Billy De Wolfe

Billy De Wolfe was an American character actor whose film work ran from the mid-1940s to 1974. He was born William Andrew Jones in Quincy, Massachusetts, in the Wollaston neighborhood, and started out as an usher before dancing with the Jimmy O'Connor Band. In 1925 he was a chorus boy in the Broadway shows Artists and Models and The Cocoanuts, then toured Europe with a dance team. After signing with Paramount Pictures in 1943, he became known for fussy, pompous characters, among them a theatrical ham who becomes a silent-film villain in The Perils of Pauline (1947). He appeared in Tea for Two (1950) and played an embassy chargé d'affaires in Call Me Madam (1953). Later credits included the stage revues John Murray Anderson's Almanac and the 1957 Ziegfeld Follies, television roles on The Doris Day Show and Good Morning World, and the voice of Professor Hinkle in Frosty the Snowman (1969).