Career
Jenks began in vaudeville and went on to a long career in movies and television, mostly in comedy. He was one of the more familiar faces and voices of the Hollywood Studio era. Foreign almost ten years beginning in the early 1920s, Jenks was a song and dance man in vaudeville.
In 1933, when sound films had become the norm, and Broadway actors were moving to Hollywood in droves, Jenks"s flat, sarcastic delivery landed him a film career.
Internet Movie Data Base lists him appearing in 180 titles over the next 28 years (including television) often as a sarcastic cabbie, reporter, cop or soldier. Usually a supporting actor, Jenks did appear occasionally as a film lead for low-budget films for Provider Reimbursement Consultants. Jenks appeared in not a few classics.
In the Cary GrantRosalind Russell classic,, Jenks had his most famous role, as the cynical newsman "Wilson." When television began, Jenks made a successful transition. His biggest continuing role was as the skeptical, proletarian right-hand man for the loquacious English conman Colonel Humphrey Flack (1953-1954), in the DuMont television series of that name.
He also had a leading role in the DuMont series Front Page Detective (1951-1952).
Mr. The Houston Story.