SAM EDWARDS was one of America’s biggest radio stars in the 1930s and he appeared in films with John Wayne and Jack Nicholson. As with so many screen character actors, his face would be more familiar to modern audiences than his name. He performed in numerous classic TV series and played the recurring role of the banker in Little House on the Prairie.
If not his face, then his voice should elicit recognition among even the youngest listeners, for it served as that of Thumper in Bambi, and he sang the classic Disney nonsense song The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers.
By the time Edwards was born, in 1915 in Macon, Georgia, his parents — both actors — had their own theatre company. Edwards, his younger brother Jack and his sister Florida were dragooned into the act, and Edwards later recalled having to wear lace panties to play a girl in one production.
The family moved to Texas, where the teenage Edwards began to attract attention as a singer, and he and his brother were cast as the two heroes of The Adventures of Sonny and Buddy, one of America’s earliest weekly radio drama serials. The story of two boys who run off to join a travelling show, it was scripted by their mother. It was picked up for national syndication, and the family relocated again to California, where they recorded five shows a week. Sonny and Buddy was followed by The Edwards Family, in which the entire family appeared.
The Edwards brothers were also regulars in the early radio soap One Man’s Family, and they appeared in films from the mid-1930s onwards, including East Side Kids (1940), an offshoot of The Dead End Kids. Sam began a long association with Disney by providing the adult voice for Thumper in 1942; he also lent his voice to various Disney records, and though he did not voice Tigger in the Winnie the Pooh films he sang The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers on record.
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During the Second World War Edwards enlisted in the Army Air Corps, and he was assigned entertainment duties in the US, Africa and Asia. Hostilities were over, however, by the time he got a chance to fly, in the war film Twelve O’Clock High (1949), with Gregory Peck. He also saw naval action with John Wayne in Operation Pacific (1951).
Edwards was already in his thirties when, in 1947, he got the part of the title character’s goofy teenage boyfriend on Meet Corliss Archer, NBC’s hit radio comedy show, but he went on to play the character, Dexter, for eight years.
He was not slow to tap in to the new medium of television and was in the first episode of the crime series Dragnet in 1951, making repeated appearances throughout the 1950s and returning when it was revived a decade later. By that time, though, he had established himself almost as part of the furniture in the serials that had replaced popular radio shows in the nation’s affections.
Edwards’s credits read like a potted history of American television drama series and include I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke (which began on radio), Perry Mason, Laramie, The Andy Griffith Show, Wagon Train, Mission: Impossible, Cannon, McCloud, Hawaii Five-O, The Streets of San Franciso, Wonder Woman, The Dukes of Hazzard and Happy Days.
He voiced minor characters on The Flintstones and had a recurring role as Hank, the hotel clerk, in The Virginian from 1963 until 1967, and as Mr Anderson, the banker, in Little House on the Prairie from 1978 until 1983.
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There were small roles in the films Hello, Dolly (1969), Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) and the 1981 remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice, starring Jack Nicholson. He retired in the mid-1980s to Durango, Colorado.
Edwards is survived by his wife of 35 years, Beverly, and three stepchildren.
Sam Edwards, actor, was born on May 26, 1915. He died on July 28, 2004, aged 89.