David Wayne was born Wayne James McMeekan (McKeekan) on January 30. 1914 in Traverse City***, Michigan. Life started on a sad note when his mother Helen Matilda Mason died (Jan 13. 1919) when he was nearly five years old. He was cared for by Al and Lena Hodgman. "They were friends of my father's, but I called them 'Uncle Al' and 'Aunt Lena." "I had a very happy home life," he later recalled. His father John David McMeekan supported the family as an insurance agent.

"I went into my first play at 6. It was in Bloomingdale, Michigan, a little town, about 500 population. We had home talent plays at the opera house and my uncle directed them. From six years on there has never been a time in my life when I have not been working in the theater."

He graduated in the local High School in 1931 was active in sports, learned tumbling and juggling, how to work marionettes, could give the illusion of sword-swallowing (!), and acted in the school dramatic group.

Looking backward, Wayne saw himself as "an extremely gay child'' with "moods of withdrawal" where he would retreat into reading.

He attended Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo for two years (1931-33) were he majored in business administration. "In school I was on stage with the dramatic group as often as I was in the lecture hall; and, after an eight-hour day with paint, I put on plays with a little theater group. That meant six hours work each night; two hours rehearsing the play for the coming week, a couple of hours giving the play for the current week, then back for a couple more hours rehearsal on the future play, after the performance was finished."

"My tastes were extended in college by a very remarkable man, Herbert Slusser, my English professor." He steered him into new horizons. Slusser recommended J.B. Priestley's book about actors, The Good Companions. Wayne always thought that novel helped him to supply an impetus toward the theatre.

Low finances forced Wayne to leave Western Michigan after two years, but he didn't regard his departure as a tragedy. "Large cities and populations excited me," he reported. "I was constantly bumming rides to them. So I was an abominable student, because I was much more interested in people than in study." His campus activities left Wayne with little reverence for the groves of academia: "Actually, an actor, if he has the taste and the capacity, will gain a liberal education anyway. And what he can learn in college of a technical sort will be of very little use to him in the theater."

His first paying occupation, at $65 a month, was as a statistician in a big Cleveland paint factory. As an antidote he appeared with non or semi-professional stock company, playing nightly after his daily juggling with figures. In a year and a half he appeared in over sixty roles. The Eldred Players of Cleveland, Ohio offered him a full-time acting assignment with sufficient salary to remove the smell of paint permanently.

So David Wayne first raised his voice during an extended apprenticeship at the Cleveland Playhouse in a wide variety of roles. He won the role of Touchstone in As You Like It (1935, Cleveland). 

After two years, after driving to Chicago for an audition, Wayne gave up his double life. He quit business entirely in 1936 when the Shakespearean repertory company set up shop at the Cleveland Great Lakes exposition, giving 600 performances of the Bard's work in 100 days. The company, "Players of the Old Globe," presented 14 Shakespeare plays in a streamlined format of 45-60 minutes each in a replica of Shakespeare's Old Globe Theatre. Wayne was seen in Julius Caesar, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, A Midsummer's Night Dream and King Henry VIII.

After this, he trouped with a marionette show "Tatterman Marionettes" particularly with Jason and the Golden Fleece and their elaborate (with 44 marionettes and 11 scenes, probably the most ambitious puppet production ever) Peer Gynt (1937) until he reached New York and his first Broadway play.

Arriving at Times Square in 1937 with the traditional loan in his pocket, he managed to get his first part without undergoing the customary series of professional and personal crises that later make good reading in the back pages of theater programs. He played it safe. He got an advertising man to sponsor him.

In 1938, he made his first New York stage appearance in Escape This Night (44th Street Theatre, Apr 22. - Apr 30. 1938). "Everything escaped, even the audience and I was out on the street in a week. I did commercial recordings and some radio; it kept body and soul together, but I was hungry oftener than not until I got the part of Fredric March's son in 'The American Way'. That job made me a Broadway actor."

In 1938, while rehearsing The Animal Kingdom for a summer stock company in Whitefield, New Hampshire, called Chase Barn Players, he was out front, watching a scene in which he did not appear. "Jane Gordon," he recalled, "an actress who was to be on the bill the following week, came down the aisle. The dress rehearsal stopped while everyone said, 'Here's old Jane.' I found myself immediately enchanted by her—and have been ever since. I found myself trying to give a hell of a performance just to impress her." He succeeded.

When after Dance Night (Belasco Theatre, Oct 14. - Oct 31. 1938) Moss Hart hired him to play the son in The American Way (Center Theatre, Jan 21. - Sep 23. 1939) Wayne celebrated by adopting a pseudonym: a combination of his father's given name, David, with his own.

Around 1940 Maurice Rosenblatt founded the "New York City Coordinating Committee for Democratic Action". The group had a twofold agenda: to mobilize Americans against Nazi racism and to promote fair treatment for blacks in Harlem. The committee through a network of agents, gathered information and published it in its magazine, The City Reporter. Rosenblatt's agents included Stuart McClure, a would-be writer, and Jane Gordon. Jane recruited her boyfriend David McKeekan. According to the census April 1940 Jane and David lived on the same address. The Committee was discontinued in 1945. David would later remember Maurice "who almost got me killed trying to save the Jews!"

He tried to enlist in the Army. He was rejected because he had been blind in one eye since birth. Rejected by the army he volunteered as an ambulance driver for the British (8th Army) in North Africa. Two weeks before being shipped out to Europe on December 20, 1941 he married Jane Gordon Trix, daughter of Jean Gordon of the Metropolitan and actress, in "The Little Church Around the Corner" (Andy Levine, from Kalamazoo was his best man). They had been playing in summer stock and knew each other quite a while. The couple would have a son and twin daughters.

