Doug Hale

Doug Hale was an actor best known for his performances in Michael Mann’s film Ali and The Night They Robbed Big Bertha’s.

Hale performed in multiple films over the course of his career, including The Brass Ring, Another Man Another Chance, The Border, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Cable Guy.

He also appeared on a number of TV shows, with recurring roles in Hart to Hart and Hotel and guest roles on Kojak, The Bionic Woman, Simon & Simon, Highway to Heaven, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Max Headroom, The Misfits of Science, Night Court, Suddenly Susan, Babylon 5, Seinfeld, Arli$$, My Name Is Earl, The West Wing and Mad Men. 

Although Hale acted in movies and on television for most of his career, he got his start in theater while attending the Neighborhood Playhouse under Stanford Meisner. He also studied at the HB Studio with Herbert Berghoff and Uta Hagen and acted in theater productions at the University of Georgia. He then performed in New York, both on and off-Broadway, in plays including Ballad of the Sad Café, Telemachus City, A View From the Bridge, King Lear, As You Like It, Richard II, Joe Egg, The Price, Private Lives, Night Must Fall, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Arsenic and Old Lace.

Hale began dabbling in the arts as a child. He began playing the trumpet at age 5 and started his acting career at age 8 in a University of Georgia production. As a 12-year-old, Hale played the trumpet with the University of Georgia Dance Band, and as a college student, he spent two summers playing the trumpet in Las Vegas with the Glenn Miller Orchestra.

A University of California, Berkeley, English major, Hale received his post graduate degree in Medieval Literature and Linguistics from the University of Georgia. He taught English at the University of Georgia, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Columbus College. He left teaching to pursue acting. In 1965, he joined the United States Air Force Reserves and was a cargo pilot in the Vietnam War. In March 1978, he was discharged as a captain.

Hale died at his home in Woodland Hills, California, on April 25, 2014. He was 73.