Best Supporting Actors by Year -- WMK
WMK's winner and four additional nominees, in order, for Best Supporting Actor by year. [Note: Some years have five additional nominees due to ties for fifth place.]
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- An extremely versatile character actor and originator of several memorable characterizations in the horror film genre, Dwight Frye had a notable theatrical career in the 1920s, moving from juvenile parts to leads before entering film. A favorite actor of Broadway theatrical producer-director Brock Pemberton, he originated the part of "the Son" in his hit 1922 production of Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author". Pemberton would continue to employ Frye in Broadway productions throughout the decade. Cast with Bela Lugosi in a 1926 production of "The Devil and the Cheese", he ultimately appeared in at least two Lugosi films.
Despite (or perhaps because of) his memorable, impassioned portrayals of real estate agent-cum-madman Renfield in Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) and Fritz the sadistic hunchbacked lab-assistant in James Whale's Frankenstein (1931), the industry seemed determined to typecast Frye, and his film career would be marked with frustration. The Crime of Doctor Crespi (1935) offered him billing second only to that of villain Erich von Stroheim, but all too soon, he was consigned to playing a lackluster array of crazies, spies, red herrings, grasping heirs and bit parts. He occasionally returned to the stage in comedies, musicals, and thrillers such as "Night Must Fall" and a stage version of "Dracula".
Frye was perplexed to find that his versatility in the theatre went unnoticed in Hollywood, where he was relegated to lunatic roles and often had his parts severely cut. Indeed, in Son of Frankenstein (1939) his role was deemed as unnecessary when an abrupt switch was made from Technicolor to black-and-white after his scenes were shot.
Dwight Frye, a devout Christian Scientist, had concealed a heart-condition from his friends and family. After the outbreak of WWII, unable to enlist, he worked nights (between films and local theatre-productions) as a draftsman for the Lockheed Aircraft Co. An uncanny physical resemblance to then-Secretary of War Newton Baker led his to being signed to a substantial role in Wilson (1944), directed by Henry King, based on the life of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, but Frye succumbed to a heart-attack on a crowded bus a few days after being cast while returning home from a movie with his son. He was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California.1931 -- DRACULA
Other Nominees: Harpo Marx (Animal Crackers), Clark Gable (A Free Soul), Ben Alexander (All Quiet on the Western Front), Louis Wolheim (All Quiet on the Western Front) - Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
With poofy, curly red hair, a top hat and a horn, the lovable mute was the favorite of the Marx Brothers. Though chasing women was a favorite routine of his in the movies, Harpo was a devoted father and husband. He adopted the mute routine in vaudeville and carried it over to the films. Harpo was an accomplished self-taught harpist whose musical numbers would many times bring tears to the eyes of the audience of an otherwise hilarious movie.ANIMAL CRACKERS- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
William Clark Gable was born on February 1, 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio, to Adeline (Hershelman) and William Henry Gable, an oil-well driller. He was of German, Irish, and Swiss-German descent. When he was seven months old, his mother died, and his father sent him to live with his maternal aunt and uncle in Pennsylvania, where he stayed until he was two. His father then returned to take him back to Cadiz. At 16, he quit high school, went to work in an Akron, Ohio, tire factory, and decided to become an actor after seeing the play "The Bird of Paradise". He toured in stock companies, worked oil fields and sold ties. On December 13, 1924, he married Josephine Dillon, his acting coach and 15 years his senior. Around that time, they moved to Hollywood, so that Clark could concentrate on his acting career. In April 1930, they divorced and a year later, he married Maria Langham (a.k.a. Maria Franklin Gable), also about 17 years older than him.
While Gable acted on stage, he became a lifelong friend of Lionel Barrymore. After several failed screen tests (for Barrymore and Darryl F. Zanuck), Gable was signed in 1930 by MGM's Irving Thalberg. He had a small part in The Painted Desert (1931) which starred William Boyd. Joan Crawford asked for him as co-star in Dance, Fools, Dance (1931) and the public loved him manhandling Norma Shearer in A Free Soul (1931) the same year. His unshaven lovemaking with bra-less Jean Harlow in Red Dust (1932) made him MGM's most important star.
His acting career then flourished. At one point, he refused an assignment, and the studio punished him by loaning him out to (at the time) low-rent Columbia Pictures, which put him in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), which won him an Academy Award for his performance. The next year saw a starring role in Call of the Wild (1935) with Loretta Young, with whom he had an affair (resulting in the birth of a daughter, Judy Lewis). He returned to far more substantial roles at MGM, such as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939).
