Robert Cornthwaite, a cult character actor whose steady, half century career in film and television placed him in the "I know the face, but not the name file," died on July 20 of natural causes at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. He was 89.

He was born on April 28, 1917 in St. Helens, Oregon. His taste for acting began innocently enough when he was given one line in a junior high school play. By the time he was attending Reed College in Portland, he was already performing in professional Shakespeare productions. Soon enough, he was on his way to Southern California and found work in radio.

As with most men in his generation, his career was halted for military service during World War II, but when he returned, he finished his theater degree at USC in 1947 and returned to radio. He made his first forays into movies in the early '50s, playing bits in Union Station (1950) and Gambling House (1951). He got his first juicy part in just his third film. That was when Howard Hawkes tapped him to play the mad scientist Dr. Carrington in the sci-fi classic, The Thing from Another World (1951).

After that, Cornthwaite - with his small eyes, thin lips, and diffident manner - was often cast as a lab-coat professional in films: Monkey Business (1952), The War of the Worlds (1953), The Leather Saint (1956), and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). He had some notable exceptions to this rule, namely as Napoleon Bonaparte in the pseudo-historical Tony Curtis costume vehicle The Purple Mask (1955) and as Governor Renault in the low budget programmer Hell on Devil's Island (1957).

He would get another stab at cult success when he was cast as Professor Windish, the first in a long line of scientists who came up with clever gadgets for Maxwell Smart in the first season of Get Smart (1965-66). He'd spend the remainder of his career playing stuffy professionals on television: Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Laverne & Shirley and lowbrow theatrical comedies: Doctor Detroit (1983), Deal of the Century (1984), Who's That Girl? (1987), before he closed his career portraying Howard Buss, the eccentric, elderly philosopher in David E. Kelly's critically acclaimed series Picket Fences (1992-96). He is survived by his brother William; and several nieces and nephews.

by Michael T. Toole