Jack Betts, who played Oscorp board chair Henry Balkan in Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man,” died Thursday in his home in Los Osos, California. He was 96.
Betts also played Dr. Ivan Kipling on “One Life to Live” from 1979-85 and moved on to parts on several soap operas, including “General Hospital,” “The Edge of Night,” “The Doctors,” “Another World,” “All My Children,” “Search for Tomorrow,” “Guiding Light,” “Loving” and “Generations.”
He also had parts in several spaghetti Westerns, though never quite reached the level of success he hoped for. As Betts said in a 2021 interview with The Dev Show, Clint Eastwood was often in the hotel next door while he filmed.
“He’d go up to his mountain and do his Western and I’d go up to my mountain and do my Western,” Betts explained. “But while his films had distribution all over the world, my films were distributed [everywhere] except Canada and America.”
Betts was inspired to become an actor after he saw Laurence Olivier in 1939’s “Wuthering Heights.” He graduated from Miami Senior High School before moving on to the University of Miami. Betts moved to New York and landed a role in the 1953 Broadway production of “Richard III.”
But that didn’t mean his career was a straight shot. Betts was working in a lamp factory when he helped a friend with her own audition for The Actor’s Studio and he received a scholarship offer from Lee Strasberg. Betts made his cinematic debut in 1959’s “The Bloody Brood.”
Betts was born April 11, 1929, in Jersey City, New Jersey. He is survived by his nephew Dean Sullivan, his nieces, Lynne and Gail, and his sister, Joan.
News of Betts’ death was first reported by the Hollywood Reporter.
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