Byron Foulger (born August 27, 1899 in Ogden, Utah; died April 4, 1970 in Hollywood, California) was an American film character actor with a familiar face, appearing in hundreds of movies and dozens of television programs.
Foulger's busy career dated from 1937, when Mae West made a notorious appearance on network radio, performing a racy "Adam and Eve" sketch that got her banned from the airwaves almost immediately. What is generally not known is that Byron Foulger played opposite West, as the voice of the serpent. Movie producers noticed, and Foulger began working steadily in motion pictures.
Foulger could play any part: storekeepers, hotel desk clerks, morticians, professors, bank tellers, ministers, confidence men, and a host of other characterizations. His earliest films show him clean-shaven, but in the 1940s he adopted a wispy moustache that emphasized his characters' worried manner. Foulger was a resourceful actor, and often embellished his scripted lines with memorable bits of business: in The Falcon Strikes Back, for example, hotel clerk Foulger discovers a homicide by bellowing across the lobby: "Mur-der! Mur-der!'
By the late 1950s he was so established as a mild-mannered worrywart that it was only necessary for Foulger to show his face on screen to get a welcoming laugh from the audience. (This happens in the cameo-laden Frank Capra comedy Pocketful of Miracles.) In a humorous coup, the actor was cast against type for the most prominent role of his career: Byron Foulger portrayed the Devil opposite The Bowery Boys in Up in Smoke, and was actually billed in the ads and posters as one of the film's three stars!
His later credits included the 1959 Twilight Zone episode "Walking Distance," the short-lived 1967 series Captain Nice, and the popular sitcom Petticoat Junction (in the recurring role of engineer Wendell Gibbs).
Highly recognizable character actor Foulger, who began performing with stock and repertory companies after graduating from the University of Utah, met his future wife, character actress Dorothy Adams, in one of these companies. After Broadway work, they moved to Hollywood in the 1930s to try to stake a claim in films, and both succeeded, appearing in hundreds of films, both together and apart, albeit in small, often unbilled, bits. A man of meek, edgy countenance, his short stature and squinty stare could be used for playing both humble and shady fellows. Although predominantly employed as an owlish storekeeper, mortician, professor, or bank teller, his better parts had darker intentions -- exceptional as weaselly, mealy-mouthed, whining henchmen who would inevitably show their yellow streak by the film's end. He moved on into TV in the 1950s and '60s, displaying a comedy side in many folksy, rural sitcoms. He died of heart problems on April 4, 1970.
