Jay Novello was an American radio

Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

, film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, and television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 character actor

Character actor

A character actor is one who predominantly plays unusual or eccentric characters. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a character actor as "an actor who specializes in character parts", defining character part in turn as "an acting role displaying pronounced or unusual characteristics or...

.

Born in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 as Michael Romano, of Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 descent, Novello began his career as a radio actor, playing Jack Packard on the Hollywood version of I Love a Mystery

I Love a Mystery

I Love a Mystery was a radio drama series about three friends who ran a detective agency and traveled the world in search of adventure. Distinguished by the high octane scripting of Carlton E...

for a brief period, circa 1944. However, he usually put his suave, cultured voice and dexterity at accents to use in supporting roles, usually ethnic, on a variety of series. He was heard regularly on Rocky Jordan

Rocky Jordan

Rocky Jordan was a radio series about an American restaurateur in Cairo who each week became involved in some kind of mystery or adventure. The show was broadcast on CBS from October 31, 1948 to September 10, 1950. and then again from June 27, 1951 to August 22, 1951...

, (as Cairo police captain Lt. Sam Sabaaya), the radio version of The Lone Wolf (as Jamison the butler), and the long-running serial One Man's Family

One Man's Family

One Man's Family, is a long-running American radio soap opera. It was heard for almost three decades, from 1932 to 1959. Created by Carlton E. Morse, it was the longest-running uninterrupted serial in the history of American radio...

(as Judge Glenn Hunter). He was also heard on Escape

Escape (radio program)

Escape was radio's leading anthology series of high-adventure radio dramas, airing on CBS from July 7, 1947 to September 25, 1954. Since the program did not have a regular sponsor like Suspense, it was subjected to frequent schedule shifts and lower production budgets, although Richfield Oil signed...

, Crime Classics

Crime Classics

Crime Classics was a U. S. radio docudrama which aired as a sustaining series over CBS from June 15, 1953, to June 30, 1954.Created, produced, and directed by radio actor/director Elliott Lewis, the program was a historical true crime series, examining crimes and murders from the past...

, Lux Radio Theater

Lux Radio Theater

Lux Radio Theater, a long-run classic radio anthology series, was broadcast on the NBC Blue Network ; CBS and NBC . Initially, the series adapted Broadway plays during its first two seasons before it began adapting films. These hour-long radio programs were performed live before studio audiences...

, Suspense

Suspense

Suspense is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. Suspense is not exclusive to fiction, though. Suspense may operate in any situation where there is a lead-up to a big event or dramatic...

, and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar

Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar was a radio drama of "the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account — America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator." The show aired on CBS Radio from January 14, 1949 to September 30, 1962...

, among others.

In film, Novello alternated between pompous or fussy professionals and assorted ethnic roles, often as Italian or Hispanic

Hispanic

Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...

 characters. One of his earliest and more familiar film appearances is in the 1945 Laurel and Hardy

Laurel and Hardy

Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comedy double acts of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema...

 comedy The Bullfighters, in which Novello plays a Latin restaurateur. Though prolific in the movies, Novello was limited mostly to bits in minor films, one of his more noteworthy assignments being the officious Spanish consul in Frank Capra

Frank Capra

Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...

's Pocketful of Miracles

Pocketful of Miracles

Pocketful of Miracles is a 1961 American comedy film that stars Bette Davis and Glenn Ford, directed by Frank Capra. The screenplay by Hal Kanter and Harry Tugend is based on the screenplay Lady for a Day by Robert Riskin, which was adapted from the Damon Runyon short story "Madame La Gimp".The...

.

Besides several appearances on CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

's I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy is an American television sitcom starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. The black-and-white series originally ran from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, on the Columbia Broadcasting System...

, Novello guest starred on a 1952 episode of CBS's espionage drama Biff Baker, U.S.A.

Biff Baker, U.S.A.

Biff Baker, U.S.A. is an American crime drama television series that aired on CBS from November 6, 1952, to March 26, 1953 starring Alan Hale, Jr. as Cold War spy Biff Baker.-Synopsis:...

, starring Alan Hale, Jr.

Alan Hale, Jr.

Alan Hale, Jr. was an American film and television actor, best known for his role as Skipper on the popular sitcom Gilligan's Island. Hale was the lookalike son of popular supporting film actor Alan Hale, Sr....