After divorcing Maria Langham, in March 1939 Clark married Carole Lombard, but tragedy struck in January 1942 when the plane in which Carole and her mother were flying crashed into Table Rock Mountain, Nevada, killing them both. A grief-stricken Gable joined the US Army Air Force and was off the screen for three years, flying combat missions in Europe. When he returned the studio regarded his salary as excessive and did not renew his contract. He freelanced, but his films didn't do well at the box office. He married Sylvia Ashley, the widow of Douglas Fairbanks, in 1949. Unfortunately this marriage was short-lived and they divorced in 1952. In July 1955 he married a former sweetheart, Kathleen Williams Spreckles (a.k.a. Kay Williams) and became stepfather to her two children, Joan and Adolph ("Bunker") Spreckels III.
On November 16, 1959, Gable became a grandfather when Judy Lewis, his daughter with Loretta Young, gave birth to a daughter, Maria. In 1960, Gable's wife Kay discovered that she was expecting their first child. In early November 1960, he had just completed filming The Misfits (1961), when he suffered a heart attack, and died later that month, on November 16, 1960. Gable was buried shortly afterwards in the shrine that he had built for Carole Lombard and her mother when they died, at Forest Lawn Cemetery.
In March 1961, Kay Gable gave birth to a boy, whom she named John Clark Gable after his father.A FREE SOUL- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Starting out as a child actor in 1915, Ben Alexander's first roles were in the films of such directors as Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith. He later graduated to juvenile leads and supporting parts in sound films, most notably in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). When his acting career slowed down in the mid-'30s, he found a new career as a successful radio announcer. Alexander was more or less retired when producer Jack Webb picked him for the part of his detective partner in the TV series Dragnet (1951). Alexander later played another detective on Howard Duff's TV series The Felony Squad (1966).ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT- Actor
- Writer
- Director
It was Lionel Barrymore who gave Louis Wolheim (Cornell '07) his start as an actor. Wolheim had had his face more or less smashed in and his nose nicely fractured while playing on a scrub Cornell football team. Later as a Cornell Instructor he found life none too easy. He had worked off and on as an extra in the Wharton studio but never received much attention. Barrymore had only to look at him once to realize that Wolhelm's face was his fortune. Through Barrymore, Wolheim gained an entree into New York theatrical life. On the legitimate stage he made a great success in "Welcome Wing" and "The Hairy Ape," climaxing these plays by his triumph in "What Price Glory". ~ Cornell Daily Sun, Issue 70, 5 January 1932, Page 2ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT- Actor
- Soundtrack
Along with fellow actors Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price, Boris Karloff is recognized as one of the true icons of horror cinema, and the actor most closely identified with the general public's image of the Frankenstein Monster from the classic 1818 Mary Shelley novel "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus". William Henry Pratt was born on November 23, 1887, in Camberwell, London, England, UK, the son of Edward John Pratt Jr., the Deputy Commissioner of Customs Salt and Opium, Northern Division, Indian Salt Revenue Service, and his third wife, Eliza Sarah Millard.
He was educated at London University in anticipation that he would pursue a diplomatic career; however, he emigrated to Canada in 1909, joined a touring company based out of Ontario and adopted the stage name of "Boris Karloff." He toured back and forth across the U.S. for over 10 years in a variety of low budget theater shows and eventually ended up in Hollywood, reportedly with very little money to his name. Needing cash to support himself, Karloff secured occasional acting work in the fledgling silent film industry in such films as The Deadlier Sex (1920), Omar the Tentmaker (1922), Dynamite Dan (1924) and Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1927), in addition to a handful of film serials (the majority of these, sadly, are all lost films). Karloff supplemented his meager film income by working as a truck driver in Los Angeles, which allowed him enough time off to continue to pursue acting roles.
His big break finally came when he was cast as the Frankenstein Monster in the Universal production of Frankenstein (1931), which was directed by James Whale, one of the studio's few remaining auteur directors. The aura of mystery surrounding Karloff was highlighted in the opening credits, as he was listed as simply "?". The film was a commercial and critical success for Universal, and Karloff was instantly established as a hot property in Hollywood. He quickly appeared in several other sinister roles, including Scarface (1932) (filmed before Frankenstein (1931)), as the black-humored The Old Dark House (1932), as the titular Chinese villain of Sax Rohmer's Dr. Fu Manchu novels in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), as the living mummy Im-ho-tep in The Mummy (1932) and as the misguided Prof. Morlant in The Ghoul (1933). He thoroughly enjoyed his role as a religious fanatic in John Ford's film The Lost Patrol (1934), although contemporary critics described it as a textbook example of overacting.
He donned the signature make-up, neck bolts and asphalt spreader's boots to play the Frankenstein Monster twice more, the first time in the sensational Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and the second time in the less thrilling Son of Frankenstein (1939). Karloff, on loan to Fox, appeared in one of the best of the Warner Oland Charlie Chan films, Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936), before beginning his own short-lived detective film series as Mr. Wong. He was a wrongly condemned doctor in Devil's Island (1938), the shaven-headed executioner Mord the Merciless in Tower of London (1939), another misguided scientist in The Ape (1940), a crazed scientist surrounded by monsters, vampires and werewolves in House of Frankenstein (1944), a murderous cab-man in The Body Snatcher (1945) and a Greek general fighting vampires in the Val Lewton thriller Isle of the Dead (1945).
