Paul Dooley (born Paul Brown; February 22, 1928) is an American character actor, writer and comedian. He is known for his roles in '' Breaking Away'', '' Sixteen Candles'', and ''

Popeye Popeye the Sailor Man is a fictional cartoon character created by E. C. Segar, Elzie Crisler Segar.Parkersburg Parkersburg is a city in and the county seat of Wood County, West Virginia. Located at the confluence of the Ohio and Little Kanawha rivers, it is the state's fourth-largest city and the largest city in the Parkersburg-Marietta-Vienna met ...

, West Virginia, the son of Ruth Irene (née Barringer), a homemaker, and Pete James Brown, a factory worker. He has said that Parkersburg had few attractions that interested him, as there were not many cultural opportunities. He enjoyed listening to comedians on the radio, especially

Jimmy Durante James Francis Durante ( , ; February 10, 1893 – January 29, 1980) was an American comedian, actor, singer, vaudevillian, and pianist. His distinctive gravelly speech, Lower East Side accent, comic language-butchery, jazz-influenced songs ...

. Dooley was a

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary an ...

as a youth and drew a strip for a local paper in Parkersburg. In 1946, he joined the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

and served for 2 years before then returning home and graduating from

West Virginia University West Virginia University (WVU) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Morgantown, West Virginia. Its other campuses are those of the West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Beckley, Potomac State Coll ...

in 1952.

Career

After graduating from West Virginia University, Dooley went to New York City to try his luck in the entertainment industry. He initially found work as a clown for children's birthday parties. In New York he soon found success as a regular on the stage. In the early 1950s, he made his debut o