Neville Brand started his big-screen career in D.O.A. (1950) as a henchman named Chester. His hulking physique, rough-hewn, craggy-faced looks and gravelly voice lead to him largely playing gangsters, Western outlaws and other screen “heavies,” cops and other tough-guy roles throughout his career. He became well known as a villain when he killed the character played by Elvis Presley in Love Me Tender. He had the distinction of being the first actor to portray outlaw Butch Cassidy, in the film Three Outlaws, opposite Alan Hale Jr. as the Sundance Kid. Though not the big-budget romp that the later Paul Newman–Robert Redford film was, both Brand’s Cassidy and Hale’s Kid were played as likable outlaws, a rare change from Brand’s typecasting as a murderous psycho. However, Neville Brand was occasionally cast against type, playing a romantic lead in the movie Return from the Sea with Jan Sterling and a heartwarming character who was brain damaged and misunderstood in an episode of the TV show Daniel Boone. He played Hoss Cartwright’s (Dan Blocker) Swedish uncle Gunnar Borgstrom on Bonanza in the episode “The Last Viking.” He also played U.S. Navy Lieutenant Kaminsky, ignored as he tried to warn his commander of the opening skirmish in Tora! Tora! Tora!. Of the hundreds of roles he played, he is probably most well known as Al Capone in the TV show The Untouchables and again in the movie The George Raft Story. The characterization – including in the TV show’s pilot episode an odd broken-English pseudo-Italian accent which the American-borne Capone did not have in real life – caused an outcry from the Italian American community over stereotypes.He also portrayed a prison guard of Birdman of Alcatraz and as the antagonistic and untrusting, yet dedicated POW, Duke, in Stalag 17. In 1980 Brand appeared as Major Marvin Groper in The Ninth Configuration, written and directed by The Exorcist author William Peter Blatty.

Neville Brand was also known for his roles in Westerns; he appeared in numerous Westerns throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, including The Tin Star with Henry Fonda and Anthony Perkins, The Desperados with Jack Palance, and The Deadly Trackers with Richard Harris. On television, he appeared in The Virginian and then went on to star as Reese Bennet in the series Laredo. Brand co-starred with George Takei in “The Encounter,” an episode of the original Twilight Zone series. Brand, a genuine decorated veteran, portrays a phony war hero, a coward who obtained his prize trophy (a Japanese soldier’s sword) by murdering a Japanese officer after he had surrendered. Neville Brand died from emphysema at Sutter General Hospital in Sacramento, California, on April 16, 1992. After a private funeral service, Brand was cremated, and his remains are interred in a niche of the Morning Glory Room at East Lawn Memorial Park in Sacramento. Brand was survived by his wife, Rae, and three daughters.