Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#20891
of 909177 performers
Top 5%
Dan Tobin represents the rare performer whose career became more ambitious with every decade — 32 years in, and Dan is still choosing the harder script.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Dan Tobin appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Dan. The Big Clock is the clearest case: a film rated 6.8 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, transformation, versatility. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, comedy, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Robert Stevenson, H. C. Potter, John Farrow and others, Dan Tobin 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 Big Clock (1948) as Roy Cordette · Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) as Bunny Funkhauser (uncredited) · Woman of the Year (1942) as Gerald Howe
Career snapshot
Ranked #20891 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1942–1974
Career length
32 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.8
The Big Clock
Average Nutevio score
6.6
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
The Big Clock
Most frequent director
Robert Stevenson
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Robert Stevenson
Most common genre
Comedy
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
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
6.7
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
1940s
6.7 average MV
The 1940s are where the work and the material meet. Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, The Big Clock, Woman of the Year — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1940s
6.7
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1940s
7.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1940s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, The Big Clock, Woman of the Year.
Most productive era
1940s
3 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 | 1940s | 1970s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.61 film | — |
| Thriller | 6.81 film | — |
| Comedy | 6.72 films | 6.31 film |
| Crime | 6.81 film | — |
| Romance | 6.61 film | 6.31 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Gerald Howe.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1948The Big Clock
6.8 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 Lawyer.
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.
4 of 4 films
as Roy Cordette
Directed by John Farrow
as Bunny Funkhauser (uncredited)
Directed by H. C. Potter
as Gerald Howe
Directed by George Stevens
as Lawyer
Directed by Robert Stevenson
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
Roy Cordette
The Big Clock (1948)
Performance score6.7
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Roy Cordette gives Dan Tobin a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Bunny Funkhauser (uncredited)
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)
Performance score6.6
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bunny Funkhauser (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Gerald Howe
Woman of the Year (1942)
Performance score6.6
Woman of the Year asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Gerald Howe is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Lawyer
Herbie Rides Again (1974)
Performance score6.5
Herbie Rides Again asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Lawyer 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 Roy Cordette
Start here. The Big Clock is the clearest statement of what Dan Tobin does — accessible, 95 minutes, and rated 6.8 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Dan 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.
Woman of the Year (1942)
A deliberate change of key after The Big Clock — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)
Keeps the comedy register of Woman of the Year but asks for a colder reading of it.
Herbie Rides Again (1974)
Keeps the comedy register of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
George Stevens
Director
1 film together
Notably Woman of the Year
John Farrow
Director
1 film together
Notably The Big Clock
H. C. Potter
Director
1 film together
Notably Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
Robert Stevenson
Director
1 film together
Notably Herbie Rides Again
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
John Farrow
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Big ClockH. C. Potter
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream HouseGeorge Stevens
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Woman of the YearRobert Stevenson
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Herbie Rides AgainSix 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
Woman of the Year
as Gerald Howe
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Herbie Rides Again
as Lawyer
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 Big Clock
as Roy Cordette
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
as Bunny Funkhauser (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
The Big Clock
as Roy Cordette
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. Dan Tobin 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.
Career Achievement
Awarded
32 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in comedy, 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 Big Clock
as Roy Cordette
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Big Clock
as Roy Cordette
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Herbie Rides Again
as Lawyer
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Big Clock
as Roy Cordette
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Big Clock
as Roy Cordette
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Big Clock
as Roy Cordette
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Woman of the Year
as Gerald Howe
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Herbie Rides Again
as Lawyer
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Matt Damon
Built a career in the same territory: drama and fantasy
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Cillian Murphy
Built a career in the same territory: drama and thriller
Morgan Freeman
Built a career in the same territory: crime and drama
Have your say
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Reference
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