Randolph Scott
in Follow the Fleet (1936)
Born	George Randolph Scott (1898-01-23)January 23, 1898 Orange County, Virginia, U.S.
Died	March 2, 1987(1987-03-02) (aged 89) Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1928–62
Spouse	Marion DuPont (1936–39) (divorced) Patricia Stillman (1944–87) (his death) 2 children

Randolph Scott (January 23, 1898 – March 2, 1987) was an American film actor whose career spanned from 1928 to 1962. As a leading man for all but the first three years of his cinematic career, Scott appeared in a variety of genres, including social dramas, crime dramas, comedies, musicals (albeit in non-singing and non-dancing roles), adventure tales, war films, and even a few horror and fantasy films. However, his most enduring image is that of the tall-in-the-saddle Western hero. Out of his more than 100 film appearances more than 60 were in Westerns; thus, "of all the major stars whose name was associated with the Western, Scott most closely identified with it."^[1]

Scott's more than thirty years as a motion picture actor resulted in his working with many acclaimed screen directors, including Henry King, Rouben Mamoulian, Michael Curtiz, John Cromwell, King Vidor, Alan Dwan, Fritz Lang, and Sam Peckinpah. He also worked on multiple occasions with prominent directors: Henry Hathaway (8 times), Ray Enright (7), Edwin R. Marin (7), Andre DeToth (6), and most notably, his seven film collaborations with Budd Boetticher.

Scott also worked with a diverse array of cinematic leading ladies, from Shirley Temple and Irene Dunne to Mae West and Marlene Dietrich. He also appeared with Gene Tierney, Ann Sheridan, Maureen O'Hara, Nancy Carroll, Donna Reed, Gail Russell, Margaret Sullavan, Virginia Mayo, Bebe Daniels, Carole Lombard, and Joan Bennett.

Tall (6 ft 2.5 in; 189 cm), lanky, and handsome, Scott displayed an easygoing charm and courtly Southern drawl in his early films that helped offset his limitations as an actor, where he was frequently found to be stiff or "lumbering".^[2] As he matured, however, Scott's acting improved while his features became burnished and leathery, turning him into the ideal "strong, silent" type of stoic hero. The BFI Companion to the Western noted:

In his earlier Westerns ... the Scott persona is debonair, easy-going, graceful, though with the necessary hint of steel. As he matures into his fifties his roles change. Increasingly Scott becomes the man who has seen it all, who has suffered pain, loss, and hardship, and who has now achieved (but at what cost?) a stoic calm proof against vicissitude.^[1]

During the early 1950s, Scott was a consistent box-office draw. In the annual Motion Picture Herald Top Ten Polls, he ranked tenth in 1950, eighth in 1951, and again tenth in 1952.^[3] Scott also appeared in the Quigley's Top Ten Money Makers Poll from 1950 to 1953.^[4]

Biography[link]

Birth, family, and schooling[link]

His full name was George Randolph Scott. He was born in Orange County, Virginia, and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, the second of six children born to parents of Scottish-American descent. His father was George Grant Scott, born in Franklin, Virginia, an administrative engineer in a textile firm. His mother was Lucille Crane Scott, born in Luray, Virginia, a member of a wealthy North Carolina family.^[3] The Scott children in order of birth were: Margaret, Randolph, Katherine, Virginia, Joseph and Barbara, most born in North Carolina.^[5]

Because of his family's financial status, young Randolph was able to attend private schools such as Woodberry Forest School. From an early age, Scott developed and displayed an athletic trait, excelling in football, baseball, horse racing, and swimming.^[3]

World War I[link]

In April 1917 the United States entered World War I. Shortly afterwards, Scott, then 19 years old, joined the Army and served in France as an artillery observer with the 2nd Trench Mortar Battalion, 19th Field Artillery.^[3]

Scott's wartime experience would give him training that would be put to use in his later film career, including the use of firearms and horsemanship.

Post-war career[link]

After the Armistice brought the war to an end, Scott stayed in France and enrolled in an artillery officers' school. Although he eventually received a commission, Scott decided to return to America and thus journeyed home around 1919.^[3]

With his military career over, Scott continued his education at Georgia Tech where he set his sights on becoming an all-American football player. However a back injury prevented him from achieving this goal.^[6] Scott then transferred to the University of North Carolina, where he majored in textile engineering and manufacturing.^[3] As with his military career, however, he eventually dropped out of college and went to work as an accountant in the textile firm where his father was employed.^[7]

Stage and early film appearances[link]

Around 1927, Scott developed an interest in acting and decided to make his way to Los Angeles and seek a career in the motion picture industry. Fortunately, Scott's father had become acquainted with Howard Hughes and provided a letter of introduction for his son to present to the eccentric millionaire filmmaker.^[6] Hughes responded by getting Scott a small part in a George O'Brien film called Sharp Shooters (1928).^[8]

In the next few years, Scott continued working as an extra and bit player in several films, including Weary River (1929) with Richard Barthelmess and The Virginian (1929) with Gary Cooper. Reputedly, Scott also served as Cooper's dialect coach in this latter film.

On the advice of director Cecil B. DeMille, Scott also gained much-needed acting experience by performing in stage plays with the Pasadena Playhouse. Scott's stage roles during this period include:^[3]

• A minister in Gentlemen Be Seated
• A butler in Nellie, the Beautiful Model
• Metellus Cimber in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
• Hector Malone in George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman

In 1931 Scott played his first leading role (with Sally Blane) in Women Men Marry, a film, now apparently lost, that was made by a Poverty Row studio called Headline Pictures. He followed that movie with a supporting part in a Warner Bros. production starring George Arliss, A Successful Calamity.

In 1932 Scott appeared in a play at the Vine Street Theatre in Hollywood entitled Under a Virginia Moon. His performance in this play resulted in several offers for screen tests by the major movie studios.^[6] Scott eventually signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures at a salary of US$400 per week.^[3][9]

Paramount years[link]

Zane Grey apprenticeship[link]

Scott's first role under his new Paramount contract was a small supporting part in a comedy called Sky Bride (1932) starring Richard Arlen and Jack Oakie.

Following that, however, Paramount cast him as the lead in Heritage of the Desert (1932), his first significant starring role and also the one that established him as a Western hero. As with Women Men Marry, Sally Blane was his leading lady. The film was the first of ten "B" Western films that Scott made for Paramount in a series loosely based on the novels of Zane Grey.^[10] Henry Hathaway made his directorial debut with Heritage of the Desert; he would go on to direct a total of seven out of the ten Zane Grey adaptations that Scott would appear in.^[11]

Many of these Grey adaptations were remakes of earlier silent films. In an effort to save on production costs, Paramount utilized stock footage from the silent version and even hired some of the same actors, such as Raymond Hatton and Noah Beery, to repeat their roles. For the 1933 films The Thundering Herd and Man of the Forest, Scott's hair was darkened and he sported a trim moustache so that he could easily be matched to footage of Jack Holt, the star of the silent versions.^[12]

In his book The Hollywood Western, film historian William K. Everson refers to the Zane Grey series as being "uniformly good".^[13] He also writes:

To the Last Man was almost a model of its kind, an exceptionally strong story of feuding families in the post-Civil War era, with a cast worthy of an "A" feature, excellent direction by Henry Hathaway, and an unusual climactic fight between the villain (Jack LaRue) and the heroine (Esther Ralston, in an exceptionally appealing performance). Sunset Pass... was not only one of the best but also one of the most surprising in presenting Randolph Scott and Harry Carey as heavies.

The Zane Grey series were a boon for Scott, as they provided him with "an excellent training ground for both action and acting".^[14]

Non-Western roles for Paramount[link]

In between his work in the Zane Grey Western series, Paramount cast Scott in several non-Western roles, such as "the other man" in Hot Saturday (1932), with Nancy Carroll and Cary Grant; Hello, Everybody! (1933), an odd one-shot attempt to make a film star out of the popular but heavy-set radio singer Kate Smith; and Go West, Young Man (1936).

Paramount also cast Scott in two fairly good horror films: Murders in the Zoo (1933) with Lionel Atwill, and Supernatural (1933) with Carole Lombard. Paramount also loaned him to work at other studios, including Columbia, where he appeared with Bebe Daniels in a minor romantic comedy called Cocktail Hour (1933).

Star on the rise[link]

By 1935 Scott was firmly established as a popular movie star and, thus, following the release of Rocky Mountain Mystery (1935), Paramount moved him up from his "B" Western status to a star of "A" features, many on loan out.

Scott made four films for RKO Radio Pictures during 1935–36. Two of these were in the popular series of musicals starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers: Roberta (1935), also starring Irene Dunne, and Follow the Fleet (1936). In both of these films Scott played Astaire's lunkheaded but likable pal. The other two were among the best in Scott's career: Village Tale (1935), "a touching, still-obscure melodrama about small-town gossip and hypocrisy"^[3] directed by John Cromwell, and She (1935), a superb adventure-fantasy adapted from H. Rider Haggard's 1886 novel.

