Name | John Garfield |
---|---|
Caption | Warner Bros. publicity photo, circa late 30's |
Birth name | Jacob Julius Garfinkle |
Birth date | March 04, 1913 |
Birth place | New York City, New York |
Death date | May 21, 1952 |
Death place | New York City, New York |
Spouse | Roberta Seidman (1935-1952) |
Garfield did summer stock at the Pine Brook Country Club located in the countryside of Nichols, Connecticut, which became the rehearsal headquarters of the Group Theatre (New York) formed by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg during the 1930s and early 1940s.
(1947)]] At the onset of World War II, Garfield immediately attempted to enlist in the armed forces, but was turned down because of his heart condition. Frustrated, he turned his energies to supporting the war effort. He and actress Bette Davis were the driving forces behind the opening of the Hollywood Canteen, a club offering food and entertainment for American servicemen. He later traveled to Yugoslavia to help entertain for the war effort.
Garfield graduated to leading roles in films such as The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) with Lana Turner, Humoresque (1946) with Joan Crawford, and the Oscar-winning Best Picture Gentleman's Agreement (1947). (In the latter film, Garfield took a featured, but supporting, part because he believed deeply in the project.) In 1948, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his starring role in Body and Soul (1947). That same year, Garfield returned to Broadway in the play Skipper Next to God. A strong-willed and often verbally combative individual, Garfield did not hesitate to venture out on his own when the opportunity arose. In 1946, when his contract with Warner Bros. expired, Garfield decided not to renew it and opted to start his own independent production company, one of the first Hollywood stars to take this step.
Long involved in liberal politics, Garfield was caught up in the Communist scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s. He supported the Committee for the First Amendment, which opposed governmental investigation of political beliefs. When called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which was empowered to investigate purported communist infiltration in America, Garfield refused to name communist party members or followers, testifying that, indeed, he knew none in the film industry. Garfield rejected Communism, and just prior to his death, in hopes of redeeming himself in the eyes of the blacklisters, wrote that he had been duped by Communist ideology, in an unpublished article "I Was a Sucker for a Left Hook", a reference to Garfield's movies about boxing. However, his forced testimony before the committee had severely damaged his reputation. He was blacklisted in Red Channels, and barred from future employment as an actor by Hollywood movie studio bosses for the remainder of his career.
With film work scarce because of the blacklist, Garfield returned to Broadway and starred in a 1952 revival of Golden Boy, finally being cast in the lead role denied him years before.
In 1954, the widowed Roberta Garfield married attorney Sidney Cohn, who died in 1991. She died in January 2004.
He was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7065 Hollywood Boulevard.
The John Prine song "The Late John Garfield Blues" is inspired by Garfield.
John Leguizamo cited him as a key influence on his acting on the show Elvis Mitchell: Under the Influence on Turner Classic Movies.
Category:1913 births Category:1952 deaths Category:American film actors Category:American Jews Category:American stage actors Category:Burials at Westchester Hills Cemetery Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in New York Category:Hollywood blacklist Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish activists Category:People from New York City Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent
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