Bert Freed Trailers
Are You My Mother? TrailerCharlie and the Great Balloon Chase TrailerSkag Trailer
Bert Freed (November 3, 1919 — August 2, 1994) was a prolific American character actor, voice over actor, and the first actor to portray "Detective Columbo" on television.
Born and raised in The Bronx, New York, Freed began acting while attending Penn State University, and made his Broadway debut in 1942. Following World War II Army service in the European Theatre, he appeared in the Broadway musical The Day Before Spring in 1945 and dozens of television shows between 1947 and 1985. His film debut occurred, oddly enough, in a musical Carnegie Hall (1947). A prominent role was as the villainous Ryker in the television series Shane, in which Freed added a unique touch of realism by beginning the show clean-shaven and growing a beard from one week to the next, never shaving again through the season.
Freed played Columbo in a live 1960 episode of the "Chevy Mystery Theatre" seven years before Peter Falk played the role. Thomas Mitchell also played the part on stage prior to Falk's version, which is probably where many of the eccentric Columbo traits originated; only a few were visible in Freed's straightforward interpretation, although the character as played by Freed is recognizably Columbo.
He appeared (sometimes more than once) in television shows such as The Rifleman, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The Big Valley,The Virginian, Mannix, Barnaby Jones, Charlie's Angels, Then Came Bronson, Run For Your Life, Get Smart, The Lucy Show, Hogan's Heroes, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey, Perry Mason, Combat!, Petticoat Junction, The Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Route 66, Ironside, The Green Hornet, The Munsters, and many, many more. He directed one episode of T.H.E. Cat.
Freed appeared as a racist club owner in No Way Out (1950), a gangster in Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town (1950), a Marine private in Halls of Montezuma (1951 film), an Army sergeant in Take the High Ground! (1953), the Police Chief in Invaders From Mars (1953), Sgt. Boulanger in Paths of Glory (1957), the hangman in Hang 'Em High (1968), Max's father in Wild in the Streets (1968), as Chief of Detectives in Madigan (1968), a homosexual prison guard in There Was a Crooked Man... (1970) and Bernard's father in Billy Jack (1971) in which he got "whumped" on the side of the face by Billy Jack's right foot "just for the hell of it."
He retired from acting in 1986, and died of a heart attack in Canada in 1994 while on a fishing trip with his son.
Most Popular Bert Freed Trailers
Total trailers found: 54
24 September 1977
An auto-theft ring decides to help out migrant workers from Mexico with the proceeds from their racket.
01 June 1960
A night club singer who is the daughter of a small-town crook is tried and convicted of murder.
12 April 1968
Marshall Jed Cooper survives a hanging, vowing revenge on the lynch mob that left him dangling. To carry out his oath for vengeance, he returns to his former job as a lawman.
07 June 1954
Major Gaylord grapples with a vexing command in the Korean War. Aired by Studio One in Hollywood, sponsored by Westinghouse.
25 October 1957
A commanding officer defends three scapegoats on trial for a failed offensive that occurred within the French Army in 1916.
01 February 1978
A widower, visiting the crypt that holds the body of his wife, is accidentally trapped therein. That night he finds that she seems to have been cataleptic, rather than dead, and frees her from her coffin.
07 July 1950
A police detective's violent nature keeps him from being a good cop.
03 May 1956
Interviews and documentary footage combine with the fictional story of an air-force pilot who encounters aliens.
06 January 1980
Pete "Skag" Skagska is a 56-year-old union foreman of a Pittsburgh steel mill until a crippling stroke forces him to stay home and try to put his life back together and deal with family problems.
31 October 1962
A former vaudeville child star viciously torments her paraplegic sister in their decaying Hollywood mansion.
17 May 1970
A dramatization of the 1865 war-crimes trial of Henry Wirz, commandant of the notorious Confederate POW camp at Andersonville, Georgia.
12 July 1981
Charlie Bartlett is a retired railroad worker whose dream of crossing the country in a hot air balloon is encouraged by his grandson Morris O'Neill, who decides to go along for the ride despite the misgivings of his widowed mother whose plans to remarry have left him disenchanted.
10 June 1966
Nevada Smith is the young son of an Indian American mother and European-American father. When his father is killed by three men over gold, Nevada sets out to find them and kill them.
16 October 1964
An airline executive refuses to believe that pilot error, by his friend, caused a fatal crash and persists in looking for another reason.
16 August 1950
Two hoodlum brothers are brought into hospital for gunshot wounds, and when one dies, the other accuses their Black doctor of murder.
18 September 1970
A charming but ruthless criminal is sent to a remote Arizona prison, where he enlists the help of his cellmates in an escape attempt with the promise of sharing his hidden loot.
26 September 1975
Loosely based on the true story of the killing of Kitty Genovese: A young woman's murder is witnessed by fifteen of her neighbors who do nothing to help and refuse to cooperate with the police.
06 December 1973
Adapted from Arthur Miller's play, film focuses on a group of Frenchmen who are detained at Vichy, the capital of France while under Nazi occupation, and "investigated" under suspicion of secretly being Jewish.
