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Harry Hayden (8 November 1882–24 July 1955) was a Canadian film character actor who appeared in over 250 films between 1936 and 1954. Born in Canada in 1882, Hayden was slight, greying at the temples and wore glasses, and the characters he played were often small-town store proprietors, hotel managers, city attorneys, bankers and minor bureaucrats, frequently officious or snooping. Hayden worked both onstage and in films, and with his wife, actress Lelia Bliss, to whom he was married from 1924 until his death, he ran the Bliss-Hayden miniature theatre in Beverly Hills, whose alumni... MORE

Harry Hayden (8 November 1882–24 July 1955) was a Canadian film character actor who appeared in over 250 films between 1936 and 1954. Born in Canada in 1882, Hayden was slight, greying at the temples and wore glasses, and the characters he played were often small-town store proprietors, hotel managers, city attorneys, bankers and minor bureaucrats, frequently officious or snooping. Hayden worked both onstage and in films, and with his wife, actress Lelia Bliss, to whom he was married from 1924 until his death, he ran the Bliss-Hayden miniature theatre in Beverly Hills, whose alumni include Veronica Lake, Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds, and Marilyn Monroe. He directed one production on Broadway, a play called Thirsty Soil, which opened in February 1937. Hayden began appearing in films in 1936, when he was seen in Foolproof, a crime drama short, and worked consistently and steadily until 1954. At the peak of his career, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, a dozen or two films would be released every year in which Hayden appeared. Often his work went uncredited, but he was notable in Laurel and Hardy's Saps at Sea in 1940 as Mr. Sharp, the horn factory owner, and as Farley Granger's boss LESS