Hooper Atchley on AllMovie

Mustachioed Hooper Atchley was one of Hollywood's better "brains villains," one of those suspicious yet nattily dressed saloon owners, assayers, or cattle barons calling the shots in B-Westerns of the '30s and '40s. He came to films in 1928 after a long stage career that included Broadway appearances opposite Marie Dressler in The Great Gambol (1913). Onscreen Atchley came into his own in talkies where his distinguished stage-trained voice lent credence to numerous bad deeds opposite the likes of Ken Maynard and Tim McCoy. The actor's screen career waned in the latter part of the '30s; a fact that may have contributed to his 1943 suicide by a gunshot.