Harold Goodwin (American actor)

Harold Goodwin (December 1, 1902 – July 12, 1987) was an American actor who performed in over 225 films.

Goodwin began his film career at age 12.^[1]

Goodwin's first starring role came in Oliver Twist, Jr. (1921).^[2] He also appeared as Jeff Brown in the 1927 Buster Keaton comedy College. It was an athletic role the 6-foot-2 Goodwin got after a perfunctory interview with Keaton. "He says, 'Do you play ball?' I said, 'Yeah. I used to play at school,' He says, 'You'll do.' " ^[3]

He followed up with a role in another Keaton film The Cameraman in 1928, opposite Keaton and actress Marceline Day. Goodwin worked steadily through the silent film era and transitioned into the talkie era as a character actor, often as a "tough guy" because of his athletic stature.^[4] He was seen in the role of Detering in the 1930 Lewis Milestone-directed World War I drama All Quiet on the Western Front. His subsequent film roles were mostly small and uncredited.

In his later years Goodwin mainly acted in the Western film genre and often worked as a stuntman for film studios. In the 1960s, he made many guest appearances on the NBC television series Daniel Boone, starring Fess Parker and Ed Ames. Goodwin made his last film appearance in the low-budget horror film The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (1973) before retiring from the film industry and eventually working in real estate. In fact, as a longtime friend and frequent collaborator of Buster Keaton’s, Goodwin was the agent who found and sold Keaton his final, cherished home in the same Woodland Hills area where they both resided.^[5]

• John Holmstrom, The Moving Picture Boy: An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995, Norwich, Michael Russell, 1996, p. 20.
• Curtis, James (2022). Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker's Life (1st ed.). New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 9780385354219.

• Harold Goodwin at IMDb