Gus Schilling

Technopedia Center

Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science
S1 Informatics S1 Information Systems S1 Information Technology S1 Computer Engineering S1 Electrical Engineering S1 Civil Engineering

faculty of Economics and Business
S1 Management S1 Accountancy

Faculty of Letters and Educational Sciences
S1 English literature S1 English language education S1 Mathematics education S1 Sports Education

Gus Schilling

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gus Schilling
Schilling in Calendar Girl (1947)
Born	August Schilling (1908-06-20)June 20, 1908 New York City, U.S.
Died	June 16, 1957(1957-06-16) (aged 48) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1940–1957
Partner	Betty Rowland

August "Gus" Schilling (June 20, 1908 – June 16, 1957) was an American film actor who started in burlesque comedy and usually played nervous comic roles, often unbilled. A friend of Orson Welles, he appeared in five of the director's films — Citizen Kane (first screen performance), The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady from Shanghai, Macbeth and Touch of Evil (final performance, released posthumously).^[1]

Career

[edit]

Born in New York City, Schilling had a rubber face and flustered gestures which made him a natural comedian and he began his career understudying comedy stars Bert Lahr and Joe Penner on Broadway. He soon became a favorite among burlesque comedians, who welcomed him into the burlesque profession. Schilling was in a relationship with burlesque star Betty Rowland and the couple toured in the Minsky burlesque troupe.^[2]

Orson Welles saw Schilling in New York and followed him to Florida. There Welles hired Schilling to appear in a stage production featuring several Shakespearean scenes. "I learned my part by taking the script to Welles and having him translate the lines to everyday English," Schilling recalled in 1939. Welles promised Schilling a part in Welles's first motion picture, and kept his promise: Schilling is featured in Citizen Kane (1941).^[3] This established Schilling in Hollywood movies as a "nervous" comedian (he plays a jittery symphony conductor in Olsen and Johnson's Hellzapoppin', for example). He also co-starred with character comedian Richard Lane in a series of 11 comedy shorts for Columbia Pictures; the series ran from 1945 to 1950.^[4]

Personal life

[edit]

In July 1945 Schilling was arrested in Hollywood on charges of possession of narcotics. At his trial he testified that he admitted ownership of the marijuana to save his wife from arrest. The all-woman jury acquitted Schilling on November 29.^[5]

Schilling and Rowland were often reported as married, but Rowland later said that they never were.^[2] His professional career remained successful, and he worked in movies and television throughout the 1950s. His final film, Welles's Touch of Evil, in which he has a brief uncredited appearance, was released in May 1958, nearly a year after his death.

On June 16, 1957, Schilling was found dead of an apparent heart attack in his Hollywood apartment.^[6]^[7]