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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Gale Gordon

American actor (1906–1995)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 16, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Gale Gordon was an American character actor who was Lucille Ball's longtime television foil, particularly as cantankerously combustible, tightfisted bank executive Theodore J. Mooney, on Ball's second television sitcom The Lucy Show. Gordon also appeared in I Love Lucy and had starring roles in Ball's successful third series Here's Lucy and her short-lived fourth and final series Life with Lucy.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Gale Gordon” as american actor (1906–1995). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current 60-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Gale, Gordon and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american actor (1906–1995). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 16, 2026.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Gale Gordon”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Gale Gordon primary sources, Gale Gordon archive and Gale research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Gale Gordon”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Gale Gordon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.