While Karloff continued to appear in a plethora of films, many of them were not up to the standards of his previous efforts, including his appearances in two of the hokey Bud Abbott and Lou Costello monster films (he had appeared with both of them in an earlier, superior film, Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet the Killer Boris Karloff (1949), of which theater owners often added his name to the marquee) at the low point of the Universal-International horror film cycle. During the 1950s he was a regular guest on many high-profile TV shows, including The Milton Berle Show (1948), Tales of Tomorrow (1951), The Veil (1958), The Donald O'Connor Show (1954), The Red Skelton Hour (1951) and The Dinah Shore Chevy Show (1956), just to name a few, and he appeared in a mixed bag of films, including Sabaka (1954) and Voodoo Island (1957). On Broadway, he appeared as the murderous Jonathan Brewster in the hit play "Arsenic and Old Lace" (his role, or rather the absence of him in it, was amusingly parodied in the play's 1944 film version) and 10 years later he enjoyed a long run in another hit play, "Peter Pan," perfectly cast as Captain Hook.
His career experienced something of a revival in the 1960s thanks to hosting the TV anthology series Thriller (1960) and independent film director Roger Corman, with Karloff contributing wonderful performances in The Raven (1963), The Terror (1963), the ultra-eerie Black Sabbath (1963) and the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired Die, Monster, Die! (1965). Karloff's last great film role before his death was as Byron Orlok, an aging and bitter horror film star on the brink of retirement who confronts a modern-day sniper in the Peter Bogdanovich-directed film Targets (1968). After this, he played Professor John Marsh in The Crimson Cult (1968), in which he co-starred with Sir Christopher Lee and Barbara Steele; it was the last film that he starred in that was released in his lifetime. Before these two films, he played the blind sculptor Franz Badulescu in Cauldron of Blood (1968) which was produced, directed and written by Edward Mann, who had also come to the art of film from the stage and the theater; it was released in the U.S. in 1971 after his death. His TV career was topped off by achieving Christmas immortality as both the voices of the titular character and the narrator of Chuck Jones' perennial animated favorite, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966). Four low budget horror films that were made in Mexico and starred an ailing Karloff, whose scenes for all four of them were shot on a soundstage in Hollywood, were released theatrically in Mexico in 1968 and then were released directly to television in the U.S. after his death between 1971 and 1972; however, they do no justice to this great actor. In retrospect, he never took himself too seriously as an actor and had a tendency to downplay his acting accomplishments. Renowned as a refined, kind and warm-hearted gentleman with a sincere affection for both children and their welfare, Karloff passed away on February 2, 1969 from pneumonia. Respectful of his Indian roots and in true Hindu fashion, he was cremated at Guildford Crematorium, Godalming, Surrey, England, UK, where he is commemorated by a plaque in Plot 2 of the Garden of Remembrance.1932 -- FRANKENSTEIN
Other Nominees: Lionel Barrymore (Grand Hotel), Lewis Stone (Grand Hotel), Nils Asther (The Bitter Tea of General Yen), Edward Ellis (I Am a Fugitive from a Cain Gang)- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Famed actor, composer, artist, author and director. His talents extended to the authoring of the novel "Mr. Cartonwine: A Moral Tale" as well as his autobiography. In 1944, he joined ASCAP, and composed "Russian Dances", "Partita", "Ballet Viennois", "The Woodman and the Elves", "Behind the Horizon", "Fugue Fantasia", "In Memorium", "Hallowe'en", "Preludium & Fugue", "Elegie for Oboe, Orch.", "Farewell Symphony (1-act opera)", "Elegie (piano pieces)", "Rondo for Piano" and "Scherzo Grotesque".GRAND HOTEL- Actor
- Writer
By the time that he was 20, Lewis Stone had turned prematurely grey. He enlisted to fight in the Spanish American War and when he returned, he returned to be a writer. This turned to acting and he began to appear in films during the middle teens. His career was again interrupted by war as he served in the cavalry during World War I. After the war, he returned to films and quickly graduated to lead roles. With his distinguished look and grey hair, he was able to play the roles of well mannered romantic men. In 1921, Lewis starred in Don't Neglect Your Wife (1921). In the next year, he starred with Alice Terry, who played the heroine, and Ramon Novarro in The Prisoner of Zenda (1922) and Scaramouche (1923). In 1924, Metro merged into the new MGM where Lewis remained for the rest of his career. He was busy over the next few years and garnered an Academy Award nomination for The Patriot (1928). In 1928, he appeared in the first of a series of pictures with Greta Garbo. In A Woman of Affairs (1928) he played the older doctor, a friend of the family. But two years later in Romance (1930), he played her lover.
