Jack Norton was born in Brooklyn in 1889 with the given name of Mortimer J. Naughton.

He became one of the silver screen’s two most delightful bit-part drunks (the other being Arthur Houseman). Norton had a stage background but it was rare for him to have a coherent speaking part in his movies.

Norton had dark crinkly hair and a pencil mustache that tilted upwards at the ends. He played a lovable boozer in many films, including The Bank Dick (’40), You Belong To Me (’41), Hold That Blond (’45) and The Palm Beach Story (’42). In The Fleet’s In (’41) he had a chance to play sober.

Norton’s more than 100 films began with Cockeyed Cavaliers (’34) and ended with Two Knights in Brooklyn (’49). To perfect his roles he would follow drunks for blocks studying their mannerisms. Norton himself was a teetotaler and his stage highballs were usually ginger ale spiked with bicarbonate of soda. He retired at 60 and died of a respiratory ailment on October 15, 1958 in Saranac Lake, NY.

— Vernon Parker

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