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WjfJz&Lj TOUGH GUY FROM TV Biff Elliot landed part after 300 video roles Relaxed: Elliot checks photo album with wife, Betty. W HEN MICKEY SPILLANE started looking around for a “tough guy” to play his Mike Hammer character in the movies he passed over several of Hollywood’s top stars and ended up with a youngster who had played star* or featured roles in nearly 300 television shows. His name, as movie fans around the country are discovering, is Biff Elliot, and he brought everything to the part of Spillane’s tough private eye, including his own muscles. He hopes to get in some television appearances, while playing the Ham¬ mer role in additional Spillane films. Biff hopes his close physical re¬ semblance to the Mike Hammer char¬ acter will please TV viewers who see the first Spillane movie, I, the Jury, produced by Victor Saville. A former regional Golden Gloves champ (that’s how he obtained his nickname), Biff impresses those he meets as being the type of sincere but tough guy who could pull off the exploits Spil¬ lane attributes to his fictional hero. Biff, whose real name is Leon El¬ liot, is a native of Presque Isle, Me., and a brother of TV’s Win Elliot. After some minor league experience in summer stock, he came to Broad¬ way with the usual burning ambition to hit the big time. It was 1948 and TV was just beginning to hit its stride in New York. As Biff says, “I had a chance to carry a spear on the stage or in TV, which was just get¬ ting started then. I chose TV.” He made his video debut on a Lights Out show. There was no ac¬ tors’ union for TV then and he was paid the munificent sum of $5 for the role. “Everybody tried to tell me then that there was no money to be made in TV,” he recalls. “But I decided to stick it out. It was rough going for a while, believe me, and I was lucky that I got a chance through TV to do some radio work, which helped pay the bills.” Last year Biff drew a starring role in the first of the Doctor telefilm series. Titled “Letter from a Stran- 10