Irving Ernest Bacon [1] (September 6, 1893 – February 5, 1965) was an American character actor who appeared in almost 500 films.[2]
Bacon was the son of entertainers Millar West Bacon (who was a teenager) and Myrtle Vane.[3] He was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, and grew up in San Diego, California.[4]His parents divorced in 1900. His father remarried, to Lena Ann Davis in Spokane later that year.
Bacon played on the stage for a number of years before getting into films in 1912 in Mack Sennett productions.[3] The actor returned to the Sennett studio in 1924, and appeared frequently in Sennett's silent and sound comedies as a supporting actor. By 1933, Bacon was so well established as a utility player that he was pressed into service to replace Andy Clyde—wearing Clyde's "old man" costume and makeup—in a Sennett comedy.[citation needed]
Bacon often played comical "average guys" in scores of feature films; in 1939 alone he appeared in three dozen features. Today's audiences may know him as the soda jerk in the W. C. Fields comedy Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, the wily wagon driver in the Bing Crosby-Fred Astaire musical Holiday Inn, the angry motel guest in the Oscar-winning short Star in the Night, and Glenn Miller's father in The Glenn Miller Story. His most familiar role was as Mr. Beasley, the weary postman in Columbia Pictures' Blondie film series. During the 1950s, Bacon worked steadily in a number of television sitcoms, most notably I Love Lucy, in which he appeared in two episodes, one of which cast him as Ethel Mertz's father.[5]
He worked as a "Carburetor and Magneto Machinist for the San Diego Battery and Ignition Company according to his 1917 WWI draft Registration Card."[6]
Bacon was married to Freda Lee Scoville until her death in 1928; they had a son and a daughter. In June 1930, Bacon married Margaret Beaver; they had a son, Frank.[4] They were divorced in 1934. In 1937, he wed, lastly, Alice Bernice Peters. He died on February 5, 1965, aged 71, in Hollywood.[7]