In 1936 Scott, on loan to independent producer [Edward Small] Edward Small, starred in another adventure classic, The Last of the Mohicans, adapted from the 1826 novel by James Fenimore Cooper. A big hit in its day, the film "gave Scott his first unqualified 'A' picture success as a lead."^[3]

Scott's films at Paramount include the aforementioned Go West, Young Man (1936), which reunited him with director Henry Hathaway and is Mae West's adaptation of Lawrence Riley's Broadway hit comedy Personal Appearance; So Red the Rose (1936), directed by King Vidor and starring Margaret Sullavan; and High, Wide, and Handsome. This last film, a musical directed by Rouben Mamoulian, featured Scott in his "most ambitious performance,"^[3] The film is …

… set in 1859 in Pennsylvania, and follows the exploits of oil prospector Scott as he struggles against various varmints and vested interests out to wreck his business, and tries to keep his marriage to Irene Dunne intact, despite the tempting presence of saloon singer Dorothy Lamour.^[1]

Heroes, heavies and "other" men[link]

In 1938 Scott finished his contract with Paramount and began freelancing. Some of the roles that he took over the next few years were supporting ones, while his other roles during the same time frame had him occasionally lapse into villainy. One missed opportunity also came about around this time. Due to his Southern background, Scott was considered for the role of Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind, but it was Leslie Howard who eventually got the part.

For 20th Century Fox Scott supported child star Shirley Temple in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938) and Susanna of the Mounties (1939). For the same studio he played a supporting role in his first Technicolor film, Jesse James (1939), a lavish highly romanticized account of the famous outlaw (Tyrone Power) and his brother Frank (Henry Fonda). Shortly after making this film, Scott portrayed Wyatt Earp in Frontier Marshal (1939) and, for Universal, starred with Kay Francis in When the Daltons Rode (1940).

Scott followed this by co-starring with Errol Flynn in Virginia City (1940) and played the "other man" role in the Irene Dunne–Cary Grant romantic comedy My Favorite Wife (1940).

In 1941 Scott returned to Zane Grey country by co-starring with Robert Young in the Technicolor production Western Union, directed by Fritz Lang. Scott played a "good bad man" in this film and gave one of his finest performances. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote:

Randolph Scott, who is getting to look and act more and more like William S. Hart, herein shapes one of the truest and most appreciable characters of his career as the party's scout.^[15]

Also in 1941 Scott co-starred with a young Gene Tierney, in another western, Belle Starr. Scott's only role as a truly evil villain was in Universal's The Spoilers, a rip-roaring adaptation of Rex Beach's 1905 tale of the Alaskan gold rush co-starring Marlene Dietrich and John Wayne. The movie's climax featured Scott and Wayne (and their stunt doubles) in one of the most spectacular fistfights ever filmed. The Dietrich-Scott-Wayne combination worked so well that Universal recast the trio the following year in Pittsburgh, a war-time action-melodrama which had Wayne and Scott slugging it out once more.

In 1943 Scott starred in The Desperados, Columbia Pictures' first feature in Technicolor. The film was produced by Harry Joe Brown, with whom Scott would form a business partnership several years later.

World War II[link]

The real war[link]

Shortly after the United States entered World War II Scott attempted to obtain an officer's commission in the Marines but, due to his back injury from years earlier he was turned down.^[6] However, he did his part for the war effort by touring in a comedy act with Joe DeRita (who later became a member of The Three Stooges) for the Victory Committee showcases, and he also raised food for the government on a ranch that he owned.^[3]

In 1942 and 1943 Scott appeared in several war movies, notably To the Shores of Tripoli, Bombardier, the Canadian warship drama Corvette K-225, Gung Ho!, and China Sky.

Tall in the saddle[link]

In 1946, after playing roles that had him wandering in and out of the saddle for many years, including a role alongside Charles Laughton in the cheaply made production Captain Kidd (1945), Scott appeared in Abilene Town, a UA^[16] release which cast him in what would become one of his classic images, the fearless lawman cleaning up a lawless town. The film "cemented Scott's position as a cowboy hero"^[14] and from this point on all but two of his starring films would be Westerns. The Scott Westerns of the late 1940s would each be budgeted around US$1 million.^[17]

Scott renewed his acquaintance with producer Harry Joe Brown and together they began producing many of Scott's Westerns, including several that were shot in the two-color Cinecolor process. Their collaboration produced the superior Coroner Creek (1948) with Scott as a vengeance-driven cowpoke who "predates the Budd Boetticher/Burt Kennedy heroes by nearly a decade,"^[14] Gunfighters (1947) based on the Zane Grey novel Two Sombreros and The Walking Hills (1949), a modern-day tale of gold hunters.

Scott also made Westerns for Nat Holt. Some of these movies, Badman's Territory, Return of the Badmen, Trail Street, and Rage At Dawn were released by RKO, while others, like Fighting Man of the Plains, Canadian Pacific, and The Cariboo Trail were released by Twentieth Century Fox.^[18]

In the late 1940s and early 1950s Scott's films were made mainly for Columbia or Warner Bros. His salary for the latter studio was US$100,000 per picture.^[14][19]

Scott's pictures from this period include the 1950 Colt .45, the 1951 films Fort Worth, Man in the Saddle and Carson City, and the 1952 films Hangman's Knot with Claude Jarman, Jr. and Lee Marvin (which Scott produced), Man Behind the Gun, The Stranger Wore a Gun (filmed in 3-D), and Thunder Over the Plains. Also in 1953, Scott appeared in Riding Shotgun, an unusual Western that presents (probably unintentionally) some McCarthyistic overtones. Most of these films were directed by Andre De Toth.

He also did Rage at Dawn in 1955 for Nat Holt, which was released by RKO starring Scott and Forrest Tucker, and featuring Denver Pyle, Edgar Buchanan, and J. Carrol Naish. It purports to tell the true story of the Reno Brothers, an outlaw gang which terrorized the American Midwest, particularly Southern Indiana, soon after the American Civil War.

Also of interest is Shootout at Medicine Bend shot in 1955, but released in 1957, which was Scott's last movie in black and white. The movie co-stars James Garner and Angie Dickinson^[20]

By 1956 Scott was 58 years old, an age where the careers of most leading men would be winding down. Scott, however, was about to enter his finest and most acclaimed period.

The Boetticher and Kennedy films[link]

In 1955 screenwriter Burt Kennedy wrote a script entitled Seven Men from Now which was scheduled to be filmed by John Wayne's Batjac Productions with Wayne as the film's star and Budd Boetticher as its director. However, Wayne was already committed to John Ford's The Searchers. Wayne therefore suggested Scott as his replacement.^[14] The resulting film, released in 1956, did not make a great impact at the time but is now regarded by many as one of Scott's best, as well as the one that launched Scott and Boetticher into a successful collaboration that totaled seven films.^[21] Kennedy scripted four of them. In these films …

Boetticher achieved works of great beauty, formally precise in structure and visually elegant, notably for their use of the distinctive landscape of the California Sierras. As the hero of these "floating poker games" (as Andrew Sarris calls them), Scott tempers their innately pessimistic view with quiet, stoical humour, as he pits his wits against such charming villains as Richard Boone in The Tall T and Claude Akins in Comanche Station.^[1]

Scott and Boetticher films

• Seven Men from Now (1956)
• The Tall T (1956)
• Decision at Sundown (1957)
• Buchanan Rides Alone (1958)
• Westbound (1958)
• Ride Lonesome (1959)
• Comanche Station (1960)

[edit] Ride the High Country (1962)

In 1962 Scott made his final film appearance in Ride the High Country, a film now regarded as a classic. It was directed by Sam Peckinpah and co-starred Joel McCrea, an actor who had a screen image similar to Scott's and who also from the mid-1940s on devoted his career almost exclusively to Westerns.

Scott and McCrea's farewell Western is characterized by a nostalgic sense of the passing of the Old West;^[22] a preoccupation with the emotionality of male bonding and of the experiential 'gap' between the young and the old; and the fearful evocation, in the form of the Hammonds (the villains in the film), of these preoccupations transmuted into brutal and perverse forms.^[1]

Final years[link]

Following Ride the High Country, Scott retired from film at the age of 64. Having made shrewd investments throughout his life, he eventually accumulated a fortune worth a reputed US$100 million.^[3]

During his retirement years he remained friends with Fred Astaire and also became friends with the Reverend Billy Graham. Scott was described by his son Christopher as being a deeply religious man.^[3] He was an Episcopalian and a member of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he was buried. He was also a York Rite Freemason.

Scott died of heart and lung ailments in 1987 at the age of 89 in Beverly Hills, California. He was interred at Elmwood Cemetery in Charlotte, North Carolina.^[23]

Personal life[link]

Marriages[link]

Scott married twice. In 1936 he became the second husband of heiress Marion duPont, daughter of William Du Pont, Sr. and great-granddaughter of Éleuthère Irénée Du Pont de Nemours, the founder of the E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. Marion had previously married George Somerville, with Randolph Scott serving as Best Man at the wedding. Reputedly the couple spent little time together and the marriage ended in divorce three years later. Prior to and between his first and second marriages Scott was romantically linked with several prominent film actresses, including Lupe Vélez, Sally Blane, Claire Trevor, and Dorothy Lamour. In 1944 Scott married Patricia Stillman, with whom he adopted two children. The marriage lasted until Scott's 1987 death.

