Born: January 22, 1905
Died: January 03, 1969

Character actor Howard McNear made a name for himself on network radio in a vast array of characterizations, from snivelling murderers to dapper French detectives. McNear's best-known radio role was as Doc on Gunsmoke, which ran from 1955 to 1962; his spin on the character was slightly more ghoulish than the interpretation offered by Milburn_Stone on television. In films from 1954, the bespectacled, mustachioed McNear was usually cast as a querulous fussbudget. He was spotlighted as Dr. Dompierre in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959), and was prominently featured in three Billy_Wilder comedies, Irma_La_Douce (1963), Kiss_Me_Stupid (1964) and The_Fortune_Cookie (1966). He appeared with frequency on TV in the 1950s and 1960s, often as a foil to such comedians as Jack_Benny and Burns and Allen. Howard McNear's most beloved TV characterization was as Mayberry barber Floyd Lawson on The Andy Griffith Show; when McNear suffered a debilitating stroke in 1967, Griffith kept him on the payroll, re-writing the scripts to allow "Floyd" to be seated and non-ambulatory without drawing undue attention to McNear's affliction. Hal Erickson, Rovi

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