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Henry Beckman

A veteran character actor and seasoned stage performer, Henry Beckman enjoyed a half-century run of memorable performances on film and TV. After serving in the Canadian military during World War II, Beckman returned to the United States and caught a major break when he was cast as heroic Commander Paul Richards on the popular sci-fi serial "Flash Gordon." By the '60s Beckman had established himself as a versatile supporting player; he played a trash-talking construction worker in the sitcom "I'm Dickens, He's Fenster" and a scheming Army colonel in the military comedy "McHale's Navy," and appeared in many of the popular Western shows of the time, like "The Virginian" and "Have Gun--Will Travel." He landed a recurring role as abusive husband George Anderson on the soap opera "Peyton Place," based on the 1956 novel about a seemingly perfect New England town. He left the show after just one season and worked steadily for several years before landing a lead role opposite Jack Palance in the cop drama "Bronk"; he played Harry Mark, a retired policeman with a second career as a junkyard dealer. One of his most memorable film roles, as distraught father Barton Kelly, came in David Cronenberg's "The Brood," a gruesome bio-horror film about a psychotherapist who treats his patients with unorthodox techniques.