George Macready

George Peabody Macready, Jr.
Born	August 29, 1899(1899-08-29) Providence Rhode Island, USA
Died	July 2, 1973(1973-07-02) (aged 73) Los Angeles, California California
Residence	Los Angeles, California
Alma mater	Classical High School Brown University
Occupation	Actor
Spouse	Elizabeth Dana Macready (married 1931-42)
Children	Michael Macready Marcia Macready Elizabeth Macready

George Peabody Macready, Jr. (August 29, 1899 – July 2, 1973), was an American stage, film, and television actor often cast in roles as polished villains.

Background

Macready was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and graduated there from Classical High School and, in 1921, from Brown University, where he was a member of Delta Phi fraternity and won a letter as the football team manager. While in college, Macready was injured in an accident in a Model T Ford. He sustained a permanent scar on his right cheek, having been thrust through the windshield while traveling on an icy road when the vehicle skidded and hit a telephone pole. The injury, along with his high brow and perfect diction, gave Macready the Gothic look of an authoritarian or villainous character. Macready was stitched up by a veterinarian, but he caught scarlet fever during the ordeal.

Macready first worked in a bank in Providence and was then briefly a newspaperman in New York City before he turned to stage acting. He claimed to have been descended from the 19th century Shakespearean actor William Charles Macready. He made his Broadway debut in 1926 in The Scarlet Letter. Through 1958, he appeared in fifteen plays, both drama and comedy, including The Barretts of Wimpole Street, based on the family of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Acting career

Macready's penchant for acting was spurred in part by the director Richard Boleslawski. His Shakespearean stage credits include Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (1927), Malcolm in MacBeth (1928), and Paris in Romeo and Juliet (1934). On film, he played Marallus in the 1953 film adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. He also played Prince Ernst in the original stage version of Victoria Regina (1936), starring Helen Hayes.

His first film was Commandos Strike at Dawn in 1942, featuring Paul Muni. As Ballin Mundson in Gilda (1946), Macready is part of a deadly love triangle with the characters played by co-stars Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford. He would again play opposite Ford several years later in the post-war adventure The Green Glove (1952). Stanley Kubrick's anti-war film, Paths of Glory (1957), provided his other great role, self-serving French World War I General Paul Mireau, who is brought down by Kirk Douglas's character, Colonel Dax. He had worked with Douglas previously in Detective Story (1951) and later he appeared with Douglas again in John Frankenheimer's Seven Days in May (1964).

Macready also leaped into the Golden Age of Television, having appeared regularly on Dick Powell's Four Star Playhouse, Ronald W. Reagan's General Electric Theater, The Ford Television Theatre, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

He also appeared in many western television series, including Bat Masterson, Bonanza, The Dakotas, Gunsmoke, Have Gun - Will Travel, Laramie, The Rebel (once in the role of Confederate General Robert E. Lee), The Rifleman, Lancer, Riverboat, The Rough Riders, Chill Wills's Frontier Circus, Barry Sullivan's The Tall Man, Rory Calhoun's The Texan, and Steve McQueen's Wanted: Dead or Alive. In addition to westerns, he made appearances on Raymond Burr's Perry Mason, The Outer Limits, and Thriller, with Boris Karloff.

In the 1960s, Macready appeared for three years in the role of Martin Peyton in the ABC series Peyton Place, the first prime-time soap opera on American television, with Dorothy Malone in the title role of Constance MacKenzie.

One of Macready's most effective film roles was also one of his last - the role of United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull in the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!, a painstakingly accurate depiction of the events leading up to and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

Personal life

A cultured and expert art collector, he and his good friend, fellow-actor Vincent Price, were partners in a Beverly Hills art gallery in the 1940s. They later closed it as their acting careers mushroomed.

The veteran actor is father of actor/producer Michael Macready and the grandfather of the gymnast John Macready.

Macready died from emphysema in 1973, and he was among entertainers who donated their bodies to a medical school, joining Walter Pidgeon, Bobby Darin, Butterfly McQueen, and Spring Byington.

Partial filmography

• Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942) film debut
• Follow the Boys (1944)
• The Seventh Cross (1944)
• The Monster and the Ape (1945 serial)
• Counter-Attack (1945)
• My Name is Julia Ross (1945)
• Gilda (1946)
• Down to Earth (1947)
• The Big Clock (1948)
• Coroner Creek (1948)
• Knock on Any Door (1949)
• Alias Nick Beal (1949)
• Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950)
• A Lady Without Passport (1950)
• The Desert Hawk (1950)
• Tarzan's Peril (1951)
• The Desert Fox (1951)
• Detective Story (1951)
• The Green Glove (1952)
• The Golden Blade (1953)
• Julius Caesar (1953)
• Vera Cruz (1954)
• A Kiss Before Dying (1956)
• Paths of Glory (1957)
• The Alligator People (1959)
• Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)
• Taras Bulba (1962)
• Seven Days in May (1964)
• Dead Ringer (1964)
• Where Love Has Gone (1964)
• "The Long Morrow", The Twilight Zone episode (1964)
• "The Invisibles", The Outer Limits episode (1963)
• "Production and Decay of Strange Particles", The Outer Limits episode (1964)
• The Human Duplicators (1965)
• The Great Race (1965)
• Fame Is the Name of the Game (1966 TV movie)
• The Cemetery, segment of the Night Gallery pilot (1969)
• Daughter of the Mind (1969 TV movie)
• Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) narrator
• Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
• The Return of Count Yorga (1971)

External links

• George Macready at the Internet Movie Database
• George Macready at AllRovi
• George Macready at the Internet Broadway Database
• George Macready at Find a Grave with photo