The first actor to win a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical, for his performance as Og the leprechaun in Finian's Rainbow, who also won a Tony for his performance in The Teahouse of the August Moon.
Prior to becoming an actor, he worked as a statistician. He was one of the lucky 50 applicants out of several hundred to be granted membership in New York's new Actors Studio in 1948.
He appeared in four films with
He was born Wayne James McMeekan in Traverse City, Michigan. He married Jane Gordon in 1941, and they had two daughters and one son together.
He was in the 1955 film The Tender Trap, starring Frank Sinatra.
