In Memory of Actor Simon Oakland ('Toma'/'The Night Stalker'): Four Decades After His Tragic Death

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It's been over forty years since the tragic death of actor Simon Oakland. Best known for his roles on classic 1970s TV shows like Toma, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and Baa Baa Black Sheep, Oakland was the last of his charismatic breed. He was only 61 years old when he died of cancer in 1983. This is his story.

A Closer Look

Simon Oakland was born on August 28, 1922, in New York, and studied violin as a youth. He appeared in his first play, Skipper Next to God, shortly after World War II, and received his big break by replacing Paul Muni on Broadway as the lead in Inherit the Wind.

Other Broadway hits followed including Light Up the Sky, and The Shrike, which further led to a starring role with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in The Great Sebastians. That in turn ultimately paved Oakland's way to Hollywood in the 1950s, when he made over 550 TV appearances.

In 1958, Oakland then made his big-screen debut opposite Susan Hayward in I Want to Live!, and went on to play several rough-type, authoritative figures in movies like West Side Story (1961) and Psycho (1960), directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Hitchcock famously abhorred the psychiatrist sequence featuring Oakland's character, thinking it was cumbersome and destructive to the pace of the film.

The scene has also proved displeasing to film critics through the years, not only as the movie's worst scene but one of Hitchcock's least-successful sequences in any of his films.

However, the studio and the movie's investors believed the sequence allowed the audience to better understand the film in general.

Conclusion

Simon Oakland was the rare breed of actor that Hollywood just doesn't churn out that frequently at all anymore.