George Macready
George Macready | |
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![]() George Macready in the trailer for Paths of Glory (1957) | |
Born | George Peabody Macready Jr. August 29, 1899 Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. |
Died | July 2, 1973 Los Angeles, California, U.S. | (aged 73)
Alma mater | Classical High School Brown University |
Occupation | Actor |
Years active | 1926–1971 |
Spouse | Elizabeth Dana Patterson Macready (1931–1943; 3 children) |
George Peabody Macready Jr.[1] (August 29, 1899 – July 2, 1973)[2] was an American stage, film, and television actor often cast in roles as polished villains.[3]
Background
Macready was born in Providence, Rhode Island,[4] and graduated from the local Classical High School[1] (1917) 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 sustained a permanent scar on his right cheek after being thrust through the windshield of a Ford Model T when the vehicle skidded on an icy road and hit a telephone pole. He was stitched up by a veterinarian, but he caught scarlet fever during the ordeal. The injury, along with his high brow and perfect diction, gave Macready the Gothic look of an authoritarian or villainous character.
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 Macready.
Acting career
Theatre
Macready made his Broadway debut in a 1926 stage adaptation of 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 poetess, Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Macready's penchant for acting was spurred in part by the director Richard Boleslawski. His Shakespearean stage credits included 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 portrayed Prince Ernst in the original stage version of Victoria Regina (1936), starring Helen Hayes.
Film
Macready's first film was Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942), which starred Paul Muni. In Gilda (1946), Macready's character Ballin Mundson enters a deadly love triangle with characters played by co-stars with 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 Macready with 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 in two more films: Vincente Minnelli's Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) and John Frankenheimer's Seven Days in May (1964). In 1965, he was cast in a rare comedy role as General Kuhster in Blake Edwards's film The Great Race.
One of Macready's last film roles was as United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), a depiction of the events leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Television
Macready made four guest appearances on Raymond Burr's Perry Mason, including the role of murder victim Milo Girard in the 1958 episode "The Case of the Purple Woman." He was also cast regularly in such series as Four Star Playhouse, General Electric Theater, The Ford Television Theatre, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Adventures in Paradise and The Islanders.
Macready appeared in many western television series produced in the 1950s and 1960s, including Bat Masterson, Bonanza, The Dakotas, Gunsmoke, Have Gun - Will Travel, The Rebel (once in the role of Confederate General Robert E. Lee), The Rifleman, Lancer, Riverboat, The Rough Riders, Chill Wills's Frontier Circus, The Texan and Steve McQueen's Wanted: Dead or Alive. Also on TV, he was seen in episodes of The Outer Limits, Boris Karloff's Thriller, Get Smart with Don Adams and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. with Robert Vaughn.
Macready also portrayed Colonel John Barrington in the 1961 episode "Handful of Fire" of the NBC Western series Laramie.[5]
Macready was cast as Cyrus Canfield, a vengeful father searching for his runaway teenaged daughter, played by Floy Dean, in the May 26, 1962, series finale of NBC's The Tall Man.
In the 1960s, Macready performed for three years in the role of Martin Peyton in ABC's Peyton Place, the first prime-time soap opera on American television, with Dorothy Malone in the lead role of Constance MacKenzie.
He played publishing magnate Glenn Howard in the TV movie Fame Is the Name of the Game (1966) starring Anthony Franciosa, but was replaced by Gene Barry in the role when the film was subsequently used as the pilot for the television series The Name of the Game with Franciosa, Barry, and Robert Stack revolving in the lead.
Personal life
An art collector, Macready was a partner with colleague Vincent Price in a Beverly Hills art gallery called The Little Gallery, which they opened in 1943. (Macready had played Price's brother on Broadway in Victoria Regina.) According to Lucy Chase Williams' book The Complete Films of Vincent Price, "The establishment merited photos and two full columns in Newsweek magazine, but rent increases forced The Little Gallery to close after two years."[citation needed]
Macready married actress Elizabeth Dana Patterson.[1] He was the father of actor/producer Michael Macready, Marcia Macready and Elizabeth Dana Macready. He is the grandfather of gymnast John Macready and 3 other grandchildren and 6 great grandchildren.