24 March 1969
Jim Bronson is a young newspaperman who quits his job following the suicide of his best friend, and sets out on a cross-country trip on his motorcycle in his quest for the meaning of life in which he befriends a runway bride, another searching soul, in this pilot for the TV series of the same name, and theatrically released in some parts of the world including Spain.
01 May 1971
A Euro-Indigenous American Ex-Green Beret hapkido expert saves wild horses from being slaughtered for dog food and helps protect a desert "freedom school" for runaways.
02 March 1979
Norma Rae is a southern textile worker employed in a factory with intolerable working conditions. This concern about the situation gives her the gumption to be the key associate to a visiting labor union organizer.
14 October 1964
In New Mexico, a Confederate veteran returns home to find his fiancée married to a Union soldier, his Yankee neighbors rallied against him and his property sold by the local banker who then hires a gunman to kill him.
17 September 1952
Writer Harry Street reflects on his life as he lies dying from an infection while on safari in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.
28 February 1947
When a kindly priest is murdered while waiting at a street corner in a quiet Connecticut town, the citizens are horrified and demand action from the police.
06 January 1951
A lady con artist sets out to steal her parole officer's fiance.
18 December 1959
TV writer Elliott Nash buries a blackmailer under the new gazebo in his suburban backyard. But the nervous man can't let the body rest there.
19 October 1951
Tells the story of one day in the lives of the various people who populate a police detective squad. An embittered cop, Det.
13 November 1966
An authoress writes a steaming sex-novel and proceeds to live out her heroine's adventures.
05 October 1955
Escaped convicts terrorize a suburban family they're holding hostage.
07 June 1955
Patients and staff at a posh psychiatric clinic clash over who chooses the clinic’s new drapes – but drapes are the least of their problems.
01 April 1950
When Pa wins a jingle-writing contest, he and Ma head for New York City. They they get in trouble with gangsters when they lose some stolen money which they had already agreed to deliver to one of the thugs.
05 March 1986
Teenage girl is stunned to discover that her mother is not deceased, but mentally ill living in an institution.
29 May 1968
Musician Max Frost lends his backing to a Senate candidate who wants to give 18-year-olds the right to vote, but he takes things a step further than expected.
13 November 1963
A young lawyer defends a drifter accused of a murder that he has already confessed to. He asks his mentor, a retired, legendary lawyer for help.
19 February 1954
A newly wed couple, Tacy and Nicky, travel in a trailer for their honeymoon. The journey is a humorous one that could end up destroying their marriage.
09 April 1953
A boy tries to stop aliens that have taken over his town and are brainwashing its inhabitants.
08 December 1970
A prison inmate comes up with a plan to break out in order to be near his wife--and also the $50,000 in stolen cash for which he was originally imprisoned.
29 March 1968
NYPD detectives Bonaro and Madigan lose their guns to fugitive Barney Benesch. As compensation, they are given a weekend to bring Benesch to justice.
27 March 1968
Reluctant New York City private eye P.J. Detweiler is hired as a bodyguard to protect Maureen Preble, the mistress of shady millionaire William Orbison.
03 August 1951
Towards the end of the American Civil War, a rebel captain flees to Colorado to join a band of Southern mercenaries.
04 January 1951
Richard Widmark leads an all star cast of marine leathernecks including Jack Palance, Robert Wagner, Karl Malden, Richard Boone and Jack Webb into battle on a heavily fortified island.
24 June 1958
A woman adored by the people around her ultimately struggles to be happy with herself.
25 September 1958
In late 1952, an aging and increasingly paranoid Stalin puts in motion a purge against his doctors, with antisemitic overtones.
07 May 1954
A writer visits an aircraft carrier during the Korean war to learn more about it and the way it's run.
22 July 1964
A private investigator endures the rigors of an insane asylum in order to locate $1 million in stolen loot.
26 September 1977
Based on a true case, this tells the story of two parents in New Jersey whose daughter has lapsed into a coma from which doctors say she will never recover.
01 May 1952
Spies hold the son of a nuclear physicist (Gene Barry) hostage in exchange for the Los Alamos bomb formula.
01 July 1950
A telephone repairman in Los Angeles uses his knowledge of electronics to help a bookie set up a betting operation.
30 October 1953
Sgt. Thorne Ryan, who once fought bravely in Korea, now serves as a hard-nosed drill instructor to new Army recruits at Fort Bliss, Texas.
16 October 1978
Little coastal town is being terrorized by deadly Barracudas.
10 September 1971
Biography of the famed motorcycle daredevil, much of which was filmed in his home town of Butte, Montana.
02 February 1950
At a mayors convention in San Francisco, ex-longshoreman Steve Fisk meets Clarissa Standish from New England.
23 June 1960
A disillusioned writer explores the subterranean depths of San Francisco's North Beach district.
01 February 1953
Steve Gordon, an American agent posing as a black market operator, is in Tangier on a mission to stop the plans of three atomic-scientists who are there to pool their secrets and sell them in a package to the Communists.
