Victor Arthur Kilian

 Victor Arthur Kilian (March 6, 1891 – March 11, 1979)

In the mid-1920s, he began to perform in Broadway plays and by the end of the decade had made his debut in motion pictures. For the next two decades, he made a good living as a character actor in secondary or minor roles in films such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938). He was frequently cast as a villain. While staging a fight scene with John Wayne for a 1942 film, Kilian suffered a serious injury that resulted in the loss of one eye. During McCarthyism of the 1950s, Kilian was blacklisted for his political beliefs, but because the Actors' Equity Association refused to go along with the ban, Kilian was able to earn a living by returning to perform on stage. After Hollywood's blacklisting ended, he began doing guest roles on television series during the 1970s. He is best known for his role as Grandpa Larkin (aka The Fernwood Flasher) in the television soap opera spoof Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976). Kilian's wife, Daisy Johnson, to whom he had been married for 46 years, died in 1961. In 1979, Kilian appeared in an episode of All in the Family, "The Return of Stephanie's Father", portraying a desk clerk in a seedy hotel. On March 11, 1979, Kilian was beaten to death by burglars in his Hollywood apartment. In a odd twist, Victor’s appearance on All in the Family also featured an actor named Charles Wagenheim. Charles was also murdered, blunt force trauma to the head, just a few days before Victor. Kilian was 88 years old. His body was cremated, and the remains scattered at Westwood Memorial Park.