PAUL PICERNI who helped Elliot Ness wipe the streets of Chicago clean of vermin on TV’s The Untouchables is gone at 88.
Picerni, a familiar face across the TV and movie landscape of the 1950s and 1960s including the seminal Vincent Price 3D flick House of Wax died Wednesday of a heart attack at his home in the Antelope Valley community of Llano, California his daughter, Maria Atkinson-Bates told media.
Picerni, who played FBI Agent Lee Hobson, sidekick to Eliot Ness, Robert Stack, was pronounced dead on arrival at Palmdale Regional Medical Center .
Born Dec. 1, 1922, in Corona, N.Y. Picerni was a bombardier during WW2 . After the war, he attended Loyola University in Los Angeles.
He played the sculptor boyfriend of Phyllis Kirk in House of Wax and brawled with a then-unknown Charles Bronson (billed as Charles Buchinsky) in the revolutionary 1953 version of 3-D.
Picerni later joined the The Untouchables in its second season which was a big hit for ABC from 1959 to 1963.
Picerni’s other notable TV creds included Kojak, Barnaby Jones, Mannix and Perry Mason.
Films included The Scalphunters and Airport — both with Burt Lancaster.
For the past 30 years, Picerni was the halftime MC at Los Angeles Rams games played at the LA Coliseum.
