AllMovie

The pint-sized American actor Jimmy Conlin preceded his film career as a vaudeville headliner on the Keith and Orpheum circuits, where he appeared with his wife Muriel Glass in a song-and-dance turn called "Conlin and Glass." After starring in the 1928 Vitaphone short Sharps and Flats, Conlin began regularly appearing in movie bit roles in 1933. Writer/director Preston Sturges liked Conlin's work and saw to it that the actor received sizeable roles--with good billing--in such Sturges projects as Sullivan's Travels (1941), Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) and Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944). Conlin's all-time best role was as Wormy, the birdlike barfly who persuades Harold Lloyd to have his first-ever drink in Sturges' The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1946). When Sturges' fortunes fell in the 1950s, Conlin and his wife remained loyal friends, communicating on a regular basis with the former top director and helping out in any way they could. In 1954, Conlin had a regular role as Eddie in the syndicated TV series Duffy's Tavern. Jimmy Conlin remained a Hollywood fixture until 1959, when he appeared in his last role as an elderly habitual criminal in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder.