John Anderson

Twice played Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the Commissioner of Baseball from 1920 to 1944 brought in by the team owners to restore public confidence after the 1919 Black Sox scandal in 'Babe Ruth (1991)(TV movie)' and Eight Men Out (1988).

In 1946, he commenced studies at the University of Iowa, eventually graduating with a master's degree in drama. His acting career began on the riverboat 'Goldenrod' (now the oldest surviving Mississippi River Basin showboat in America) and proceeded from there to the Cleveland Playhouse for a year, then the New York stage and summer stock with parts in prestigious plays like "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" and "Home of the Brave".

He also occasionally doubled up as a singer on Broadway ("Paint Your Wagon" (1951), "The Emperor's Clothes" (1953)). Anderson began as a regular television actor during that medium's formative years.

In the course of the next four decades, his appearance barely changing, he was consistently excellent wherever he popped up, be it as western lawmen (including a recurring role as Virgil Earp in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955)), as cops, governors, judges and army officers; hard-nosed oil executive Herbert Styles in Dallas (1978), or as kindly patriarch of the Hazard clan in North and South, Book I (1985).

He had a high opinion of Rod Serling and was proud to be featured in four episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959), most memorably as the tuxedo-clad angel Gabriel in "A Passage for Trumpet" (doing for Jack Klugman what Henry Travers did for James Stewart in It's A Wonderful Life (1946)). Known to other youths as 'J. R. ', Anderson had a happy childhood, growing up first on a small farm near Clayton, Illinois, and then in the mid-sized town of Quincy where his mother operated a cigar stand. A rangy, outdoorsy type, he excelled at various sports, was a drum major, a member of the track team and the boy scouts. During World War II, he served in the Coast Guard, mainly involved in helping protect convoys from U-boat attacks.

Though less traveled on the big screen, Anderson was particularly impressive as the furtive second-hand car dealer, 'California Charlie', in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), the ruthless leader of the renegades, Addis, in Day of the Evil Gun (1968) and, reprising his role as Lincoln, in The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977).

A tall, sinewy, austere-looking character actor with silver hair, rugged features and a distinctive voice, John Robert Anderson appeared in hundreds of films and television episodes. Immensely versatile, he was at his best submerging himself in the role of historical figures (he impersonated Abraham Lincoln three times and twice baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, men whom he strongly resembled). He was a familiar presence in westerns and science-fiction serials, usually as upstanding, dignified and generally benign citizens (a rare exception was his Ebonite interrogator in The Outer Limits (1963) episode "Nightmare").

He guest starred in episodes of 3 different TV westerns as the former commander of a Civil War prison camp who was now trying to hide under an assumed name to escape his past. In Bonanza: The Fence (1969) and The Big Valley: The Guilt of Matt Bentell (1965) he was unaware of some of the deplorable conditions in his camp and was remorseful for what happened. However, on Cheyenne: Retaliation (1961) he was fully aware of the conditions and tried to eliminate anyone who discovered his true identity.

Shares last name with Richard Dean Anderson, and played the grandfather of MacGyver (1985). Despite this, there is no relation.

Anderson had lost his own wife shortly before appearing in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) "The Survivors", and said that the subject matter made the role of Kevin Uxbridge one of the most difficult of his career. (Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion).

After his death in 1992, he was cremated and his ashes taken out to sea as part of his membership with the Neptune Society.