Dan Tobin's career in Hollywood as a small part supporting player spanned three decades, beginning in 1939. Adding to his slightly shifty appearance -- squinty eyes, high cheekbones and generally sporting a thin moustache -- was a fussy, bumptious manner, which made him ideal typecasting as supercilious, miserly, smugly conceited or obsequious types. Though Tobin's screen personae could be sinister, or at least underhanded, they also often provided comic relief, as, for instance, his somewhat camp, bow-tied employee Gerald Howe in La femme de l'année (1942). On stage, he had his biggest hit in Philip Barry's classic comedy play "The Philadelphia Story" (Broadway (1939-40), playing the part of Alexander 'Sandy' Lord.
By the mid-1950's, Tobin had drifted from films towards guest appearances in early anthology series and sitcoms on television. He had a regular spot in the final season of Perry Mason (1957) as Raymond Burr's restaurateur friend Terrance Clay. As the ideal character to be deflated, he was also employed to good comic effect in several episodes of Ma sorcière bien aimée (1964) and Madame et son fantôme (1968). Tobin retired from acting in 1977 and died five years later at the age of 72. He had been married to TV scriptwriter Jean Holloway.
