MovieChat Forums > Simon Oakland Discussion > This guy is all over old police movies a...

This guy is all over old police movies and series.


Amazing there are no comments about him.

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To say nothing of his prominence in The Night Stalker telefilms

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Yeah, why not, he was too perfect for the character roles they put him in, he disappeared into the plots.

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I'm just now recalling that he starred in Bullit also

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His Wikipedia page has this ...
Psycho (1960), West Side Story (1961), The Sand Pebbles (1966), Bullitt (1968), The Hunting Party (1971), and Chato's Land (1972)

I think I recall that he was a bully guy who picked on the Chinese kid in "The Sand Pebbles".

He died long ago. For some reason I always thought he was Latino or Latinx or whatever it is, but ...

Oakland was born in Brooklyn, New York,[2] the eldest of the three sons of immigrant Jewish parents, Jacob Weiss and Ethel Oaklander, born in Romania and the Russian Empire respectively.[3][4] His father was a plasterer and builder.[5] While he later claimed in media interviews to have been born in 1922[5][6] (a date repeated in his New York Times obituary),[1][7] Social Security and vital records indicate he was born Simon Weiss in 1915; his stage name was derived from his mother's maiden name, Oaklander.[8][9][10][Note 1]

He began his performing career as a musician (he was a violinist,[12] an avocation he pursued during his entire career as an actor). Oakland began his acting career in the late 1940s. He enjoyed a series of Broadway hits, including Light Up the Sky, The Shrike, and Inherit the Wind, and theater was one of his lasting passions. He was a concert violinist until the 1940s.[citation needed]

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Yes, and he was a good friend of Steve McQueen.

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I've only seen him in Psycho and Kolchak: The Night Stalker. I liked his characters in both.

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LOL I looked him up just last week after seing Bullitt!

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He had a guest spot on almost every police TV show from the '50s to the '80s including 5 episodes of Hawaii Five O
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0643000/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

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Appeared in most of the episodes of the 1970's WWII drama Baa Baa Black Sheep as General Moore who oversaw Robert Conrad's Pappy Boyington. His character maybe got a few minutes of airtime each week but you always waited in anticipation for his scenes. Had good chemistry with Conrad as well as Dana Elcar who played Moore's salty subordinate Colonel Lard.

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Will always be Tony Vincenzo to me. But did like him in West Side Story as well.

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The Twilight Zone “The Rip Van Winkle Caper”

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