O.Z. Whitehead(1911-1998)
- Actor
American character actor of rather bizarre range, a member of the
so-called "John Ford Stock Company." Originally a New York stage actor
of some repute, Whitehead entered films in the 1930s. He played a wide
variety of character parts, often quite different from his own actual
age and type. He is probably most familiar as Al Joad in 'John Ford
(I)''s The Grapes of Wrath (1940). But twenty-two years later, in his fifth film for
Ford, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Whitehead at 51 was playing a lollipop-licking
schoolboy! He continued to work predominantly on the stage, appearing
now and again in films or on television. In his last years, he suffered
from cancer and died in 1998 in Dublin, Ireland, where he had lived in
semi- retirement for many years.
