Harvard graduate Kent Smith formed a theater company in Massachusetts before making his Broadway debut in 1932's Men Must Fight. Three years later, Smith entered films with a second role in The Garden Murder Case. Smith's colorlessness as a leading man was used to excellent advantage in producer Val Lewton's Cat People movies of the 1940s, wherein Smith played the handsome but clueless husband of feline-possessed Simone Simon (in Cat People) and the unimaginative father of overimaginative moppet Anne Carter (in Curse of the Cat People). Married twice, Smith's second wife was prominent Broadway actress Edith Atwater. In films until the 1960s, Kent Smith was also briefly a regular on TV's Peyton Place; his credits should not be confused with those of film editor Kent Smith.
by Hal Erickson
biography
