George Tobias spent thirty years as the friend standing next to the star, a New Yorker who could make a barracks joke or a neighbour's complaint sound like the most reasonable thing anyone had said all day. A small trade, and he was good at it.
Fi1m perspective
The best thing in the middle of Sergeant York (1941) is a man who does not belong there. Howard Hawks has put Gary Cooper's Tennessee farm boy in a barracks and is busy arguing him into the war, one scene of history and conscience at a time, and into this walks George Tobias as "Pusher" Ross, a New Yorker who has never seen a tree that was not in a park. He is there for comedy, and he supplies it. He also supplies air. We had started to feel preached at, and each time Tobias came through the door we stopped; the film breathes when he is on screen and holds its breath when he is not.
That was the job for most of a career. Tobias began at fifteen at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, reached Broadway in 1924 in What Price Glory?, and signed with Warner Bros in 1939. He spent the 1940s and 1950s in supporting parts, working-class types for the most part, the friend or sidekick of whoever the picture was actually about. Four of those pictures were with James Cagney. In Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) he is Dietz, one face among many around Cagney's Cohan, and we will be honest: we did not much notice him. That film belongs to Cagney's dancing and is happy to say so.
The cast lists of the next decade tell the same story. He is Tiny in The Set-Up (1949) and Si Schribman in The Glenn Miller Story (1954), and the names alone say what the studios thought he was for: a corner of the frame that needed filling by someone who would not fuss about it. A Tiny is never the lead. Tobias played him for thirty years without, on the evidence, minding.
Television took him in the late 1950s. He was Penrose on Adventures in Paradise from 1959 to 1961, and then, from 1964 to 1971, Abner Kravitz on Bewitched, the neighbour, long-suffering by trade. It is the part he is best remembered for, and it is the barracks part again with the war taken out and a lawn put in: a plain man surrounded by nonsense, putting up with it. He made a last appearance on Tabitha in 1977 and stopped.
If you want to see what he did, go to the barracks in Sergeant York: half an hour of men making speeches, and one man who appears to have wandered in from a friendlier film.
Biography
George Tobias (1901–1980) was an American actor. Born in New York City, he began his career in theatre and made his Broadway debut in 1924 before signing with Warner Bros. in 1939.
He appeared in supporting roles in numerous films of Hollywood's Golden Age, including Sergeant York (1941) as 'Pusher' Ross, Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and The Glenn Miller Story (1954). From 1964 to 1971 he played Abner Kravitz in the television series Bewitched.
