Career Highlights: Seconds, Home of the Brave, Superman and the Mole Men
First Major Screen Credit: My Friend Flicka (1943)
Biography
American actor Jeff Corey forsook a job as sewing-machine salesman for the less stable world of New York theatre in the 1930s. The 26-year-old Corey was regarded as a valuable character-actor commodity when he arrived in Hollywood in 1940. Perhaps the best of his many early unbilled appearances was in the Kay Kyser film You'll Find Out (40), in which Corey, playing a game-show contestant (conveniently named Jeff Corey), was required to sing a song while stuffing his mouth full of crackers. The actor was busiest during the "film noir" mid-to-late 1940s, playing several weasely villain roles; it is hard to forget the image of Corey, in the role of a slimy stoolie in Burt Lancaster's Brute Force, being tied to the front of a truck and pushed directly into a hail of police bullets. Corey's film career ended abruptly in 1952 when he was unfairly blacklisted for his left-leaning political beliefs. To keep food on the table, Corey became an acting coach, eventually running one of the top training schools in the business (among his more famous pupils was Jack Nicholson). He was permitted to return to films in the 1960s, essaying such roles as a wild-eyed wino in Lady in a Cage (64), the louse who kills Kim Darby's father in True Grit (68), and a sympathetic sheriff in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (68). In addition to his film work, Jeff Corey has acted in and directed numerous TV series; he was seen as a regular on the 1985 Robert Blake series Hell Town and the 1986 Earl Hamner Jr. production Morningstar/Eveningstar. The following decade found Corey appearing in such films as Sinatra (1992), Beethoven's 2nd (1993) and the action thriller Surviving the Game (1994). Shortly after suffering a fall at his Malibu home in August of 2002, Corey died in Santa Monica due to complications resulting from the accident. He was 88. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
After a Shakespearean stint in New York in the late 1930s, Corey made the move to Hollywood in 1940, where he became a highly respected character actor. One of his
early TV appearances was in the pilot for Adventures of
Superman, a 1950 feature film called Superman and the Mole
Men, later edited to a two-part episode called The Unknown People. His effective portrayal of a xenophobic
vigilante would prove to be ironic, in light of what was about to happen to him.
His career was halted in the early 1950s, when he was summoned before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Corey refused to give names and went
so far as to ridicule the panel by offering critiques of the testimony of the previous witnesses. This behaviour led to his being
blacklisted for twelve years.
In 1962, Corey began working in films again, and remained active into the 1990s. He made guest appearances in many TV shows.
His best known appearances in the science fiction community were in The Outer Limits episode "O.B.I.T." and the Star Trek season 3 episode "The Cloud Minders" as High Advisor
Plasus and on Babylon 5 as Justin in the season 3 finale "Z'ha'dum".
Returning to one aspect of his acting roots, he can be seen directing some of the screen tests for Superman in the DVD extras.
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