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Alan North

Alan North built the kind of wide-ranging acting career that could move comfortably between Broadway, film and television without being defined by a single medium. Born in the Bronx on December 23, 1920, North served in the United States Navy during the Second World War. After the war, he worked as a stage manager before making his Broadway debut in the 1955 musical Plain and Fancy. The stage remained part of North’s working life, but his screen career took him through an unusually varied collection of movies. He appeared in Plaza Suite in 1971 and Serpico in 1973, followed by films including The Formula, Thief of Hearts and Highlander. His credits during the second half of the 1980s ranged from The Fourth Protocol and Lean on Me to the comedy See No Evil, Hear No Evil and the Civil War drama Glory. One of his later film appearances came in the 1996 thriller The Long Kiss Goodnight. For television viewers, North is particularly associated with Captain Ed Hocken in the 1982 series Police Squad! The show gave him a prominent place in its deadpan police-procedural parody alongside a cast committed to playing the absurdity straight. He also had a recurring television role as Captain Sean Delaney on the soap opera Another World from 1984 to 1988. North’s credits show the career of a dependable working actor rather than one confined to a particular genre or format. Police stories, thrillers, comedy, drama and historical filmmaking all found room for him, while his stage background remained a constant part of his professional identity. His final stage performance was in Lake Hollywood in 1999, bringing his theatrical career close to the end of a working life that had begun behind the scenes and expanded across American stage and screen. North died in 2000.