Eugene William Pallette (July 8, 1889 – September 3, 1954[citation needed]) was an American actor who worked in both the silent and sound eras, performing in more than 240 productions between 1913 and 1946.

He had a deep voice, which some critics have likened to the sound of a croaking frog,[1][2] and is probably best-remembered for comic character roles such as Alexander Bullock (Carole Lombard's character's father) in My Man Godfrey (1936), Friar Tuck in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), and his similar role as Fray Felipe in The Mark of Zorro (1940).

[citation needed] Pallette began his acting career on the stage in stock company roles, appearing for a period of six years.

He starred as the slender sword-fighting swashbuckler Aramis in Douglas Fairbanks' 1921 version of The Three Musketeers, one of the great smash hits of the silent era.

Discouraged, Pallette left Hollywood for the oil fields of Texas, where he both made and lost a sizable fortune of $140,000 (equivalent to $2,391,493 in 2023) in the same year.

He played the comically exasperated head of the family (e.g., My Man Godfrey, The Lady Eve, Heaven Can Wait), the cynical backroom sharpy (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), and the gruff police sergeant in five Philo Vance films including The Kennel Murder Case.

Stuffed into a tuxedo that seems perpetually near bursting, he seems more down-to-earth than the stylish high society types who surround him.Pallette was cast as the father of lead actress Jeanne Crain for the film In the Meantime, Darling (1944).

[4] However, a 1953 issue of the African-American magazine Jet listed Pallette as being among the attendees of a Hollywood banquet honoring the then "oldest Negro actress in the world", Madame Sul-Te-Wan.

In 1946, convinced that there was going to be a "world blow-up" by atomic bombs, the hawkish Pallette received considerable publicity when he set up a "mountain fortress" on a 3,500-acre (14 km2) ranch near Imnaha, Oregon, as a hideaway from universal catastrophe.

The "fortress" reportedly was stocked with a sizable herd of prize cattle, enormous supplies of food, and had its own canning plant and lumber mill.

When the "blow-up" he anticipated failed to materialize after two years, he began disposing of the Oregon ranch and returned to Los Angeles and his movie colony friends.