Herbert Anderson was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 character actor from Oakland, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, probably best remembered for his part as Henry Mitchell in the classic television sitcom Dennis The Menace.

Career

After a few minor roles in films for Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

, Anderson got his big break in the 1941 picture Navy Blues, starring Martha Raye

Martha Raye

Martha Raye was an American comic actress and standards singer who performed in movies, and later on television....

 and Ann Sheridan

Ann Sheridan

-Life and career:Born Clara Lou Sheridan in Denton, Texas on February 21, 1915, she was a student at the University of North Texas when her sister sent a photograph of her to Paramount Pictures. She subsequently entered and won a beauty contest, with part of her prize being a bit part in a...

, followed by The Body Disappears and The Male Animal

The Male Animal

The Male Animal is a Warner Brothers film starring Henry Fonda, Olivia de Havilland and Joan Leslie.The film was based on a hit 1940 Broadway play of the same name written by James Thurber and Elliott Nugent. The screenplay was written by Stephen Morehouse Avery, Julius J. Epstein, and Philip G....

in which he co-starred with Henry Fonda

Henry Fonda

Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...

 and Olivia de Havilland

Olivia de Havilland

Olivia Mary de Havilland is a British American film and stage actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 and 1949. She is the elder sister of actress Joan Fontaine. The sisters are among the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s.-Early life:Olivia de Havilland...

. His other films include the 1949 World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 film Battleground, Give My Regards to Broadway

Give My Regards to Broadway

"Give My Regards to Broadway" is a song written by George M. Cohan for his musical play Little Johnny Jones ....

, Excuse My Dust

Excuse My Dust

Excuse My Dust is a 1920 silent film action comedy produced by Famous Players-Lasky and distributed by Paramount Pictures. It is taken from a Saturday Evening Post short story The Bear Trap by Byron Morgan, who penned stories for the previous year's The Roaring Road. Sam Wood directed Wallace Reid...

, Island in the Sky

Island in the Sky

Island in the Sky or may refer to:*Island in the Sky , 1953 film starring John Wayne*Island in the Sky *Island in the Sky, the Ernest K...

, The Benny Goodman Story

The Benny Goodman Story

The Benny Goodman Story is a biographical film starring Steve Allen and Donna Reed, directed by Valentine Davies and released by Universal Studios in 1956. The film is based on the life of famed clarinetist Benny Goodman, who recorded most of the clarinet solos used in the film...

, Kelly and Me, Joe Butterfly

Joe Butterfly

Joe Butterfly is a comedy film directed by Jesse Hibbs and starring Audie Murphy, George Nader, Keenan Wynn, and Burgess Meredith in the title role. The movie follows the staff of Yank magazine, who are among the first American troops in Tokyo after Japan's surrender. They are given the difficult...

, My Man Godfrey

My Man Godfrey

My Man Godfrey is a 1936 American screwball comedy film directed by Gregory La Cava. The screenplay was written by Morrie Ryskind, with uncredited contributions by La Cava, based on "1101 Park Avenue", a short story by Eric Hatch. The story concerns a socialite who hires a derelict to be her...

(1957), I Bury the Living

I Bury the Living

I Bury the Living is a horror film directed by famed B-movie director Albert Band, father of Charles Band, and starring Richard Boone and Theodore Bikel.-Plot summary:...

, Sunrise at Campobello

Sunrise at Campobello

Sunrise at Campobello is a 1960 American biographical film made by Dore Schary Productions and Warner Bros. It tells the story of the initial struggle by future President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his family when he was stricken with paralysis at the age of 39 in August...

, Hold On!

Hold On! (film)

Hold On! is a 1966 musical film directed by Arthur Lubin and starring Peter Noone, Shelley Fabares, Herbert Anderson, and Sue Ane Langdon. The film features performances by Herman's Hermits and stars the band as fictionalized versions of themselves...

and Rascal

Rascal

Rascal or rascals may refer to:In music:* Dizzee Rascal , English rapper, songwriter, and record producer* The Rascals, American blue-eyed soul group* The Rascals , indie rock band from the Hoylake, England...

