Tall, distinguished-looking character player usually cast as villains or humorless authority figures. Dehner began his career as an animation assistant at Walt Disney Studios, worked as an Army publicist during WWII and, as a Los Angeles radio news reporter, editor and announcer, netted his station a Peabody Award for his coverage of the first UN conference in San Francisco in the late 1940s. Dehner started acting in films in the mid-1940s, eventually appearing in over 100 features, mostly westerns or action films. As sheriff Pat Garrett, he proved a notable foil to Paul Newman's Billy the Kid in Arthur Penn's "The Left-Handed Gun" (1958).