Jonathan Hole
Read the character names on this page in order and you have the career: Reporter Russell, Headwaiter on Riverboat, Ticket Seller, Chemist, Teller, Refinery Agent, Hotelpage. Jonathan Hole, born in 1904, was a professional background man, and he was one for sixty five years.
He came out of vaudeville and legitimate theatre, moved through radio, and then spent decades supplying American film and television with the functionary in the frame: the man who hands over the ticket, takes the order, runs the test, says the one line that lets the scene turn. Most of the film credits here are uncredited, which is the job working as designed rather than a slight.
The most seen of them is The Graduate, where he is Mr. Singleman, uncredited, in a film whose opening stretch is built almost entirely out of adults like him. Disney used him repeatedly, in The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and The Million Dollar Duck. Earlier there are real speaking parts, Phelps Potter in The Opposite Sex and Reporter Russell in Riot in Cell Block 11, plus a headwaiter in 4 for Texas and a ticket seller in The Split.
Television took the same shape, from The Rogues and Honey West in the 1960s through to True Colors decades later. He worked into the 1990s and died in 1998, which is the only statistic on this page that really matters.
Movies (7)
TV (4)
Where to start with Jonathan Hole
There is no starring vehicle to point at, so watch him the way you would watch a repertory company. The Graduate is the essential stop: Mr. Singleman belongs to the suffocating adult world the film spends its first act trapping Benjamin inside, and Hole plays that world without a hint of parody.
Riot in Cell Block 11 is the best film here on its own terms, a tough, semi documentary prison picture, and it gives him an actual credited role rather than a walk on. The Opposite Sex is the other one where he gets a name and uses it.
After that, treat The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and The Million Dollar Duck as a Disney double bill and enjoy spotting him. Honey West is the fun television option, a stylish 1960s detective series with a good sense of its own absurdity.