PAUL BURKE was a leading actor from the 1950s and the star of the 1957 horror film The Disembodied. He starred as Tom Maxwell, an author and adventurer who runs afoul of voodoo queen Allison Hayes when he becomes part of a romantic triangle with the queen and her older husband while on an expedition in the deep jungles of Africa.
Burke was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on July 21, 1926, and was the son of boxer Martin Burke. He went to Hollywood in the mid-1940s and studied acting as the Pasadena Playhouse. He began his film career in the early 1950s with small roles in several films including the talking-mule fantasies Francis Goes to West Point (1952) and Francis in the Navy (1955). He moved up to larger roles later in the decade with the voodoo horror film The Disembodied (1957).
He also became a familiar face on television from the 1950s, with roles in numerous series such as Adventures of Superman, Panic!, The Man and the Challenge, and Men into Space. He starred as Detective Adam Flint in the crime series Naked City from 1960 to 1963, earning two Emmy nominations, and was featured as Col. Joseph Anson Gallagher in the military drama 12 O’Clock High from 1964 to 1967.
He later appeared in character roles in films and tele-films, with such Sci-Fi/Horror/Fantasy credits as Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting (1969), Crowhaven Farm (1970), An Echo of Theresa (1973), and Psychic Killer (1975).
He remained a familiar face on television until his retirement in the late 1980s. Burke died of complications from leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in Palms Springs, California, on September 13, 2009, at the age of 83.
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