Leonard Mudie

Real world article
(written from a Production point of view)

Leonard Mudie
Birth name:	Leonard Mudie Cheetham
Date of birth:	11 April 1883
Place of birth:	Manchester, England, UK
Date of death:	14 April 1965
Place of death:	Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA
Roles:	Actor
Character(s):	SS Columbia survivor

Leonard Mudie (11 April 1883 – 14 April 1965; age 82) was an English actor who played the second illusory survivor of the SS Columbia in "The Cage", the original pilot for Star Trek: The Original Series. Footage of his appearance was used in the first season episode "The Menagerie, Part I". Despite having dialog, he was not credited for his role in either episodes.

Mudie's role in Star Trek ultimately proved to be his last. He died just four months after filming "The Cage" and one year and five months before The Original Series first aired. He was the first of two Star Trek staffers to die before the series premiered on television; the second was Ross Dowd. Mudie was the second oldest hired actor to appear in the Star Trek franchise.

Along with Judith Anderson, Walter Bacon, Bill Borzage, Jane Crowley, Morgan Farley, Richard Hale, Anthony Jochim, Felix Locher, Celia Lovsky, Charles Seel, Abraham Sofaer, Eleanore Vogel, and Ian Wolfe, he is one of only fourteen Star Trek guest stars born in the 19th century to appear in any episode or film. Three credited Star Trek production staffers – Franz Bachelin, Ernest Haller, and Byron Haskin – were also born in the 1800s. Having been born in 1883, he was the second oldest actor who ever appeared on Star Trek, surpassed only by Locher, but the first one to die.

Born as Leonard Mudie Cheetham in the Cheetham Hill suburb of Manchester, England, Mudie started his acting career in 1908 on the theater stage in his home city, rapidly making a name for himself. In 1914, he went to America to play on Broadway, first appearing in the original play "Consequences", where he would, on and off continue to play until 1948. In between, from 1921 to 1923, he moved to Hollywood, to get his first taste of the motion picture industry during the silent movie era, before returning to Broadway. However, in 1931 he definitely returned to Hollywood, never to return to the East Coast, save for a last performance in 1948. In Hollywood, due to his English intonation, he had little trouble finding gainful employment at the start of the sound era from the mid 1930s onward, though mostly as featured extra.

In his career, extending nearly 45 years, Mudie appeared in over 130 feature films, some of the more notable being such classics as The Mummy (1932), Captain Blood (1935) Les Miserables (1935), Lost Horizon (1937, starring Jane Wyatt), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Dark Victory (1939), Foreign Correspondent (1940, with Ian Wolfe), The Letter (1940), Random Harvest (1942, with Ian Wolfe), When Worlds Collide (1951, starring Richard Derr and John Hoyt), Limelight (1952), and Kiss Me Deadly (1955, on which Robert H. Justman worked as assistant director.

Mudie also appeared in multiple episodes of the 1950s television series Adventures of Superman, which also featured future Star Trek performers Peter Brocco, Elisha Cook, Jeff Corey, and Vic Perrin. Other television programs he appeared in include Sea Hunt and The Untouchables.

External links

• Leonard Mudie at the Internet Movie Database
• Leonard Mudie at Wikipedia