. Anderson also acted extensively in Broadway shows, including the role of Dr. Bird in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. He was also in the film version of The Caine Mutiny

The Caine Mutiny

The Caine Mutiny is a 1952 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Herman Wouk. The novel grew out of Wouk's personal experiences aboard a destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific in World War II and deals with, among other things, the moral and ethical decisions made at sea by the captains of ships...

, with Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....

; he was the only one of both casts to be both in the Broadway play and the movie.

Anderson is also known for both lead and guest-starring roles in many television shows, including Dennis the Menace, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from 1959 to 1963. The series and some episode scripts were adapted from a 1951 collection of short stories of the same name, written by Max Shulman, that also inspired the 1953 film The Affairs of Dobie Gillis with Debbie...

, Perry Mason

Perry Mason

Perry Mason is a fictional character, a defense attorney who was the main character in works of detective fiction authored by Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason was featured in more than 80 novels and short stories, most of which had a plot involving his client's murder trial...

, The David Niven Show, Mr. Adams and Eve

Mr. Adams and Eve

Mr. Adams and Eve is a CBS sitcom starring Howard Duff and his then wife, Ida Lupino, as a fictitious acting couple, Howard and Eve Adams, residing in Beverly Hills, California. In the television series, Lupino is known professionally as Eve Drake. The program aired sixty-six episodes from January...

, Sea Hunt

Sea Hunt

Sea Hunt was an American adventure television series that was aired in syndication by Ziv Television Programs from 1958 to 1961 and was popular in syndication for decades afterwards. The series originally aired for four seasons, with 155 episodes produced...

, Alfred Hitchcock Presents

Alfred Hitchcock Presents

Alfred Hitchcock Presents is an American television anthology series hosted by Alfred Hitchcock. The series featured dramas, thrillers, and mysteries. By the premiere of the show on October 2, 1955, Hitchcock had been directing films for over three decades...

, My Three Sons

My Three Sons

My Three Sons is an American situation comedy. The series ran from 1960 to 1965 on ABC, and moved to CBS until its end on August 24, 1972. My Three Sons chronicles the life of a widower and aeronautical engineer named Steven Douglas , raising his three sons.The series was a cornerstone of the CBS...

, The Bing Crosby Show

The Bing Crosby Show

The Bing Crosby Show is a 28-episode situation comedy television program starring crooner, film star, iconic phenomenon, and businessman Bing Crosby and actress Beverly Garland as a middle-aged couple, Bing and Ellie Collins, rearing two teenaged daughters during the early 1960s...

, I Dream of Jeannie

I Dream of Jeannie

I Dream of Jeannie is a 1960s American sitcom with a fantasy premise. The show starred Barbara Eden as a 2,000-year-old genie, and Larry Hagman as an astronaut who becomes her master, with whom she falls in love and eventually marries...

, The Smothers Brothers Show

The Smothers Brothers Show

The Smothers Brothers Show is an American fantasy sitcom featuring the Smothers Brothers that aired on CBS on Friday nights at 9:30 p.m. ET from September 17, 1965 to September 9, 1966, co-sponsored by Alberto-Culver's VO5 hairdressing products and American Tobacco...

, The Cara Williams Show, Petticoat Junction

Petticoat Junction

Petticoat Junction is an American situation comedy produced by Filmways which originally aired on CBS from 1963 to 1970. The series is one of three interrelated shows about rural characters created by Paul Henning; the others are The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres.The setting for the series...

, Bewitched

Bewitched

Bewitched is an American situation comedy originally broadcast for eight seasons on ABC from 1964 to 1972, starring Elizabeth Montgomery, Dick York and Dick Sargent , Agnes Moorehead, and David White. The show is about a witch who marries a mortal and tries to lead the life of a typical suburban...

, Daniel Boone

Daniel Boone

Daniel Boone was an American pioneer, explorer, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits mad']'e him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now the Commonwealth of Kentucky, which was then beyond the western borders of...

, Family Affair

Family Affair

Family Affair is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from September 12, 1966 to September 9, 1971. The series explored the trials of well-to-do civil engineer and bachelor Bill Davis as he attempted to raise his brother's orphaned children in his luxury New York City apartment. Davis' traditional...

, Adam-12

Adam-12

Adam-12 was a television police drama which followed two police officers of the Los Angeles Police Department, Pete Malloy and Jim Reed, as they patrolled the streets of Los Angeles in their patrol unit, 1-Adam-12. Created by Jack Webb who is known for creating Dragnet, the series captured a...

