Victor Kilian

New Jersey-born Victor Kilian drove a laundry truck before joining a New England repertory company when he was 18. His first break on Broadway came with the original 1924 production of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms. After making a few scattered appearance in East Coast-produced films, Kilian launched his Hollywood career in 1936. Often cast as a brutish villain (notably "Pap" in the 1939 version of Huckleberry Finn) Kilian duked it out with some of moviedom's most famous leading men; while participating in a fight scene with John Wayne in 1942's Reap the Wild Wind, Kilian suffered an injury that resulted in the loss of an eye. Victimized by the Blacklist in the 1950s, Kilian returned to TV and film work in the 1970s. Fans of the TV serial satire Mary Hartman Mary Hartman will have a hard time forgetting Kilian as Mary's grandpa, a.k.a. "The Fernwood Flasher." In March of 1979, Victor Kilian was murdered in his apartment by intruders, a scant few days after a similar incident which culminated in the death of another veteran character actor, Charles Wagenheim.

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide