Neil Hamilton (actor)

James Neil Hamilton (September 9, 1899 – September 24, 1984) was a longtime American actor probably best known for his role as Commissioner Gordon on the Batman TV series of the 1960s.

Acting career

An only child, Hamilton was born in Lynn, Massachusetts. His show business career began when he secured a job as a shirt model in magazine ads, similar to fellow silent film performer Reed Howes, who was known in advertisements as "The Arrow Collar Man".

After this, he became interested in acting and joined several stock companies. This allowed him to secure his first film role in 1918 in Vitagraph's The Beloved Impostor, but he got his big break from D. W. Griffith in The White Rose (1923). In 1924, he traveled to Germany with Griffith and made a film about the incredibly harsh living conditions in post-World War I Germany, Isn't Life Wonderful.

While filming America in 1924, a soldier's arm was blown off. As fellow actor Charles Emmett Mack recalls, "Neil Hamilton and I went to neighboring towns and raised a fund for him—I doing a song and dance and Neil collecting a coin."