William Tannen

William Tannen was an American actor from New York City who first became involved in drama, as both an actor and a writer, while attending Lawrenceville School. His stage debut came in The Honor of the Family, presented in Washington, D.C., by the National Theatre troupe. In the 1930s and 1940s he worked under contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where his early assignments included three turns as the unidentified MGM crime reporter in Crime Does Not Pay shorts. He moved into the studio's stock company and took incidental parts in dozens of its features. After MGM reduced its staff in 1948, he freelanced for other studios while continuing to receive MGM assignments for a decade. In the 1950s, television audiences knew him for playing Deputy Hal Norton across 56 episodes of The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, an ABC/Desilu western, from 1956 to 1958. He later played George Frost in a 1961 episode of Rawhide.