William Schallert, a veteran TV performer and Hollywood union leader who played Patty Duke’s father — and uncle — on television and led a long, contentious strike for actors, has died.
Schallert died Sunday at his home in Pacific Palisades, California, said his son, Edwin. He was 93.
Though usually seen in secondary roles, Schallert’s lean, friendly face was familiar to baby boomers for roles in two classic sitcoms — as a teacher to Dwayne Hickman and his pals in “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” and as the dad in “The Patty Duke Show.”
In 1979, Schallert was elected president of the 46,000-member Screen Actors Guild, an honor held at one time or another by James Cagney, George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Charlton Heston and other screen notables. Most of them had little to do but conduct meetings and issue statements. With Schallert it was different.
In 1980 he led the union as it staged a 13-week strike over such issues as actors’ pay for films made for the then-new cable television industry.
He told the Los Angeles Times his message to actors was that “we have to respect ourselves as artists” and recalled the pre-union days when actors were sometimes expected to work until midnight and be back at work six hours later.
William Joseph Schallert was born in 1922, in Los Angeles. His father, Edwin, was drama editor of the Los Angeles Times from 1919 to 1958.
William spent his high school years in a seminary. After military service he graduated from UCLA and went to England on a Fulbright scholarship in 1952. He studied repertory theater and lectured on American theater at Oxford University.
In his early years he was a founding member of the Circle Theater in Hollywood. The director was Charlie Chaplin, whose son Sydney was a cast member.
Schallert recalled that after a preview performance Chaplin would suggest a couple of things to correct. “When it was about five or six in the morning,” Schallert said, “Oona (Chaplin’s wife) would say ‘Come on, Charlie, let them go home. They’ve got a performance to do tonight.”’
Associated Press
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