Image: Wikimedia CommonsKarl Swenson
American actor (1908–1978)
- Born July 23, 1908
- 6 movies
Karl Swenson (23 July 1908 to 8 October 1978) was an American actor of stage, radio, film and television, born in Brooklyn to Swedish parents. He abandoned premedical studies for the theatre, worked on Broadway in the 1930s and 1940s, and was a busy radio lead before turning to film in the 1940s. Over more than 170 productions he became one of Hollywood's most dependable character actors, especially in Westerns. Later audiences know him as the mill owner Lars Hanson on Little House on the Prairie and as the voice of Merlin in Disney's The Sword in the Stone.
Karl Swenson appears in 6 films in The Rerun, from 1959 to 1966. Most of that work is in western, drama and horror. Frequent collaborators in The Rerun: Kirk Douglas (2), John Wayne (2), Karl Malden (2).
Known for
- Little House on the Prairie (1974), Lars Hanson. His role on the television series through 1978.
- The Sword in the Stone (1963), Merlin (voice). He voiced Merlin in the Disney animated film.
- Lonely Are the Brave (1962). One of his many character roles in film.
- Seconds (1966). A mid-1960s film credit among his more than 170 productions.
Career
Swenson briefly acted as “Peter Wayne” in the early 1930s, sharing the stage with the young Henry Fonda and James Stewart in the University Players summer company, and later played the title role in Arthur Miller’s first Broadway production, The Man Who Had All the Luck. On radio he was the voice of Father Brown and Mr. Chameleon and was heard on The Mercury Theatre on the Air.
Film roles accumulated from the 1950s: North to Alaska, Flaming Star, Judgment at Nuremberg and the doom-saying drunk in the diner in Hitchcock’s The Birds. Television made him a familiar face on Gunsmoke, Maverick and The Andy Griffith Show, and from 1974 until his death he played Lars Hanson on Little House on the Prairie.
Where to start
- Lonely Are the Brave (1962): a prison inmate in Kirk Douglas’s elegy for the cowboy West.
- Seconds (1966): a supporting part in John Frankenheimer’s paranoid identity thriller.
- Flaming Star (1960): the Elvis Presley frontier drama, played straight.
- The Sword in the Stone (1963): his warm, fussy Merlin.
Movies
Quick answers
- What movies and TV shows has Karl Swenson been in?
- Karl Swenson appears in Seconds (1966), Major Dundee (1965), Lonely Are the Brave (1962), Flaming Star (1960), North to Alaska (1960) and The Hanging Tree (1959) on The Remote.
- When was Karl Swenson born?
- Karl Swenson was born on 23 July 1908.
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