Cause of death Heart attack Name Tom Greenway | Role Character actor | |
Born June 5, 1909 ( 1909-06-05 ) Booneville, Logan County, Arkansas, U.S. Occupation Television & film actor Died February 8, 1985, Los Angeles, California, United States Spouse Helen Greenway (m. ?–1985) Movies Last of the Badmen, The Deadly Mantis, Flood Tide Similar People Pat Conway, Robert D Webb, Phil Karlson, Fred Zinnemann, Richard Thorpe | ||
Tom Greenway (June 5, 1909–February 8, 1985) was an American character actor of film and television, whose career, in movies and television westerns, extended from 1949 to 1965.
Contents
Early life
Greenway was born June 5, 1909, to Charles Sanford Greenway and his wife Lena Mai Radford, in Booneville in Logan County, east of Fort Smith in western Arkansas. During World War II he served in the United States Army Air Corps as a flight engineer on a B-17 bomber. While on a mission, he was shot down and spent more than a year in Italian and German POW camps. Released from military service, he performed on Broadway in New York City, where he procured his Social Security number, before he moved into films, where he had many uncredited roles in the early years of his career.
Acting career
Greenway's first appearances were uncredited in two 1949 films, Impact and Deputy Marshal. Often he was cast as a law enforcement officer. He was an unnamed townsman in the 1952 Dale Robertson film based on Bret Harte's short story, "The Outcasts of Poker Flat". Greenway later appeared in many well known films including North by Northwest, High Noon, How the West was Won, Peyton Place and Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire.
Greenway appeared twice in 1954-1955 on the Rod Cameron syndicated television series City Detective. In 1955, he guest starred in the episode "The Big Genius" of NBC's Dragnet, starring and narrated by Jack Webb. In 1958, Greenway appeared four times on Rod Cameron's second syndicated series, State Trooper, a modern western series. He portrayed Sheriff Bronson in the episodes "Stay Lost, Little Girl", "Dangerous Honeymoon", "Full Circle", and "Death on Wheels". In 1957, Greenway was cast in the episode "Copper Wire" of another syndicated crime drama, Sheriff of Cochise, set in Arizona and starring John Bromfield; in 1958, he portrayed Deputy Sheriff Tom Munger in the episode "Sentenced to Death" of Bromfield's successor series, U.S. Marshal.
In 1958, he appeared as Kylie in the episode entitled "Geronimo", of Pat Conway's Tombstone Territory, also set in Arizona. John Doucette was cast in the same episode as the Apache Chief Geronimo. Greenway appeared in 1958 as Dr. Quinn in "The Dan Hogan Story" of the NBC western series, Wagon Train. Another appearance in 1958 was as Lt. Peters in the episode "Double Jeopardy" of the CBS crime drama, Richard Diamond, Private Detective, starring David Janssen. In 1959, he portrayed John Sebrey in "Death of a Gunfighter" on Richard Boone's CBS western series, Have Gun - Will Travel. That same year, he played the role of rancher Frank Chanault in the film These Thousand Hills.
Between 1957 and 1960, he appeared in five different roles in five half-hour episodes of CBS's Gunsmoke, with James Arness. He appeared in 1961 in the episode "Gamble with Death" on the syndicated western anthology series Death Valley Days, with John Doucette again playing Geronimo. That same year, Greenway guest starred twice on both NBC's Bat Masterson and CBS's Rawhide in the latter as Hawthorne in "Incident at the Blackstorms". In 1961, Greenway also played warden Binns in the episode "The Return of the Widow Brown" of Henry Fonda's series The Deputy. That same year, he also played Glenn Cornell, a used car salesman, in the episode "Very Hard Sale" of NBC's police drama, 87th Precinct. Peter Helm appeared as Cornell's son, Andy.
In 1962, he appeared twice on NBC's Laramie. He guest starred as Henry Sharp in the segment "Don't Wake a Tiger" in Dale Robertson's Tales of Wells Fargo. He appeared five times between 1960 and 1962 on NBC's Bonanza. On CBS's Perry Mason, Greenway guest starred as Rod Andrews in "The Case of the Howling Dog" (1959) and as Dick Jenkins in "The Case of the Fifth-Millionth Frenchman" (1964).
Greenway's final video role was in 1965 as a marshal in the episode "The Verdict" of Robert Horton's ABC series, A Man Called Shenandoah.
Greenway died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California, nearly twenty years after his last acting role. He was survived by his wife, Helen T. Greenway (born 1920) of Hemet in Riverside County, California.