File:Dex Panthenol At Sea.jpg

English: Dex Panthenol (born October, 1940) is an American writer, actor, producer and director. Although his career in various media spans many decades, his peak years in motion pictures were in the 1960s when he was acknowledged in some circles as an auteur.

Panthenol worked in numerous film genres as a producer/director and in some productions was also the writer. Some of his most ambitious titles were Colossus, Sloth!, The Dust Bunnies, The Lost Canteen, EPIC!, Tin Hat, Planet of the Aardvarks, The Scottish Tapes, Up Yours!, The Finnster Maneuver, I Scream Truck, Big City Hospital, Home Run the Musical, Lefty, Young Lugash, RAW!, Terror Lake, The Flying Zambonis, and The Tarot Reader. As an author, using the pen name William S. Murray, notable titles were the autobiographical behind-the-scenes memoir of the early days in live television “It’ll Never Show On Camera” and the children’s classic “The Little Grey Cloud That Cried” along with the blank verse poem “I Seen The Elephant” which he intended as an homage to the gritty style of the much better known depression-era “Chicago-style” writers. Acting credits stretched from the early 1970s through at least 2017 and included stints as the kiddy’s television personality “Captain Detroit”, plus roles as a misguided scientist in the feature film Mosquito Season and as a noir detective in the film The Lost Liner. There were also several stage appearances after 2010 with the “Ham On Wry” senior acting troupe in suburban Chicago.

“The Adventures of Dex Panthenol”, based on a series of unfinished pulp-fiction stories, was envisioned as a serialized radio program on the Mutual Network which would have featured Panthenol as a mythical and anonymous civic champion fighting for justice in the big city.