Perhaps best remembered for his award-winning childhood performances in both the Broadway and film adaptations of the Carson McCullers novel Member of the Wedding, this 20th-century stage and screen actor went on to earn an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in the 1953 film Shane.
When he was just seven years old, he co-starred with Ethel Waters and Julie Harris in the Broadway production of The Member of the Wedding. Two years later, he performed in a second Broadway play, Mrs. McThing.
Tragically, he was killed at the age of thirty in a car accident in Colorado.
He grew up in Brooklyn and Long Island, New York, as the child of Dutch immigrants; his mother, Eugenia Wilson deWilde, also pursued an acting career. His first marriage, to Susan Maw, resulted in a son named Jesse; his second marriage, to Janice Gero, began in 1972, just three months before his untimely death.
He and Ernest Truex were the stars of the ABC sitcom Jamie.