James Mishler

He was born James Eugene Mishler in St. Paul, Minnesota and moved to Chicago at a very early age. He fought in W.W. 2 as a paratrooper with the O.S.S.., attached to the 82nd and 101st airborne. After the war, he returned to Chicago and enrolled in the Goodman Theater, at the University of Chicago. It was there that he met his future wife, Jacqueline Jones. After moving to Florida and California they settled in Long Island, New York where they studied under Uta Hagen. In New York he did Broadway and Off-Broadway shows including The Cain Mutiny Court Martial and the Three Penny Opera. While working on stage and TV he started doing commercials and at one point was in more commercials than any other actor. In 1965 he moved his family to Rome, Italy and did extensive movie work and dubbing. The family moved back to the States in the early 1970s and he was working on and off until he was asked to be Hemingway in a Vanity Fair photo shoot. That photo shoot got him to write a one-man play about Hemingway in Cuba. In it, Hemingway is in a cantina talking about his past while waiting for a reporter to arrive for an interview. The play got great reviews and was filmed, but never aired. He died at the age of 80 having lived a full life.