[1][2][3] Far removed from the stereotypical stage parents, both Mr. and Mrs. Tobias did their utmost to discourage the acting bug in their youngest: [T]hey made up their minds very definitely that I was not going to spend my life nearly starving as they did.

[4] He appeared in Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape in 1922,[5] and in Charles Méré's La Flamme and Channing Pollock's The Fool the following year,[6][7] then made his Broadway debut in Maxwell Anderson's What Price Glory?

[3] In 1939, he signed with Warner Bros.[4] and was cast in supporting roles, many times along with James Cagney, such as the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), and with Gary Cooper in the drama Sergeant York (1941) and Irving Berlin, Ronald Reagan, and George Murphy in This Is the Army (1943).

[9] Tobias often appeared in an uncredited role as a courtroom spectator on Perry Mason,[citation needed] and he played Sidney Falconer in the episode titled "The Case of the Antic Angel" (1964).

Tobias never married and he retired from acting in 1977 after he reprised his role as Abner Kravitz in a guest appearance on the Bewitched sequel Tabitha.