Biography
Charles Middleton (also credited as Charles B. Middleton) was an American stage and film actor. Born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, he worked in a travelling circus and vaudeville before acting on stage and entering motion pictures in 1920. His film career, which lasted nearly 30 years, included nearly 200 films, often in supporting or uncredited roles as authority figures or villains.
He appeared as the Prosecutor in the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup (1933). Middleton is best known for portraying the villainous emperor Ming the Merciless in the three Flash Gordon serials made between 1936 and 1940. Other credits include roles in Gone with the Wind (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Sergeant York (1941) and The Killers (1946). He died in Los Angeles in 1949.
