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Arthur Batanides

Arthur Batanides was an American film and television actor whose career was built on range, steady character work and an ability to move between very different corners of the screen. Born in Tacoma, Washington, on April 9, 1923, he became interested in acting while performing stand-up routines for fellow GIs in Europe during World War II. He later studied dramatic art at the Actors' Lab in Los Angeles and gained extensive experience on stage. Batanides became a familiar presence across decades of television, guest starring in series including Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, The Andy Griffith Show, Bonanza, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mission: Impossible, Columbo and Happy Days. Westerns were also part of that busy television run, with appearances in Tombstone Territory, The Rifleman and The Wild Wild West. In the 1963 Perry Mason episode “The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe,” he played Bill Golding, while The Rifleman cast him as Littleboy Sherman in “Old Man Running.” One of his more recognizable television roles came in Star Trek, where he played the unfortunate Starfleet geologist D'Amato in the episode “That Which Survives.” It is a good example of the kind of career Batanides had: he might not have been the central figure in a long-running series, but he repeatedly found a place in shows that audiences continued to revisit. His film credits included The Unearthly, Violent Road, The Leech Woman, Man-Trap, The Maltese Bippy, Evil Roy Slade and Brannigan. Later, he appeared as Mr. Kirkland in four Police Academy films, giving him a recurring big-screen role within the comedy series. The sixth installment, City Under Siege, became his final acting appearance. Batanides died in Los Angeles on January 10, 2000, at the age of 76. His body of work remains a snapshot of a durable character actor's life: stage-trained, widely travelled across television and film, and present in an unusually broad collection of enduring shows.