— Lewis Offield was one of Hollywood’s most prolific actors during the golden age of movies in the 1930s and 1940s. He was born in Sedalia, Mo., but after his father’s death, his mother moved the family to Muskogee when Lewis was a small child. Lewis spent his childhood here in the 1910s, attending school and playing along the older neighborhood streets.

When Lewis was 17, his mother Mary took a job teaching psychology at Columbia University in New York. Lewis got a job as a runner on Wall Street. But it wasn’t the financial markets of New York that captured Lewis’ attention; it was the lights of Broadway. He started acting in charity productions, but made his professional debut in 1923 in a George M. Cohan musical titled “Little Nelly Kelly.”

It was about this time that Lewis decided to take a stage name. He chose Jack (the name of the character in his first role) Oakie (for the fact that he was from Oklahoma). From this beginning Jack Oakie from Muskogee soon became a household name. He worked in Broadway musicals for a time and then went on the road in a vaudeville act where he honed his comedic skills.

By 1927, he decided to give Hollywood a try. Movies with sound, known as “talkies,” were coming into being, and Jack, with his booming voice, was perfect for this medium. Jack never took star billing, but he was a popular actor and never lacked for work. He appeared in movies with such notables as Cary Grant, Betty Grable, Lucille Ball, Shirley Temple and Bing Crosby.

Because of his stocky build, Jack was a natural for football movies and starred in several with a collegiate theme. In fact, he gained the nickname as the “World’s Oldest Freshman” because he was still acting as a college football player when he was 38 years old. Jack would later write, “I played football for State for over ten years, advancing from coach in the first one to a freshman in the last.” In that final collegiate film, “Rise and Shine,” the 38-year-old actor portrayed an 18-year-old.

Oakie won his greatest critical acclaim for his role in “The Great Dictator,” with Charlie Chaplin. He was nominated for an Oscar for playing Napolini Il Duce of Bacteria, a thinly-disguised parody of Mussolini against Chaplin’s portrayal of Hitler. Though the film was a brilliant comedy, by the time it was released in 1940, it was met with mixed reviews. By that time, Mussolini and Hitler were no longer laughable.

During the 1940s, Oakie made a series of musical comedies that helped America escape the worries of war and trouble in Europe. Jack later worked in television westerns, a popular forum in the 1950s, and continued acting off and on even after he retired to a farm in the San Fernando Valley. He died suddenly in 1978, but was eulogized as one of the greatest “second-banana” actors that Hollywood (and Oklahoma) had ever produced.

Reach Jonita Mullins at jonita.mullins@gmail.com.