Okay, I'm satisfied that the gent in the photo (in this post) was not Whitney Ellsworth and that it's almost certainly Harry Gerstad. The above pic shows Mr. Ellsworth on the set with George Reeves and as you can see, it's a different guy. In fact, it's a different guy who looks a lot more like Whitney Ellsworth did when I met him in 1968.
Whitney Ellsworth was an interesting figure in comic book history. He was a cartoonist and a pulp writer in the thirties and when those two forms merged to form the great American comic book, Ellsworth became the chief editor at DC Comics. As such, he spent most of his time not editing comics. That was done by underlings while Ellsworth watched over the company's licensing and their deals for movies and radio shows based on their characters. In the fifties, he relocated from New York to Los Angeles to supervise the George Reeves Superman TV show and never left. He stayed in L.A. trying to sell other shows and to represent the company's interests on programs that did get sold.
He was the first person in comics I ever interviewed and I got absolutely nothing out of him. I don't think that was because I was new at interviewing. It was because he was horribly nervous, even facing a 16 year old kid with a tape recorder. He didn't want to talk about Superman in the forties because that might have meant mentioning Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and he didn't want to talk about them. He didn't want to talk about Batman because…well, I'm not sure but I think it was because he was afraid we'd get near the topic of what Bob Kane actually did and why didn't Bill Finger get credit? He didn't want to talk about Wonder Woman because he was afraid of angering the estate of William Marston, who created the character. I think the big scoop I got out of our chat was that Aquaman sometimes talks to fish…and even that, he briefly tried to put off-the-record. DC was then going through major upheavals and I think he was terrified he'd say something impolitic, I'd print it in my little 300-circulation fanzine…and someone at DC would read it and use it as an excuse to terminate his position.
I didn't think that was him in the other photo but it's nice to know for certain. Thanks to everyone who wrote in, especially Brad Ferguson, who sent the above pic.