This boyish-looking New York-born actor of film and (especially) TV was
born in 1928 and signed by Columbia at the onset of his teen career.
Also known as Donald Dubbins, he started off playing earnest young
cadet types in the war films
Verdammt in alle Ewigkeit (1953)
(as a young bugler) and
Die Caine war ihr Schicksal (1954). It was
superstar James Cagney who took a distinct
liking to the rookie actor and prominently displayed him in two of his
subsequent films. In
Das Herz eines Millionärs (1956),
Dubbins played Cagney's long-lost adopted son and, in the western
Jeremy Rodack - Mein Wille ist Gesetz (1956),
he forms an unlikely romantic triangle with cattle boss Cagney and
senorita Irene Papas. He also was at the
mercy of Jack Webb's title character
as a private in the Dragnet-styled military film
Einer macht nicht mit (1957). He subsequently played
a frequent suspect on several episodes of the
Polizeibericht (1967) series.
Finishing up the 1950s, he was a part of the cast in the
Jules Verne sci-fi picture
Von der Erde zum Mond (1958).
Although Dubbins never became a box office name, he certainly was a
reliable asset on TV and was seen in a host of character roles over the
years, not to mention a good number of smaller parts in such films as
Kein Lorbeer für den Mörder (1963) and
Hass (1969). A
character player adept at both good guys and bad guys, he retired
completely in the late 1980s after filming episodes of
Der Denver-Clan (1981),
Ein Engel auf Erden (1984)
and Unter der Sonne Kaliforniens (1979). He
succumbed to cancer less than a decade later in 1991 at the age of 63.
