Jerome Cowan was one of Hollywood's most prolific and instantly recognisable character actors. His trademark pencil-thin moustache and slicked back hair, immaculate suits and sophisticated manner were his stock-in-trade for impersonating an assortment of rejected husbands, shifty politicians, lawyers and shady detectives. He also excelled at delivering snappy repartee and witty or barbed one-liners which were typical of the gritty Warner Brothers films of the 1930's and 40's.
Straight out of high school, Jerome began to work his way up through stock companies and burlesque, making his debut on Broadway in the 1923 comedy 'We've Got to Have Money'. On the strength of his most successful stage performance in 'Boy Meets Girl' (1935-37), he was contracted by producer Samuel Goldwyn to appear in L'ennemie bien-aimée (1936) as an Irish patriot. Several films later, he found his niche as the dapper sophisticate with attitude, in films like Miss catastrophe (1938), as Nick Shane, Torrid Zone (1940), Crime by Night (1944) - a rare leading role as private eye Sam Campbell; and Femme aimée est toujours jolie (1944), as Bette Davis's ex. He was the short-lived partner, Miles Archer, to Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade in Le faucon maltais (1941), a nervous informer in Riff-Raff (1947) and the district attorney who fails to indict Chris Cringle in Le miracle de la 34ème rue (1947). Add to that several well-acted gangsters (Frisco Lil (1942), Fog Island (1945), Deadline for Murder (1946), to mention a few) and some unexpected comedy, particularly as Dagwood's boss George Radcliffe in the Blondie (1957) series. In the 1950's and 1960's, Cowan adapted perfectly to the medium of television and became a regular on several shows, alternating drama with comedy, from Perry Mason (1957)to Les monstres (1964). He gave a short, but poignant performance opposite Ida Lupino in 'The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine', a 1959 episode of Rod Serling's La quatrième dimension (1959), as an unrecognisably aged former matinee idol.