Sexual orientation[link]

Although Scott achieved fame as a motion picture actor, he managed to keep a fairly low profile with his private life. Off-screen he was good friends with Fred Astaire and Cary Grant. He met Grant on the set of Hot Saturday and shortly afterwards they began rooming together in a beach house in Malibu that became known as "Bachelor Hall." According to biographer Robert Nott, "They lived together on and off for about ten years, because they were friends and wanted to save on living expenses (they were both considered to be notorious tightwads)."^[3]

In his book, Cary Grant: Grant's Secret Sixth Marriage (2004), Marc Eliot claims Grant had a sexual relationship with Scott after they met on the set of Hot Saturday. In Hollywood Gays (1996), Boze Hadleigh, author of numerous books purporting to "out" the sexual orientation of celebrities, makes various claims for Scott's homosexuality. He cites homosexual director George Cukor who said about the homosexual relationship between the two: "Oh, Cary won't talk about it. At most, he'll say they did some wonderful pictures together. But Randolph will admit it – to a friend." There is considerable disagreement over the veracity of Hadleigh's claims about alleged homosexuals in Hollywood.^[24][25][26] According to William J. Mann's book, Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910–1969, photographer Jerome Zerbe spent "three gay months" in the movie colony taking many photographs of Grant and Scott, "attesting to their involvement in the gay scene." In 1995, Richard Blackwell published his autobiography From Rags to Bitches, where he declared he was a lover of both Grant and Scott.^[27]

In 1944 Scott and Grant stopped living together but remained close friends throughout their lives. Grant's insistence that he had "nothing against gays, I'm just not one myself", is treated at length in Peter Bogdanovich's book of essays about actors, Who the Hell's in It. Scott's adopted son, Christopher, also challenged the rumors. Following Scott's death, Christopher wrote a book entitled, Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott?, in which he rebuts rumors of his father's alleged homosexuality. Budd Boetticher, the director most often linked with Scott's work, had this to say about the rumors: "Bullshit."^[14]

Cultural references[link]

Scott is the putative subject of the 1974 Statler Brothers song "Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott?", lamenting the passing of Western films.

He is mentioned in the film Blazing Saddles when Sheriff Bart tries to convince the reluctant citizens of Rock Ridge to support his plan to save the town. He says that they "would do it for Randolph Scott" and they rise, putting their hands to their hearts and saying reverently "Randolph Scott", echoed by an off-screen chorus.

Randolph Scott and To the Shores of Tripoli are referred to in Tom Lehrer's song "Send the Marines."

Awards[link]

In 1975 Scott was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States. He also received an In Memoriam Golden Boot Award for his work in Westerns.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Randolph Scott has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6243 Hollywood Blvd.

Filmography[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Crow, Jefferson Brim, III. Randolph Scott: The Gentleman From Virginia. Wind River Publishing, 1987. ISBN 0-940375-00-1
• Everson, William K. The Hollywood Western. New York. Citadel Press, 1969/1992.
• Nott, Robert. The Films of Randolph Scott. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2004. ISBN 0-7864-1797-8
• Nott, Robert. Last of the Cowboy Heroes – The Westerns of Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, and Audie Murphy. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2000
• Scott, C.H. Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott? Empire Publishing, 1994. ISBN 0-944019-16-1

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Randolph Scott

• Randolph Scott at the Internet Movie Database
• Randolph Scott at Virtual History

Zane Grey
Zane Grey holds a koala during a visit to Australia
Born	(1872-01-31)January 31, 1872 Zanesville, Ohio
Died	October 23, 1939(1939-10-23) (aged 67) Altadena, California
Occupation	Novelist, dentist
Nationality	American
Genres	Western fiction

Pearl Zane Grey (January 31, 1872 – October 23, 1939) was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and stories that presented an idealized image of the Old West. Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) was his best-selling book. In addition to the success of his printed works, they later had second lives and continuing influence when adapted as films and TV productions. As of 2007, 110 films, one TV episode, and a series, Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater, had been made that were based loosely on his novels and short stories.^[1]

Biography[link]

Early life and education[link]

Pearl Zane Gray was born January 31, 1872, in Zanesville, Ohio. It has been suggested that his name derives from the "Pearl Grey" color favored by Queen Victoria in her dress.^{[citation needed]} He was the fourth of five children born to Alice "Allie" Josephine Zane, whose English Quaker immigrant ancestor Robert Zane came to America in 1673, and her husband, Lewis M. Gray, a dentist.^[2] His family changed the spelling of their last name to "Grey" after his birth. Later Grey dropped Pearl and used Zane as his first name. He grew up in Zanesville, a city founded by his maternal great-grandfather Ebenezer Zane, a American Revolutionary War patriot; from an early age, the boy was intrigued by history. Grey developed interests in fishing, baseball, and writing, all which contributed to his writing success.^[3] His first three novels recounted the heroism of his ancestors who fought in the American Revolutionary War.^[4]

As a child, Grey frequently engaged in violent brawls, despite (or because of) his father's punishing him with severe beatings. Though irascible and antisocial like his father, Grey was supported by a loving mother and found a father substitute. Muddy Miser was an old man who approved of Grey's love of fishing and writing, and who talked about the advantages of an unconventional life. Despite warnings by Grey’s father to steer clear of Miser, the boy spent much time during five formative years in the company of the old man.^[5]

Grey was an avid reader of adventure stories (Robinson Crusoe and Leatherstocking Tales) and dime novels (featuring Buffalo Bill and "Deadwood Dick"). He was enthralled by and crudely copied the great illustrators Howard Pyle and Frederic Remington.^[6] He was particularly impressed with Our Western Border, a history of the Ohio frontier that likely inspired his earliest novels.^[7] Zane wrote his first story, Jim of the Cave, when he was fifteen. His father tore it to shreds and beat him.^[8] Both Zane and his brother Romer were active, athletic boys who were enthusiastic baseball players and fishermen.^[9]

Due to shame from a severe financial setback in 1889 caused by a poor investment, Lewis Grey moved his family from Zanesville and started again in Columbus, Ohio.^[10] While the older man struggled to re-establish his dental practice, Zane Grey made rural house calls and performed basic extractions, which his father had taught him. The younger Grey practiced until the state board intervened. His brother Romer earned money by driving a delivery wagon.^[11] Grey also worked as a part-time usher in a movie theater and played summer baseball for the Columbus Capitols, with aspirations of becoming a major leaguer.^[12] Eventually, Grey was spotted by a baseball scout and received offers from many colleges. Romer also attracted scouts' attention and went on to have a professional baseball career.^[11]

Penn and baseball[link]

At Penn, 1895

Grey chose the University of Pennsylvania on a baseball scholarship, where he studied dentistry and joined Sigma Nu fraternity; he graduated in 1896. When he arrived at Penn, he had to prove himself worthy of a scholarship before receiving it. He rose to the occasion by coming in to pitch against the Riverton club, pitching five scoreless innings and producing a double in the tenth which contributed to the win.^[13] The Ivy League was highly competitive and an excellent training ground for future pro baseball players. Grey was a solid hitter and an excellent pitcher who relied on a sharply dropping curve ball. When the distance from the pitcher's mound to the plate was lengthened by ten feet in 1894 (primarily to reduce the dominance of Cy Young’s pitching), the effectiveness of Grey’s pitching suffered. He was re-positioned to the outfield.^[14] The short, wiry baseball player remained a campus hero on the strength of his timely hitting.^[15]

He was an indifferent scholar, barely achieving a minimum average. Outside class he spent his time on baseball, pool, and creative writing, especially poetry.^[13] His shy nature and his teetotaling set him apart from other students, and he socialized little. Grey struggled with the idea of becoming a writer or baseball player for his career, but unhappily concluded that dentistry was the practical choice.

