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Balding, long-necked character actor Frank Rice made his earliest screen appearance in 1922. In talkies, Rice often appeared in comic bit roles, many of which -- notably the butler in Laurel and Hardy's Pack up Your Troubles (1932) -- afforded him the opportunity of performing his rolling-eyeballs specialty. From 1931 onward, he successfully pursued a career as a Western comedy sidekick, appearing opposite such sagebrush stars as John Wayne and Buck Jones. Frank Rice died prematurely at age 44 of complications ensuing from nephritis and hepatitis.