The Eloquent Goons, as cath0de refers to them, were the character parts repeatedly filled by these guys:

… whose almost interchangeable faces led to these three actors continually – and possibly competitively – cast as Lead Henchman of the Moonshiners / Gun Runners / Racketeers / Corrupt Townies / Union Bosses / Military Bad Apples / Dirty Cops / etc.

They tended to get equal screen time as the nominal stars of the shows they guested on, and always looked like they had the best time, making chicken salad out of the chicken shit cookie-cut scripts, their revolving-door turns on innumerable shows memorable enough to be the go-to guys in the Head Thug roster.

These guys weren’t usually the Brains of the Organization, but they were always the Field Lieutenants, or the Hitmen, or the Lawless Cattle Rustlers, or, well… you get the idea.

What made them special was their ability to Get Rough, Get Dirty, engage in gun battles, barroom brawls… and also to expound – expositing the sinister agenda both in curt instructions to their underlings, and then more expansively to the show’s protagonists during their first confrontation, second confrontation, obligatory capture scene, and inevitable Page 47 turnaround.

This differentiated them from both the Protected Suit Baddy or Square-Jawed Square (Lloyd Bochner, Richard Kiley, Robert Weber, etc.), and the ground-level muscle (Anthony James, John Quade, Sid Haig, etc.) They were the Interface Protocol Layer of criminal outfits, the District Managers. They got to wear a suit and tie, and worry about the financials, but still had to do grunt work with the mooks.

In fact this versatility often led them to be cast either with or against-type as recurring characters on several long-running shows, or in their own minor starring vehicles; the most well-known being Winter’s roles as Colonel Flagg in M*A*S*H and as the Blue Book Investigator in Project: U.F.O.

These guys also turn up on the side of Right from time to time, in thankless parts where they wear shoulder holsters and harangue our cop stars to “stop wasting the Department’s (or the Taxpayer’s) resources on long-shot hunches!” or as buffoon Military foils: “I’m not gonna let [the hero] slip from my fingers THIS time – this time I’ll GET him, and when I do, I’ll get another bar/star/oak leaf on my uniform!”

Dependable. Menacing, Competent, but not TOO competent.

To the Kobuns of Krime, we salute you.