 He appeared too on NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

's Northwest Passage

Northwest Passage (TV series)

Northwest Passage is a 26-episode half-hour adventure television series produced by Metro Goldwyn Mayer about Major Robert Rogers during the time of the French and Indian War . The show derived its title and the main characters Rogers, Towne, and Marriner from the 1937 novel of the same name by...

series, based on the work of Major Robert Rogers

Robert Rogers (soldier)

Robert Rogers was an American colonial frontiersman. Rogers served in the British army during both the French and Indian War and the American Revolution...

 in the French and Indian War

French and Indian War

The French and Indian War is the common American name for the war between Great Britain and France in North America from 1754 to 1763. In 1756, the war erupted into the world-wide conflict known as the Seven Years' War and thus came to be regarded as the North American theater of that war...

. He appeared in 1956 on NBC's western

Western (genre)

The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...

 anthology series Frontier

Frontier (1955 TV series)

This program should not be confused with Frontiers , the British program Frontier , Frontier Justice , Frontier Circus, or Frontier Doctor....

in the episode "The Texicans". About this time, he also guest starred in Brian Keith

Brian Keith

Brian Keith was an American film, television, and stage actor who in his four decade-long career gained recognition for his work in movies such as the 1961 Disney family film The Parent Trap, the 1966 comedy The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, and the 1975 adventure saga The Wind and...

's first series, Crusader

Crusader (TV series)

Crusader is a half-hour black-and-white American adventure/drama series that aired on CBS for two seasons from October 7, 1955 to December 28, 1956.-Synopsis:...

, a Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

 drama. In 1957, he guest starred in Frank Lovejoy

Frank Lovejoy

Frank Lovejoy was an American actor in radio, film, and television. He was born Frank Lovejoy Jr. in Bronx, New York, but grew up in New Jersey. His father, Frank Lovejoy Sr., was a furniture salesman from Maine...

's NBC detective series, Meet McGraw

Meet McGraw

Meet McGraw is an American dramatic television series starring Frank Lovejoy in the role of the hard-hitting detective McGraw, a man specifically given no first name in the program. Forty-one half-hour episodes aired on NBC during the 1957-1958 season, sponsored by Procter & Gamble. The series was...

.

He appeared in the syndicated crime drama, Johnny Midnight

Johnny Midnight (TV series)

Johnny Midnight is an American crime drama that aired for one season in syndicated from January to December 1960. The series stars Edmond O'Brien as the title character.-Synopsis:...

, starring Edmond O'Brien

Edmond O'Brien

Edmond O'Brien was an American actor who is perhaps best remembered for his role in D.O.A. and his Oscar winning role in The Barefoot Contessa...

. Novello appeared twice on The Andy Griffith Show

The Andy Griffith Show

The Andy Griffith Show is an American sitcom first televised by CBS between October 3, 1960, and April 1, 1968. Andy Griffith portrays a widowed sheriff in the fictional small community of Mayberry, North Carolina...

(as the main character in the episode entitled "Guest of Honor", and as an opportunist lawyer in "Otis Sues the County"), and an early guest spot on the television incarnation of Gangbusters (as famed bank robber Willie Sutton

Willie Sutton

William "Willie" Sutton was a prolific U.S. bank robber. During his forty-year criminal career he stole an estimated $2 million, and eventually spent more than half of his adult life in prison...

), he was a regular on McHale's Navy

McHale's Navy

McHale's Navy is an American television sitcom series which ran for 138 half-hour episodes from October 11,1962, to August 31, 1966, on the ABC network. The series was filmed in black and white and originated in a one-hour drama called Seven Against the Sea, broadcast on April 3, 1962...

as the con artist Mayor Mario Lugatto of Volta Fiore, Italy.

He appeared in the episode of Climax!, Escape From Fear

Escape From Fear (1955)

Escape From Fear is a 1955 American television adaptation from A. J. Cronin's 1954 serial story of the same title. The show was written by Bernard Girard, directed by Allen Reisner, and produced by Tony Barr. It was the twelfth episode of the first season of Climax!, which was broadcast on CBS...

, and had a recurring role on Zorro as Juan Greco. Novello also appeared in several episodes of "Lawman".

He died at age 78 in 1982 and is interred in the San Fernando Mission Cemetery

San Fernando Mission Cemetery

The San Fernando Mission Cemetery is a Catholic cemetery located at 11160 Stranwood Avenue in the Mission Hills community of the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, California, near the San Fernando Mission....

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External links