James Mitchell (actor)

James Mitchell was an American actor and dancer. Although he is best known to television audiences as Palmer Cortlandt on the soap opera All My Children , theatre and dance historians remember him as one of Agnes de Milles leading dancers. Mitchells skill at combining dance and acting was considered something of a novelty in 1959, the critic Olga Maynard singled him out as an important example of the new danceractorsinger in American ballet, pointing to his interpretive abilities and masculine technique.

Mitchell was born on Leap Day, 1920 in Sacramento, California. His parents emigrated from England to Northern California, where they operated a fruit farm in Turlock. In 1923, Mitchells mother, Edith, left his father and returned to England with Mitchells brother and sister she and Mitchell had no further contact. Unable to run a farm while singlehandedly raising his remaining son, Mitchells father fostered him out for several years to vaudevillians Gene and Katherine King. After Mitchells mother died, however, his father remarried and brought both of his sons, but not his daughter, back to Turlock. At age seventeen, Mitchell left Turlock for Los Angeles, where he remained close to the Kings.

Source: Wikipedia