O.Z. WHITEHEAD
Information from IMDb
Date of Birth
1 March 1911,
New York City, New York, USA
Date of Death
29 July 1998,
Dublin, Ireland (cancer)
Birth Name
Oothout Zabriskie Whitehead
Nickname
Zebby
Trivia
Appeared as O.Z. Whitehead (as he is usually listed) in a Perry Mason episode,
"The Case of the Cowardly Lion", which had a pussycat lion and a baby gorilla named Toto.
Played the relatively quiet role of the night porter in the 1966 Irish premiere of
Eugene O'Neill's "Hughie" and was awarded "best supporting actor"
at the Dublin Theatre Festival. He played the role again in a 1989 production.
After moving to Ireland in 1963, Whitehead became, first and foremost,
a distinguished pioneer who devoted the final three and a half decades of his life
to the nurturing and consolidation of the distinctive Bahá'í community in Ireland
as a historian and chronicler.
Father was a banker and the family lived in the privileged upper East Side of Manhattan.
Attending Harvard University and switched majors from English to dramatics
against the wishes of his parents. He also developed a lifelong friendship
with Katharine Hepburn's brother Dick while there.
Beat out the likes of Mickey Rooney and Glenn Ford
for his role of Al Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940).
A devout anti-war pacifist, he nevertheless served during WWII
and was discharged as a sergeant, but a curvature of the spine kept him from
seeing any combat during his active duty.
Mini Biography
American character actor of rather bizarre range, a member of the so-called
"John Ford Stock Company." Originally a New York stage actor of some repute,
Whitehead entered films in the 1930s.
He played a wide variety of character parts, often quite different from his own actual age and type.
He is probably most familiar as Al Joad in 'John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (1940).
But twenty-two years later, in his fifth film for Ford, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962),
Whitehead at 51 was playing a lollipop-licking schoolboy!
He continued to work predominantly on the stage, appearing now and again in films
or on television. In his last years, he suffered from cancer and died in 1998 in Dublin, Ireland,
where he had lived in semi- retirement for many years.
IMDb Mini Biography By: Jim Beaver
Personal Quotes
War has the effect of accelerating change in all the worst possible ways.
People become harder, more ruthless.
Oothout Zabriskie Whitehead was a stage and film character actor.
He was born in New York City and attended Harvard University. Called "O.Z." or "Zebby",
he who also authored several volumes of biographical sketches of early members of the
Bahá'í Faith especially in the West after he moved ("pioneered" as a Bahá'í)
to Dublin, Ireland in 1963.
OZ was another member of the
John Ford Stock Company
and made 5 movies with the director
He is probably most familiar as Al Joad in
'John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (1940).
and twenty-two years later, in his fifth film for Ford,
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962),
OZ appeared in 2 movies that starred Duke
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962 )...Herbert Carruthers
The Horse Soldiers (1959 )...Otis 'Hoppy' Hopkins
