Janusz Gajos

A popular Polish actor, he starred in numerous other films and theatrical plays, notably in Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors: White. Billy Halop Online (http://home.comcast.net/~shelga/index.html). He debuted in 1964 (while still in the film school) in a film for young audience "Panienka z okienka." Shortly afterwards he was cast in a role of Janek Kos in a widely popular TV WWII series "Czterej pancerni i pies" (The Tank Crew and the Dog). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide. He graduated in 1965 from the Polish Film and Theater Academy in Lodz. For the rest of his life, Billy Halop supplemented his nursing income with small TV and movie roles, gaining a measure of latter-day prominence as Archie Bunker's cab-driving pal Bert Munson on the '70s TV series All in the Family. Janusz Gajos (born September 23, 1939 in Dabrowa Gornicza in Poland) is a Polish actor. John's Hospital in Malibu.

In 1960, he married a multiple sclerosis victim, and the nursing skills he learned while taking care of his wife led him to steady work as a registered nurse at St. Diminishing film work, marital difficulties and a drinking problem eventually ate away at Halop's show business career. A long-standing rivalry between Halop and fellow Dead-Ender Leo Gorcey (both actors wanted to be the leader of the gang) led to Billy's breakaway from the Dead End Kids and its offspring groups, the East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys, though Halop briefly starred in Universal's "Little Tough Guys" films. After serving in World War II, Halop found that he'd grown too old to be effective in the roles that had brought him fame; at one point he was reduced to starring in a cheap "East Side Kids" imitation at PRC studios, Gas House Kids (1946). After several years as a well-paid radio juvenile, Billy was cast as Tommy Gordon in the Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley's Dead End (1935), where thanks to his previous credentials he was accorded star status. Traveling to Hollywood with the rest of the Dead End Kids when Samuel Goldwyn produced a film version of the play in 1937, Billy had no trouble lining up important roles, specializing in tough kids, bullies and reform school inmates in such major pictures as Dust be My Destiny (1939) and Tom Brown's School Days (1940).

The original leader of the original "Dead End Kids," American actor Billy Halop came from a theatrical family; his mother was a dancer and his sister Florence Halop was a busy radio actress. February 11, 1920 - November 9, 1976.