Film and television actor Anthony Eisley, who found fame on the series Hawaiian Eye (1959-1962), and in numerous schlock horror movies in the '60s and '70s (The Wasp Woman, 1960, Dracula vs. Frankenstein, 1971) , died on January 29 in Woodland Hills, California, of heart failure. He was 78.

Born Frederick Eisley in Philadelphia on January 19, 1925, he studied drama at the University of Miami and landed a job with a stock company in Pennsylvania, playing in touring versions of such Broadway productions as Mister Roberts, Picnic and The Desperate Hours. By the late '50s, Eisley found guest work on such hit television shows as The Real McCoys and Perry Mason, and made his first impression on film with a role in Vincent Sherman's The Young Philadelphians (1959), with Paul Newman. It wasn't long before his smooth delivery and good looks caught the attention of Warner Bros., who put him under contract and cast him in the popular detective show, Hawaiian Eye (1959-1962) that co-starred Robert Conrad and Connie Stevens.

Eisley's new found visibility from Hawaiian Eye allowed Eisley to make a respectable mark in films throughout the '60s: Joseph Pevney's fast-paced bio on Dutch Schultz, Portrait of a Mobster (1961); Samuel Fuller's hard-hitting noir, The Naked Kiss (1964); and Robert Wise's musical biography of Gertrude Lawrence, Star! (1968) starring Julie Andrews, showed him to be a very capable supporting player. However, it's the cult flicks that make Eisley so appreciated by midnight movie fanatics: The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966), Journey to the Center of Time (1967), The Mighty Gorga (1969), and The Doll Squad (1973), just to name a few.

Toward the end of his career, Eisley made a few more television appearances in some popular shows: Barnaby Jones, The Dukes of Hazzard, and landed a regular role in the daytime soap opera, Capitol (1982-1987), but by the dawn of the '90s he had retired. A widower, Eisley is survived by his four children, David, Nan, Jonathan and Amanda; and seven grandchildren.

by Michael T. Toole