Houseley Stevenson is one of the great "fringe character" actors in American film noir, fashioning a sizable career in it over a five-year span after he'd turned sixty-five.

A stalwart of the Pasadena Playhouse from the late 1920s on, Stevenson took many bit parts in films during the 1930s, including a string of appearances in Warner Brothers "B" films, many of them knockoffs of exotic adventure tales (one of which is the oddball Bogart vehicle ISLE OF FURY, where Bogey's odd drawl takes on a psuedo-British patina and he sports a mustache (only happened one other time: can you name it?).


Houseley Stevenson and Tom D'Andrea in DARK PASSAGE

Stevenson's noir career began in 1946 with his appearance in SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT as mental patient Michael Conroy, who holds a key secret as to the true identity of "Geroge Taylor" (John Hodiak) but whose forced incapacitation creates another impediment in Taylor's quest to discover who he is. Stevenson's craggy look, and his denture-inflected speech pattern is unique and unmistakable, and it set off a burgeoning career in bit parts across all genres. Here is a list of the noirs he appeared in, often for just one scene:

Somewhere in the Night (1946) • The Brasher Doubloon (1947) • Ramrod* (1947) • Dark Passage (1947) • Secret Beyond the Door (1948) • Moonrise (1948) • Knock on Any Door (1949) • The Walking Hills* (1949) • The Lady Gambles (1949) • Take One False Step (1949) • All the King's Men (1949) • Edge of Doom (1950) • The Sun Sets At Dawn (1950) • Hollywood Story (1951) • The Secret of Convict Lake* (1951)

*Noir westerns

And Stevenson was in another two dozen "non-noir" films during this time frame, moving into television appearances in 1952 briefly before his death in 1953.

It's not quite as distinguished or extensive a list of noir as the one we've previously assembled for "bit actor icon" Tito Vuolo, but Stevenson is always a welcome presence and his performance in DARK PASSAGE is one of the most notable bit parts in all of noir.