H.M. Wynant

The Face Fuller Found in Detroit

H.M. Wynant isn't a name crowds scream on the red carpet. But his face is stuck in the memory of anyone who devoured black-and-white television. He was born in Detroit in 1927 and honed his craft on stage before Hollywood put a knife in his hand for his first big role.

In 1957 Samuel Fuller cast him in Run of the Arrow. He played a Sioux warrior named Crazy Wolf. Fuller was looking for faces that didn't look manufactured in a casting office, and Wynant fit the bill with his sharp gaze. He landed the role after an audition of barely five minutes in which he hardly had to speak.

And the gamble paid off.

That shoot in Utah was a hell of heat and dust that defined his work ethic. Wynant soon realized that in 1950s Hollywood, it was better to be a reliable supporting actor than a fleeting star. That's why he never turned down a script as long as his character had at least one scene where he could shine.

A Gold Mine on the Small Screen

Television was his true refuge for decades. In 1960 he appeared in The Twilight Zone, in the episode titled The Howling Man. He played David Ellington, a traveler who makes the mistake of freeing a prisoner in a monastery. That episode is today considered a cult classic for its oppressive atmosphere.

But his work pace was frenetic. In a single year he could appear in three different series, playing a sheriff, a gangster, or a lawyer. He wasn't after fame but the craft. So he chained together appearances on Perry Mason, Wild Wild West, and Get Smart with barely a break between sets.

In 1968 it was his turn to beam aboard the Enterprise. In the episode The Empath of Star Trek, he brought Lal to life. It was a restrained performance that let him keep working in science fiction in the years that followed.

He became the face of the character actor par excellence.

Survival and Credits in the New Century

Many actors of his generation disappeared with the arrival of color or the shift in storytelling in the seventies. Wynant did not. In 1972, he joined the cast of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. There he played Hoskyns and proved he could adapt to new production aesthetics without losing his direct, straightforward style.

His secret was always sobriety. He never tried to steal the spotlight from the lead. In 1963 he shared the screen with Elvis Presley in It Happened at the World's Fair. While others chased the camera, he simply did his job and delivered his lines with the precision of a watchmaker.

In 2023, he appeared in the short film The Last Note. At ninety-six, he was still memorizing lines without blinking in front of directors who could have been his great-grandchildren. His name appears in more than 200 official credits according to U.S. actors' union records.

Wynant collects his image rights through checks that arrive by regular mail at his California home. His 1957 contract for Fuller's film still generates net profits from cable TV broadcasts.