Eddie Quillan; Acting Career Spanned 60 Years

Eddie Quillan, who honed his theatrical skills in silent two-reel Mack Sennett comedies and then utilized them in more than 150 films and dozens of television shows in a 60-year career, has died in Burbank.

He was 83 when he died Thursday of cancer, said his sister, Roseanne Quillan.

Quillan was a longtime resident of North Hollywood who portrayed a series of idealistic young heroes and boys next door in some of Hollywood’s most notable pictures.

Among them were Ellison, the lovesick mutineer in “Mutiny on the Bounty” (1935), a boy accused of murder in “Young Mr. Lincoln” (1939), Connie Rivers, the young radio mechanic in “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940) and the candy man in “Brigadoon” (1954).

Known for his saucy, light air and a flair for the double-take, Quillan was born into a family of vaudevillians in Philadelphia and traveled the country as a child, performing in the family’s variety act, “A Little Bit of Everything.” In the mid-1920s, he came to California and landed small parts in Sennett’s slapstick comedies.

But his big break came when he chanced upon a disabled car on Santa Monica Boulevard and stopped to help fix a flat tire, not knowing that the driver was an aide to film director Cecil B. DeMille. Quillan was invited to an audition and signed a contract with DeMille’s Pathe Film Corp. In 1929, he appeared in his first feature film, “The Godless Girl.”

He generally was consigned to frothy comedies or musical revues but achieved occasional breakthroughs in major films.

When he turned to TV late in his career he generally portrayed an assortment of cab drivers, bookmakers or thieves on such melodramas as “Police Woman” and “Baretta.”

But as the mailman in 1968-71 television series “Julia,” he was allowed some comedic improvisations by producer-director Hal Kanter because of his extensive background.

“The first thing I’d do when I got on the set was to see where the doors are, where the props are and figure out what I might do in the way of (funny) business,” Quillan said in a 1981 Times interview. “There are very few if any of us left who know the (impromptu) comedy we learned in that era,” he said of his Sennett days.

Quillan also was the handyman in the 1964-65 TV series “Valentine’s Day” and appeared in several episodes of “Little House on the Prairie” and “Highway to Heaven.”

He is survived by five sisters, who ask donations in his name to the St. Joseph Medical Foundation, 501 S. Buena Vista St., Burbank 91505.