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BILLY HALOP TRIBUTE-FOREVER SOAPY

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Biography

William "Billy" Halop (February 11, 1920 – November 9, 1976) was an American actor born in NYC. He came from a  theatrical family: his mother was a dancer, and his sister Florence was a child actress, who later worked on radio and in television. After several years as a radio juvenile, Billy was cast as "Tommy Gordon" in the Broadway production of Dead End in 1935, and traveled to Hollywood with the rest of the Dead End Kids when Samuel Goldwyn produced a film version of the play in 1937.

In an interview in his later years, he claimed that he was paid more than the other 'Dead End' actors, which had contributed to bad feelings in the group, and that he hated the name 'Dead End Kids'

After serving in WW II, Halop found that he had grown too old to be effective in the roles that had brought him fame. At one point, he was reduced to starring in a cheap East Side Kids imitation at PRC studios,Gas House Kids(1946). Diminishing film work, marital difficulties, and a drinking problem eventually ate away at Halop's show business career.

In 1960, he married a multiple sclerosis victim, and the nursing skills he learned while taking care of his wife led him to steady work as a registered nurse at St. John's Hospital in Malibu. For the rest of his life, Billy Halop supplemented his nursing income with small TV and movie roles, gaining a measure of latter-day prominence as Archie Bunker's cab-driving pal Bert Munson on the '70s TV series All in the Family.

Halop died on November 9, 1976, aged 56, from a heart attack and is interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetary in Los Angeles, CA.