LOS ANGELES: American actor William Schallert, who parlayed an everyman face into hundreds of television and film roles, most notably as the father in the 1960s TV situation comedy The Patty Duke Show, died on May 8, his son Edwin said. He was 93. Schallert was alert to the end and in no pain, his son told Reuters, without specifying a cause of death. He appeared in shows spanning the history of television, did hundreds of voice-overs and served as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1979 to 1981. Schallert is best remembered for his role as Martin Lane, the father in The Patty Duke Show, which aired from 1963 to 1966. Schallert appeared in all 104 episodes of The Patty Duke Show, as well as the TV movie reunion in 1999 with other original cast members including Duke and Jean Byron, who played his wife on the programme. “I was a nice father and a nice dad,” Schallert said of his character’s appeal in an interview with the Archive of American Television. Born on July 6, 1922 in Los Angeles, Schallert was himself the son of a journalist, longtime Los Angeles Times drama critic Edwin Schallert. After doing some acting in college, he joined the Circle Theater in Los Angeles. In 1947, he got his first film role in The Foxes of Harrow, before moving on to other movies including Mighty Joe Young (1949), The Red Badge of Courage (1951) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952.) But it was in the new medium of television that the actor was to find his niche.