Gale Gordon

At 89 years old, Gale Gordon has this physical status:

Gale Gordon (born Charles Thomas Aldrich Jr., 1906 – 1995) was an American character actor best known for his role as Lucille Ball's long-serving television foil, and particularly as cantankerously combustible bank executive Theodore J. Mooney on Ball's second television situation comedy The Lucy Show, a stumbling, narrowfisted bank executive.

Gordon appeared in I Love Lucy and appeared in Ball's acclaimed third series Here's Lucy and her short-lived fourth and final series Life with Lucy. Gordon was also known and beloved radio actor in Our Miss Brooks, starring Eve Arden, in 1948–1957 radio serial and 1952–1956 television series.

In Dennis the Menace, he appeared as Mr. Wilson for the second time.

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Career

Born Charles Thomas Aldrich Jr., in New York City, before playing Rumson Bullard on the show's lucrative spinoff, The Great Gildersleeve. When Gordon was enlisted in the United States Coast Guard, where he served four years, Gordon and his character of Mayor La Trivia left the show during World War II. In the 1935 radio serial The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon, he was the first actor to play Flash Gordon. In Glorious One, he appeared as Dr. Stevens.

He appeared on "The Octopus" in the Speed Gibson adventure film from 1937 to 1939. Gordon was the pilot for The Halls of Ivy in 1949, starring in the program's title role of Dr. Todhunter Hall, the president of Ivy College. Ronald Colman replaced Gordon in the pilot role, but Gordon later joined the cast as a substitute for Willard Waterman in the popular role of John Merriweather.

On the Mutual Broadcasting Network, Gordon starred as erudite art importer, suave bachelor, and amateur sleuth Gregory Hood on The Casebook of Gregory Hood from 1946-47. The show followed the same formula: same sponsor, same writers, same storytelling style—as the scheme was originally intended as a summer replacement for, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. After the network was unable to reach an employment deal with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's estate for the Sherlock Holmes franchise, the Gregory Hood program was continued on the fall schedule for the subsequent season. Mutual ended the show after a full season but it returned to ABC in 1948 and subsequent years, with other actors playing the title roles.

In the radio series Granby's Green Acres, which became the basis for the 1960s television series Green Acres, Gordon played John Granby, a former city dweller ineptly following his dream of life on a farm. Gordon went on to play pompous principal Osgood Conklin on Our Miss Brooks, transferring the role to television as the show premiered there in 1952. Gordon appeared on My Favorite Husband, a precursor to I Love Lucy, in the interim.

Gordon and Ball had appeared together on The Wonder Exhibition, starring Jack Haley from 1938 to 1939. Both the two partners had a long friendship as well as a regular professional relationship. Gordon appeared on yet another radio hit, The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, as long as Rexall sponsored the show. The character was simply changed employers when the sponsor changed to RCA.

Gordon, the well-known master of the "slow-burn" temper explosion, was the first pick to play Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy, but he had to decline the role before being introduced to Our Miss Brooks. He appeared in two guest shots on the program: twice as Ricky Ricardo's boss, Alvin Littlefield, owner of the Tropicana Club, where Ricky's band appeared, and then appeared as a judge on an episode of Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour.

Gordon appeared on the NBC sitcom Sally, starring Joan Caulfield and Marion Lorne in 1958. He appeared on The Real McCoys, a Walter Brennan ABC sitcom. Gordon appeared in the CBS television comedy Pete and Gladys. He appeared in Harrigan and Son, the story of a father-and-son litigation team at this time. He appeared on CBS/Desilu's Angel, as well as Annie Fargé. He appeared in seven episodes on The Danny Thomas Show. In five years, he was the landlord of the house where the Williams family lived. Gordon appeared on two episodes of another ABC sitcom, The Donna Reed Show, in 1962.

When Ball first went to work in his bank, she intended to bring Theodore J. Mooney. Gordon was under contract to play John Wilson (after the death of Joseph Kearns, who appeared on Dennis the Menace)). The two had worked together on an old radio show, The Cinnamon Bear, before Gordon's replacement on Dennis the Menace, where Kearns first appeared with Eve Arden and Richard Crenna as Superintendent Stone and later (in eight episodes) as Superintendent Stone, which was a position he had never seen on radio. Gordon joined The Lucy Show as Mr. Mooney for the 1963–64 season when Dennis the Menace ended in spring 1963. (In the intervening years, Charles Lane played the same Mr. Barnsdahl character from the 1962-1963 series.) Gordon, the somewhat portly, was surprisingly good at physical comedy and could do a flawless cartwheel; he appeared on The Lucy Show and Here's Lucy, as a guest on The Dean Martin Exhibition.

Ball closed down Desilu Studios in 1968 and relaunched it into Here's Lucy, becoming her own producer and distributor. Gordon Otis 'Uncle Harry' Carter, her blustery boss (and brother-in-law) at a work group that specialized in unusual jobs for unusual individuals. It was basically a continuation of the Lucy Carmichael/Mr. series. The Mooney family has long been associated with new names and a new location.

When Here's Lucy ended in 1974, Gordon was almost dead, but Ball coaxed him out of retirement in 1986 to join her in the short-lived series Life with Lucy. Gordon was the first actor to co-starred or guest-starred in any weekly drama, radio, or television, Ball had been to since the 1940s. Mr. Mooney's last acting appearance on Hi Honey, I'm Home! In 1991, it was published in a newspaper in the United States.

Gordon and his wife lived in Borrego Springs, California, where pop. 1,500 acres (and several dogs) where he owned a herd and several horses. When working for Ball, he was also honorary mayor of the town and commuted approximately 160 km (260 km) to and from Los Angeles every day.

Gordon was a talented writer, writing two books in the 1940s titled Nursery Rhymes for Hollywood Babies and Leaves from the Story Trees, as well as two one-act plays. Gordon and his wife bought 150 acres (61 ha) in Borrego Springs, California, and he and his wife did significant work on the house and his art studio himself. He also built and restored his own furniture on the property and turned it into one of the few commercial carob growers in the United States.

Gale Gordon: This is Gordon's first biography of Gordon, from Mayor of Wistful Vista to Borrego Springs, published by BearManor Media in 2016.

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