Michael Fox (American actor)

Michael Fox (born Myron Melvin Fox, February 27, 1921 – June 1, 1996) was an American character actor who appeared in numerous films and television shows.

Some of his most famous recurring roles were as various autopsy physicians in Perry Mason, as Coroner George McLeod in Burke's Law, as Amos Fedders in Falcon Crest, and as Saul Feinberg in The Bold and the Beautiful.

Fox was born in Yonkers, New York to Jacob Fox, an Austrian-born salesman, and his wife, the former Josephine Berkowitz.

He was the youngest of four children, and the third son.

Michael Fox began acting in stage plays in southern California circa 1945.

Through his stage endeavors, Fox met Harry Sauber who introduced him to Sam Katzman.

He also appeared in several episodes on the 1955–1957 television series Science Fiction Theatre.

Fox also made an important contribution to the scholarly field of education, as the actor who portrayed "Dr. Myron L. Fox" in a study that would give rise to the Dr. Fox effect, and also participated in the generation of additional materials in at least one follow-up study.

In the initial demonstration of this effect, Fox delivered an engaging and expressive lecture that contained no meaningful content, and yet, the audience rated Fox just as highly as a genuine professor's lecture.

The Dr. Fox effect has been often cited as a critique of the validity of student evaluations of teaching.

He was married to Hannah, an actress he met while acting in the stage play The Dybbuk, in a Los Angeles area theatre run by Lou Smuckler, father-in-law of Lee J. Cobb.

Borrowing a car from Dorothy Gish, Fox drove Hannah to a judge and married her between the matinee and evening performances of The Story of Mary Surratt.

Two of his regular TV roles were as the coroner in the courtroom drama Perry Mason, and as Saul Feinberg on the CBS soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful from 1989 to 1996.

Among his earlier television work was the penultimate episode of Adventures of Superman, as the ringleader of a criminal gang that tried to conduct a Perils of Pauline–style series of murder attempts on the show's various protagonists.

Fox died of pneumonia June 1, 1996, in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California.

His death was written into The Bold and the Beautiful.