Balding and slender with a craggy voice and a master of the double-take, Gleason portrayed tough but warm-hearted characters, usually with a New York background.

Gleason was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as boxing manager Max "Pop" Corkle in the 1941 film Here Comes Mr. Jordan.

One of Gleason's best-known roles is Uncle Birdie, the kind-hearted ship captain plagued by alcohol and the memory of his deceased wife, in Charles Laughton's film noir classic The Night of the Hunter (1955).

[4] His television credits include several episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the Reed Hadley legal drama The Public Defender and ABC's The Real McCoys.

In "The Child", the Christmas 1957 episode of John Payne's The Restless Gun on NBC, Gleason and Anthony Caruso played Roman Catholic priests who run an orphanage.

On December 26, 1945, the younger Gleason was in New York City awaiting deployment to Europe with his regiment, when he fell out of a fourth story window in the Hotel Sutton — which the army had commandeered to house the troops — resulting in his death.