From the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s he featured in numerous theatre productions, including being part of the original cast of Born Yesterday in Chicago, and the long-running Oklahoma!.

Penniless and looking for work after his graduation from the University of Rochester, he landed a small part in a play by the Lyceum Players starring Louis Calhern.

He had a starring role in The Well (1951), and had traveled to Austria to play the lead in the MGM production The Devil Makes Three (1952).

[3] The week before his death, he played the lead in Corny Johnson, a television film produced by Bing Crosby Enterprises.

The car swerved off the highway in heavy fog and plummeted over a 75 ft (23 m) embankment, something which, three years earlier, in The File on Thelma Jordon, he actually depicted, sitting next to Barbara Stanwyck.