Biography
John Qualen was a Canadian-American character actor of Norwegian heritage who specialised in Scandinavian roles. He began his career on Broadway in the late 1920s, gaining attention as the Swedish janitor in Elmer Rice's Street Scene; he recreated the part in the 1931 film adaptation. That same year he appeared in John Ford's Arrowsmith, beginning a collaboration that lasted more than thirty years.
Qualen appeared in well over one hundred films and worked extensively on television into the 1970s. Among his notable roles were Muley Graves in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Earl Williams in His Girl Friday (1940), Berger in Casablanca (1943), Lars Jorgensen in The Searchers (1956), Peter Ericson in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Deputy Sheriff Sulo Kangas in Anatomy of a Murder (1959). He frequently performed roles with various accents, usually Scandinavian.
