Walter Catlett (February 4, 1889 - November 14, 1960) was an American actor.
[edit] Early Career
Catlett was born in San Francisco, California. He made a career by playing excitable, officious blowhards. As a San Francisco citizen, he started out in vaudeville with a detour for a while in opera before breaking into films in the mid-1920s.
[edit] Voice Over
Catlett also provided the voice of Foulfellow the Fox in the 1940 Disney animated film Pinocchio.
[edit] The "Talkies"
Catlett made a handful of silent film appearances but his film career did not catch on until the advent of talking pictures allowed movie-goers see his full comic repertoire. Three of his most remembered roles were as the stage manager given to distraction by James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy, the local constable who throws the entire cast in jail and winds up there himself in the Howard Hawks classic screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby, and as Morrow, the drunken poet in the restaurant who "knows when [he's] been a skunk" and takes Longfellow Deeds on a "bender" in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.
[edit] Other Roles
Catlett also appeared as hotel resort tycoon 'Timber Applegate' in the musical film Lady, Let's Dance which starred ice skating sensation 'Belita' and James Ellison. Audiences seemed to enjoy seeing unpleasant things happen to Catlett onscreen. In the drama Manpower, Catlett supplies comedy relief as a hospital patient who has spent months in traction with both arms and both legs broken. On the day of his release, he slips on the hospital steps, and is once again put in traction, with both arms and both legs broken. In the 1950s, he appeared in films like Davy Crockett and the River Pirates, Friendly Persuasion and Beau James.
Walter Catlett died of a stroke in 1960 in Woodland Hills, California. His interment was at Holy Cross Cemetery.
[edit] External links
Walter Catlett at the Internet Movie Database