During a summer break, while playing 'summer nines' in Delphos, Ohio, Grey was charged with, and quietly settled, a paternity suit. His father paid the $133.40 cost and Grey resumed playing summer baseball in Delphos. He managed to conceal the episode when he returned to Penn.^[16]

Grey went on to play minor league baseball with several teams, including the Newark, New Jersey Colts in 1898^[17] and also with the Orange Athletic Club for several years. His brother, Romer Carl "Reddy" Grey (known as "R.C." to his family) did better and played professionally in the minor leagues. He played a single major league game in 1903 for the Pittsburgh Pirates.^[18]

Dentistry[link]

After graduating, Grey established his practice in New York City under the name of Dr. Zane Grey in 1896. It was a competitive area but he wanted to be close to publishers. He began to write in the evening to offset the tedium of his dental practice.^[19] He struggled financially and emotionally. Grey was a natural writer but his early efforts were stiff and grammatically weak. Whenever possible, he played baseball with the Orange Athletic Club in New Jersey, a team of former collegiate players that was one of the best amateur teams in the country.^[19]

Grey often went camping with his brother R.C. in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, where they fished in the upper Delaware River. When canoeing in 1900, Grey met seventeen year-old Lina Roth, better known as "Dolly". Dolly came from a family of physicians and was studying to be a schoolteacher.^[20]

Marriage and family[link]

After a passionate and intense courtship marked by frequent quarrels, Grey and Dolly married five years later in 1905. Grey suffered bouts of depression, anger, and mood swings, which affected him most of his life. As he described it, “A hyena lying in ambush—that is my black spell! I conquered one mood only to fall prey to the next...I wandered about like a lost soul or a man who was conscious of imminent death."^[21]

During his courtship of Dolly, Grey still saw previous girlfriends and warned her frankly, "But I love to be free. I cannot change my spots. The ordinary man is satisfied with a moderate income, a home, wife, children, and all that....But I am a million miles from being that kind of man and no amount of trying will ever do any good". He added, "I shall never lose the spirit of my interest in women."^[22]

The Zane Grey Museum in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania

After they married in 1905, Dolly gave up her teaching career. They moved to a farmhouse at the convergence of the Delaware and Lackawaxen rivers, in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, where Grey's mother and sister joined them. (This house, now preserved and operated as the Zane Grey Museum, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.) Grey finally ceased his dental practice to devote full-time to his nascent literary pursuits. Dolly’s inheritance provided an initial financial cushion.^[23]

Writing career[link]

While Dolly managed Grey's career and raised their three children, including son Romer Zane Grey, over the next two decades Grey often spent months away from the family. He fished, wrote and spent time with his many mistresses. While Dolly knew of his behavior, she seemed to view it as his handicap rather than a choice. Throughout their life together, he highly valued her management of his career and their family, and her solid emotional support. In addition to her considerable editorial skills, she had good business sense and handled all his contract negotiations with publishers, agents, and movie studios. All his income was split fifty-fifty with her; from her "share", she covered all family expenses.^[24] Their considerable correspondence shows evidence of his lasting love for her despite his infidelities and personal emotional turmoil.^{[citation needed]}

The Greys moved to California in 1918. In 1920 they settled in Altadena, California, where Grey bought a prominent mansion on East Mariposa Street, known locally as "Millionaire's Row". Designed by architects Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey (no relation to the author), the 1907 Mediterranean-style house is acclaimed as the first fireproof home in Altadena, built entirely of reinforced concrete as prescribed by the first owner's wife. Grey summed up his feelings for the city: "In Altadena, I have found those qualities that make life worth living."^{[cite this quote]} (The city uses it in promotions.)

It was in Altadena that he spent time with his mistress Brenda Montenegro. The two met while hiking Eaton Canyon. Of her he wrote, "I saw her flowing raven mane against the rocks of the canyon. I have seen the red skin of the Navajo, and the olive of the Spaniards, but her...her skin looked as if her Creator had in that instant molded her just for me. I thought it was an apparition. She seemed to be the embodiment of the West I portray in my books, open and wild."^{[citation needed]}

With the help of Dolly’s proofreading and copy editing, Grey gradually improved his writing. His first magazine article, "A Day on the Delaware", a human-interest story about a Grey brothers’ fishing expedition, was published in the May 1902 issue of Recreation magazine.^[25] Elated by selling the article, Grey offered reprints to patients in his waiting room.^[26] In writing, Grey found temporary escape from the harshness of his life and his demons. “Realism is death to me. I cannot stand life as it is.”^[27] By this time, he had given up baseball.^[28]

Grey read Owen Wister’s great Western novel The Virginian. After studying its style and structure in detail, he decided to write a full-length story.^[27] Grey had difficulties in writing his first novel, Betty Zane (1903). When it was rejected by Harper & Brothers, he lapsed into despair.^[29] The novel dramatized the heroism of an ancestor who had saved Fort Henry. He self-published it, perhaps with funds provided by his wife Dolly or his brother R. C.'s wealthy girlfriend Reba Smith.^[30] From the beginning, vivid description was the strongest aspect of his writing.^[31]

After attending a lecture in New York in 1907 by Charles Jesse "Buffalo" Jones, western hunter and guide who had co-founded Garden City, Kansas, Grey arranged for a mountain lion-hunting trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.^[32] He brought along a camera to document his trips and prove his adventures. He also began the habit of taking copious notes, not only of scenery and activities but of dialogue.^[33] His first two trips were arduous, but Grey learned much from his compatriot adventurers. He gained the confidence to write convincingly about the American West, its characters, and its landscape. Treacherous river crossings, unpredictable beasts, bone-chilling cold, searing heat, parching thirst, bad water, irascible tempers, and heroic cooperation all became real to him. He wrote, “Surely, of all the gifts that have come to me from contact with the West, this one of sheer love of wildness, beauty, color, grandeur, has been the greatest, the most significant for my work.”^[34]

Upon returning home in 1909, Grey converted his experiences into a new book, The Last of the Plainsmen, describing the adventures of Buffalo Jones. Harper’s editor Ripley Hitchcock rejected it, the fourth work in a row. He told Grey, “I do not see anything in this to convince me you can write either narrative or fiction.”^[35] Grey wrote dejectedly, "I don’t know which way to turn. I cannot decide what to write next. That which I desire to write does not seem to be what the editors want...I am full of stories and zeal and fire...yet I am inhibited by doubt, by fear that my feeling for life is false".^[36] The book was later published by Outing magazine, which provided Grey some satisfaction. Grey next wrote a series of magazine articles and juvenile novels.^{[citation needed]}

With the birth of his first child pending, Grey felt compelled to complete his next novel and his first Western, The Heritage of the Desert. He wrote it in four months in 1910. It quickly became a bestseller. Grey took his next work to Hitchcock again; this time Harper published his work, an historical romance in which Mormon characters were of central importance.^[34] Grey continued to write popular novels about Manifest Destiny, the conquest of the Old West, and the behavior of men in elemental conditions.^{[citation needed]}

Two years later Grey produced his best-known book, Riders of the Purple Sage (1912), his all-time best-seller, and one of the most successful Western novels of all.^[37] Hitchcock rejected it, but Grey took his manuscript directly to the vice president of Harper, who accepted it. As Zane Grey had become a household name, after that, Harper eagerly received all his manuscripts. Other publishers caught on to the commercial potential of the Western novel. Max Brand and Ernest Haycox were among the most notable of other authors of Westerns.^[38] Grey's publishers paired his novels with some of the best illustrators of the time, including N. C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Douglas Duer, Herbert W. Dunton, W. H. D. Koerner, and Charles Russell.^[39]

Grey had the time and money to engage in his first and greatest passion: fishing. From 1918 until 1932, he was a regular contributor to Outdoor Life magazine. As one of its first celebrity writers, he began to popularize big-game fishing. Several times he went deep-sea fishing in Florida to relax and to write in solitude.^[40] Although he commented that, “the sea, from which all life springs, has been equally with the desert my teacher and religion,” Grey was unable to write a great sea novel.^[41] He felt the sea soothed his moods, reduced his depressions, and gained him the opportunity to harvest deeper thoughts:

“The lure of the sea is some strange magic that makes men love what they fear. The solitude of the desert is more intimate than that of the sea. Death on the shifting barren sands seems less insupportable to the imagination than death out on the boundless ocean, in the awful, windy emptiness. Man’s bones yearn for dust.”^[39]

Over the years, Grey spent part of his time traveling and the rest of the year wrote from the base of his adventures. Unlike writers who could write every day, Grey would have dry spells and then sudden bursts of energy, in which he could write as much as 100,000 words in a month.^[42] He encountered fans in most places. He kept a cabin on the Rogue River in Oregon. Other excursions took him to Washington state and Wyoming.^[43]

From 1923 to 1930, he spent a few weeks a year at his cabin on the Mogollon Rim, in Central Arizona. After years of abandonment and decay, the cabin was restored in 1966 by Bill Goettl, a Phoenix air conditioning magnate, and was opened to the public as a free-of-charge museum. The Dude Fire destroyed the cabin in 1990. It was later reconstructed 25 miles away in the town of Payson.^[43]

During the 1930s, Grey continued to write, but the Great Depression hurt the publishing industry. His sales fell off and he found it more difficult to sell serializations. Having avoided the stock market crash, he continued to earn royalty income. In the 1930s, nearly half of the film adaptations of his novels were made.^[44]

From 1925 to his death in 1939, Grey traveled more and further from his family. He became interested in exploring unspoiled lands, particularly the islands of South Pacific, New Zealand and Australia. He thought Arizona was beginning to be overrun by tourists and speculators.^[45] Near the end of his life, Grey looked into the future and wrote:

“The so-called civilization of man and his works shall perish from the earth, while the shifting sands, the red looming walls, the purple sage, and the towering monuments, the cast brooding range show no perceptible change.”^[46]

Controversy and critics[link]

