Alan Manson, an actor who appeared in “This Is the Army,” “The Tenth Man” and other Broadway shows, died March 5 in Queens. He was 83.
Mr. Manson was one of the 310 actual soldiers chosen to be in “This Is the Army,” Irving Berlin’s star-spangled 1942 tribute to the American forces. He played a stiff interlocutor in the first half of the show, but in the second half he came out in drag as Jane Cowl to lead the Stage Door Canteen number, in which celebrities served ordinary GIs.
He also was in the 1943 film version of the show, starring Ronald Reagan. The show was enormously successful, running on Broadway and touring around the world, often to soldiers near the front line.
After the war Mr. Manson played in the hit revue “Call Me Mister,” whose cast was made up of former soldiers and USO performers, as well as in Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s “Allegro” and “Angels Kiss Me.”
In 1955 he was called before a House Un-American Activities panel in New York set up to investigate communists in the theater. In a hearing, Mr. Manson refused to answer questions about his party membership, citing the 1st, 5th and even the 9th Amendment.
“I feel that these matters lie within a province that is hallowed,” he said, “and that I spent five years in the Army for.”
His comments caused him to be blacklisted, said his brother, Arthur. He was later cleared.
In 1959 he was in Paddy Chayefsky’s “The Tenth Man,” eventually moving up the cast into the lead. He was also in Chayefsky’s “Gideon” and played Ziegfeld in “Funny Girl” with Barbra Streisand.
From the 1960s until recently, he played a variety of character parts in television and film.
