Allyn Joslyn is good at making a respectable man seem both superior and ill at ease. We like his sharp comic timing, though the snobs and romantic rivals can leave too little room for anything else.
Fi1m perspective
In Heaven Can Wait (1943), Allyn Joslyn's Albert Van Cleve has never done anything wrong, a considerable disadvantage in a comedy by Ernst Lubitsch. He is engaged to Gene Tierney's Martha, while his cousin Henry is the man the film wants us to forgive. Joslyn gives us the snobbish, respectable alternative. We felt a little sorry for Albert, because the comedy makes his good conduct seem so much less appealing than Henry's charm.
Joslyn's nervous manner and aristocratic looks suited men who expect to be taken seriously and find that nobody is obliged to comply. His early film work included a reporter in They Won't Forget (1937), followed by the caustic director Morgan Carrell in No Time for Comedy (1940). The sharp comic timing mattered more than the job title. The limitation of such casting is that it can settle our opinion of a character before the actor has much chance to complicate it.
Only Angels Have Wings (1939) makes useful room for a different sort of unease. As Les Peters, an anxious insurance salesman and flier, Joslyn brings an openly worried man into Howard Hawks's aviation drama. Cary Grant and Jean Arthur carry the guarded romance, and we admire the film despite its indulgence towards the pilots' stubborn pride. Peters gives us a reason not to regard that pride as the only possible attitude; concern about flying hardly seems unreasonable.
Lubitsch gives Joslyn's particular comic usefulness the clearer setting. Samson Raphaelson's screenplay for Heaven Can Wait moves through Henry's life a birthday at a time, making each stop a small comedy. An actor who can establish Albert's self-satisfaction quickly suits that structure. Albert works, but the writing does not ask us to know him as closely as Henry, and that limits how much Joslyn can give us.
The sympathetic Sheriff Clem Otis in Frank Borzage's Moonrise (1948) offers a useful departure from those snobs and rivals. It is a part worth noting in a career so often spent making another man's virtues easier to see. Start with Heaven Can Wait for the comedy, then try Moonrise if Albert leaves you wondering what else he could do.
Biography
Allyn Joslyn (also credited as Allen Joslyn) was an American character actor who worked in theatre, radio, film and television. Born in Milford, Pennsylvania, he began performing on stage as a teenager and appeared in Broadway productions including the 1935 hit Boy Meets Girl and the original 1941 cast of Arsenic and Old Lace.
He made his screen debut in They Won't Forget (1937) and went on to appear in films such as Only Angels Have Wings (1939), The Great McGinty (1940), I Wake Up Screaming (1941), My Sister Eileen (1942) and Heaven Can Wait (1943), in which he played Albert Van Cleve. Joslyn was also a prolific radio performer, appearing in thousands of broadcasts, and later worked extensively in television, including guest roles in series such as The Addams Family (1964) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955). He died in 1981.
