Hand signed actor, Leonard specialized in playing supporting characters, especially gangsters or heavies . His trademark was his especially thick New York accent, usually delivered from the side of his mouth. (He would often pronounce th as t and would say er as oi, thus he would pronounce earth as oit.) His breakthrough role was in Another Thin Man (1939), in which he played a soft-spoken but dangerous murder suspect. From then on he was typecast as smooth gangsters or streetwise guys in such movies as It's a Wonderful Life (1946; as bartender Nick), To Have and Have Not (1944), Guys and Dolls (1955), and Open Secret (1948). He was a favorite of director Frank Capra, who asked him to play an executive mobster in his 1961 movie Pocketful of Miracles. Leonard became so associated with tough-guy parts that he was occasionally cast against type, as a law-enforcement officer, in movies like Street of Chance (1942) and Decoy (1946).

On radio from 1945 to 1955, Leonard played an eccentr

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