Lewis made the transition from silent to sound with The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929), which starred Norma Shearer. Sound did not cause Lewis any problems and he continued to be busy with his roles as the distinguished lead. The Big House (1930) was highly successful for MGM and he appeared in other popular movies such as The Phantom of Paris (1931) with John Gilbert and Red-Headed Woman (1932) with Jean Harlow. He appeared with Garbo in Inspiration (1931), Mata Hari (1931), Grand Hotel (1932) and Queen Christina (1933). In the late 30s he took on a role for which he was long remembered - the role of Judge James Hardy who had a son named Andy. Judge Hardy was the father audiences wanted in the late 30s early 40s. He was kind, intellectual, fair and as patient as he had to be with Andy, played by Mickey Rooney. This series occupied most of his screen time until it ended and he did slow down during the late 40s. In the 50s he continued to appear in a number of pictures including remakes of the two he had made 30 years before with Alice Terry. He suffered a heart attack and died in 1953 after appearing in over 200 films.GRAND HOTEL- Actor
- Soundtrack
Nils Asther was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1897 and raised in Malmö, Sweden, by his wealthy Swedish parents. After attending the Royal Dramatic Theater School in Stockholm, he began his stage career in Copenhagen. His film debut came in 1916 when the director Mauritz Stiller cast him in the lead role (as an aspiring actor, appropriately enough) in the Swedish film Vingarne (1916). After working with Victor Sjöström in Sweden and Michael Curtiz in Germany, Asther moved to Hollywood in 1927, where his exotic looks landed him romantic roles with co-stars such as Greta Garbo, Pola Negri, and Joan Crawford. Although his foreign accent was a hindrance in "talkies", his Hollywood career continued until 1934 when he was blacklisted for breaking a contract and went to Britain for four years. After his return to Hollywood in 1938, his career declined and by 1949 he was driving a truck. In 1958, he returned to Sweden, where he remained until his death, making occasional appearances in television and on stage.THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN- Actor
- Writer
Character actor in films, often portraying strident types, he is best remembered cast as "The Thin Man" (actually, "Wynant") of the hit 1934 MGM film. He Ellis was active on Broadway as an actor, producer and playwright from 1905-32 (see "Other Works"). He died in Beverly Hills, CA at age 81 in 1952.I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
William Claude Rains, born in the Clapham area of London, was the son of the British stage actor Frederick Rains. The younger Rains followed, making his stage debut at the age of eleven in "Nell of Old Drury." Growing up in the world of theater, he saw not only acting up close but the down-to-earth business end as well, progressing from a page boy to a stage manager during his well-rounded learning experience. Rains decided to come to America in 1913 and the New York theater, but with the outbreak of World War I the next year, he returned to serve with a Scottish regiment in Europe. He remained in England, honing his acting talents, bolstered with instruction patronized by the founder of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Herbert Beerbohm Tree. It was not long before his talent garnered him acknowledgment as one of the leading stage actors on the London scene. His one and only silent film venture was British with a small part for him, the forgettable -- Build Thy House (1920).
In the meantime, Rains was in demand as acting teacher as well, and he taught at the Royal Academy. Young and eager Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud were perhaps his best known students. Rains did return to New York in 1927 to begin what would be nearly 20 Broadway roles. While working for the Theater Guild, he was offered a screen test with Universal Pictures in 1932. Rains had a unique and solid British voice-deep, slightly rasping -- but richly dynamic. And as a man of small stature, the combination was immediately intriguing. Universal was embarking on its new-found role as horror film factory, and they were looking for someone unique for their next outing, The Invisible Man (1933). Rains was the very man. He took the role by the ears, churning up a rasping malice and volume in his voice to achieve a bone chilling persona of the disembodied mad doctor. He could also throw out a high-pitched maniac laugh that would make you leave the lights on before going to bed. True to Universal's formula mentality, it cast him in similar roles through 1934 with some respite in more diverse film roles -- and further relieved by Broadway roles (1933, 1934) for the remainder of his contract. By 1936, he was at Warner Bros. with its ambitious laundry list of literary epics in full swing. His acting was superb, and his eyes could say as much as his voice. And his mouth could take on both a forbidding scowl and the warmest of smiles in an instant. His malicious, gouty Don Luis in Anthony Adverse (1936) was inspired. After a shear lucky opportunity to dispatch his young wife's lover, Louis Hayward, in a duel, he triumphs over her in a scene with derisive, bulging eyes and that high pitched laugh -- with appropriate shadow and light backdrop -- that is unforgettable.
