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Gene Roth

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Gene Roth
Roth in The Hoodlum (1951)
Born
Eugene Oliver Edgar Stutenroth

(1903-01-08)January 8, 1903
Redfield, South Dakota, U.S.
DiedJuly 19, 1976(1976-07-19) (aged 73)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Other namesGene Stutenroth
Eugene Stutenroth
Eugene Roth
Occupations
  • Actor
  • film manager
Years active1922–1967

Eugene Oliver Edgar Stutenroth (January 8, 1903 – July 19, 1976), known professionally as Gene Stutenroth or Gene Roth, was an American film actor and former theater manager. He appeared in more than 250 films over three decades.

Early years

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Roth was born in Redfield, South Dakota. He was the son of a German father and a Swedish mother, who raised their three sons after the father left the family. Roth finished high school in 1920 and became an expert machinist, specializing in repairing and installing pipe organs. These were commonly featured in movie theaters to accompany silent movies, and Roth's constant exposure to theaters prompted him to become a film exhibitor himself.

Film

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Gene Stutenroth became a successful manager of movie theaters for Fox and Warner Bros., in Brooklyn, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Burlington, New Jersey. Apart from playing bit roles in two low-budget productions of 1939, his screen career began in earnest in 1943, when he joined the war effort in California. As a trade paper reported, "Exhibitor Stutenroth came to Hollywood with ambition to apply to the manufacture of warplanes the skill he employed in his pre-exhibitor years on the fabrication and installation of pipe organs, and he did so apply it, entering the Lockheed plant, where he still works four hours a day for the purpose."[1]

Stutenroth was visiting the Universal studio and watching a movie scene being photographed, when a member of the crew noticed that he looked like Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, then a crony of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany. Stutenroth was promptly fitted with makeup and costume, and appeared as a Nazi agent in the wartime serial Adventures of the Flying Cadets (1943). This launched his new career as a character actor. (In 1944's The Hitler Gang, a dramatized exposé of Hitler and his cronies, Stutenroth appeared as the very man he resembled, Putzi Hanfstaengl.)[citation needed]

Stutenroth's burly frame and craggy features made him ideal as an all-purpose menace, gangster, tough guy, or sheriff. Most of his acting jobs in the mid-1940s were in "B" features for Columbia Pictures and Monogram Pictures. Interestingly, Stutenroth apparently regarded his movie jobs as a sideline and didn't take himself seriously as an actor; as late as 1947 his name doesn't appear in Terry Ramsaye's Motion Picture Almanac, an annual compendium of motion picture professionals.[2] In 1949 he abandoned his given name of Stutenroth and shortened his screen name to "Roth." He also starred as the master villain in the Columbia serials Captain Video (1951), Mysterious Island (1951), and The Lost Planet (1953).

Roth is remembered for his portrayals of formidable authority figures in Three Stooges comedies such as Slaphappy Sleuths, Hot Stuff, Quiz Whizz, Outer Space Jitters, and (as a professor) Pies and Guys. His most memorable role was in Dunked in the Deep (1949) as Russian spy Bortsch hiding microfilm. He reprised the role in a remake, Commotion on the Ocean (1956). His most famous line was his threat to Shemp Howard: "Giff me dat fill-um!" ("give me that film" with a Russian accent).[3]

Roth later made frequent television appearances including seven episodes of The Lone Ranger from 1949 to 1954. Roth portrayed a con man in a Highway Patrol episode "Dead Patrolman" in 1956, and he played a protection racket operator in the episode "Blood Money" in 1958. His final film appearance with the Stooges was in The Three Stooges Meet Hercules.

In 1960, Roth appeared as Davis on the TV western Cheyenne in the episode "Counterfeit Gun." [citation needed]

Roth appeared three times on Gene Barry's TV western Bat Masterson, once playing "Mayor Oliver Hinton" in the 1959 episode "Election Day", and twice in 1960, once playing a miner in the episode "The Rage of Princess Anne" and another time as a crooked bartender in the episode "The Big Gamble".

Roth retired from acting in the 1960s and operated a liquor store in Hollywood.

Death

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Roth was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in Los Angeles, California on July 19, 1976.[4]

Selected filmography

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References

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  1. ^ Motion Picture Herald, "Mr. Exhibitor Comes to Hollywood", Dec. 25, 1943.
  2. ^ Terry Ramsaye (ed.), Motion Picture Almanac (1945-46 and 1946-47 editions), Quigley Publications.
  3. ^ "Gene Roth". IMDb.
  4. ^ Okuda, Ted; Watz, Edward; (1986). The Columbia Comedy Shorts, p. 231 McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. ISBN 0-89950-181-8
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