Hooper Atchley Biography

Mustachioed Hooper Atchley was one of Hollywood's better "brains villains," one of those suspicious yet nattily dressed saloon owners, assayers, or cattle barons calling the shots in B-Westerns of the '30s and '40s. He came to films in 1928 after a long stage career that included Broadway appearances opposite Marie Dressler in The Great Gambol (1913). Onscreen Atchley came into his own in talkies where his distinguished stage-trained voice lent credence to numerous bad deeds opposite the likes of Ken Maynard and Tim McCoy. The actor's screen career waned in the latter part of the '30s; a fact that may have contributed to his 1943 suicide by a gunshot. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi