Malachi Throne (December 1, 1928 – March 13, 2013)[1] was an American actor best known as Noah Bain on It Takes a Thief. He also had guest-starring roles on multiple television series, including Star Trek and Batman, and appeared in films and theater.
Early life
Throne was born in New York City to Austro-Hungarian and Russian Jews,[2] Samuel and Rebecca Throne, who emigrated to America before World War II. His mother Rebecca's parents were Max Chaikin and Fanny Podolski. Throne was raised in The Bronx. He first appeared on stage at the age of ten in 1939 in the New York Parks Department production of Tom Sawyer as Huckleberry Finn.
Two sons were born to him and his first wife, Judith Merians, in Hollywood, California: Zach Throne (a musician on the Corey Taylor album CMFT) was born in 1967 and Josh Throne in 1969.
Television career
Malachi Throne with Robert Wagner in It Takes a Thief, 1968.
Throne provided the voice of the Keeper in Star Trek's first pilot episode "The Cage" (1964). Not broadcast in its original form for many years, most of the episode was included within the two-part "The Menagerie" (1966).[4] As Throne was cast in another role in "The Menagerie", Commodore José I. Méndez, the Keeper's voice was electronically altered in pitch.[5]
He played the villain False-Face in the ABC series Batman. The character, who used a variety of disguises to effect his nefarious schemes, wore a semitransparent mask when not in the middle of his crimes. The mask rendered Throne's face unrecognizable on screen. Playing off this effect, but against Throne's wishes, the show's producers wrote the onscreen credit as "? as False Face", denying Throne his screen credit. But at the end credits of "Holy Rat Race", Throne's full name was credited. Later, he appeared in animation as the voices of the Judge on The New Batman Adventures (1998) and Fingers the Gorilla on Batman Beyond (2000).
Throne lived in Southern California, and he did much local theater work there. He was a member of the Theater West company in Hollywood. He also won critical acclaim for several performances with the Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles. Much earlier in his career, he had appeared briefly on Broadway (as Mal Thorne) in Reginald Lawrence's Legend of Lizzie and other plays.[3]
Advertising
Malachi Throne was a national television spokesman for Ziebart in several advertising campaigns throughout the 1970s. He also narrated the 1976 trailer for the film Star Wars (1977).[7]
Death
Throne died of lung cancer at his home in Brentwood, California on March 13, 2013, at the age of 84.[3]
^ abcde"Malachi Throne (visual voices guide)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved October 24, 2023. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its opening and/or closing credits and/or other reliable sources of information.
