Jack Weston

Biography: Born in Cleveland, Jack Weston was the son of a Polish immigrant who taught himself English by reading the plays of Shakespeare and Shaw. "Boys, don't be salesmen," Weston's dad advised his sons. "Be actors." Jack and his brother Sam dutifully took acting lessons (at 50 cents each), but only Jack pursued this vocation into adulthood. Dropping out of school at 15 after his father was killed in an accident, Jack worked as a theater usher and played small roles at the Cleveland Playhouse. Following World War II service, Weston toured with the USO and enrolled at New York's American Theatre Wing. He and his actress wife Marge Redmond settled permanently in New York in 1950, the same year that Weston made his Broadway debut in Season in the Sun. There followed a comic-relief stint on the Saturday morning kiddie series Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers and featured roles in such Broadway hits as South Pacific and Bells are Ringing. In 1957, he made his first film appearance in StageBorn in Cleveland, Jack Weston was the son of a Polish immigrant who taught himself English by reading the plays of Shakespeare and Shaw. "Boys, don't be salesmen," Weston's dad advised his sons. "Be actors." Jack and his brother Sam dutifully took acting lessons (at 50 cents each), but only Jack pursued this vocation into adulthood. Dropping out of school at 15 after his father was killed in an accident, Jack worked as a theater usher and played small roles at the Cleveland Playhouse. Following World War II service, Weston toured with the USO and enrolled at New York's American Theatre Wing. He and his actress wife Marge Redmond settled permanently in New York in 1950, the same year that Weston made his Broadway debut in Season in the Sun. There followed a comic-relief stint on the Saturday morning kiddie series Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers and featured roles in such Broadway hits as South Pacific and Bells are Ringing. In 1957, he made his first film appearance in Stage Struck. Much in demand on TV in the late 1950s, Weston alternated between playing amiable oafs and slavering villains: he combined traits of both characterizations as the homicidal "President of the Peter Lorre fan club" in Jerry Lewis' theatrical feature It's Only Money (1962). In 1961, he co-starred with Peggy Cass and the Marquis Chimps in the infamous TV sitcom fiasco The Hathaways. He continued conveying humor and menace in films, and was starred in such Broadway comedies as Neil Simon's Last of the Red Hot Lovers and Woody Allen's The Floating Light Bulb, earning a Tony nomination for the latter. Weston enjoyed some of his best movie roles in the 1970s and 1980s, notably the doomed-to-die schlepper in The Ritz (1976), the middle-aged newlywed in The Four Seasons (1980) and the Catskills resort owner in Dirty Dancing (1987). Inactive the last six years of his life due to illness, Jack Weston died of lymphoma at the age of 72.… Expand