Billy Halop

William Halop (born February 11, 1920 in New York City, NY) was an American character actor who worked nearly 40 years. His show business career started on radio in the 1920s and carried over to stage work on Broadway. There, in 1937, he and other teenage cast members of the stage hit "Dead End" were brought to Hollywood by Samuel Goldwyn for the film version of the play, which was a tremendous hit. Halop and some of the other teenage cast members went on to do a series of films at Universal as the Dead End Kids/Little Tough Guys while some of the others worked at Monogram in a series as the East Side Kids. Halop left the group in the early 1940s to seek a career on his own, but could only land parts in B pictures. He passed away November 9, 1976 at the age of 56. Billy's cause of death was a heart attack.