The more books Grey sold, the more the established critics, such as Heywood Broun and Burton Rascoe, attacked him. They claimed his depictions of the West were too fanciful, too violent, and not faithful to the moral realities of the frontier. They thought his characters unrealistic and much larger-than-life. Broun stated that “the substance of any two Zane Grey books could be written upon the back of a postage stamp.”^[47] T. K. Whipple praised a typical Grey novel as a modern version of the ancient Beowulf saga, “a battle of passions with one another and with the will, a struggle of love and hate, or remorse and revenge, of blood, lust, honor, friendship, anger, grief—all of a grand scale and all incalculable and mysterious.” But he goes on to criticize Grey’s writing, “His style, for example, has the stiffness which comes from an imperfect mastery of the medium. It lacks fluency and facility.”^[48] In truth, as far as veracity was concerned, Grey relied on first-hand experience, careful note-taking, and considerable research.^[49] Despite his great popular success and fortune, Grey read the reviews and sometimes became paralyzed by negative emotions after critical ones.^[50]

In 1923 a reviewer called Grey’s “moral ideas...decidedly askew”. Grey reacted with a 20-page treatise “My Answer to the Critics”. He defended his intentions to produce great literature in the setting of the Old West.^[51] He suggested that critics should ask his readers what they think of his books, and noted actor and fan John Barrymore as an example. Dolly warned him against publishing the treatise, and he retreated from a public confrontation.^{[citation needed]}

His novel The Vanishing American (1925), first serialized in The Ladies’ Home Journal in 1922, started a heated debate. People recognized its Navajo hero as patterned after the great athlete Jim Thorpe. Grey portrayed the struggle of the Navajo to preserve their identity and culture against corrupting influences of the white government and of missionaries. This viewpoint enraged religious groups. Grey contended, “I have studied the Navaho Indians for twelve years. I know their wrongs. The missionaries sent out there are almost everyone mean, vicious, weak, immoral, useless men.”^[52] To have the book published, Grey agreed to some structural changes. With this book, Grey completed the most productive period of his writing career, having laid out most major themes, character types, and settings.^[53]

As with many writers, Grey produced his best work early in his career. Later he repeated himself. His fans were perfectly happy with the results, however, and each new book was eagerly anticipated, even after his death.^[47]

His Wanderer of the Wasteland is his thinly disguised autobiography.^[54] One of his books, “Tales of the Angler’s El Dorado, New Zealand”, helped establish the Bay of Islands in New Zealand as a premier game fishing area. Several of his later writings were based in Australia.^{[citation needed]}

Literary works and legacy[link]

Grey became one of the first millionaire authors. With his veracity and emotional intensity, he connected with millions of readers worldwide, during peacetime and war, and inspired many Western writers who followed him. Zane Grey was a major force in shaping the myths of the Old West; his books and stories were adapted into other media, such as film and TV productions. He was the author of more than 90 books, some published posthumously and/or based on serials originally published in magazines. His total book sales exceed 40 million.^[55]

Grey wrote not only Westerns, but two hunting books, six children’s books, two baseball books, and eight fishing books.^[56] Many of them became bestsellers. It is estimated that he wrote over nine million words in his career.^[57] From 1917–1926, Grey was in the top ten best-seller list nine times, which required sales of over 100,000 copies each time.^[58] Even after his death, Harper had a stockpile of his manuscripts and continued to publish a new title each year until 1963.^[59] During the 1940s and afterward, as Grey's books were reprinted as paperbacks, his sales exploded.^{[citation needed]}

Erle Stanley Gardner, prolific author of mystery novels and the Perry Mason series, said of Grey, he:

“had the knack of tying his characters into the land, and the land into the story. There were other Western writers who had fast and furious action, but Zane Grey was the one who could make the action not only convincing but inevitable, and somehow you got the impression that the bigness of the country generated a bigness of character.”^[60]

Hollywood and other media[link]

Grey started his association with Hollywood when William Fox bought the rights to Riders of the Purple Sage for $2,500 in 1916.^[61] The ascending arc of Grey’s career matched that of the motion picture industry. It eagerly adapted Western stories to the screen practically from its inception, with Bronco Billy Anderson becoming the first major western star.^[62] Legendary director John Ford was then a young stage hand and William S. Hart, who had been a real cowhand, was defining the persona of the film cowboy.^[63] The Grey family moved to California to be closer to the film industry and to enable Grey to fish in the Pacific.^{[citation needed]}

After his first two books were adapted to the screen, Grey formed his own motion picture company. This allowed him to control production values and faithfulness to his books. After seven films he sold his company to Jesse Lasky, who was a partner of the founder of Paramount Pictures. Paramount made a number of movies based on Grey's writings and hired him as advisor.^[64] Many of his films were shot at locations described in his books.^{[citation needed]}

Grey became disenchanted by the commercial exploitation and pirating of his works. He felt his stories and characters were diluted by being adapted to film.^[65] Nearly fifty of his novels were converted into over one hundred Western movies, the most by any Western author.^[66] Shortly after Grey's death, the success of Fritz Lang's Western Union (1941), a film based on one of his books, helped bring about a resurgence in Hollywood westerns. Its costars were Randolph Scott and Robert Young. The period of the 1940s and 1950s included the great works of John Ford, who successfully used the settings of Grey’s novels in Arizona and Utah.^[67]

The success of Grey's The Lone Star Ranger (a novel later turned into a 1930 film) and King of the Royal Mounted (popular as a series of Big Little Books and comics, later turned into a 1936 film), inspired two radio series by George Trendle (WXYZ, Detroit). Later these were adapted again for television, forming the series The Lone Ranger and Challenge of the Yukon (Sgt. Preston of the Yukon on TV). More of Grey's work was featured in adapted form on the Zane Grey Show, which ran on the Mutual Broadcasting System for five months in the 1940s, and the “Zane Grey Western Theatre”, which had a five-year run of 145 episodes.^[66]

Many famous actors got their start in films based on Zane Grey books. They included Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott, William Powell, Wallace Beery, Richard Arlen, Buster Crabbe, Shirley Temple, and Fay Wray. Victor Fleming, later director of Gone with the Wind, and Henry Hathaway, who later directed True Grit, both learned their craft on Grey films.^{[citation needed]}

Fishing[link]

Grey's son Loren claims in the introduction to Tales of Tahitian Waters that Zane Grey fished on average 300 days a year through his adult life. Grey and his brother R.C. were frequent visitors to Long Key, Florida, where they helped to establish the Long Key Fishing Club, built by Henry Morrison Flagler and was its president from 1917 to 1920. He pioneered the fishing of Boohoo fish (sailfish), and there is a Zane Grey Creek there [1].

Grey indulged his interest in fishing with visits to Australia and New Zealand. He first visited New Zealand in 1926 and caught several large fish of great variety, including a mako shark, a ferocious fighter which presented a new challenge. Grey established a base at Otehei Bay Lodge on Urupukapuka Island in the Bay of Islands, which became a magnet for the rich and famous and wrote many articles in international sporting magazines highlighting the uniqueness of New Zealand fishing which has produced heavy-tackle world records for the major billfish, striped marlin, black marlin, blue marlin and broadbill. He held numerous world records during this time and invented the teaser, a hookless bait that is still used today to attract fish. Grey made three further fishing trips to New Zealand. The second was January to April 1927, the third December 1928 to March 1929, and the last December 1932 to February 1933. All these trips are recorded in books by Grey himself, or his son, Romer Zane Grey, or by his brother Reddy Grey.^{[citation needed]}

Grey fished out of Wedgeport, Nova Scotia, for many summers and set a world record for the largest blue-fin tuna on August 24, 1924 when he caught one weighing 758 pounds.^{[citation needed]}

Grey also helped establish deep-sea sport fishing in New South Wales, Australia, particularly in Bermagui, New South Wales, which is famous for Marlin fishing. Patron of the Bermagui Sport Fishing Association for 1936 and 1937, Grey set a number of world records,^{[citation needed]} and wrote of his experiences in his book "An American Angler in Australia".

From 1928 on, Grey was a frequent visitor to Tahiti. He fished the surrounding waters several months at a time and maintained a permanent fishing camp at Vairao. He claimed that these were the most difficult waters he had ever fished, but from these waters he also took some of his most important records, such as the first marlin over 1,000 pounds.^{[citation needed]}

Catalina Island[link]

Grey had built a getaway home in Santa Catalina Island, California, which now serves as the Zane Grey Pueblo Hotel.^[68] Avid fisherman as he was, he served as president of the Catalina's exclusive fishing club, the Tuna Club.^{[citation needed]}

Death[link]

Zane Grey died of heart failure on October 23, 1939, at his home in Altadena, California. He was interred at the Union Cemetery in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania.^{[citation needed]}

Legacy and honors[link]

• The National Park Service maintains his former home in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania as the Zane Grey Museum, a part of the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River area.
• His home in Altadena is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
• Zanesville, Ohio has a museum named in his honor, the National Road-Zane Grey Museum.
• Zane Grey Terrace, a small residential street in the hillsides of Altadena, is named in his honor.
• The Zane Grey Tourist Park Bermagui, Australia.
• "Zane Greys'" a headland at the western end of Matapaua Bay, New Zealand.
• The Zane Grey Continuation School is located adjacent to Reseda High School in Reseda, Los Angeles, California.^{[citation needed]}

Books[link]

Published in Grey's lifetime[link]

Published posthumously[link]

All western works were translated from English into Spanish by Editorial Juventud in 1959 for CLASICOS Y MODERNOS collection.

