Jack Betts, the debonary character actor who played in Spaghetti Westerns, played Dracula for an ephemeral moment on Broadway and appeared in such notable films such as Spider And Gods and monstersis dead. He was 96 years old.
Betts died Thursday in his sleep at home in Los Osos, California, his nephew, Dean Sullivan, said The Hollywood Reporter.
Betts was great friends with Everyone loves the actress of Raymond Doris Roberts, with whom he shared a house and escorted him to Hollywood events in the late 1980s until his death in April 2016.
Member of the actors’ studio, Betts has portrayed the doctor at LlanView Hospital Ivan Kipling on ABC A life to live From 1979 to 1985, and its curriculum vitae also included stays on General hospital,, The edge of the night,, Doctors,, Another world,, All my children,, Look for tomorrow,, Guiding light,, Affectionate And Generations.
Betts made his way in the spotlight as a vengeful title character in Franco Giraldi Foal (1966), where it was presented for the first time as hunting powers. The film launched a series of around 15 spaghetti westerns for him until 1973, but left him without the renown appreciated by another American Star of Italian tariff.
“At the hotel next to mine was Clint Eastwood,” he recalls in an interview in 2021. “He climbed on his mountain and was doing his Western and I went to my mountain and I would do my Western. But while his films had a distribution all over the world, my films were distributed [everywhere] Except Canada and America. »»
In Sam Raimi Spider (2002), the character of Betts, Henry Balkan, said to Norman Osborn de Willem Dafoe that he crossed at Oscorp Technologies – “You were released, Norman” – but the Goblin Green will soon transform him and his colleagues member of the board of directors in skeletons during a Times Square attack.
Jack Betts with Doris Roberts at the Hollywood Film Awards in Beverly Hills in 2015.
Mark Davis / Getty images
Jack Fillmore Betts – He said he was linked to 13th The American president, Millard Fillmore – was born on April 11, 1929 in Jersey City, New Jersey. When he was 10 years old, he moved with his family to Miami and was inspired to become an actor after seeing Laurence Olivier Wuthering Heights (1939).
After graduating from Miami Senior High School, he studied at the University of Miami, where he studied the theater and played in the play by Mosse Hart Turn on the sky in Cuba. He then moved to New York and went to Broadway in 1953 in Richard IIIWith José Ferrer.
Betts had a job in a lamp factory when a friend asked her to make a scene with her for her hearing for the actors’ studio, and that led Lee Strasberg to give her a three -year scholarship to study. He then obtained a place in the famous studio, Elia Kazan putting him in a production of Cat on a hot tin roof.
He made his debut on the big screen in The bloody brood (1959), with Peter Falk, then joined Anthony George, Sebastian Cabot and Doug McClure in 1961 to play the detective Chris Devlin the second and last season of CBS ‘ CheckmateCreated by Eric Ambler.
Betts appeared four times on CBS ‘ Perry Mason from 1961 to 1966 before meeting Giraldi about the star in Foal. He told the director that he could ride a horse and had just won a shooting competition – of course, he had never been on a horse or manipulated a firearm – but he spent the next three weeks to learn these skills at the Ranch of John Wayne before running for a service in Cinecittà in Rome.
Betts also worked for the actress who became advertising Helen Ferguson at the time, and she gave him the hunting powers of the stage name.
Betts returned to Broadway for Kazan in a production of 1959-60 of Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth Before landing on the revival of 1977-80 of Dracula. He portrayed Dr. Seward, and as Raul Julia’s standby, he was able to intervene as a count – but only once – a highlight of his career.
Regarding this theme, he played Boris Karloff in Bill Condon Gods and monsters (1998), with Ian McKellen.
Betts also appeared in films such as Trotsky’s assassination (1972), To fall (1993), Batman forever (1995), Batman and Robin (1997), 8 mm (1999) and Office space (1999) and on television series, including Manure,, The FBI,, You need a thief,, Kojak,, Remington Steele,, Sink,, Everyone loves Raymond,, Friends,, My name is earl,, The mentalist And Monk.
Betts met Roberts for the first time at Studio Actors in 1954, and he accepted his offer to move New York in an apartment below in his Hollywood Hills house in 1988. “We were the best friends at the very end, we spent wonderful moments together,” he said.
Roberts also made a play that Betts wrote, Screen test: take aOn a soap opera which comes from a shoot.
In addition to his nephew, the survivors include his nieces, Lynne and Gail, and his sister, Joan, who will be 100 years old in November.
