VideoDetective.com

Joe Sawyer

Joe Sawyer
Joe Sawyer
Born: 1905 in Canada
Died: Apr 21, 1982 in Ashland, Oregon
Occupation: Actor, Writer,
Active: '30s-'50s
Major Genres: Drama, Comedy
Career Highlights: About Face, Tanks a Million, Mr. Walkie Talkie
First Major Screen Credit: Moonlight on the Prairie (1936)
9 Videos for Joe Sawyer
How the West Was Won (1962) A Double Life (1947) Raiders of Ghost City [Serial] (1944)
North to Alaska (1960) Gilda (1946) Hit the Ice (1943)
The Killing (1956) The Naughty Nineties (1945) Sergeant York (1941)
Photos


There are currently no photos.

Biography:

Beefy, puffy-faced Canadian actor Joseph Sawyer spent his first years in films (the early- to mid-'30s) acting under his family name of Sauer. Before he developed his comic skills, Sawyer was often seen in roles calling for casual menace, such as the grinning gunman who introduces Duke Mantee, the well-known killer in The Petrified Forest (1936).

While under contract to Hal Roach studios in the 1940s, Sawyer starred in several of Roach's streamliners, films that ran approximately 45 minutes each. He co-starred with William Tracy in a series of films about a GI with a photographic memory and his bewildered topkick: Titles included Tanks a Million (1941), Fall In (1942), and Yanks Ahoy (1943) (he later reprised this role in a brace of B-pictures produced by Hal Roach Jr. for Lippert Films in 1951).

A second streamliner series, concerning the misadventures of a pair of nouveau riche cabdrivers, teamed Sawyer with another Roach contractee, William Bendix. Baby boomers will remember Joe Sawyer for his 164-episode stint as tough but soft-hearted cavalry sergeant Biff O'Hara on the '50s TV series Rin Tin Tin.

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide.