Notable Guest-Stars: Dan Seymour

Well, I finally found the Richard Anderson Ironside episode on MeTV’s schedule! I don’t know if I was blind or what, but it will air on the 11^th, a week from the Barbara Hale episode tomorrow. And said Richard episode will be followed by a Hawaii 5-O with Simon Oakland! Paradise morning for me!

(MeTV, incidentally, is actually showing some other Hawaii 5-O episodes on this run. They’re doing season 8! I am excited.)

I decided to do another guest-star highlight, as I’ve gotten rather behind in those lately. Another great Perry alumnus I’ve wanted to showcase is Dan Seymour (not the Dan Seymour who is a radio announcer).

Another of those classic character actors who is everywhere, Dan Seymour appeared in quite a few movies before moving to television. And it seems that I’ve seen several of them: Casablanca, Mara Maru (with Raymond Burr), Hard-Boiled Mahoney (a Bowery Boys installment), Key Largo, Johnny Belinda. . . . And also one I’ve wanted to see, the only Marx Brothers movie I’ve never seen, A Night in Casablanca.

For Perry fans, he played seven characters over the course of the nine-season run. After his first appearance in The Silent Partner, the guy who visits the defendant at her greenhouse (clearly I need to watch this episode again, if that’s the best description I can give), he doesn’t turn up again until season 5. His role as Carlos Silva, a crooked businessman in The Impatient Partner, is probably the one for which I remember him best.

He makes a second appearance in season 5, a much smaller, one scene part in The Promoter’s Pillbox. Following that, he appears once every season for the remainder of the show.

His next character, Pedros Dias in The Libelous Locket, is a bigger part again. He’s the cousin of the eventual murder victim. The Libelous Locket is my favorite of the four season 6 episodes with a guest attorney (followed closely by The Two-Faced Turn-A-Bout). If I haven’t highlighted it, I need to do that soon.

His character in The Tandem Target also has a good amount of screentime. As Leo Lazaroff, he is the disgruntled brother of an inventor and believes that the murdered man stole his brother’s invention. Watching him discuss the invention in court is definitely an amusing scene.

He only has a bit part in season 8’s The Gambling Lady, as a croupier at Jesse White’s casino, but it’s still fun to see him pop up.

His final Perry role is Nappy Tyler, the wheelchair-bound owner of the taco stand in The Carefree Coronary. He gets Paul mixed up in the insurance fraud ring when Paul goes undercover seeking information on it.

He appears in many television series through the 1960s and on into the 1970s. One of his last roles before retiring is a bit part in an episode of Kojak. I remember seeing it and instantly recognizing him.

Here’s an interesting tidbit I found. Dan Seymour became life-long friends with director Fritz Lang on the set of Cloak and Dagger. Eventually, he became the executor for Fritz Lang’s estate.

He was also only married once, remaining married to his wife for forty-four years until his death following a stroke in 1993. They had two children (both boys) and four grandchildren (all girls).

One thing I’ve always wondered about Dan Seymour is, how did he get that memorable scar on his face? I’m trying to remember if he had it in his first Perry episode, The Silent Partner, because I watched him on The Untouchables this past week (an episode made in 1960) and his character got beat up and was bleeding right about in that area. I kind of wondered if it wasn’t fake blood and he really got hurt and that’s how he got the scar.