He was kept very busy through the remainder of the 1930s with a mix of benign and devious historical, literary, and contemporary characters always adapting a different nuance -- from murmur to growl -- of that voice to become the person. He culminated the decade with his complex, ethics-tortured Senator "Joe" Paine in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). That year he became an American citizen. Into the 1940s, Rains had risen to perhaps unique stature: a supporting actor who had achieved A-list stardom -- almost in a category by himself. His some 40 films during that period ranged from subtle comedy to psychological drama with a bit of horror revisited; many would be golden era classics. He was the firm but thoroughly sympathetic Dr. Jaquith in Now, Voyager (1942) and the smoothly sardonic but engaging Capt. Louis Renault -- perhaps his best known role -- in Casablanca (1942). He was the surreptitiously nervous and malignant Alexander Sebastian in Notorious (1946) and the egotistical and domineering conductor Alexander Hollenius in Deception (1946). He was the disfigured Phantom of the Opera (1943) as well. He played opposite the challenging Bette Davis in three movies through the decade and came out her equal in acting virtuosity. He was nominated four times for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar -- but incredibly never won. With the 1950s the few movies left to an older Rains were countered by venturing into new acting territory -- television. His haunted, suicidal writer Paul DeLambre in the mountaineering adventure The White Tower (1950), though a modest part, was perhaps the most vigorously memorable film role of his last years. He made a triumphant Broadway return in 1951's "Darkness at Noon."
Rains embraced the innovative TV playhouse circuit with nearly 20 roles. As a favored 'Alfred Hitchcock' alumnus, he starred in five Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955) suspense dramas into the 1960s. And he did not shy away from episodic TV either with some memorable roles that still reflected the power of Claude Rains as consummate actor -- for many, first among peers with that hallowed title.1933 -- THE INVISIBLE MAN
Other Nominees: Louis Calhern (The World Gone Mad), Luis Alberni (When Ladies Meet), Cary Grant (The Eagle and the Hawk), Herbert Mundin (Cavalcade)- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Tall, distinguished, aristocratic Louis Calhern seemed to be the poster boy for old-money, upper-crust urban society, but he was actually born Carl Vogt, to middle-class parents in New York City. His family moved to St. Louis when he was a child, and it was while playing football in high school there that he was spotted by a representative of a touring acting troupe and hired as an actor. He returned to New York to work in the theater, but his career was interrupted by military service in France in World War I. He returned to the stage after the war, and eventually broke into films. Although his regal bearing would seem to pigeonhole him in aristocratic parts in serious drama, he proved to be a very versatile actor, as much at home playing a comic foil to The Marx Brothers in Duck Soup (1933) as he was as Buffalo Bill to Betty Hutton's Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun (1950) or, most memorably, the lawyer involved with the criminal gang in The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Married four times, he was in Tokyo, Japan, filming The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956) when he suffered a fatal heart attack.THE WORLD GONE MAD- Actor
- Soundtrack
Spanish character actor Luis Alberni was born on October 4, 1886 in Cataluna Barcelona, Spain. His mother's maiden name was Malo, and his father was Judge John Alberni. Luis attended the University of Madrid and majored in Law. Bored with the prospects of long-winded trials, he ran away from home and joined a traveling circus in the south of France as a clown. It was around this time that he discovered his calling and began to get involved in acting. Intent on portraying dramatic characters, while acting in a Shakespearean play (Hamlet), the audience laughed and went hysterical. Due to the recognition he received, it was then that he decided to become a comedian.
In 1914 he emigrated to the United States on board a ship as a steerage passenger and soon went on a traveling road show. Around 1919, he met and married a drawling debutante named Charlotte Hall. Eventually they had three sons together - John, Luis, and Carlos. Around 1938 while still married, he started seeing a blonde from Texas. He soon got divorced from Mrs. Charlotte and married that blonde; she would turn out to be his last wife, Wanda Wilson. Despite having a very tumultuous marriage, they managed to stay together throughout the remainder of his life. They had no children, but Wanda's grand-babies looked to Luis as a grandfather. Around his early to mid-seventies, Luis lived in a home for the elderly devoted to actors, the Motion Picture Television Fund in Woodland Hills most of whom were from the Screen Actors guild or Masquers club. Luis passed away on December 23, 1962 and was buried at Pierce Brothers Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood, California.
Now in recent years, Wanda Alberni's great-great-grandson actor Anthony Carrillo is developing a documentary on this great, great character actor's life; if you remember Luis at all, please contact Anthony.WHEN LADIES MEET- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Once told by an interviewer, "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant", Grant is said to have replied, "So would I."
Cary Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18, 1904 in Horfield, Bristol, England, to Elsie Maria (Kingdon) and Elias James Leach, who worked in a factory. His early years in Bristol would have been an ordinary lower-middle-class childhood, except for one extraordinary event. At age nine, he came home from school one day and was told his mother had gone off to a seaside resort. However, the real truth was that she had been placed in a mental institution, where she would remain for years, and he was never told about it (he would not see his mother again until he was in his late 20s).
