Steve Calvert (bornWilliam Seeger; June 28, 1916,Peoria, Illinois – died March 5, 1991,Los Angeles County, California) was a prolificgorilla suit performer in many Hollywood films and television shows from the late 1940s through the 1950s. He took the stage name Calvert from Calvert Whisky.^[1]

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Calvert knew many film stars from his career as headbartender atCiro's, aSunset Boulevard nightclub, and worked occasionally as astand in andstunt performer. When he got to knowRobert Lowery as the actor's stand-in in 1948, Lowery was able to get Calvert into theScreen Actor's Guild. That same year,Ray Corrigan whom Calvert knew and admired, sold Calvert his gorilla suits, which he had used in a multitude of Hollywood films, for a down payment of $1800, also providing some acting pointers.^[2] He began to follow in Corrigan's paw prints in lesser Hollywood fare making his debut in the firstJungle Jim film in 1948, earning the amount of the down payment.

Calvert appeared inBride of the Gorilla,The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters, the serialPanther Girl of the Kongo,Ed Wood'sThe Bride and the Beast, inRoad to Bali withBob Hope andBing Crosby and appeared in the second part of the title role ofBela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. Subsequently, Calvert appeared again with Lugosi at the 1953 Hollywood premiere ofHouse of Wax, at which Lugosi arrived in his Dracula costume, leading the furry-suited Calvert on a leash.

Among his television work is at least one appearance withBuster Keaton which Calvert called "the best thing I ever did. He was a pure pantomime artist.") and an episode ofAdventures of Superman, "Jungle Devil." In the tradition of other gorilla men playing space monsters, Calvert played a robot that was meant to be an entire army of robots inTarget Earth as well as the robot inThe Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters in scenes which did not involve the ape. Circus clown Billy Small frequently came aboard when Calvert needed a second "ape," such as inBride and the Beast.^[3]

Dismayed by a lack of steady work and suffering a heart attack, Calvert retired from film work in 1960. That year,Target Earth producerHerman Cohen approached Calvert about playing the title role inKonga,^[4] but as Calvert had sold his costumes toWestern Costume, Cohen was forced to rent an alternate ape suit from stuntman/actorGeorge Barrows, though Barrows himself did not appear in the suit in the film.^{[citation needed]}

Calvert had two daughters and a son. A widower, Calvert was a carpenter in his later years, and an active member ofAlcoholics Anonymous. He died in Los Angeles, aged 74, in 1991.^{[citation needed]}

• Steve Calvert atIMDb

• 1916 births
• 1991 deaths
• 20th-century American male actors
• American male film actors
• American make-up artists
• American male television actors
• Male actors from Peoria, Illinois

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