Biography for
Bert Freed More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

3 November 1919, The Bronx, New York, USA

Date of Death

2 August 1994, Sechelt, British Columbia, Canada (heart attack)

Birth Name

Bertram Freed

Height

5' 10" (1.78 m)

Mini Biography

During the '50s and '60s it seemed like every time you turned around, there was Bert Freed as a detective, gangster, sheriff or greedy small-town businessman, and sci-fi fans will remember him as the police chief taken over by the Martians in the classic Invaders from Mars (1953). He played a lot of tough cops--sometimes crooked ones, sometimes racist ones, sometimes violent ones, sometimes a combination of all three--and a lot of tough soldiers, but he could also play a jovial family patriarch when called upon. Born and raised in New York, Freed began acting while attending Penn State University, and made his Broadway debut in 1942. His film debut occurred, oddly enough, in a musical--Carnegie Hall (1947)--and he went on to play everything from a gangster in a Ma and Pa Kettle movie (Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town (1950) to a French army sergeant--a first-rate job, too--in the classic Paths of Glory (1957). He appeared in it seems like every cop and detective series on TV at one time or another. He retired from acting in 1981, and died of a heart attack in Canada in 1994 while on a fishing trip with his son.

IMDb Mini Biography By: frankfob2@yahoo.com

Spouse

Nancy Lee Wurzberger

(12 February 1956 - 2 August 1994) (his death) 2 children

Trivia

First actor to play the role of Lt. Columbo, in a 1960 episode of "The Chevy Mystery Show" (1960), eight years before Peter Falk became famous in the part.