Michael Whalen

Michael Whalen was an American actor who worked in films and television. He managed a Woolworth's department store in Pennsylvania until 1925, when a trip to New York led him to the stage and to radio, where he sang. He moved to Los Angeles in 1933 and was signed by 20th Century-Fox in 1935 as a potential leading man, and the studio used him in juvenile leads in four big-budget A pictures before giving him leading roles in cheaper B pictures. In the late 1930s he starred as crime-busting newspaperman Barney Callahan in three Roving Reporters features, and he left Fox in 1939. After freelancing at smaller studios he quit movies for the Broadway stage, later returning to Hollywood for more B pictures, mostly for producer Robert L. Lippert, and for television work through the 1950s and into the 1960s. His credits included Wee Willie Winkie (1937). He died in 1974.