Content area
Full Text
Charles Lane, who has died aged 102, was probably the most celebrated of "I-know-the-face-but-not-the-name" actors. Most filmgoers, some time or other, were bound to have seen the prolific Lane, who made hundreds of appearances in films and on television.
If casting directors wanted a mean-spirited bureaucrat, hard-hearted businessman, tightfisted relative, crotchety clerk or cantankerous neighbour, the thin, sour-faced, bespectacled Lane was their man. On being typecast, he commented that it was "a pain in the ass. You did something that was pretty good, but that pedigreed you into that type of part, which I thought was stupid and unfair. It didn't give me a chance, but it made the casting easier for the studio."
Most typical was his role in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946) as the rent collector for Mr Henry F Potter (Lionel Barrymore), the richest and meanest man in the county, who owns every institution in Bedford Falls except the Bailey Building and Loan Society. "Look, Mr Potter, it's no skin off my nose," Lane says, using his most...