Richard Hale

A onetime opera singer, wizened, glowering American character actor Richard Hale spent most of his screen time playing small-town sourpusses. Many of his movie appearances were small and unbilled: he enjoyed larger assignments as outlaw patriarch Basserman in Preston Sturges' The Beautiful Blonde of Bashful Bend (1949), the Soothsayer in Julius Caesar (1953), and the father of the retarded Boo Radley (Robert Duvall) in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). He also showed up with regularity on television, often cast as a taciturn farmer or hard-hearted banker on the many western series of the 1950s and 1960s. One of Hale's showier parts was in the Oscar-winning All The King's Men, as the father of the girl killed in an auto accident caused by the drunken son (John Derek) of demagogic Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford), his character name: Richard Hale. - Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide