John Hamilton

Biography

Burly, stentorian-voiced John Hamilton, worked on Broadway and in touring theatrical companies for many years prior to his 1930 film debut. He was in the original Broadway company of "Seventh Heaven" and would appear in the film remake (Seventh Heaven (1937)) in 1937. For Warner Bros, he starred with Donald Meek in a series of short mysteries based on S.S. Van Dine stories. He was often typecast as prison wardens, judges and police chiefs, but played various types of characters in an almost limitless number of films from the 1930s to the 1950s. He became famous when he was cast as Daily Planet newspaper editor Perry White in the 1950s TV classic, Adventures of Superman (1952). He died of a heart attack in 1957 and is survived by a son. Hamilton is often confused with John F. Hamilton, an American actor whose career began in the 1920s, John Hamilton, a British actor who worked during the same period but exclusively in the UK, and with several other actors of the same name.