Abel Fernandez
Abel Fernandez was an actor best remembered for the role of William Youngfellow, a Prohibition-era federal agent in the popular TV drama The Untouchables. As Youngfellow, Fernandez was part of the team headed by Chicago agent Eliot Ness, played by Robert Stack. The series aired from 1959 to 1963.
A native of Los Angeles, Fernandez graduated from high school at 16, after which he became a paratrooper in the Army. He also competed as a boxer and became the middleweight champion of the Asiatic Forces.
Following his discharge from the service he continued to box, and in 1950 he won the Los Angeles Times Golden Gloves championship and went on to become runner-up at a Golden Gloves event in Chiacgo. He fought professionally as a light heavyweight for a short time in the early 1950s and many years later, in 2013, he was inducted into the California Boxing Hall of Fame.
Abel Fernandez was an actor best remembered for the role of William Youngfellow, a Prohibition-era federal agent in the popular TV drama The Untouchables. As Youngfellow, Fernandez was part of the team headed by Chicago agent Eliot Ness, played by Robert Stack. The series aired from 1959 to 1963.
A native of Los Angeles, Fernandez graduated from high school at 16, after which he became a paratrooper in the Army. He also competed as a boxer and became the middleweight champion of the Asiatic Forces.
Following his discharge from the service he continued to box, and in 1950 he won the Los Angeles Times Golden Gloves championship and went on to become runner-up at a Golden Gloves event in Chiacgo. He fought professionally as a light heavyweight for a short time in the early 1950s and many years later, in 2013, he was inducted into the California Boxing Hall of Fame.
He made his acting debut in 1953 with a role as a boxer in the film Second Chance, in which his character battled in the ring with the film's star, Robert Mitchum. He played another boxer in The Harder They Fall, starring Humphrey Bogart. His other feature films included Alaska Seas, Fort Yuma, Pork Chop Hill, Apache Uprising, Dead Heat on a Merry Go Round, Madigan and Quicksilver.
His numerous TV credits included such series as Playhouse 90, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Have Gun — Will Travel, Steve Canyon, Batman, Wagon Train, Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, Daniel Boone and Marcus Welby, M.D., Lou Grant and The Fall Guy.
Fernandez died on May 3, 2016, in Whittier, California. He was 85.
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