Michael McManus
Poltergeist is the credit people recognise. Michael McManus plays Ben Tuthill in it, and everything else on his page is the working life that a part like that sits on top of: an American character actor whose face is more familiar than his name, moving through a decade of studio comedy in small, precisely defined roles. He worked as a writer and producer too, and won a Writers Guild of America award in 1982 for a Steve Martin television special.
The acting credits are a good record of how that career actually functions. He is Todd in Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol, Branch Kipp in Head Office, Yes Man #5 in The World's Greatest Lover, Farmer #1 in Moving Violations, and a courtroom sketch in The Kentucky Fried Movie. The billing "Yes Man #5" tells you more about a jobbing actor's week than any biography could.
Television took the rest. Alongside When Things Were Rotten in 1975 and Delta in 1992, the guest-star list runs through M*A*S*H, Laverne & Shirley, Rhoda, The Six Million Dollar Man, Dallas, Happy Days, Night Court, Knight Rider and The Golden Girls, which is close to a complete tour of American network television across two decades.
Movies (8)
TV (2)
Where to start with Michael McManus
Watch Poltergeist first, not because he is central to it, but because it is the one film here that everyone has already agreed is good, and it is worth knowing what a small role looks like inside something that big.
After that, the comedies. The Kentucky Fried Movie is the funniest and the most anarchic, Mother, Jugs & Speed the most interesting failure, and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol strictly for people already committed to that series. Head Office and Moving Violations are mid-1980s studio comedy at its most disposable, worth it only if you collect the era.
The television is harder to track down: When Things Were Rotten is a 1975 Robin Hood spoof and Delta a 1992 sitcom, both of them period pieces in their own right now.