page_title: William Bendix
section_title: Film
hierarchical_section_title: William Bendix / Film
caption_attribution_description: English: Poster for the American film The Glass Key (1942).
context_page_description: William Bendix was an American film, radio, and television actor, who typically played rough, blue-collar characters. He is best remembered in films for the title role in The Babe Ruth Story. He also portrayed the clumsily earnest aircraft plant worker Chester A. Riley in both the radio and television versions of The Life of Riley. He received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for Wake Island.
context_section_description: Bendix began his acting career at age 30 in the New Jersey Federal Theatre Project. He made his film debut in 1942. He played in supporting roles in dozens of Hollywood films, usually as a warm-hearted gangster, detective or serviceman. He began with appearances in film noir, including a supporting role in The Glass Key (1942), which featured Brian Donlevy, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in the leads. He soon gained attention after appearing in Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) as Gus, a wounded and dying American sailor.
  Bendix's other well-known movie roles include his portrayal of Babe Ruth in The Babe Ruth Story (1948) – a film roundly considered one of the worst sports biopics in film history and Sir Sagramore opposite Bing Crosby in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), in which he took part in the trio, "Busy Doing Nothing". He played Nick the bartender in the film version of William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life (1948) starring James Cagney. Bendix had appeared in the stage version, but in the role of Officer Krupp (a role played on film by Broderick Crawford). He was cast in The Blue Dahlia (1946), appearing for the second time alongside Ladd and Lake.
  Bendix starred in a film adaptation of his radio program The Life of Riley (1949).
caption: Poster for The Glass Key (1942)
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