He left school at age 14, lying about his age and forging his father's signature on a letter to join Bob Pender's troupe of knockabout comedians. He learned pantomime as well as acrobatics as he toured with the Pender troupe in the English provinces, picked up a Cockney accent in the music halls in London, and then in July 1920, was one of the eight Pender boys selected to go to the United States. Their show on Broadway, "Good Times", ran for 456 performances, giving Grant time to acclimatize. He would stay in America. Mae West wanted Grant for She Done Him Wrong (1933) because she saw his combination of virility, sexuality and the aura and bearing of a gentleman. Grant was young enough to begin the new career of fatherhood when he stopped making movies at age 62.
One biographer said Grant was alienated by the new realism in the film industry. In the 1950s and early 1960s, he had invented a man-of-the-world persona and a style - "high comedy with polished words". In To Catch a Thief (1955), he and Grace Kelly were allowed to improvise some of the dialogue. They knew what the director, Alfred Hitchcock, wanted to do with a scene, they rehearsed it, put in some clever double entendres that got past the censors, and then the scene was filmed. His biggest box-office success was another Hitchcock 1950s film, North by Northwest (1959) made with Eva Marie Saint since Kelly was by that time Princess of Monaco.
Although Grant retired from the screen, he remained active. He accepted a position on the board of directors at Faberge. By all accounts this position was not honorary, as some had assumed. Grant regularly attended meetings and traveled internationally to support them. The position also permitted use of a private plane, which Grant could use to fly to see his daughter wherever her mother Dyan Cannon, was working. He later joined the boards of Hollywood Park, the Academy of Magical Arts (The Magic Castle - Hollywood, California), Western Airlines (acquired by Delta Airlines in 1987) and MGM.
Grant expressed no interest in making a career comeback. He was in good health until almost the end of his life, when he suffered a mild stroke in October 1984. In his last years, he undertook tours of the United States in a one-man-show, "A Conversation with Cary Grant", in which he would show clips from his films and answer audience questions. On November 29, 1986, Cary Grant died at age 82 of a cerebral hemorrhage in Davenport, Iowa.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Grant the second male star of Golden Age of Hollywood cinema (after Humphrey Bogart). Grant was known for comedic and dramatic roles; his best-known films include Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959) and Charade (1963).THE EAGLE AND THE HAWK- Actor
- Soundtrack
Herbert Mundin was born on 21 August 1898 in St. Helens, Merseyside, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), David Copperfield (1935) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935). He was married to Ann Shaw and Hilda Frances Hoyes. He died on 5 March 1939 in Van Nuys, California, USA.CAVALCADE- Actor
- Director
- Writer
In 1902, 16-year-old Wallace Beery joined the Ringling Brothers Circus as an assistant to the elephant trainer. He left two years later after a leopard clawed his arm. Beery next went to New York, where he found work in musical variety shows. He became a leading man in musicals and appeared on Broadway and in traveling stock companies. In 1913 he headed for Hollywood, where he would get his start as the hulking Swedish maid in the Sweedie comedy series for Essanay. In 1915 he would work with young ingénue Gloria Swanson in Sweedie Goes to College (1915). A year later they would marry and be wildly unhappy together. The marriage dissolved when Beery could not control his drinking and Gloria got tired of his abuse. Beery finished with the Sweedie series and worked as the heavy in a number of films. Starting with Patria (1917), he would play the beastly Hun in a number of films. In the 1920s he would be seen in a number of adventures, including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), Robin Hood (1922), The Sea Hawk (1924) and The Pony Express (1925). He would also play the part of Poole in So Big (1924), which was based on the best-selling book of the same name by Edna Ferber. Paramount began to move Beery back into comedies with Behind the Front (1926). When sound came, Beery was one of the victims of the wholesale studio purge. He had a voice that would record well, but his speech was slow and his tone was a deep, folksy, down home-type. While not the handsome hero image, MGM executive Irving Thalberg saw something in Beery and hired him for the studio. Thalberg cast Beery in The Big House (1930), which was a big hit and got Beery an Academy Award nomination. However, Beery would become almost a household word with the release of the sentimental Min and Bill (1930), which would be one of 1930's top money makers. The next year Beery would win the Oscar for Best Actor in The Champ (1931). He would be forever remembered as Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1934) (who says never work with kids?). Beery became one of the top ten stars in Hollywood, as he was cast as the tough, dim-witted, easy-going type (which, in real life, he was anything but). In Flesh (1932) he would be the dim-witted wrestler who did not figure that his wife was unfaithful. In Dinner at Eight (1933) he played a businessman trying to get into society while having trouble with his wife, link=nm0001318]. After Marie Dressler died in 1934, he would not find another partner in the same vein as his early talkies until he teamed with Marjorie Main in the 1940s. He would appear opposite her in such films as Wyoming (1940) and Barnacle Bill (1941). By that time his career was slowing as he was getting up in age. He continued to work, appearing in only one or two pictures a year, until he died from a heart attack in 1949.e1934 -- DINNER AT EIGHT
