Loring Smith

Loring B. Smith (November 18, 1890 – July 8, 1981) was an American vaudeville, stage, film, radio and television actor, frequently of broadly comic and gregarious characters. He enjoyed a 65-year career involved in many facets of the entertainment business. A native of Stratford, Connecticut, Smith left doubt as to the year of his birth. Most of the earliest sources list 1890, by the 1940s, it was 1895, and by the 1950s, the year became 1900. He does, however, have vaudeville and theatrical credits reaching back to the 1910s. While he served in the Tank Corps during World War I, he put on shows for soldiers. A booking agent saw him in a show at Camp Upton on Long Island, and that exposure led to his becoming a professional entertainer. During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, he played hundreds of characters in radio drama, comedy and variety. He also intermittently appeared in films, playing supporting parts in 1941's Keep 'Em Flying, with Abbott and Costello and Shadow of the Thin Man, fourth in the William Powell–Myrna Loy series of Nick and Nora Charles mysteries. Over the following twenty-six years he was s... ()