Andy Clyde's more than 40-year film career started on the vaudeville stages and music halls in his native Scotland in the 1920s. He made his way to Hollywood and began as an extra in Mack Sennett comedies, but he was soon moved up to featured player, usually the sidekick or second banana to the lead. He had his own series of well-received comedy shorts at Educational Pictures in the mid-1930s, and began a long association with Columbia Pictures, where he made his own series of comedy shorts over the next 20 years. He is best remembered, however, for his many roles as the comedy-relief sidekick in scores of westerns, usually paired with William Boyd in the "Hopalong Cassidy" series as California Carson or with Whip Wilson in a lower-budgeted series of westerns at Monogram playing "Winks" (for some reason, his character in each entry of the series was called Winks, but often had a different last name). He played the grizzled, grungy, scruffy marshal, deputy or just plain old cowboy, usually with several days growth of beard and a sloppy, mismatched wardrobe (in real life he was exactly the opposite, being a slick, clean-shaven and sharp dresser). His last film, Pardon My Nightshirt (1956), also brought an end to his Columbia shorts series. He had regular parts in such TV series as No Time for Sergeants (1964) and The Real McCoys (1957). He died in 1967, age 75, in Hollywood, still working.