Film and television[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Obituary, Los Angeles Times, October 24, 1939, page 1.

Further reading[link]

• Zane Grey: "The Man Whose Books Made the West Famous" by Norris F. Schneider (1967)
• Zane Grey: A Biography by Frank Gruber (1969)
• Zane Grey by Carlton Jackson (1973)
• Zane Grey by Anne Ronald (1975)
• Zane Grey by Carol Gay (1979)
• Zane Grey's Arizona by Candace C. Kant (1984)
• Zane Grey: A Photographic Odyssey by Loren Grey (1985)
• Zane Grey, A Documented Portrait by G.M. Farley (1985)
• Selling the Wild West by Christine Bold (1987)
• Dolly & Zane Grey. Letters From a Marriage Candace C Kant, (2008)
• West of Everything by Jane Tompkins (1992)
• Zane Grey: His Life, His Adventures, His Women. by Thomas H. Pauly (2005)
• Rider of the Purple Prose, New York Times Book Review (January 1. 2006)
• Zane Grey: A Study in Values - Above and Beyond the West by Chuck Pfeiffer (2006)
• Ace of Hearts: The Westerns of Zane Grey by Arthur G. Kimball (1993)
• Berryman, Jack W. (2006). "Zane Grey (1872-1939)". Fly-Fishing Pioneers and Legends of the Northwest. Seattle, WA: Northwest Fly Fishing LLC. pp. 124–133. ISBN 978-0-9779454-0-5. 
• Reiger, George, ed. (1972). Zane Grey-Outdoorsman. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc. ISBN 0-13-983841-4. 

External links[link]

Biography portal

Find more about Zane Grey on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Images and media from Commons
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource

Sources

• Works by Zane Grey at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Zane Grey at Internet Archive
• Works by Zane Grey at Freeread

Other

• Zane Grey Incorporated
• Zane Grey's West Society
• A Comprehensive list of Zane Grey's works
• Zane Grey Cabin Foundation
• Zane Grey Museum in Lackawaxen, PA
• National Road/Zane Grey Museum Norwich, OH
• King of the Royal Mounted BLBs and Comics
• The Shortstop by Zane Grey Free eBook
• Zane Grey biography at Ohio History Central
• Works by or about Zane Grey in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Guide to Zane Grey's papers at the University of Oregon
• Zane Grey (I) at the Internet Movie Database

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Charles Laughton
In film The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)
Born	(1899-07-01)1 July 1899 Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England, UK
Died	15 December 1962(1962-12-15) (aged 63) Hollywood, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor, screenwriter, producer, director
Years active	1926–1962
Spouse	Elsa Lanchester (m.1929-1962; his death)

Charles Laughton (1 July 1899 – 15 December 1962) was an English-born American stage and film actor, screenwriter, producer and director.^[1]

Early life and career[link]

Laughton was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, the son of Robert Laughton and his wife Elizabeth (née Conlon), Yorkshire hotel keepers.^[2] His mother was a devout Roman Catholic of Irish descent. He attended Stonyhurst College, a Jesuit school, in Lancashire.^[3] He served during World War I (in which he was gassed) first with the 2/1st Battalion of the Huntingdonshire Cyclist Regiment^[4] and later with the 7th Battalion of the Northamptonshire Regiment.

He started work in the family hotel business, while participating in amateur theatricals in Scarborough. Finally allowed by his family to become a drama student at RADA in 1925, Laughton made his first professional stage appearance on 28 April 1926 at the Barnes Theatre, as Osip in the comedy The Government Inspector, in which he also appeared at the London Gaiety Theatre in May. Despite not having the looks for a romantic lead, he impressed audiences with his talent and played classical roles in two plays by Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard and The Three Sisters. Laughton played the lead role of Harry Hegan in the world premiere of Sean O'Casey's The Silver Tassie in 1928 in London. He played the title roles in Arnold Bennett's Mr Prohack (Elsa Lanchester was also in the cast) and in Mr Pickwick. He also played Tony Perelli in Edgar Wallace's On the Spot and William Marble in Payment Deferred. He took the last role across the Atlantic and made his United States debut on 24 September 1931, at the Lyceum Theatre. He returned to London for the 1933–34 Old Vic Season and was engaged in four Shakespeare roles (as Macbeth and Henry VIII, Angelo in Measure for Measure and Prospero in The Tempest). In 1936, he went to Paris and on 9 May appeared at the Comédie-Française as Sganarelle in the second act of Molière's Le Médecin malgré lui, the first English actor to appear at that theatre, where he acted the part in French and received an ovation.^{[citation needed]}

Laughton commenced his film career in England while still acting on the London stage. He took small roles in three short silent comedies starring his wife Elsa Lanchester, Daydreams, Blue Bottles and The Tonic (all 1928) which had been specially written for her by H. G. Wells. He made a brief appearance as a disgruntled diner in another silent film Piccadilly with Anna May Wong in 1929. He appeared with Elsa Lanchester again in a "film revue", featuring assorted British variety acts, called Comets (1930) in which they duetted in 'The Ballad of Frankie and Johnnie', and made two other early British talkies: Wolves with Dorothy Gish (1930) from a play set in a whaling camp in the frozen north, and Down River (1931) in which he played a murderous, half-oriental drug-smuggler.

His New York stage debut in 1931 immediately led to film offers and Laughton's first Hollywood film was The Old Dark House (1932) with Boris Karloff in which he played a bluff Yorkshire businessman marooned during a storm with other travellers in a creepy mansion in the Welsh mountains. He then played a demented submarine commander in Devil and the Deep with Tallulah Bankhead, Gary Cooper and Cary Grant and followed this with his best-remembered film role of that year as Nero in Cecil B. DeMille's The Sign of the Cross. He also turned out a number of other memorable performances during that first Hollywood trip, repeating his stage role as a murderer in Payment Deferred, playing H. G. Wells' mad vivisectionist Dr. Moreau in Island of Lost Souls, and the meek raspberry-blowing clerk in the brief segment of If I Had a Million that was directed by Ernst Lubitsch. In all, he appeared in six Hollywood films during 1932.

His association with film director Alexander Korda began in 1933 with The Private Life of Henry VIII (loosely based on the life of King Henry VIII), for which Laughton won an Academy Award, the first British actor to do so. However, he continued to act occasionally in the theatre, including his American production of Life of Galileo by (and with) Bertolt Brecht.

Film career[link]

1933–1943[link]

From the trailer for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

Laughton soon gave up the stage in preference for a film career and returned to Hollywood where his next film was White Woman (1933) in which he co-starred with Carole Lombard as a Cockney river trader in the Malaysian jungle. Then came The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) as Norma Shearer's malevolent father; Les Misérables (1935) as Javert, the police inspector; Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) as Captain William Bligh, one of his most famous screen roles, co-starring with Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian; and Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) as the very English butler transported to early 1900s America. He was also signed to play Micawber in David Copperfield (1934) but after a few days shooting asked to be released from the part, as he did not feel suited to it, and was replaced by W. C. Fields.

Back in England, and again with Korda, he played the title role in Rembrandt (1936). In 1937, also for Korda, he starred in an ill-fated film version of the classic novel, I, Claudius, by Robert Graves, which was abandoned during filming owing to the injuries suffered by co-star Merle Oberon in a car crash. After I, Claudius, he and the ex-patriate German film producer Erich Pommer founded the production company Mayflower Pictures in the UK, which produced three films starring Laughton: Vessel of Wrath (US Title The Beachcomber) (1938), based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham, in which Laughton's wife Elsa Lanchester co-starred; St. Martin's Lane (US Title Sidewalks of London), a story about London street entertainers that also featured Vivien Leigh and Rex Harrison; and Jamaica Inn, with Maureen O'Hara and Robert Newton, based on a novel about Cornish smugglers by Daphne du Maurier, and the last film Alfred Hitchcock directed in Britain before moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s.^{[citation needed]}

The films produced were not successful enough, and the company was saved from bankruptcy only when RKO Pictures offered Laughton the title role of Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). Laughton and Pommer had plans to make further films, but the outbreak of World War II, which implied the loss of many foreign markets, meant the end of the company. Laughton's early success in The Private Life of Henry VIII established him as one of the leading interpreters of the costume and historical drama parts for which he is best remembered (Nero, Henry VIII, Mr. Barrett, Inspector Javert, Captain Bligh, Rembrandt, Quasimodo and others); he was also type-cast for arrogant, unscrupulous characters.^{[citation needed]}

He largely moved away from historical parts when he played an Italian vineyard owner in California in They Knew What They Wanted (1940); a South Seas patriarch in The Tuttles of Tahiti (1942); and an American admiral during World War II in Stand by for Action (1942). He played a Victorian butler in Forever and a Day (1943) and an Australian bar-owner in The Man from Down Under (1943). Simon Callow's 1987 biography quotes a number of contemporary reviews of Laughton's performances in these films. James Agate, reviewing Forever and a Day, wrote: "Is there no-one at RKO to tell Charles Laughton when he is being plain bad?" On the other hand, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times declared that Forever and a Day boasted "superb performances".^[5]

C. A. Lejeune, wrote Callow, was "shocked" by the poor quality of Laughton's recent work: "One of the most painful screen phenomena of latter years", she wrote in The Observer, "has been the decline and fall of Charles Laughton." On the other hand, David Shipman, in his book The Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years, said "Laughton was a total actor. His range was wide".^[6]

1943–1962[link]

Laughton played a cowardly schoolmaster in occupied France in This Land is Mine (1943), by Jean Renoir, in which he engaged himself most actively;^[7] in fact, while Renoir was still working on an early script, Laughton would talk to him about Alphonse Daudet's story "The Last Lesson", which suggested to Renoir a relevant scene of the film.^[8] He played a henpecked husband who eventually murders his wife in The Suspect (1944), directed by Robert Siodmak, who later became a good friend of his.^[9] He played sympathetically an impoverished composer-pianist in Tales of Manhattan (1942) and starred in an updated version of Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost in 1944.

