Carl Ballantine was an American actor, magician and comedian. Billing himself as "The Great Ballantine," "The Amazing Ballantine" or "Ballantine: The World's Greatest Magician," his vaudeville-style comedy routine involved transparent or incompetent stage magic tricks, which tended to flop to the wisecracking Ballantine's mock chagrin.

Ballantine is probably best remembered as Lester Gruber, one of the PT boat sailors in the ABC sitcom McHale's Navy (1962-1966), starring with Ernest Borgnine, Joe Flynn and Tim Conway. He made his only appearance on Broadway as Lycus the slave merchant in the 1972 revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Phil Silvers. His most recent feature film appearance was in Aimee Semple McPherson, a 2006 biopic about the female evangelist. He died of natural causes on November 3, 2009 at his Hollywood, California home. He is survived by his daughters actress Sara Ballantine and Molly and his sister Esther Robinson. Mr. Ballantine was 92.

I remember him best for his role as the shifty used car dealer Carl Tucker on an episode of I Dream Of Jeannie.