Other Nominees: Lionel Barrymore (Dinner at Eight), Michel Simon (L'Atalante), Edward Arnold (Sadie McKee), Edward Everett Horton (The Merry Widow)- Actor
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Famed actor, composer, artist, author and director. His talents extended to the authoring of the novel "Mr. Cartonwine: A Moral Tale" as well as his autobiography. In 1944, he joined ASCAP, and composed "Russian Dances", "Partita", "Ballet Viennois", "The Woodman and the Elves", "Behind the Horizon", "Fugue Fantasia", "In Memorium", "Hallowe'en", "Preludium & Fugue", "Elegie for Oboe, Orch.", "Farewell Symphony (1-act opera)", "Elegie (piano pieces)", "Rondo for Piano" and "Scherzo Grotesque".DINNER AT EIGHT- Actor
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The son of a sausage-maker, Michel Simon was conscripted into the Swiss Army at the start of World War I, but was thrown out through a combination of tuberculosis and general insubordination. He was variously a boxer, photographer, general handyman and right-wing anarchist, finally becoming a stage actor in Geneva in 1920. His reputation soon grew, and he moved to Paris in 1923, appearing in his first film in 1925 (the same year he played Boudu for the first time on stage). With the coming of sound, Simon became firmly established as one of France's outstanding character actors, doing unforgettable work for Jean Renoir (La Chienne (1931), Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)), Jean Vigo (L'Atalante (1934)) and Marcel Carné (Port of Shadows (1938), Bizarre, Bizarre (1937)). In the 1950s he worked less frequently, partly thanks to an accident involving makeup dye that paralyzed part of his body and face. Despite this, he still managed to appear in films right up to his death in 1975.L'ATALANTE- Actor
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Edward Arnold was born as Gunther Edward Arnold Schneider in 1890, on the Lower East Side of New York City, the son of German immigrants, Elizabeth (Ohse) and Carl Schneider. Arnold began his acting career on the New York stage and became a film actor in 1916. A burly man with a commanding style and superb baritone voice, he was a popular screen personality for decades, and was the star of such film classics as Diamond Jim (1935) (a role he reprised in Lillian Russell (1940)) Arnold appeared in over 150 films and was President of The Screen Actors Guild shortly before his death in 1956.SADIE MCKEE- Actor
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It seemed like Edward Everett Horton appeared in just about every Hollywood comedy made in the 1930s. He was always the perfect counterpart to the great gentlemen and protagonists of the films. Horton was born in Brooklyn, New York City, to Isabella S. (Diack) and Edward Everett Horton, a compositor for the NY Times. His maternal grandparents were Scottish and his father was of English and German ancestry. Like many of his contemporaries, Horton came to the movies from the theatre, where he debuted in 1906. He made his film debut in 1922. Unlike many of his silent-film colleagues, however, Horton had no problems in adapting to the sound, despite--or perhaps because of--his crackling voice. From 1932 to 1938 he worked often with Ernst Lubitsch, and later with Frank Capra. He has appeared in more than 120 films, in addition to a large body of work on TV, among which was the befuddled Hekawi medicine man Roaring Chicken on the western comedy F Troop (1965).THE MERRY WIDOW- Actor
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William Claude Dukenfield was the eldest of five children born to Cockney immigrant James Dukenfield and Philadelphia native Kate Felton. He went to school for four years, then quit to work with his father selling vegetables from a horse cart. At eleven, after many fights with his alcoholic father (who hit him on the head with a shovel), he ran away from home. For a while he lived in a hole in the ground, depending on stolen food and clothing. He was often beaten and spent nights in jail. His first regular job was delivering ice. By age thirteen he was a skilled pool player and juggler. It was then, at an amusement park in Norristown PA, that he was first hired as an entertainer. There he developed the technique of pretending to lose the things he was juggling. In 1893 he was employed as a juggler at Fortescue's Pier, Atlantic City. When business was slow he pretended to drown in the ocean (management thought his fake rescue would draw customers). By nineteen he was billed as "The Distinguished Comedian" and began opening bank accounts in every city he played. At age twenty-three he opened at the Palace in London and played with Sarah Bernhardt at Buckingham Palace. He starred at the Folies-Bergere (young Charles Chaplin and Maurice Chevalier were on the program).
