WrightKing

Born on January 11, 1923 in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, Thomas Wright Thornburg King studied at the St. Louis Theater School before enlisting in the Navy during World War II. At the end of the contest, he made his debut on the small screen, in the forgotten series  Captain Video and His Video Rangers .

On Broadway he triumphed with the original staging of  A Streetcar Named Desire , where he played a very brief role, the salesman who charmed Blanche, the protagonist, who came to kiss him. Praised by critics, he reprized himself in the legendary film adaptation shot by  Elia Kazan . He had to repeat his scene 48 times, which meant kissing  Vivien Leigh  as many times, the dream of many viewers at the time.

From that moment on, he lavished himself on numerous series, appearing from time to time in the cinema, in titles such as  The Big Test , by  William Wyler , where he gives life to a horse groomer, but does not appear in the credits, or the western  The Sheriff of Dodge City , with  Joel McCrea . Above all,  Wright King  became a popular face for fans of fantasy, as an actor in two well-remembered episodes of  Rod  Serling ‘s cult series Twilight Zone.. In “Of Late I Think of Cliffordville” he was a businessman who buys a piece of land where he thinks there is oil, and in “Shadow Play” a reporter convinced of the innocence of a death row prisoner. He was also involved in  Planet of the Apes , which had Serling as a screenwriter. He played Dr. Galen, the human vet who saves Taylor’s ( Charlton Heston ) life through a transfusion, alongside Dr. Zira. In  Francis Ford Coppola ‘s Valley of the Rainbow ,   he played a lawyer.

The actor retired in the late 1980s after playing a priest in the unknown drama  House Made of Dawn . He remained faithful to his wife, June Ellen Roth, until her death in 2008. The couple had three children.