Jan Merlin

Jan Merlin was an American actor who also wrote for television and published novels, with a career of more than five decades in stage, radio, film, and television. He grew up in New York City and served in the Navy during World War II, writing plays aboard ship. After his discharge he performed in summer stock starting in 1946, trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse, and reached Broadway in 1949 in Mister Roberts. Cast often as the heavy, he played Travers in Hell Bent for Leather (1960), appeared in The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), Take the Money and Run (1969), The Twilight People (1972), and I Escaped from Devil's Island (1973), and had co-starring roles on television as Cadet Roger Manning in Tom Corbett, Space Cadet and Lieutenant Cullen Kirby in The Rough Riders. He won a Daytime Emmy in 1975 for writing on Another World and published his first novel in 1982.