Horacio Paul Picerni

 Horacio Paul Picerni (December 1, 1922 – January 12, 2011)

Picerni was an actor in film and television, perhaps best known today in the role of Federal Agent Lee Hobson, second-in-command to Robert Stack's Eliot Ness in the ABC hit television series, The Untouchables. Picerni joined the United States Army Air Forces during World War II and served as a B-24 Liberator bombardier in the China-Burma-India Theater. He flew twenty-five combat missions with the 493rd Bomb Squadron of the 7th Bomb Group and received the Distinguished Flying Cross. He was part of a mission that attacked and destroyed the actual bridge made famous in the film The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). As a young actor returning from the war, Picerni appeared in military pictures: in Twelve O'Clock High (1949) as a bombardier and as Private Edward P. Rojeck in Breakthrough. This led to a Warner Brothers contract and a succession of roles at that studio including a Portuguese Socialist "Red" agitator in 1952's The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima, the hero of the 1953 horror classic, House of Wax. After his departure from Warners, he appeared with Audie Murphy in Universal Studio's To Hell and Back. When Italian organizations began to complain about the use of Italian gangsters on ABC's, The Untouchables, starring Robert Stack as G-man Eliot Ness, Picerni in 1960 joined the cast of the show as Ness's number-one aide, Lee Hobson, a role that he played for the duration of the series. Picerni also made three guest appearances on Perry Mason during its nine-year run on CBS. Picerni appeared in many other television series in guest roles, including Fury, The Rebel, Bourbon Street Beat, Here's Lucy, Gunsmoke, Hogans Heroes, Mannix, and The Red Hand Gang. In 1964, he portrayed Pierre Lafitte in, The Great Adventure. Picerni died from a heart attack on January 12, 2011 in Palmdale, California. He is buried at San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills, California.