The Brian Blog: August 2019

In the Twilight Zone, TV ads, and (below) the 1962 political movie "Advise and Consent," the bespectacled man either seems to know something you don't, or suspects you of hiding something. That's classic Edward Andrews.

You don’t know his name, but because he was everywhere on big and small screens, you know Edward Andrews.
“Oh yeah, that guy!” any longtime TV viewer or moviegoer from the ‘60s or ‘70s is provoked into saying upon seeing the gourmet in the Taster’s Choice ad, the father from “Tea and Sympathy,” the Illinois Senator from “Advise and Consent,” and dozens and dozens of other brief roles.

Andrews seemingly always played the quintessential well-groomed male of self-made substance, position, and stability.

Yet, he was never the squeaky-clean father knows best type; there was forever something cagey and unforthcoming about his characters. That’s what made Edward Andrews so appealing.

Edward in a 1972 TV ad:

The classic Andrews character dazzled with his details. At first, you see a statuesque upper middle class white American male of the late 20^th century. Football fan, GI Bill, Rotarian -- rather plain, but not for long.
Quickly, Edward Andrews’ mellow voice, acrobatic eyes and instantly shifting mood give him a simply ethereal quality – as does his absence of name recognition. He’s seen and heard, then moves on -- to another short movie role (he was in three movies per year from the mid-1950s through the ‘60s), a TV plot (two Twilight Zones, three Love American Styles, two in Bewitched, to name a few) or a TV ad.

Even looking up through a glass table top for dramatic effect in the1960 Twilight Zone episode "3rd From The Sun," the viewer can clearly see Edward suspects his aerospace plant subordinates played by Fritz Weaver (left) and Joe Maross are plotting to escape the planet as nuclear war looms.

In a 1985 obituary story the Los Angeles Times noted that Andrews' name anonymity was oddly coupled with his ubiquitous image. The Times recalled Andrews once saying: “They know you from somewhere but they don’t think of you as an actor. They stop and say, ‘Harry, how’s everything in Miami?’ I’ve learned by experience not to argue with them.”
Who this performer is remains a mystery to this day to many viewers of vintage TV and movies, but Edward Andrews' visual and vocal identities are embedded in our consciousness -- perhaps subliminally. Character actors like Andrews were sort of the bot personas before the internet.

Love and the Character Actor

Edward Andrews on Love American Style circa 1970:

Movies, stage plays, Television episodes, commercials, Edward Andrews was in every visual medium, over four decades.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

As a character actor, Andrews could play a different person two or three times a year without impeding the viewer’s ability to suspend belief and enjoy the show. That’s what a character actor does – they make movies and TV possible by being dependable, then expendable, with no complaints.

As such, Andrews' visits to movie sets were relatively brief, but each line he spoke could challenge him like a whole movie role does a major name star:

"I always figure any fool can learn lines, but what they pay you for is to say 'em better than anybody else can say 'em. I'm cocky enough, still, to say that the things I do best, there isn't anyone in the business that can do them better than I," Edward Andrews said in a 1984 feature in Starlog magazine. "There are roles that nobody can play better than I. It seems awfully immodest, but I have no doubt about it in the world."

Starlog’s Jim George added:
“Behind the ever-present trademark black frame glasses is a mischievous eye-twinkle which can shift from playful to nefarious literally in the bat of an eyelash. The slightest curling in the corners of one of those wonderfully wicked tight-lipped smiles can completely alter the tenor of a characterization…. One is never quite certain what is truly happening behind the sly smirk.”

Furthering Edward's title as a character actor icon is the fact that his two tries at starring roles were in forgotten TV shows that lasted about as long as one of those eye-twinkles of his:

Edward conducts the off-the-rails Supertrain in 1979

Fifteen years earlier, Edward delights us with his skills

in an otherwise awful show called Broadside

----------------------------------

And, rescued from - DARN! then put back in - the dust bin:

In 1971, NBC passed on a ho-hum pilot with somebody named Ferra, or something like that. Six years later, they realized they had a gold mine. So, they aired a Farah Fawcett "special," by repurposing the pilot, called "Inside O.U.T." And Edward, of course, was there. But COPYRIGHT BLOCKED! :(

Fear not, though - here is a classic Edward Andrews "dad" role. He was ingrained so deeply in viewers' minds as a father figure, that Sears didn't care that by 1978, Edward looked like a grandpa to "son."

----------------------------------

On the Silver Screen, Edward's character acting thrived. From the 1964 comedy movie "Send Me No Flowers"

Andrews’ movie roles included Sixteen Candles, The Absent Minded Professor, Gremlins, Kisses for my President, Death of a Salesman, and Tora! Tora! Tora!

The son of a Georgia Episcopal minister, he began acting on stage at age 12 in 1926 after his family moved to Pittsburgh. Andrews also lived in Ohio and West Virginia during his youth. His early Broadway roles included performing in "Of Mice and Men."

His on-screen prowess at playing characters with something to hide is not unlike a real-life Andrews trait. He acknowledged to Starlog that he sometimes manipulated directors when he would tell them he had come up with an idea for a line. Before stating it, Andrews would say, “No, I’m not sure it would work” – a tactic to prime a director’s curiosity to make them more receptive to his suggestion. “It’s a terrible, childish device,” Andrews said, “but it works.”

-------------------------------

Whether at this point you are uplifted to finally know who that man you grew up watching really was, or if Edward Andrews is new to you, I'll leave you with two sign offs. First, Edward Andrews late in his life in an early 1980s ad for new high-tech phone services (I regret that it's a little stereotypical of the Japanese, whose technology we were told to envy then):