John Beradino

John Beradino (born Giovanni Berardino, May 1, 1917 – May 19, 1996) was an American Major League Baseball infielder and actor. Known as Johnny Berardino during his baseball career, he was also credited during his acting career as John Berardino, John Baradino, John Barardino or John Barradino.

Beradino was born in Los Angeles and was raised near Hollywood. He attended Belmont High School in downtown Los Angeles. Beradino won a football scholarship to the University of Southern California in 1936, but he soon switched to baseball.

Although Beradino is sometimes believed to have appeared in the silent Our Gang comedies as a child actor, he has not been identified as having appeared in any of the existing films.

After attending the University of Southern California, where he played baseball under coach Sam Barry and was member of Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, Beradino was a major league player from 1939 to 1952, except for three years of military service in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II from 1942 to 1945. He played for the St. Louis Browns, Cleveland Indians and Pittsburgh Pirates, winning the World Series with the Indians in 1948. While primarily a middle infielder, playing second baseman or shortstop, he also played first and third base.

After injuring his leg and being released by Pittsburgh in 1952, he retired from baseball and returned to acting, having appeared in his first film in 1948.

Beradino appeared briefly in an uncredited role as a state trooper in the 1954 thriller Suddenly, starring Frank Sinatra and Sterling Hayden, and later performed as a policeman who allows Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) to make a phone call to his mother in the 1959 Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest.

Beradino (still billed as John Berardino) played a cameo role in the 1954 sci-fi thriller Them!. He also appeared in a 1956 episode of the television series Adventures of Superman titled "The Unlucky Number" as a small-time criminal struggling to reform.

Beradino appeared twice on the Western series Annie Oakley: as Gorman in "Annie Rides the Navajo Trail" and as Roscoe Barnes in "Amateur Outlaw" (both 1956). He appeared as an outlaw in the opening scenes of Budd Boetticher'sSeven Men From Now in 1956. He guest-starred on John Bromfield's syndicated crime drama with a modern Western setting, Sheriff of Cochise, and Bromfield's successor series, U.S. Marshal. He was also cast in an episode of David Janssen's crime drama series Richard Diamond, Private Detective.