Early years

Jenks was born in Des Moines, Iowa,^[1] and his mother gave him a trombone when he was 9 years old. By his late teens he was playing with Eddie Peabody and his band. Later, he became a studio musician in Hollywood, California.^[2]

Movie career

Jenks began in vaudeville and went on to a long career in movies and television, mostly in comedy. He was one of the more familiar faces and voices of the Hollywood Studio era. For almost ten years beginning in the early 1920s, He was a song and dance man in vaudeville. In 1933, when sound films had become the norm, Broadway actors moved to Hollywood in droves. Jenks' flat, sarcastic delivery landed him a film career. Usually a supporting actor, Jenks did appear occasionally as a film lead for low-budget films for PRC. Jenks appeared in not a few classics. In the Cary Grant-Rosalind Russell classic His Girl Friday (1940), Jenks had his most famous role, as the cynical newsman "Wilson".

When television began, Jenks made a successful transition. His biggest success was as Uthas P. Garvey, the skeptical, proletarian right-hand man for the loquacious English con artist "Colonel Humphrey Flack" (1953-54) in the DuMont Television Network series of that name.^[3] He reprised the role in a syndicated version of Colonel Humphrey Flack that was syndicated in 1958.^[4] He portrayed Lieutenant Rodney in the DuMont series Front Page Detective (1951-52),^{[4]: 369-370} and he was a member of the cast of The Eddie Cantor Comedy Theater, which was syndicated in 1955.^[4]: 298

Death

On May 13, 1962, Jenks died of esophageal cancer in Hollywood, California, at age 59.^[1]