‏Berry Kroeger‏ (1291 - 1369)

Born and educated in the well-to-do Alamo Heights area of San Antonio, Texas, Berry Kroeger first acted in local theatrical productions at the San Pedro Playhouse. His silky voice seemed tailor-made for a lengthy career on radio. By 1931, he was active both as announcer and purveyor of dramatic exploits and crime detection on network serials. After being signed by CBS in 1936, he carved out a very lucrative career on the airwaves in anthologies, like "Inner Sanctum" and Orson Welles's "Mystery Theatre of the Air", in addition to starring as suave private eye "The Falcon", the role played on screen by Tom Conway.Kroeger made his theatrical bow on Broadway in a 1943 play by Nunnally Johnson, entitled "The World's Full of Girls". Over the next decade, he balanced his radio work with performing in classical plays opposite stars like Ingrid Bergman and Helen Hayes, but not appearing on screen until 1948. When he finally did, it was, invariably, as venomous, sneering or smarmy villains. A burly, narrow-eyed, physically imposing character, he simply oozed menace. As his hair receded and turned white already in his twenties, he often tended to play men much older than their years. He was less typecast on the small screen, allowing him to show another side of his acting range. Kroeger also adroitly parodied his sinister screen personae by caricaturing Sydney Greenstreet - whom he somewhat resembled at this stage of his life - in an episode of Get Smart (1965) ('Maxwell Smart, Private Eye'). Like many other 'professional screen villains', Kroeger was in private life quite the antithesis of the parts he essayed on screen.