Eric Linden - Actor in the 1930s

Recruited for films right out of Columbia University, American
actor Eric Linden cornered the early-'30s market in portraying
sensitive, intellectual, slightly weak-willed juveniles. He made
an auspicious movie debut with RKO's Are These Our Children?
(1931), in which he played a callow teenager whose minor
flirtation with thievery leads to his execution for killing an
elderly shop owner. The scenes in which Linden struggles
to come to grips with the enormity of his crime and the
inevitability of his punishment still pack a wallop when
seen today. He continued playing first and second leads,
mostly in programmers, throughout the '30s, sometimes
costarring with Cecilia Parker in an off-and-on series of
rural romances. Linden's career suffered a major setback
when he accepted the cameo role of an amputation victim
in Gone With the Wind (1939). Due to the horrific elements
of his bloody leg operation, Linden's screen time was whittled
down to little more than 30 seconds. The industry perception
was that Eric Linden's status had slipped to the extent that he
was willingto accept a bit part; as a consequence, he appeared
in only a handful of B-pictures before leaving Hollywood for the
business world in 1941. ~ Hal Erickson.

IMDB page

All Movie Guide Also Credited As:
Eric William Linden

Born:
on 09/15/1909 in New York, New York

Died:
14-JUL-94.