Maurice Lionel Gosfield (January 28, 1913 – October 19, 1964) was an American comic actor, most famous for his portrayal of Private Duane Doberman on the 1950s sitcom You'll Never Get Rich (later renamed The Phil Silvers Show).

Biography

Early life

Maurice Lionel Gosfield was born in New York in 1913, but was raised in Philadelphia and later in Evanston, Illinois. During World War II he served in the U. S. Army's Tec 4 unit in the 8th Armoured Division, and gained the rank of sergeant.

Acting career

He began acting with the Ralph Bellamy and Melvyn Douglas Players in Evanston, and joined the summer stock theatre circuit in 1930. In 1937, he made his Broadway debut as Manero in the play Siege. Other theatre credits from the 1930s include The Petrified Forest, Three Men on a Horse and Room Service. He also made several appearances on radio programs.

In 1950, he played an uncredited role in the film Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town. He also appeared on Toast of the Town in 1956.

You'll Never Get Rich

From 1955-1959, Gosfield played Private Duane Doberman in You'll Never Get Rich; this was renamed The Phil Silvers Show in its second season, in 1956. Doberman was written as the most woebegone soldier.

The show's creator Nat Hiken's biography details the casting for the role and the effect that Gosfield had on him, the producer and Phil Silvers when he appeared in front of them:

"The dumpy, spectacularly ugly Maurice Gosfield ampled into an open casting call one day, brandishing an enormous list of credits. A handful of his bit parts on stage are easy enough to confirm; more difficult to pin down are his claims of two-thousand radio credits and one hundred TV appearances." Nonetheless, they were impressed with him. "None of the man's background, though, really mattered to Hiken and Silvers once they got a good look at him. Nat had already picked someone to play the most woebegone member of Bilko's platoon, but immediately he knew that here [Maurice Gosfield] was the man born for the part". The actor originally hired for the part was Maurice Brenner, but he was recast as private Irving Fleischman.

In 1959, Maurice Gosfield was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for the show. That same year, he again played Private Doberman in the television show Keep in Step and made his final appearance as the character, the following year, when he guest starred on The Jack Benny Program. He next appeared in the made for television movie The Teenage Millionaire (1961).

Final years

Gosfield also provided the voice for Benny the Ball on the cartoon series Top Cat which was partially based on the Sergeant Bilko series. His last role was in the 1963 film The Thrill of It All, playing a truck driver. In 1964 he unsuccessfully tested for the role of Uncle Fester in the TV series The Addams Family.

Death

On October 14, 1964, Gosfield was in a play at New York Theatre, when he kept losing his balance and repeatedly falling asleep. He was diagnosed as having critical hypertension, and put on seven different tablets for this, which he was told to take for the rest of his life. On 17 October 1964, he suffered a heart attack. He was rushed to New York Hospital where he was reportedly not breathing and CPR was performed. He was admitted and his condition improved. As a result, Arnold Stang told him that Hanna-Barbera were making a second series of the show, and that his role was waiting for him for when he recovered. But two hours after Stang left, Gosfield suffered a second and fatal heart attack, and died instantly, on the night of October 19, 1964. Gosfield had also been suffering from diabetes, heart trouble and other complications. Stang was phoned the next morning to be told the news, and he broke it to William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, who were both devastated by Gosfield's sudden death.

Reaction

After Gosfield died in 1964, rather than make a new series, Hanna-Barbera decided not to, as they couldn't find a good replacement for Benny the Ball's voice. William Hanna commented it was "a tragic loss". The Jetsons, a cartoon that aired in Top Cat's place, sent a message to Gosfield after the latest episode "IN LOVING MEMORY OF MAURICE GOSFIELD 1913-1964".

Legacy

Because of the popularity of Private Doberman, DC Comics published eleven issues of a Private Doberman comic from 1957 to 1960.

Phil Silvers, in his 1973 autobiography, said of Gosfield that he had a pomposity and condescension off-screen, behaving "like Clark Gable playing a fat man".

Marvin Kaplan in an interview with Earl Kress on the DVD feature of Top Cat said of him: "Maurice Gosfield. He was one of a kind. He was a marvellous human being. I loved Maurice."

He never got married. He was 5'2" and weighed over 200 pounds and had once told TV writer Bert Resnik, that he was "too ugly to get married". In 1957, he received the "TV's Bachelor of the Year" Award by the Bachelor and Bachelorettes Society of America.

Source: Wikipedia