Don Dubbins (June 28, 1928 - August 17, 1991) , originally Donald Dubbins, was an American actor of film and television who in his early career usually played younger military roles, particularly in such classic pictures as From Here to Eternity (1953) and The Caine Mutiny (1954). Screen giant James Cagney took a liking to Dubbins and procured roles for him in two 1956 films, These Wilder Years and Tribute to a Bad Man. In the former, Dubbins played Cagney's long-lost adopted son; in the latter, he was an unlikely romantic triangle with cattle boss Cagney for the affections of a senorita. In 1957, Dubbins played a callow young United States Marines private in Jack Webb's The D.I., meaning "Drill Instructor". In 1958, Dubbins was cast in a science fiction picture based on Jules Verne's novel From the Earth to the Moon.
As Dubbins matured, he appeared in such films as The Prize in 1963, The Illustrated Man (based on a Ray Bradbury novel) in 1969, and Death Wish II in 1976.
Dubbins appeared in many televisions roles, including four episodes each of CBS's Gunsmoke and Perry Mason. In 1960, Dubbins appeared in the episode "Elegy" of CBS's Twilight Zone. The next year he guest starred as a deputy who inadvertently killed his outlaw-brother in an episode of Stagecoach West, a Four Star Television series on ABC. He later appeared with Walter Brennan in ABC's The Guns of Will Sonnett. He appeared twice on NBC's Little House on the Prairie with Michael Landon and five times on CBS's Barnaby Jones with Buddy Ebsen. Dubbins appeared in several episodes of Jack Webb's Dragnet 1967 series on NBC.
Dubbins last roles were in episodes of CBS's Knots Landing (1979), ABC's Dynasty (1981), and NBC's Highway to Heaven (1984).
The Brooklyn-born Dubbins retired to Greenville, South Carolina, where his last acting was at the Warehouse Theater as Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman. Dubbins succumbed to cancer at the age of sixty-three.
This boyish-looking New York-born actor of film and (especially) TV was born in 1938 and signed by Columbia at the onset of his teen career. Also known as Donald Dubbins, he started off playing earnest young cadet types in the war films From Here to Eternity (1953) (as a young bugler) and Caine Mutiny, The (1954). It was superstar James Cagney who took a distinct liking to the rookie actor and prominently displayed him in two of his subsequent films. In These Wilder Years (1956), Dubbins played Cagney's long-lost adopted son and, in the western Tribute to a Bad Man (1956), he forms an unlikely romantic triangle with cattle boss Cagney and senorita Irene Papas. He also was at the mercy of Jack Webb's title character as a private in the Dragnet-styled military film D.I., The (1957). He subsequently played a frequent suspect on several episodes of the "Dragnet 1967" (1967) series. Finishing up the 1950s, he was a part of the cast in the Jules Verne sci-fi picture From the Earth to the Moon (1958). Although Dubbins never became a box office name, he certainly was a reliable asset on TV and was seen in a host of character roles over the years, not to mention a good number of smaller parts in such films as Prize, The (1963) and Learning Tree, The (1969). A character player adept at both good guys and bad guys, he retired completely in the late 1980s after filming episodes of "Dynasty" (1981), "Highway to Heaven" (1984) and "Knots Landing" (1979). He succumbed to cancer less than a decade later in 1991 at the age of 63.