In the line of duty, the ambulance of Lee Kyle and Wayne McMeekan was blown up in a minefield, but both escaped miraculously. He was erroneously reported as being killed in action when the Germans were victorious at the Battle of Tobruk in North Africa. Returning here, he appeared in a revival of The Merry Widow (Majestic Theatre, Aug 4. 1943 - May 6. 1944). After the U.S joined the war he served in the US Army, he was assigned to officer's training school at Camp Lee, Virginia, where he was commissioned a lieutenant. David Wayne's first* appearance on the screen was as the pilot of a ditching B-17 in Ditch and Live (United States Army Air Forces, 1944) a lesson in sea evacuation for pilots disguised as a drama.

He caught the eye and won the approval of Broadway's critical magistrates with a remarkable performance as Conscience in Peep Show (Fulton Theatre, 3 feb  - 26 feb 1944) and as Mr. Meacham in Park Avenue (Sam S. Shubert Theatre, 4 nov 1946 - 4 jan 1947).

In a 1950 interview David said his hobbies were golf, tennis, swimming, painting his children, his wife, and his career.

Of motion pictures he says: "I am not at all convinced the actor has enough responsibility of creation in films. It is too much a technician's field. That is why I think the movie actor should return to the theater from time to time to enrich himself."

As Dr. Dutton he was trying to find a cure for the Andromeda Strain in 1971 (below left).

For David Wayne's one man show An Unpleasant evening with H.L. Mencken (Ford Theatre, Washington D.C. Mar 8. - Mar 26. 1972) the National Parks Service, which, owned Ford's, suggested that certain derogatory references to the South be deleted. Paul Shyre, the author‐director complied with some suggestions but insisted that other lines remain. David Wayne, still referred to Mississippi as the “bunghole of America,”. The retention one might say, was a victory for free Speech. The fact was that the Show was not a victory in any other sense. 

He was the duke in a 1974 remake of Huckleberry Finn (below right). On the big screen he performed in The Front Page (Universal, Dec 18 .1974), and The Apple Dumpling Gang (Walt Disney, Jul 1. 1975).

His crusty Inspector Queen in the Ellery Queen TV series (1975-1976) must be the definitive depiction of "The Old Man" although Wayne lacked the mustache so often mentioned in the books. Wayne boasted not just a resonant golden-era Hollywood voice, instantly identifiable and perfectly suited for this 1940s-themed series filled with distinctive voices. Additionally, there was remarkable chemistry between Hutton and Wayne, forming a robust and convincing duo, seamlessly complementing each other's performances.

In 1977 he moved to Los Angeles. Most of the public now will remember him as Willard (Digger) Barnes on Dallas (1978) (above left) the alcoholic stepfather of Pamela Ewing, known for his beautiful voice and modern interpretive dance skills, which were masterfully showcased at the Ewing Barbecue when he performed "The Yellow Rose of Texas" (see link 7 below).

Dallas recast the role with David's friend Keenan Wynn because David had a leading role in House Calls (Universal, 1979-1982) (above right). He played Dr. Amos Weatherby, close to retirement and with a mean streak. The best he could do was to irritate Dr. Solomon by constantly getting his name wrong while going his own way.

Curtailing his activities in the late 1980s, David Wayne retired altogether in 1993, after the death of his wife of 51 years.

His daughter said he continued to do TV movies and a few smaller films into the early 1990s but "generally just retired."** Years ago, Wayne told a studio biographer he was happiest on the stage but like any other actor could not resist a good script "regardless of the commute."

His Broadway, TV and film portrayals ran a gamut of characters ranging from a scientist trying to save the world to an ingenuous Asian bent on bringing happiness to GIs in a far-off land.

He passed away in Santa Monica, California February 9, 1995 from lung cancer. He was 81 years old.

David Wayne made Stanislawsky's credo his own: "Love the art in yourself rather than yourself in the art." 
He added "An actor can't go wrong if he sticks to it; It should be written over the door of every sound stage in Hollywood. I'm afraid most Hollywood actors will read it here for the first time. I hope they take the time to memorize it."

Other references
(1) IMDb
(2) Wikipedia
(3) IBDB
(4) Looking at Hollywood with Hedda Hopper, Chicago Tribune (Jul 9, 1951)
(5) Louella O.Parsons in Hollywood (1950)
(6) OTRRpedia
(7) Radiogoldindex
(8) David Wayne: Versatile Character Man Scott Rollins Film & TV
     Trivia Blog (Feb 9. 2019)
(9) Marilyn behind the icon - How to Marry a Millionaire Gary Vitacco-Robles
(10) Playbill
(11) Top Ten TV Moments: David Wayne by David Hofstede (June 13. 2016)
(12) David Wayne, A Study in Contrasts, by Fern Marja (1954)

Additional video & audio sources
(1) M (Film Clip, 1951)
(2) A Couple of Swells (Ford Star Jubilee) (Clip Tv special Judy Garland,
     1955)
(3) David Wayne for AMC (Video Clip, 1966)
(4) The Adventure of the Blunt Instrument (full Ellery Queen episode, 1975
     via DialyMotion)
(5) Dallas (Season 2, episode 2 "Reunion, Part II") (Tv Clip Sep 30, 1978)
(6) Sounds of NBC Monitor – 1966
(7) Dallas (Season 1. episode 5 'Barbeque") (TV clip drunk Digger Barnes sings
    "Yellow Rose of Texas")