The Departed: James Whitmore

• James Whitmore, 1921-2009.

The frame capture below is from Them! [1955], a seminal example of 1950s science fiction at its finest. It's also an object lesson in Whitmore's onscreen appeal: generous, reliable, and never less than watchable.

Mr. Whitmore’s acting career spanned six decades and included dozens of films, countless television shows and a handful of Broadway credits, including his solo efforts.

Besides the one in “Battleground,” his film roles included a hunchback diner owner and sometime criminal in John Huston’s “Asphalt Jungle” (1950); a lightfooted thug who, with Keenan Wynn, dances and sings his way through “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” in “Kiss Me Kate” (1953); a white journalist who disguises himself as a black man in "Black Like Me" (1964); a police inspector who may be up to no good in “Madigan” (1968); Admiral William F. Halsey in “Tora! Tora! Tora!” (1970), and an elderly convict and prison librarian in “The Shawshank Redemption” (1994).