[1] These early shorts display Conlin's musical talents, including his impressive skills at the piano.

He typically wore horn-rimmed spectacles, and arranged his hair with shaggy blond bangs that hung over his face.

Today's audiences may remember him as the assistant bartender to W. C. Fields in My Little Chickadee, the collections agent in the Fred Astaire musical Second Chorus, the beggar posing as a blind man in Dick Tracy's Dilemma, and the elderly horse trainer in Rolling Home.

With many major studios cutting back on new productions and discontinuing low-budget "B" pictures, Conlin had fewer opportunities from 1948 forward, but continued to appear in occasional movies into the 1950s.

Conlin did not make many television appearances, but he did have a regular role as a bartender on Duffy's Tavern,[3] a syndicated series from 1954.