Death
Macready died of emphysema in 1973 and his body was donated to the UCLA School of Medicine.[2]
Filmography
- Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942) as Schoolteacher
- Follow the Boys (1944) as Walter Bruce
- The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944) as Dutch Army captain (uncredited)
- Wilson (1944) as William McCombs (uncredited)
- The Seventh Cross (1944) as Bruno Sauer
- The Soul of a Monster (1944) as Dr. George Winson
- The Conspirators (1944) as Schimitt's Special Agent (uncredited)
- The Missing Juror (1944) as Harry Wharton / Jerome K. Bentley
- The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1945) as Fitz-Herbert
- A Song to Remember (1945) as Alfred de Musset (uncredited)
- I Love a Mystery (1945) as Jefferson Monk
- The Monster and the Ape (1945) as Prof. Ernst
- Counter-Attack (1945) as Col. Semenov
- Don Juan Quilligan (1945) as District Attorney (uncredited)
- My Name is Julia Ross (1945) as Ralph Hughes
- The Fighting Guardsman (1946) as Gaston de Montrevel
- Gilda (1946) as Ballin Mundson
- The Man Who Dared (1946) as Donald Wayne
- The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1946) as Matthew Stoker
- The Return of Monte Cristo (1946) as Henri de la Roche
- Down to Earth (1947) as Joe Manion
- The Swordsman (1948) as Robert Glowan
- The Black Arrow (1948) as Sir Daniel Brackley
- The Big Clock (1948) as Steve Hagen
- Coroner Creek (1948) as Younger Miles
- Beyond Glory (1948) as Maj. General Bond
- The Gallant Blade (1949) as Gen. Cadeau
- Knock on Any Door (1949) as Dist. Atty. Kerman
- Alias Nick Beal (1949) as Reverend Thomas Garfield
- Johnny Allegro (1949) as Morgan Vallin
- The Doolins of Oklahoma (1949) as Marshal Sam Hughes
- The Nevadan (1950) as Edward Galt
- Fortunes of Captain Blood (1950) as Marquis de Riconete
- Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950) as King John
- A Lady Without Passport (1950) as Palinov
- The Desert Hawk (1950) as Prince Murad
- Tarzan's Peril (1951) as Radijeck
- The Golden Horde (1951) as Raven the Shaman
- The Desert Fox (1951) as Gen. Fritz Bayerlein
- Detective Story (1951) as Dr. Karl Schneider
- The Green Glove (1952) as Count Paul Rona
- Treasure of the Golden Condor (1953) as Marquis de St. Malo
- I Beheld His Glory (1953, TV Movie) as Cornelius
- Julius Caesar (1953) as Marullus
- The Stranger Wore a Gun (1953) as Jules Mourret
- The Golden Blade (1953) as Jafar
- Duffy of San Quentin (1954) as John C. Winant
- Vera Cruz (1954) as Emperor Maximilian
- A Kiss Before Dying (1956) as Leo Kingship
- Thunder Over Arizona (1956) as Mayor Ervin Plummer
- The Abductors (1957) as Jack Langley
- Paths of Glory (1957) as Brigadier General Paul Mireau
- Gunfire at Indian Gap (1957) as Mr. Jefferson
- Plunderers of Painted Flats (1959) as Ed Sammpson
- The Alligator People (1959) as Dr. Mark Sinclair
- Jet Over the Atlantic (1959) as Lord Robert Leverett
- Family Classics: The Three Musketeers (1960, TV Movie)
- Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) as Lew Jordan
- Taras Bulba (1962) as Governor
- Seven Days in May (1964) as Christopher Todd
- Dead Ringer (1964) as Paul Harrison
- Where Love Has Gone (1964) as Gordon Harris
- The Human Duplicators (1965) as Prof. Vaughn Dornheimer
- Memorandum for a Spy (1965, TV Movie) as Graham Jutland
- The Great Race (1965) as General Kuhster
- Fame Is the Name of the Game (1966, TV Movie) as Gleen Howard
- Night Gallery (1969, TV Movie, segment "The Cemetery") as William Hendricks
- Daughter of the Mind (1969, TV Movie) as Dr. Frank Ferguson
- Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) as Narrator
- Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) as Cordell Hull
- The Return of Count Yorga (1971) as Prof. Rightstat (final film role)
Partial television credits
- The Living Christ Series ("Crucifixion and Resurrection" and "Triumph and Defeat"), 1951 as Cornelius
- Bonanza ("A Rose for Lotta"), 1959 as Alpheus Troy
- Thriller ("The Weird Tailor", TV, 1961) as Mr. Smith
- The Outer Limits ("The Invisibles", 1963, and "Production and Decay of Strange Particles", 1964) as Gov. Lawrence K Hillerman / Dr. Marshall
- The Twilight Zone ("The Long Morrow", 1964) as Dr. Bixler
Peyton Place (1962-1965) as Martin Peyton
References
- ^ a b c Jarrett, Diane (July 2019). "George Macready: A Loving Parent". Classic Images (529): 58–67.
- ^ a b Wilson, Scott (2016). Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons, 3d ed. McFarland. p. 467. ISBN 9781476625997. Retrieved 19 June 2017.
- ^ Obituary Variety, July 11, 1973, page 63.
- ^ Monush, Barry (2003). Screen World Presents the Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors: From the silent era to 1965. Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 456. ISBN 9781557835512. Retrieved 25 July 2019.
- ^ "Laramie: "Handful of Fire", December 5, 1961". Internet Movie Data Base. Retrieved September 22, 2012.
External links
- George Macready at IMDb
- George Macready at AllMovie
- George Macready at the Internet Broadway Database
- George Macready at Find a Grave with photo