Tristram Coffin

Tristram Coffin was born in a Utah mining community, grew up in Salt Lake City, and started acting while in high school. He later continued acting with traveling stock companies. Having earned a degree in speech at the University of Washington, he worked as a news analyst and sportscaster until a Hollywood talent scout approached him with the idea of putting him in films. Coffin's sinister looks served him well in the roles he played in serials like Perils of Nyoka (1942) and Spy Smasher (1942), but there were occasional hero roles, too, as in the feature The Corpse Vanishes (1942) with Bela Lugosi.

He donned the bullet helmet and gadget-laden leather jacket of Rocket Man in the 1949 serial King of the Rocket Men (1949).

He was the infamous "dead man walking" from early television, an often-told tale about the "corpse" who got up and walked out of a scene on live TV. The incident was so well known that Los Angeles Times ran an article a few days after the incident, saying, "It seems that on the new high-budgeted CBS dramatic series, Climax! (1954), which had its debut on KNXT (2) Thursday night, actor Tristam Coffin was lying under a blanket and Detective Dick Powell was talking about having the body removed when the actor arose from the dead and strolled off scene. Powell and the other actors went right on talking as if nothing had happened. And the show went on and the private eye finally solved the murder, leaving televiewers a little perplexed. CBS blushingly explained yesterday that Coffin thought the scene was over and that he was off-camera when he took his macabre stroll". However, Coffin vigorously refuted the description (see Personal Quote below).