Laughton appeared in two comedies with Deanna Durbin, It Started with Eve (1941) and Because of Him (1946). He portrayed a bloodthirsty pirate in Captain Kidd (1945) and a malevolent judge in Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1948). Laughton played a megalomaniac press tycoon in The Big Clock (1948). He had supporting roles as a Nazi in pre-war Paris in Arch of Triumph (1948), as a bishop in The Girl from Manhattan (1948), as a seedy go-between in The Bribe (1949), and as a kindly widower in The Blue Veil (1951). He played a Bible-reading pastor in the multi-story A Miracle Can Happen (1947), but his sequence was deleted and replaced with another featuring Dorothy Lamour, and in this form the film was retitled On Our Merry Way. However, an original print of A Miracle Can Happen was sent abroad for dubbing before the Laughton sequence was deleted, and in this form it was shown in Spain under the title Una Encuesta Llamada Milagro.

From the Young Bess trailer (1953)

Laughton made his first color film in Paris as Inspector Jules Maigret in The Man on the Eiffel Tower (1949) and, wrote the Monthly Film Bulletin, "appeared to overact" alongside Boris Karloff as a mad French nobleman in a version of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Door in 1951. He played a tramp in O. Henry's Full House (1952), in which he had a one-minute scene with Marilyn Monroe. He became a pirate again, buffoon style this time, in Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd (1952). He guest-starred in an episode of the Colgate Comedy Hour on TV that also featured Abbott and Costello and that was notable for his delivery of the Gettysburg Address. He played Herod Antipas in Salome (1953, with Rita Hayworth in the title role) and repeated his role as Henry VIII in Young Bess (1953). He returned to England to star in Hobson's Choice (1954) directed by David Lean. Kevin Brownlow's biography of David Lean (1996) reveals in Chapter 26 that Lean was a great admirer of Laughton and briefly considered him for the part of Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai, hoping that Laughton would lose weight for the role. Other possible contenders for the part included Cary Grant and Laurence Olivier, though in the end it went to Alec Guinness.

Laughton received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for his role as Sir Wilfrid Robarts in the screen version of Agatha Christie's play Witness for the Prosecution (1957).

He played a British admiral in Under Ten Flags (1960) and worked for the only time with Laurence Olivier in Spartacus (1960) as a wily Roman senator.

His final film was Advise and Consent (1962), for which he received favorable comments for his performance as a southern US Senator (for which accent he studied recordings of Mississippi Senator John Stennis). Laughton worked on the film, which was directed by Otto Preminger, while he was dying from metastatic renal cell carcinoma (cancer of the kidney).^[10]

[edit] The Night of the Hunter

In 1955, Laughton directed (but did not act in) The Night of the Hunter, starring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish. The film is often cited among today's critics as one of the best of the 1950s,^[11] and has been selected by the United States National Film Registry for preservation in the Library of Congress. At the time of its original release, however, it was a critical and box-office failure, and Laughton never had another chance to direct. The documentary Charles Laughton Directs The Night of the Hunter by Robert Gitt (2002) features preserved rushes and outtakes with Laughton's audible off-camera direction.^[12]

Theatre[link]

Laughton made his London stage debut in Gogol's The Government Inspector (1926). He appeared in many West End plays in the following few years and his earliest successes on the stage were in roles like Hercule Poirot in Alibi (1928, the first actor to portray Agatha Christie's Belgian detective Hercule Poirot) - a stage adaptation of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd) and William Marble in Payment Deferred, in which he made his Lyceum Theatre (New York) debut in 1931.

In 1926, he played the role of the criminal Ficsur in the original London production of Ferenc Molnár's Liliom (The play was musicalized in 1945 by Rodgers and Hammerstein as Carousel, where Ficsur became Jigger Craigin, but Laughton never appeared in the musical version). While Laughton is most remembered for his film career, he continued to work in the theatre, as when, after the success of The Private Life of Henry VIII he appeared at the Old Vic Theatre in 1933 as roles Macbeth, Lopakin in The Cherry Orchard, Prospero in The Tempest and Angelo in Measure for Measure. In America, Laughton worked closely with Bertolt Brecht on a new English version of Brecht's play Galileo. Laughton played the title role at the play's premiere in Los Angeles on 30 July 1947 and later that year in New York. This staging was directed by Joseph Losey. The processes by which Laughton painstakingly, over many weeks, created his Galileo—and incidentally, edited and translated the play along with Brecht—are detailed in an essay by Brecht, "Building Up A Part: Laughton's Galileo."^[13] Brecht's essay offers a sympathetic and detailed portrait of an actor at work.

Laughton had one of his most notable successes in the theatre by directing and playing the Devil in Don Juan in Hell beginning in 1950. The piece is actually the third act sequence from George Bernard Shaw's play Man and Superman, frequently cut from productions to reduce its playing time, consisting of a philosophical debate between Don Juan and the Devil with contributions from Doña Ana and the statue of Ana's father. Laughton conceived the piece as a staged reading and cast Charles Boyer, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and Agnes Moorehead (billed as "The First Drama Quartette") in the other roles. Boyer won a special Tony Award for his performance. The performance, recorded complete by Columbia Masterworks, is now available as an MP3 download.

He directed several plays on Broadway. His most notable box-office success as a director came in 1954, with The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, a full-length stage dramatization by Herman Wouk of the court-martial scene in Wouk's novel The Caine Mutiny. The play, starring Henry Fonda as defense attorney Barney Greenwald, opened the same year as the film starring Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg and José Ferrer as Greenwald based on the original novel, but did not affect that film's box-office performance. Laughton also directed a staged reading in 1953 of Stephen Vincent Benét's John Brown's Body, a full-length poem about the American Civil War and its aftermath. The production starred Tyrone Power, Raymond Massey (re-creating his film characterizations of Abraham Lincoln and John Brown), and Judith Anderson. Laughton did not appear himself in either of these productions, but John Brown's Body was recorded complete by Columbia Masterworks.

Laughton returned to the London stage in May 1958 to direct and star in Jane Arden's The Party at the New Theatre which also had Elsa Lanchester and Albert Finney in the cast. He made his final theatre appearances as Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream and as King Lear at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1959, although failing health resulted in both performances being disappointing, according to some British critics. His performance as King Lear came in for particular lambasting by critics, with many reviews saying that the portly actor looked more like Old King Cole than Shakespeare's creation, and critic Kenneth Tynan wrote that Laughton's Nick Bottom "...behaves in a manner that has nothing to do with acting, although it perfectly hits off the demeanor of a rapscallion uncle dressed up to entertain the children at a Christmas party". Although a British production of A Midsummer Night's Dream did air on television around this time, it was not the one with Laughton, but rather a 1958 production with Paul Rogers as Bottom.

Although he did not appear in any later plays, he continued to tour the US with staged readings, including a very successful appearance on the Stanford University campus in 1960.

Recordings[link]

Laughton's voice first appeared on 78-rpm records with the release of five British Regal Zonophone 10-inch discs entitled Voice of the Stars issued annually from 1934 to 1938. These featured short soundtrack snippets from the year's top films. He is heard on all five records in, respectively, The Private Life of Henry VIII, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Mutiny on the Bounty, I, Claudius (curiously, since this film was unfinished and thus never released), and Vessel of Wrath. In 1937 he recorded Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on a 10-inch Columbia 78, having made such an impression with it in Ruggles of Red Gap.

He made several other spoken-word recordings, one of his most famous being his one-man album of Charles Dickens's Mr. Pickwick's Christmas, a twenty-minute version of the Christmas chapter from Dickens's The Pickwick Papers. It was first released by American Decca in 1944 as a four-record 78-rpm set, but was afterward transferred to LP. It frequently appeared on LP with a companion piece, Decca's 1941 adaptation of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, starring Ronald Colman as Scrooge. Both stories were released together on a Deutsche Grammophon CD for Christmas 2005.

In 1943, Laughton recorded a reading of the Nativity story from St. Luke's Gospel, and this was released in 1995 on CD on a Nimbus Records collection entitled Prima Voce: The Spirit of Christmas Past.

