Billy Halop

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William "Billy" Halop (born February 11, 1920 in New York City , † November 9, 1976 in Brentwood , California ) was an American actor who reached his greatest popularity as a teenager in the late 1930s.

life and career

Billy Halop was born the son of a dancer in New York, his younger sister Florence Halop later also became an actress. At the age of twelve he already played the leading role of Bobby Benson in the radio series The H-Bar-O Rangers , in which the young Don Knotts also participated. Between 1934 and 1937 he played the role of son in the radio plays for the Kent family. On Broadway , he was cast as the teenage gang leader in Sidney Kingsley's play Dead End Kids in 1935 . The Dead End Kids - a total of six young actors in the play, including Halop - came to Hollywood. There they played in dead end, the film adaptation of her play, alongside Sylvia Sidney , Joel McCrea and Humphrey Bogart . After the success of this film, a number of crime and gangster films were made in the late 1930s in which the Dead End Kids played teenage problem children who are actually kind-hearted but grew up on the verge of crime. The most famous film with the Dead End Kids was probably Michael Curtiz 's 1938 film classic Chicago - Angels with Dirty Faces with James Cagney . Of the six Dead End Kids, Halop was the most popular, which is why he got a higher salary.

With the beginning of World War II , Halop played the lead role in a number of military films before he was drafted himself in 1942. In the Special Services he was then responsible for troop maintenance in the rank of sergeant. When he returned to Hollywood, Halop could no longer build on his old successes: by now over 25 years old, he had outgrown his teenage roles. Halop still played leading roles in a few B-films such as Dangerous Years (1947) and also starred in several television series during the 1950s. Due to the lack of offers, however, he then had some personal and financial problems, he had to hire himself as a salesman for tumble dryers. Halop later found a job as a nurse in a Malibu hospital, but he remained involved in acting in a second job, for in the 1960s he took on several film and television roles, and in the early 1970s he even had a recurring role in the sitcom All in the Family (1971).

Billy Halop was married three times, all marriages ended in divorce. He was working on his autobiography There's No Dead End when he died of a heart attack in 1976 at the age of 56.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article on the radio series
  2. ^ "Dead End" in the Internet Broadway Database
  3. ↑ Billy Halop at Find A Grave
personal data
SURNAME Halop, Billy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Halop, William (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH February 11, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City , New York , United States
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 1976
Place of death Brentwood , California , United States