Charles Lane, 1905 - 2007.

Charles Lane, the prolific character actor whose name was little known, but whose bespectacled face and crotchety persona made him instantly recognizable to generations of movie-goers, has died, his son said Tuesday. He was 102....

Lane, whose career spanned more than 60 years, appeared in such film classics as It's a Wonderful Life, Mr Deeds Goes to Town and Twentieth Century....

In 1934, Frank Capra, then on his rise to eminence, cast Lane in a horse racing film, Broadway Bill. Capra liked the actor's work so much he included him in nine more movies, including Mr Smith Goes to Washington and You Can't Take It with You.

Bob Thomas for the AP.

Updated through 7/14.

Joe Saltzman livens up his piece on "Frank Capra and the Image of the Journalist in American Film" with several stills, one of them from Mr Smith. Scroll down to see Jimmy Stewart this close to punching out Nosey, that is, Charles Lane.

See also: Wikipedia. More from Edward Copeland.

Updates, 7/11: "Mr Lane was busily employed from the 1930s to the 90s, playing hotel clerks, cashiers, reporters, lawyers, judges, tax collectors, mean-spirited businessmen, the powerful as well as the nondescript," writes Robert Berkvist in the New York Times. "Sometimes he was little more than a face in the crowd, with only a line or two of dialogue, which made it easy for him to trot from one movie set to another and rack up two or three film credits in a single day."

"Starting in the early 1950s, Lane was also on dozens of TV programs, including The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show," notes Claudia Luther in the Los Angeles Times. "Perhaps most famously, he appeared in classic episodes of I Love Lucy, playing several characters who all seemed to have in common a stunned if comical lack of patience with the bumbling Lucy. He said it was on this show that he perfected the crusty skinflint role."

Update, 7/14: Richard Harland Smith at Movie Morlocks: "I've lived most of my life wanting Charles Lane to yell at me."

Posted by dwhudson at July 10, 2007 2:34 PM