A Brunswick/American Decca LP entitled Readings from the Bible featured Laughton reading Garden of Eden, The Fiery Furnace, Noah's Ark, and David and Goliath. It was released in 1958. Laughton had previously included several Bible readings when he played the title role in the film Rembrandt.

Laughton was also heard narrating the story on the soundtrack album of the film that he directed, Night of the Hunter, accompanied by the film's score. This album has also been released on CD.

Also, and derived from the film they made together, a complete radio show (18 June 1945) of The Canterville Ghost was broadcast which featured Laughton and Margaret O'Brien. It has been issued on a Pelican LP.

His wife Elsa Lanchester made three LPs in the 1950s: Songs for a Shuttered Parlour, Songs for a Smoke-Filled Room, and Cockney London. Laughton introduced the various numbers with spoken introductions on the first two and wrote the sleeve notes for the third.

An online version of the complete, two-LP Columbia Masterworks recording of the 1950 Broadway staging of George Bernard Shaw's Don Juan in Hell was re-released [Saland Publishing] in April, 2009. It is available only as a download from various vendors.

However, none of Laughton's other record albums have been made available on CD as of yet. A two-LP Capitol Records album was released in 1962, the year of Laughton's death, entitled The Story Teller: A Session with Charles Laughton. Taken from Laughton's one-man stage shows, it culls together dramatic readings from several sources. Three of the excerpts are broadcast annually on a Minnesota Public Radio Thanksgiving programme entitled Giving Thanks. The Story Teller won a Grammy in 1962 for Best Spoken Word Recording. However, although the album has yet to be released on compact disc, it can now be heard in its entirety online.^[14]

Television[link]

Laughton was the fill-in host on 9 September 1956, when Elvis Presley made his first of three appearances on CBS's The Ed Sullivan Show, which garnered 72 million viewers (Ed Sullivan was recuperating from a car accident). That same year, Laughton also hosted the first of two programs devoted to classical music entitled "Festival of Music", and telecast on the NBC television anthology series Producers' Showcase. He appeared multiple times on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford.

In 1959, Laughton appeared in the episode "Eleanor" of the anthology series The Joseph Cotten Show, broadcast over CBS.

One of his last performances was on the TV series Checkmate, in which he played a missionary recently returned from China. He threw himself into the role, traveling to China for several months in order to better understand his character.^[15] Bugs Bunny spoofed Laughton playing Captain Bligh in Buccaneer Bunny (1947), Laughton's Mutiny on the Bounty as Mutiny on the Bunny (1948), The Sign of the Cross with Laughton as Nero in Roman Legion-Hare (1955), and as a spoiled king in Shishkabugs (1962). Laughton also appeared in the popular Western TV series Wagon Train.

Private life and death[link]

In 1927, Laughton began a relationship with Elsa Lanchester, at the time a cast mate in a stage play. The two were married in 1929, became American citizens in 1950, and remained together until Laughton's death. Over the years, they appeared together in several films, including Rembrandt (1936), Tales of Manhattan (1942) and The Big Clock (1948). Lanchester portrayed Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's fourth wife, opposite Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII. They both received Academy Award nominations for their performances in Witness for the Prosecution (1957) — Laughton for Best Actor, and Lanchester for Best Supporting Actress—but neither won. Laughton and Lanchester had no children.^[16][17] Laughton's bisexuality has been corroborated by several of his contemporaries and is generally accepted by Hollywood historians,^{[18][19][20][21]} However, actress Maureen O'Hara, a friend and co-star of Laughton, claimed that Laughton told her that he and his wife never had children because of a botched abortion which Lanchester had early in her career while performing burlesque and that indeed his biggest regret was never having children of his own.^[22] In her own autobiography, Lanchester acknowledged having had two abortions in her youth (one of the pregnancies purportedly by Laughton) although she didn't mention whether this had indeed left her incapable of becoming pregnant again. According to her biographer Charles Higham, the reason she didn't have children was that she didn't want any.^[23]

Death[link]

Charles Laughton died 15 December 1962, after a battle with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer) at age 63. The cremated remains of Laughton are interred in a marbled crypt of the Court of Remembrance courtyard, at Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.^[24]

Awards and nominations[link]

Laughton won the New York Film Critics Circle Awards for Mutiny on the Bounty and Ruggles of Red Gap in 1935.

Academy Awards

• 1933 Won Best Actor in a Leading Role, The Private Life of Henry VIII
• 1936 Nominated Best Actor in a Leading Role, Mutiny on the Bounty
• 1958 Nominated Best Actor in a Leading Role, Witness for the Prosecution

Filmography[link]

Theatre performances[link]

Actor[link]

• 1926: The Revizor [written] by Nikolai Gogol

first appearance, debut on the London stage (aka The Government Inspector)

• 1928: Alibi adapted from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

police drama, he is the first actor to play detective Hercule Poirot

• 1928: The Silver Tassie (premiere)
• 1931: Payment Deferred adapted from the novel by C. S. Forester

debut on the New York stage

• 1932: The Fatal Alibi adapted from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

police drama, Laughton is also the director (American version of Alibi)

• 1947: Galileo by Bertolt Brecht
• 1950: The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
• 1951 and 1952: Don Juan in Hell, the third act of Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw

drama, Laughton is also the director

• 1956–1957: Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw

comedy, Laughton is also the director

• 1959: King Lear by William Shakespeare

classic tragedy

Director[link]

• 1932: The Fatal Alibi adapted from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

police drama, Laughton also acts in the play.

• 1951 and 1952: Don Juan in Hell (the third act of Man and Superman) by George Bernard Shaw

drama, Laughton also acts in the play.

• 1953: John Brown's Body, adapted by Laughton from Stephen Vincent Benét

with Judith Anderson

• 1956–1957: Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw

comedy, Laughton also acts in the play

• 1954–1955: The Caine Mutiny Court Martial adapted from the novel by Herman Wouk

drama, with Henry Fonda, transferred in 1954 to the screen by Edward Dmytryk

Producer[link]

• 1955: 3 for Tonight

musical revue, with Harry Belafonte

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

• Brown, William (1970). Charles Laughton A Pictorial Treasury of his Films. New York: Falcon Enterprises. 
• Callow, Simon (1988). Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 0-8021-1047-9. 
• Crowe, Cameron (2001). Conversations With Wilder. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-375-70967-3. 
• Higham, Charles (1976). Charles Laughton: An Intimate Biography. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-09403-5. 
• Jones, Preston Neal (2004). Heaven and Hell to Play With: The Filming of The Night of the Hunter. New York: Limelight Editions. ISBN 0-87910-974-2. 
• Lanchester, Elsa (1938). Charles Laughton and I. London: Faber and Faber. p. 271. 
• Lanchester, Elsa (1983). Elsa Lanchester Herself. London: Michael Joseph. ISBN 0-7181-2309-3. 
• Lyon, James K. (1980). Bertolt Brecht in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-19-502639-X. 
• O'Hara, Maureen (2005). 'Tis Herself. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-4693-4. 
• Parker, John (ed), (1947). Who's Who in the Theatre 10th revised edition. London. pp. 892–3.. 
• Singer, Kurt (1954). The Charles Laughton Story. London: John C. Winston Company. 
• Tell Me a Story (1957) and The Fabulous Country (1962). Two literary anthologies selected by Charles Laughton. They contain pieces which were presented by him in his reading tours across America, with written introductions which give some insight about Laughton's thoughts. This selection presents texts from the Bible, Charles Dickens, Thomas Wolfe, Ray Bradbury, and James Thurber to name just a few.
• Diverse authors, articles in The Stonyhurst magazine: Charles Laughton at Stonyhurst by David Knight (Volume LIV, No. 501, 2005), Charles Laughton. A Talent in Bloom (1899–1931), by Gloria Porta (Volume LIV, No. 502, 2006)

External links[link]

Biography portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Charles Laughton

• Official website
• Charles Laughton at the Internet Movie Database
• Charles Laughton at the TCM Movie Database
• Charles Laughton at the Internet Broadway Database
• Charles Laughton at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Rooting for Laughton: Laughtonians of the world, unite! (Weblog)
• Gay Greats

• Call him Jack...Thank you for introducing me to Charles Laughton and to Life with a capital L!

Lee Marvin
Marvin in 1971.
Born	(1924-02-19)February 19, 1924 New York City, New York, United States
Died	August 29, 1987(1987-08-29) (aged 63) Tucson, Arizona, United States
Cause of death	Heart failure
Resting place	Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia, United States
Residence	Tucson, Arizona
Nationality	American
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1950–1986
Home town	Hartford, Connecticut
Spouse	Betty Ebeling (1951–67; divorced) Pamela Feeley (1970–87; his death)
Partner	Michelle Triola (1965-1970)

Lee Marvin (February 19, 1924 – August 29, 1987) was an American film actor.^[1] Known for his gravelly voice, white hair and 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m)^[2] stature, Marvin at first did supporting roles, mostly villains, soldiers and other hardboiled characters, but after winning an Academy Award for Best Actor for his dual roles in Cat Ballou (1965), he landed more heroic and sympathetic leading roles.