He was in each of the Ziegfeld Follies from 1915 through 1921. He played for a year in the highly praised musical "Poppy" which opened in New York in 1923. In 1925 D.W. Griffith made a movie of the play, renamed Sally of the Sawdust (1925), starring Fields. Pool Sharks (1915), Fields' first movie, was made when he was thirty-five. He settled into a mansion near Burbank, California and made most of his thirty-seven movies for Paramount. He appeared in mostly spontaneous dialogs on Charlie McCarthy's radio shows. In 1939 he switched to Universal where he made films written mainly by and for himself. He died after several serious illnesses, including bouts of pneumonia.1935 -- DAVID COPPERFIELD
Other Nominees: Ernest Thesiger (Bride of Frankenstein), Harpo Marx (A Night at the Opera), Guy Standing (Lives of a Bengal Lancer), Edward Chapman (Things to Come)- Although he made nearly 60 films in a 50-year acting career, it is for the two he made with director James Whale that Ernest Thesiger will be best remembered. Born Ernest Frederic Graham Thesiger in London on January 15, 1879, he was the grandson of the first Baron of Chelmsford. Educated at Marlbrough college and the Slade, he originally hoped to become a great painter. Greatness proved elusive, however (though he remained an accomplished watercolour artist), and he quickly turned to the theatre, making his first appearance on stage in a production of "Colonel Smith" in 1909. He put his career on hold when, in 1914, he enlisted as a private in the British army when World War I broke out (he originally hoped to join a Scottish regiment because he wanted to wear a kilt). He did see some action in the trenches but had to be sent home after being wounded (he was quoted afterwards as saying of these experiences, "My dear, the noise! And the people!"). He made his first film appearance in 1916 with The Real Thing at Last (1916) and then returned to the theatre with "A Little Bit of Fluff",' which ran for over 1200 performances and led to him appearing in a film adaptation (A Little Bit of Fluff (1919)).
In 1925 he appeared in Noël Coward's production of "On With the Dance", in which he got to show off his knack for camp performances by playing one of two elderly women sharing a boarding house. In the early 1930s his old friend, actor-turned-director James Whale (who had moved to Hollywood and was enjoying huge success with Frankenstein (1931)), requested that his friend join him there to play the role of Horace Femm in Whale's upcoming production of The Old Dark House (1932). Thesiger agreed and, along with co-star Eva Moore, stole the film, which became a huge success. He returned to Britain to make The Ghoul (1933) with Boris Karloff. Whale requested Thesiger's services in Hollywood again, this time to appear in his sequel to Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Thesiger was given the role of the sinister Dr. Pretorious, after Whale had refused the studio's suggestion of Claude Rains for the role. With help from Whale's direction, some classic dialogue ("Have some gin. It's my only weakness . . .", "To a new world of gods and monsters") and expert camera work (which helped accentuate his skeletal frame), Thesiger stole the show once more. He returned to Britain and, unfortunately, never worked with Whale again. He appeared in the Alexander Korda-produced The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936) and had a memorable role in the thriller They Drive by Night (1938). He appeared with Will Hay in My Learned Friend (1943) and Don't Take It to Heart! (1944). His other notable films of the 1940s include Henry V (1944) and The Winslow Boy (1948). He returned briefly to America to appear in "As You Like It" on Broadway and afterwards divided his time between theatre and film. Notable later films include Last Holiday (1950) (as Sir Trevor Lampington, discoverer and eponym of Lampington's disease), Laughter in Paradise (1951), A Christmas Carol (1951) and The Man in the White Suit (1951) (as an elderly industry magnate). He made his last film appearance in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) and his last stage performance, opposite Sirs Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, in a production of "The Last Joke". He passed away shortly afterwards, on the eve of his 82nd birthday, at his home on Gloucester Road in Kensington, London.BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN - Actor
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With poofy, curly red hair, a top hat and a horn, the lovable mute was the favorite of the Marx Brothers. Though chasing women was a favorite routine of his in the movies, Harpo was a devoted father and husband. He adopted the mute routine in vaudeville and carried it over to the films. Harpo was an accomplished self-taught harpist whose musical numbers would many times bring tears to the eyes of the audience of an otherwise hilarious movie.A NIGHT AT THE OPERA- Guy Standing was born on 1 September 1873 in London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Death Takes a Holiday (1934), The Eagle and the Hawk (1933) and I'd Give My Life (1936). He was married to Dorothy Hammond, Blanche Burton and Isabelle Urquhart. He died on 24 February 1937 in Hollywood Hills, California, USA.LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER
- Edward Chapman was born on 13 October 1901 in Harrogate, Yorkshire [now North Yorkshire], England, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for Juno and the Paycock (1929), Murder! (1930) and A Stitch in Time (1963). He was married to Prudence Nesbitt and Constance Willis Spark. He died on 9 August 1977 in Brighton, East Sussex, England, UK.THINGS TO COME