Reply #107: Charles Lane, 102 [View All]

[Longhorn]

July 11 (Bloomberg) -- Charles Lane, a skinny character actor who mostly played cranky roles and made more than 200 Hollywood movies and scores of television shows over six decades, died yesterday in Los Angeles. He was 102.

After making his film debut in 1931 as a hotel desk clerk in ``Smart Money,'' starring James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson, Lane was typecast as a clerk in five straight films before he got small parts as a shoe salesman, waiter, reporter, process server, henchman, shyster lawyer and prosecutor.

Shortly after his 100th birthday in 2005, when he was cited at a TV awards ceremony, the durable actor deadpanned: ``If anyone's interested, I'm still available.''

TV audiences in the 1960s knew him as railroad boss Homer Bedloe in ``Petticoat Junction.'' He also played in many TV shows starring comedienne Lucille Ball, with whom he acted when both had uncredited parts in the 1934 movie ``Broadway Bill,'' directed by Frank Capra.

He became a favorite of Capra's, who cast Lane in eight more films, including as the Internal Revenue agent in ``You Can't Take It With You,'' which won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1938, and ``It's a Wonderful Life'' in 1946.

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