Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#170448
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Ben Taggart works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Ben Taggart appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Ben. The Thin Man is the clearest case: a film rated 7.1 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for war, action, drama. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Edward Ludwig, Ray Enright, George Waggner and others, Ben Taggart helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
The Thin Man (1934) as Police Captain (uncredited) · Horse Feathers (1932) as Police Officer (uncredited) · Monkey Business (1931) as Capt. Corcoran (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #170448 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1931–1944
Career length
13 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
The Thin Man
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
The Thin Man
Most frequent director
W.S. Van Dyke
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With W.S. Van Dyke
Most common genre
Drama
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 25m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.3
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1930s
6.7 average MV
The 1930s are where the work and the material meet. San Francisco, The Thin Man, Horse Feathers — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1930s
6.7
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1930s
7.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1930s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. San Francisco, The Thin Man, Horse Feathers.
Most productive era
1930s
4 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1930s | 1940s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.41 film | 6.32 films |
| Action | — | 6.31 film |
| Comedy | 6.83 films | — |
| Crime | 7.11 film | — |
| Romance | 6.62 films | — |
| Horror | — | 6.31 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1931Monkey Business
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Capt. Corcoran (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1934The Thin Man
7.1 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Aircraft Carrier Captain (uncredited).
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
7 of 7 films
as Police Captain (uncredited)
Directed by W.S. Van Dyke
as Police Officer (uncredited)
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
as Capt. Corcoran (uncredited)
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
as Aircraft Carrier Captain (uncredited)
Directed by Edward Ludwig
as Banker (uncredited)
Directed by Ray Enright
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Police Captain (uncredited)
The Thin Man (1934)
Performance score7.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Police Captain (uncredited) gives Ben Taggart a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Police Officer (uncredited)
Horse Feathers (1932)
Performance score6.6
Horse Feathers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Police Officer (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Capt. Corcoran (uncredited)
Monkey Business (1931)
Performance score6.6
Monkey Business asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Capt. Corcoran (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Aircraft Carrier Captain (uncredited)
The Fighting Seabees (1944)
Performance score6.5
The Fighting Seabees asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Aircraft Carrier Captain (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Police Captain (uncredited)
Start here. The Thin Man is the clearest statement of what Ben Taggart does — accessible, 91 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Ben at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Monkey Business (1931)
Keeps the comedy register of The Thin Man but asks for a colder reading of it.
Horse Feathers (1932)
Same director as Monkey Business, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Spoilers (1942)
A deliberate change of key after Horse Feathers — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Fighting Seabees (1944)
Keeps the drama register of The Spoilers but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Norman Z. McLeod
Director
2 films together
Notably Horse Feathers
W.S. Van Dyke
Director
2 films together
Notably The Thin Man
George Waggner
Director
1 film together
Notably Man-Made Monster
Ray Enright
Director
1 film together
Notably The Spoilers
Edward Ludwig
Director
1 film together
Notably The Fighting Seabees
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
W.S. Van Dyke
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
The Thin ManNorman Z. McLeod
Director
2 films together · 6.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Horse FeathersEdward Ludwig
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Fighting SeabeesRay Enright
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The SpoilersGeorge Waggner
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Man-Made MonsterSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
The Thin Man
as Police Captain (uncredited)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
San Francisco
as Cop (uncredited)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
The Thin Man
as Police Captain (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Thin Man
as Police Captain (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Thin Man
as Police Captain (uncredited)
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Ben Taggart has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Drama Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
The Thin Man
as Police Captain (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Thin Man
as Police Captain (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
San Francisco
as Cop (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Thin Man
as Police Captain (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Thin Man
as Police Captain (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Fighting Seabees
as Aircraft Carrier Captain (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Fighting Seabees
as Aircraft Carrier Captain (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Fighting Seabees
as Aircraft Carrier Captain (uncredited)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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