Leon Ames was born Harry Wycoff in Portland, Indiana, to Cora Alice (DeMoss) and Charles Elmer Wycoff. He had always wanted to be an actor and he did it the hard way, serving a long apprenticeship in touring amateur theatre companies, even selling shoes for a while on 42nd Street in the 1920's. It took him until 1933 to make his debut on Broadway. His play at the Morosco Theatre, "It Pays to Sin", lasted for only three performances after receiving disastrous critical reviews. By then, he had already appeared in his first movie, the sombre, expressionistic Double assassinat dans la rue Morgue (1932), an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, in which Leon played the dependable love interest of heroine Sidney Fox.
For the next three years, he appeared under his birth name, Leon Waycoff, in a variety Of B-movies for "poverty row" studios like Mayfair, Showmen's Pictures, World-Wide Pictures, Empire and Majestic. His first film, as Leon Ames, was the Shirley Temple vehicle, Stowaway (1932). For the next few years, he served yet another apprenticeship, playing a variety of stalwart characters and the occasional bad guy in such cheerful potboilers as the anemic Murder in Greenwich Village (1937), the amusing M. Moto dans les bas-fonds (1938) and the eminently forgettable Secrets of a Nurse (1938). There were occasional highlights: he appeared in Ernst Lubitsch's last film at Paramount, La huitième femme de Barbe-bleue (1938), with Gary Cooper and Myrna Loy, and even starred as the leading man of Bureau du chiffre secret (1938) and La patrouille de Panama (1939), albeit at Grand National.
Leon's career improved dramatically after playing Judy Garland's father Alonzo (along with Mary Astor as the matriarch of the family) in MGM's classic, Le chant du Missouri (1944), directed by Vincente Minnelli. For the first time, Leon's acting abilities were used to perfection, particularly his ability to deliver dryly humorous one-liners. Signed to a contract at MGM, Leon was now cast in important character roles in more important pictures, usually as put-upon, loving fathers: Ainsi sont les femmes (1948), Les quatre filles du Dr March (1949), (where he again teamed up with Mary Astor), La maîtresse de papa (1953), to name but a few. For something completely different, he also played district attorney "Kyle Sackett" in the film noir, Le facteur sonne toujours deux fois (1946) and, against type, portrayed Paul Newman's thoroughly unpleasant father in Du haut de la terrasse (1960).
Leon continued in films well until his later years and was last seen as Kathleen Turner's grandfather in Peggy Sue s'est mariée (1986). On television, he had a popular run starring in Life with Father (1953) and Le père de la mariée (1961) (played by Spencer Tracy on the big screen) and playing Wilbur Post's neighbor, "Gordon Kirkwood", in Monsieur Ed, le cheval qui parle (1958). Leon's other claim to fame was being one of 19 actors, who, after a clandestine meeting in June 1933, established the Screen Actor's Guild. For thirty years, from 1945, he held a senior executive position as recording secretary and served as national president of the organization between 1957 and 1979. He held a further position on the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The dapper actor and avid unionist died at a Laguna Beach, California, nursing home at the ripe old age of 91 on October 12 1993.
