Biography
More familiar for his radio work than his film appearances, American actor Ben Wright was active professionally from the early '40s. Dialects were a specialty with Wright, as witness his two-year hitch as Chinese bellhop Hey Boy on the radio version of Have Gun Will Travel. Most of Wright's film roles were supporting or bit appearances in such productions as
A Man Called Peter (1955),
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959),
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961),
My Fair Lady (1964), and
The Fortune Cookie (1964). On TV, Wright was one of
Jack Webb's stock company (including fellow radio veterans
Virginia Gregg,
Stacy Harris, and
Vic Perrin) on the '60s version of
Dragnet. Ben Wright's most frequently seen film appearance was as the humorless Nazi functionary Herr Zeller in the 1965 megahit
The Sound of Music. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide