Whit Bissell Overview:

Character actor, Whit Bissell, was born Whitner Nutting Bissell on Oct 25, 1909 in New York City, NY. Bissell died at the age of 86 on Mar 5, 1996 in Woodland Hills, CA .

MINI BIO:

Fair-haired, pear-faced, inquisitive-looking American actor who rarely played sympathetic characters, but rather those whose ostensible interest in the community cloaked self-enriching schemes. His do-gooders were no-gooders, his solid citizens usually revealed a yellow streak and sometimes he was just the weak victim of his oppressors. On stage as a child, he briefly started a hollywood career before war service intervened. Had one leading role, as a mad professor in I Was a Teenage Frankenstein.

(Source: available at Amazon Quinlan's Film Character Actors: an Illustrated Directory).

HONORS and AWARDS:

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Whit Bissell Quotes:

Cora Lister: [Flashback scene: Tom Lister is in his prison cell, recalling how he had given his wife Cora an exquisite fur coat] Tom... oh, Tom! It's the most beautiful thing in the whole world!
Tom Lister: It belongs on you.
Cora Lister: [Putting the coat on and admiring herself dreamily in the mirror] It makes me feel so... I don't know... like I was "somebody." Oh, Tom...
Cora Lister: [Suddenly coming to her senses] Where'd you get it? Where'd the money come from? Where'd you get it!
Tom Lister: Cora, I stole the money. I juggled the books and took three thousand dollars.
Cora Lister: You? You STOLE? Why?
Tom Lister: Darling, the way we were going, you wanting things - things you ought to have - and me strapped all the time... we were heading for a split-up. Don't you see? I just had to do it.
Cora Lister: All my life, the one thing I've really wanted is a fur coat. I CAN'T give it up. I WON'T, Tom!
Tom Lister: No, darling...
Cora Lister: But what if something should happen?
Tom Lister: Nothing that happens could matter, unless I lost you...
[Loud, ominous knocking on door is heard, returning the scene back to Tom's prison cell]


Bert Piazza: [discussing an ad campaign] But what's the angle?
Evan Adams III: The 'average American girl!'
Robert Grau: A lot of penetration there.


Virgil Gates: You know, that's pretty good stew as stew goes around here. Of course, I wish old Cookie would stay out of it with his feet when he's mixin' it up.


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Whit Bissell Facts
Son of prominent surgeon Dr. J. Dougal Bissell.

Stepfather of Brian Forster.

As one of five children (including three brothers and a sister), Bissell was an avid yachtsman and fencer in his youth. He attended the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and while there began a serious pursuit of acting with the Carolina Playmakers. After a stint on the Broadway stage, Bissell began a career as one of the most recognizable character actors in the history of film and television.

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