Career Highlights: The Old Man and the Sea, Blue Collar, Hero at Large
First Major Screen Credit: The Tanks Are Coming (1951)
Biography
Though born in the Midwest, character actor Harry Bellaver spent the better part of his screen career playing New York- or Brooklyn-bred cops, cabbies, doormen and petty thieves. His four-decade career began with MGM's Another Thin Man (1939), and ended when he retired after 1980's Hero at Large. An inescapable guest-star presence on 1950s and 1960s television, Harry Bellaver also played Sergeant Frank Arcaro on the weekly New York-filmed cop series The Naked City (1959-63). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Harry Bellaver (February 12, 1905 – August 8, 1993) was an American stage, film and television actor who appeared in many roles from the 1930s through the 1980s.
Bellaver was born in Hillsboro, Illinois, the son of Italian immigrants working in the Hillsboro coal mines. He appeared in numerous Broadway plays over the years, with his Broadway debut in the 1931 Group Theatre production of the play 1931. He also appeared in the Elmer Rice play We, The People in 1933, and in the Broadway debut hat year of The Threepenny Opera.
Bellaver's greatest Broadway success was in 1946, when he appeared in the original production of Annie Get Your Gun, as Chief Sitting Bull. He appeared in the same roll in the 1966 revival.
Bellaver was also a prolific film character actor, mainly in "working class" roles, from 1939 through the 1960s. He appeared in the film adaptation of From Here to Eternity and in several notable film noirs. He appeared in The House on 92nd Street as a taxi driver spying for the Nazis, and again played a cab driver, this time victimized by a gangster, in Side Street.
Bellaver is probably best known for his featured role as Sgt. Frank Arcaro in the television series Naked City. He played an older, mellow detective who was a counterpoint to the dedicated young detective played by Paul Burke. Bellaver continued to play small film and television roles through the 1980s, with his last film role in 1985 as an old miner in the movie The Stuff.