Actor / Director Profile

Big, burly, character actor, one of the toughest of screen heavies, Leo Gordon's powerful physique, combined with his deep, menacing voice, was guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of even the bravest screen hero. Director Don Siegel, who used Gordon in his prison film Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), once said that "Leo Gordon was the scariest man I have ever met" - this coming from a man who had directed John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Bette Midler! Siegel wasn't talking about just Gordon's screen presence. Before becoming an actor (he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts), Gordon served a stretch in San Quentin prison for armed robbery. "Riot in Cell Block 11" was filmed at San Quentin, and many of the guards remembered Gordon from his time there, when he was regarded as a troublemaker. Prison officials would not let Gordon enter and leave the institution with the other cast and crew members; he was only allowed to enter and exit by himself, and was thoroughly searched each time. Contrary to his image, though, Gordon was not just a one-note villain. He did play sympathetic parts on occasion, notably in the western Black Patch (1957) and in Roger Corman's civil rights drama The Intruder (1962), and turned in first-rate performances, especially in the latter film. Gordon was also a screenwriter, turning out several screenplays for Corman. He wasn't just limited to writing low-budget sci-fi films, either; he penned the screenplay for the WWII epic Tobruk (1967), writing in a good part for himself as Kruger, a tough sergeant in a platoon of German Jews masquerading as Nazi soldiers to help blow up a German oil storage facility.