Much underrated actor Art Smith is brilliant as the out spoken all-knowing prison doctor aware of all the secrets of the “men on the inside” led by Burt Lancaster and eyewitness to the prison administration failures in Dassin’s Brute Force (1947) on TCM 11/02/16. …Catch him in the heartbreaking Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) as the all-knowing but mute butler sensitive to Joan Fontaine’s lifelong obsession with his master Louis Jourdan …and in Nick Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950) where Art Smith plays the loyal friend and agent trying to keep his loose temper client (the great Bogart) out of trouble and in with Gloria Grahame.
Lawrence of Cinema 