Walter Smith Baldwin Jr. (January 2, 1889 − January 27, 1977) was an American character actor whose career spanned five decades and 150 film and television roles, and numerous stage performances.
Baldwin was born January 2, 1889, in Lima, Ohio, into a theatrical family: his father Walter S. Baldwin Sr. and mother Pearl Melville (a sister of Rose Melville) were both actors.[1] He joined his parents' stock theatre company, and in 1915 married fellow actress Geraldine Blair.[2]
Prior to his first film roles in 1939, Baldwin had appeared in more than a dozen Broadway plays in New York City. He played "Whit"/ in the first Broadway production in 1938 of Of Mice and Men, based on famous author John Steinbeck's best-selling novel published the previous year of 1937, ànd also appeared in the original Grand Hotel (1931) play in a small role, as well as serving as the production's stage manager. He originated the role of "Bensinger", the prissy 'Chicago Tribune' reporter, in the 1928 Broadway production in New York City of The Front Page (later subject of several other subsequent productions / media).
In the 1960s he had small acting roles in television comedy shows such as Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. In 1967 he portrayed a stable owner in the "Fandango" episode (Season 12, Episode 21) on the famous long-running (1955 to 1975) of TV Western series on Gunsmoke. He continued to act in motion pictures, and one of his last roles was in Rosemary's Baby. (1968).
Baldwin was known for playing solid middle class burghers, although sometimes he gave portrayals of eccentric characters. He played a customer seeking a prostitute in The Lost Weekend (1945), and the rebellious prison trusty "Orvy" in Cry of the City (1948).
Walter Baldwin was featured in a lot of "John Deere Day" movies during the 1950s, from 1949 to 1959 where he played the farmer "Tom Gordon". In this series of Deere Day advertising / marketing movies for over a decade shown as short subjects between usually two other major feature films along with cartoons, newsreels and previews of coming attractions (trailers) such as in a "double feature" program shown in local neighborhood movie theatres. This was in the early television broadcasting era (with commercials occupying usually 10 minutes out of every half-hour program). He helped to introduce to rural country movie theatre audiences about many new pieces of John Deere farming / agriculture machinery and equipment year-by-year. In each yearly movie along with an interesting short story line, he would be shown in a "Tom Gordon Family Film" where he would always be buying new John Deere farm equipment or a new green and yellow tractor in the traditional John Deere colors. A picture of Walter Baldwin playing "Tom Gordon" can be found on page 108 of Bob Pripp's farm equipment history book "John Deere: Yesterday & Today"
Hal Erickson writes in the AllMovie Internet website / database on films: "With a pinched Midwestern countenance that enabled him to portray taciturn farmers, obsequious grocery store clerks and the occasional sniveling coward, Baldwin was a familiar (if often unbilled) presence in Hollywood films for three decades."[3]
