Harry Townes
Huntsville native Harry Townes (1914-2001) was a prolific television and film actor for more than 30 years, dating back to the earliest days of broadcast television. Rarely cast as a leading man, he played a wide variety of character actors on some of the most popular shows of his time, including The Twilight Zone, Route 66, and Perry Mason in the 1950s and 1960s and Falcon Crest, The Incredible Hulk, and Knot’s Landing in the 1980s.
Harry Rhett Townes was born in Huntsville, Madison County, on September 18, 1914, to Charles, a wholesale goods merchant, and Jeanne Halsey Townes; he had a sister and two brothers, one of whom died in childhood. Townes attended local public schools, and after graduation from Huntsville High School in 1933, he entered the University of Alabama. He pledged the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and it was one of his fraternity brothers who first encouraged him to try acting and join the school’s Blackfriars Dramatic Club. His talents attracted the attention of English professor Hudson Strode, who wrote a letter supporting Townes's application for an internship in summer stock theater; such seasonal venues provided early training for many actors who went on to successful careers. Townes was hired by a theater in Massachusetts in 1935 and quickly realized that New York would be a better place to pursue an acting career. He moved there in the late 1930s, deciding to forego completing his college degree.
Townes landed his first Broadway roles in productions of Tobacco Road and Mr. Sycamore in 1942, but his acting career was cut short by the outbreak of World War II. He enlisted and was commissioned a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps, serving until 1946, with some sources indicating that he worked in intelligence. After the war, he returned to New York and enrolled at Columbia University to study acting and then moved to Hollywood, California, in 1949 without completing his degree. He soon became a staple character actor on many of the anthology shows that characterized the era, including Tales of Tomorrow and Playhouse 90. In 1954, he was given the lead role in his first feature film, Operation Manhunt; released by United Artists, the film was a fictionalized version of the events surrounding the defection of a Soviet cryptology expert during the Cold War.
Townes would star in 25 television and theatrical films over his career, but he primarily focused on television series, with an notable 163 credits to his name. As noted earlier, he started out on the many television shows that were actually collections of televised plays. For example, actor and director Robert Montgomery created the series Tales of Tomorrow, which ran for two seasons and featured three teleplays on each episode; Townes starred in one entitled “Test Flight” about a wealthy businessman who builds a rocket to Mars. Townes would be a mainstay on these types of series throughout the 1950s.
As television shifted to focus more on series developed especially for the medium, Townes continued to play an important role in its evolution. Although he played a wide variety of roles, Townes carved out a niche for himself on the many Western, crime, and science fiction and horror series that became popular in the late 1950s and continued into the 1970s, including The Wild Wild West, Bonanza, The Fugitive, and The Twilight Zone. He typically was cast in single episodes, but he was in high demand, often performing on five or six shows a year and sometimes more. He played seven different characters on Gunsmoke, for example, one of the longest-running scripted TV shows, over the course of its production.
As the 1960s came to a close, Townes turned his attention to pursuing other outlets based in his religious beliefs. During the early 1970s, he attended the Bloy House seminary (now the Episcopal Theological School at Claremont) in Los Angeles with the goal of becoming an Episcopal priest. Townes was ordained in March 1974 at St. Paul's Cathedral and then became the head priest at St. Mary of the Angels Anglican Church in Hollywood.
Townes continued acting throughout the 1970s and 1980s, while also continuing to serve at St. Mary of the Angels. In the 1970s, he guest-starred on such hits as Planet of the Apes, Lou Grant, and Ironside, and in the 1980s, he guested on some of the most popular series of the day, including Magnum, P.I., Charlie’s Angels, The Incredible Hulk, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. In addition to these one-off spots, he had recurring roles on Quincy, M.E., Falcon Crest, Knot’s Landing, and Simon and Simon, as well as minor roles in several low-budget science fiction films.
Townes retired from acting in 1989 and moved back to Huntsville, two doors down from his sister, and became an active member of the Huntsville-Madison County Historical Society. He died on May 23, 2001, and was buried in Huntsville’s Maple Hill Cemetery.