, Green Acres

Green Acres

Green Acres is an American television series starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor as a couple who move from New York City to a country farm...

, Batman

Batman

Batman is a fictional character created by the artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger. A comic book superhero, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 , and since then has appeared primarily in publications by DC Comics...

, Dragnet

Dragnet (series)

Dragnet is a radio and television crime drama about the cases of a dedicated Los Angeles police detective, Sergeant Joe Friday, and his partners...

, The Brady Bunch

The Brady Bunch

The Brady Bunch is an American sitcom created by Sherwood Schwartz and starring Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, and Ann B. Davis. The series revolved around a large blended family...

, The Name of the Game

The Name of the Game

"The Name of the Game" is a 1977 song by Swedish pop group ABBA, and was released as the first single from the group's fifth studio album, The Album...

, The Governor and J.J., Ironside

Ironside

-Entertainment and literature:*Ironside , an American television series starring Raymond Burr*Ironside: A Modern Faery's Tale, an urban fantasy novel by Holly Black-People:...

, Gunsmoke

Gunsmoke

Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman MacDonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, during the settlement of the American West....

,, Nanny and the Professor

Nanny and the Professor

Nanny and the Professor is a U.S. fantasy situation comedy created by AJ Carothers and Thomas L. Miller for 20th Century Fox Television. During pre-production, the proposed title was Nanny Will Do. The series first aired as a mid-season replacement on January 21, 1970, on ABC and was last telecast...

, The Jimmy Stewart Show

The Jimmy Stewart Show

The Jimmy Stewart Show is an American sitcom starring James Stewart as a professor at a small town university called Josiah Kesser College. Twenty-four episodes of the show were broadcast in the 1971–1972 season on the NBC network's Sunday night schedule , under the sponsorship of Procter &...

, The Smith Family

The Smith Family (TV series)

The Smith Family is an American comedy-drama television series produced by Don Fedderson Productions. The series aired on ABC from October 20, 1971 to June 7, 1972, for 39 episodes.-Cast:...

, The Rookies

The Rookies

The Rookies is an American crime drama series that aired on ABC from 1972 until 1976. It followed the exploits of three rookie police officers in an unidentified city for the fictitious Southern California Police Department .-History:...

and The Waltons

The Waltons

The Waltons is an American television series created by Earl Hamner, Jr., based on his book Spencer's Mountain, and a 1963 film of the same name. The show centered on a family growing up in a rural Virginia community during the Great Depression and World War II. The series pilot was a television...

.

Anderson retired from acting in 1982 after having heart

Heart

The heart is a myogenic muscular organ found in all animals with a circulatory system , that is responsible for pumping blood throughout the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions...

 surgery. He died of complications from a stroke

Stroke

A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...

 on June 11, 1994 in Palm Springs

Palm Springs, California

Palm Springs is a desert city in Riverside County, California, within the Coachella Valley. It is located approximately 37 miles east of San Bernardino, 111 miles east of Los Angeles and 136 miles northeast of San Diego...

, California.

Selected filmography

• Battleground (1949) - Pvt Hanson
• Navy Blues (1941) - Homer Mathews
• The Lawless
  The Lawless
  The Lawless is a 1950 American drama film directed by Joseph Losey and starring Macdonald Carey, Gail Russell and Johnny Sands. A newspaper editor in California becomes concerned about the plight of the state's fruit pickers, mostly illegal immigrants from Mexico...
  
  (1950)
• The Benny Goodman Story
  The Benny Goodman Story
  The Benny Goodman Story is a biographical film starring Steve Allen and Donna Reed, directed by Valentine Davies and released by Universal Studios in 1956. The film is based on the life of famed clarinetist Benny Goodman, who recorded most of the clarinet solos used in the film...
  
  (1956) - John Hammond, Jr.
• Hold On!
  Hold On! (film)
  Hold On! is a 1966 musical film directed by Arthur Lubin and starring Peter Noone, Shelley Fabares, Herbert Anderson, and Sue Ane Langdon. The film features performances by Herman's Hermits and stars the band as fictionalized versions of themselves...
  
  (1966) - Ed Lindquist

External links

• Great Character Actors: Herbert Anderson