DVD this week

Out on Tuesday was the latest wave of Disney Treasures. Disney was a fan of character actors, and one of the live-action treasures out this week is from Disney's Mickey Mouse Club. "The Hardy Boys: Mystery of the Applegate Treasure" star Tim Considine and Tommy Kirk as Frank and Joe Hardy. But character actors abound, including Russ Conway as their father and Sarah Selby as their Aunt Gertrude in each of the more than two dozen episodes. You'll also find Robert Foulk, Arthur Shields, Jess Kirkpatrick, Mort Mills, Charles Cane, and as Silas Applegate, the wonderful Florenz Ames (above/right).
Ames was in vaudeville and later appeared on Broadway from the 1920s to the 1950s. He was Ellery Queen's father in the early 1950s tv series; he played Dagwood's boss Mr. Dithers, on the first Blondie tv series in the late 1950s; but I can find no credits for him after 1959. He was born in Rochester, New York in January 1883 and appeared in vaudeville with his wife Adelaide Winthrop. I also can't find any record of his death, so we have a bit of a mystery...whatever happened to Florenz Ames???