From 1886 to 1987, George Spelvin was in the cast of more than 90 Broadway plays and musicals. His first Broadway appearance was in 1886 in Karl the Peddler by Charles A. Gardiner. His most recent was from 1985 to 1987, in the musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood with Betty Buckley.

Q. How did you get started in show business?

A. There was that 1886 show. But my career really didn't begin until 1906, when a writer named Winchell Smith used me in a play called Brewster's Millions. After that, I became a Broadway regular. (The play, about a young man who inherits millions, was based on a 1902 novel by George Barr McCutcheon and has been made into a movie several times. Richard Pryor and John Candy starred in a 1985 version. I wasn't in that one.)

Q. What are some of your major credits?

A. I was in Jerome Kern's Sitting Pretty in 1924 — one of the songs was called "Tulip Time in Sing Sing"; in a play no one has ever heard of called Bertha, the Sewing Machine Girl in 1935 (it ran for seven performances); the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 with Fanny Brice; High Button Shoes with Phil Silvers and Nanette Fabray in 1947 (that show had "Papa, Won't You Dance With Me?" by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn); the musical High Spirits with Tammy Grimes and Beatrice Lillie in 1964; the musical Cyrano with Christopher Plummer in 1973; and the comedy Sly Fox with George C. Scott and Jack Gilford in 1976.

Q. What was it like to work with George C. Scott, or with Christopher Plummer, or Fanny Brice? And how did you manage to have such a long career?

A. I wouldn't really know about Scott or the other two. And the reason I've been around so long — and, as you've probably guessed, the reason I can't tell you about those actors — is that I don't really exist. I'm an imaginary actor.

You see, back in 1906, Winchell Smith; his co-author, Byron Ongley; their star, Edward Abeles; and their producer, Fred Thompson, were struggling over the script when, to ease the tension, Abeles joked about a nonexistent actor named George Spelvin. (I have no idea who the 1886 guy was.) Their play called for one actor to double in two roles, and, certain that "Spelvin" would bring good luck, Smith insisted that the actor use the name in the cast list for one of the roles.

The play was a hit. Smith was convinced that I was responsible, and kept on casting me in his plays. My fame soon spread, and others started "hiring" me. (I wasn't really around, of course, but this is what Smith told The New York Times in 1916.)

I was used when a performer had more than one role in a play or musical and perhaps he or the producer thought the audience might be confused if he was listed as playing one character in the first act and another in the second act. Or by an actor who wanted to be anonymous — if, for instance, he was a member of Actors' Equity working in a non-Equity production and didn't want to be penalized by the union. Or if he considered it undignified to be cast in a minor role.

Sometimes I was a name used in a cast list for a specific plot purpose — by a mystery writer, for example, who didn't want to reveal an aspect of the mystery that would be obvious if a character wasn't listed. Or for a character who is talked about and you expect to arrive but never shows up. Or sometimes just for fun. Or for good luck.

(By the way, I also have an imaginary daughter, Georgette Spelvin, who appeared in a few plays in the 1920s and '30s, including Sidney Howard's dramatization of Sinclair Lewis' Dodsworth, in 1934. I've also been known as George Spelvinsky, or Giorgio Spelvino.)

Q. Wasn't there an award named in your honor?

A. Yes, I'm glad you remember. An old-time Hollywood actors' organization, the Masquers Club, created the George Spelvin Award to honor their entertainment colleagues. Some of the winners were Fred Astaire, Ida Lupino, Groucho Marx, Dean Jagger, Broderick Crawford, Ronald Colman, John Huston, Herbert Marshall and Edmund Gwenn. Pretty good company I was keeping, huh?

Q. Do you have any interesting anecdotes about your career?

A. Well, to tell the truth, I don't really recall this, but the Masquers Club website says that in one night I performed in nine theatres, in 11 roles, at the same time, in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, St. Louis and New York. And that, over three years, I once took part in 20,000 performances in 210 roles. The club says that Jacob Adler of the Yiddish theatre was probably the most renowned actor to use "George Spelvin." The newspaperman Westbrook Pegler also used my name — one of his books is titled "George Spelvin, American."

By the way, I haven't only been a performer. Sometimes writers have made me an actual character — in George and Ira Gershwin and George S. Kaufman's Strike Up the Band in 1927, and in 1981 in Christopher Durang's Actor's Nightmare, where I was an accountant who unexpectedly finds himself onstage in a play. Seemed appropriate.

Q. I understand you've also had a movie career.

A. Yes, indeed. Britannica Online notes that I was a Union soldier in "The Birth of a Nation," the groundbreaking (and racist) 1915 movie by D. W. Griffith. And that I was listed as a dancer in Griffith's 1920 film, "Way Down East." And I was in "From Here to Eternity," which won the Oscar for Best Film in 1953. I've been on television too — on "The Fugitive" and on soap operas like "The Edge of Night" and "Guiding Light."

Q. But what happened? Where have you been lately? Have you retired? Your last Broadway credit, after all, was in 1987.

A. Well, like everything else, things change. Mostly — and this is just a guess, because no one has ever told me — it has become normal for actors to play multiple roles in plays and musicals, and to be listed as doing so. These days it seems to happen frequently. An actor can be a doctor in Act One and a soldier in Act Two, and nobody thinks it's unusual. As far as I'm concerned, of course, I'd be happy being listed as the soldier — after all, I do have movie experience in the role.

Q. You've been part of the cast of many shows over the years. But is there anything you'd like to do in theatre you haven't already done?

A. Most of all, I'd like to get back on the stage. I mean, it could happen. Fashions change, and sometimes things revert to the way they used to be. One day there might be a producer who decides that for old time's sake, he needs George Spelvin, that George Spelvin is due for his Broadway comeback. And if that day comes, I guarantee I'll be ready. Just write me in.