The Omnipresent John Dehner
I'm sure the name John Dehner is familiar to most people reading this. He's played major and minor roles in lots of the classic radio series of the 1940s and 50s.
Maybe you remember him as J.B. Kendall, the reporter for the London Times in Frontier Gentleman, a western adventure drama which was broadcast in 1952. Anyone listening to this show could be forgiven for thinking that John Dehner was an Englishman as his accent was so very convincing, but that wasn't the case. He was born in Staten Island, New York.
Another of his starring roles was as Palladin in Have Gun Will Travel, which aired from 1958-1960. It was quite common for radio shows to move to TV, but in the case of Have Gun Will travel the move was in the opposite direction. The show started life in 1957 as a TV show and then moved to radio the following year. On television the lead was played by Richard Boone, but that didn't stop John Dehner creating his own inimitable version of the character.
His other starring roles include the Hermit in The Hermit´s Cave after 1942, the part of Inspector Peter Black in Pursuit, a detective drama from 1949 and the part as Elmer Truitt in The Truitts a situation comedy from 1950-1951.
He also appeared in the Adventures of Philip Marlowe, California Caravan, The Count of Monte Cristo, Crime Classics, Escape, NBC University Theatre (later known as NBC Theatre), On Stage, Rogers of the Gazette, Romance, The Sears Radio Theatre, The Silent Men, Smilin´ Ed and his Buster Brown Gang, Suspense, The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, and The Zero Hour, to name but a few.
In an e-mail that came in last week a member rightly pointed out that John Dehner “was everywhere on radio and had such a superb voice’. How right he was. John Dehner's legacy to old time radio is a wonderful one and there are only a handful of other actors and actresses who were anywhere near as prolific.
But we shouldn't forget that he was much more than just a voice. From 1945 until the late 1980s he also had a movie career and starred in such classics as She Went To The Races, Christmas In Connecticut, State Fair, Carousel, The Left Handed Gun, The Cheyenne Social Club, Support Your Local Gunfighter, Airplane II, and The Jagged Edge. On the small screen he could be seen in Gunsmoke, Wanted: Dead Or Alive, Wagon Train, Zane Grey Theater, The Twilight Zone, The Andy Griffith Show, Winds Of War, and War And Remembrance.
Unfortunately John is no longer with us. He passed away on 4th February 1992. Luckily he left behind him so many excellent performances that his memory will live on for many decades. As long as there are people listening to old radio shows somebody, somewhere will be hearing his dulcet tones.
Happy listening my friends
