Wallace Beery | |
|---|---|
 Beeryc. 1930 | |
| Born | Wallace Fitzgerald Beery (1885-04-01)April 1, 1885 Clay County, Missouri, U.S. |
| Died | April 15, 1949(1949-04-15) (aged 64) |
| Resting place | Forest Lawn Memorial Park,Glendale, California, U.S. |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1904–1949 |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 1 |
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Wallace Fitzgerald Beery (April 1, 1885 – April 15, 1949) was an American film and stage actor.[1] He is best known for his portrayal of Bill inMin and Bill (1930) oppositeMarie Dressler, as General Director Preysing inGrand Hotel (1932), as the pirateLong John Silver inTreasure Island (1934), asPancho Villa inViva Villa! (1934) for which he won theVolpi Cup for Best Actor, and his title role inThe Champ (1931), for which he won theAcademy Award for Best Actor. Beery appeared in some 250 films during a 36-year career. His contract withMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer stipulated in 1932 that he would be paid $1 more than any other contract player at the studio. This made Beery the highest-paid film actor in the world during the early 1930s. He was the brother of actorNoah Beery and uncle of actorNoah Beery Jr.
For his contributions to the film industry, Beery was posthumously inducted into theHollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.[2]
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Beery was born the youngest of three boys on April 1, 1885, inClay County, Missouri, nearSmithville.[3] The Beery family left the farm in the 1890s and moved to nearbyKansas City, Missouri, where his father was a police officer.[4] A fourth brother, Charles, was born in 1880 but survived only a day after his birth.[5] There might have been an older sister but information is faint.
Beery attended the Chase School in Kansas City and took piano lessons as well, but showed little love for academic matters. He ran away from home twice, the first time returning after a short time, quitting school and working in the Kansas Citytrain yards as anengine wiper.[3] Beery ran away from home a second time at age 16 and joined theRingling Brothers Circus as an assistant elephant trainer. He left two years later after being clawed by a leopard.
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Wallace Beery joined his older brotherNoah in New York City in 1904, finding work in comic opera as a baritone, and appeared onBroadway and insummer stock theatre. He was inThe Belle of the West in 1905. His most notable early role came in 1907 when he starred inThe Yankee Tourist to good reviews.[6]
In 1913, he moved to Chicago to work forEssanay Studios. His first movie was likely a comedy short,His Athletic Wife (1913).
Beery was then cast asSweedie, a Swedish maid character he played indrag in a series of short comedy films from 1914 to 1916.Sweedie Learns to Swim (1914) co-starredBen Turpin.Sweedie Goes to College (1915) starredGloria Swanson, whom Beery married the following year.[7]
Other Beery films (mostly shorts) from this period includedIn and Out (1914),The Ups and Downs (1914),Cheering a Husband (1914),Madame Double X (1914),Ain't It the Truth (1915),Two Hearts That Beat as Ten (1915), andThe Fable of the Roistering Blades (1915).
The Slim Princess (1915), withFrancis X. Bushman, was one of his earliest feature-length films. Beery also didThe Broken Pledge (1915) andA Dash of Courage (1916), both with Swanson.
Beery played a German soldier inThe Little American (1917) withMary Pickford, directed byCecil B. De Mille. He did some comedies forMack Sennett,Maggie's First False Step (1917) andTeddy at the Throttle (1917), but he gradually left that genre and specialized in portrayals of villains prior to becoming a major leading man during the sound era.
In 1917, Beery portrayedPancho Villa inPatria at a time when Villa was still active inMexico. (Beery reprised the role 17 years later inViva Villa!.)
Beery was a villainous German inThe Unpardonable Sin (1919) withBlanche Sweet. For Paramount, he didThe Love Burglar (1919) withWallace Reid;Victory (1919), withJack Holt;Behind the Door (1919), as another villainous German; andThe Life Line (1919) with Holt.
Beery was the villain in five major releases in 1920:813;The Virgin of Stamboul for directorTod Browning;The Mollycoddle withDouglas Fairbanks, in which Fairbanks and Beery fist fought as they tumbled down a steep mountain; and in the noncomedicWesternThe Round-Up starringRoscoe Arbuckle as an obese cowboy in a well-received serious film with the tagline "Nobody loves a fat man." Beery continued his villainy cycle that year withThe Last of the Mohicans, playing Magua.
Beery had a supporting part inThe Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) withRudolph Valentino. He was a villainous Tong leader inA Tale of Two Worlds (1921) and was the bad guy again inSleeping Acres (1922),Wild Honey (1922), andI Am the Law (1922), which also featured his brother Noah Beery Sr.
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Beery had a large then-rare heroic part asKing Richard I (Richard the Lion-Hearted) inRobin Hood (1922), starringDouglas Fairbanks asRobin Hood. The lavish movie was a huge success and spawned a sequel the following year starring Beery in the title role ofRichard the Lion-Hearted.
Beery had an important unbilled cameo as "the Ape-Man" inA Blind Bargain (1922) starringLon Chaney (Beery is seen crouching, in full ape-man make-up, in the background of some of the movie's posters), and a supporting role inThe Flame of Life (1923). He played another historical ruler,King Philip IV of Spain, inThe Spanish Dancer (1923) withPola Negri.
Beery starred in an action melodrama,Stormswept (1923) forFBO Films alongsideNoah Beery Sr. The tagline on the movie's posters was "Wallace and Noah Beery – The Two Greatest Character Actors on the American Screen."
Beery played his third royal, theDuc de Tours, inAshes of Vengeance (1923) withNorma Talmadge, then didDrifting (1923) withPriscilla Dean for director Browning.
Beery had the title role inBavu (1923), aboutBolsheviks and theRussian Revolution. He co-starred withBuster Keaton in the comedyThree Ages (1923), the first feature Keaton wrote, produced, directed, and starred in.
Beery was a villain inThe Eternal Struggle (1923), aMountie drama, produced byLouis B. Mayer, who eventually became crucial to Beery's career. He was reunited with Dean and Browning inWhite Tiger (1923), then played the title role in the aforementionedRichard the Lion-Hearted (1923), a sequel toRobin Hood based onSir Walter Scott'sThe Talisman; a print ofRichard the Lion-Hearted is held at the Archives du Film du CNC in Bois d'Arcy.[8]
Beery was inThe Drums of Jeopardy (1923) and had a supporting role inThe Sea Hawk (1924) for director Frank Lloyd. He also appeared in a supporting role forClarence Brown'sThe Signal Tower (1925) starringVirginia Valli andRockliffe Fellowes.
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Beery signed a contract with Paramount Pictures. He had a support role inAdventure (1925) directed byVictor Fleming.
At First National, he was given the star role ofProfessor Challenger inArthur Conan Doyle's dinosaur epicThe Lost World (1925), arguably his silent performance most frequently screened in the modern era. Beery was top billed in Paramount'sThe Devil's Cargo (1925) for Victor Fleming, and supported inThe Night Club (1925),The Pony Express (1925) forJames Cruze, andThe Wanderer (1925) forRaoul Walsh.
Beery starred in a comedy withRaymond Hatton,Behind the Front (1926), and he was a villain inVolcano! (1926). He was a bos'n inOld Ironsides (1926) for director James Cruze, withCharles Farrell in the romantic lead.
Beery had the title role in the baseball movieCasey at the Bat (1927). He was reunited with Hatton inFireman, Save My Child (1927) andNow We're in the Air (1927). The latter also featuredLouise Brooks, who was Beery's costar inBeggars of Life (1928), directed byWilliam Wellman, which was Paramount's first part-talkie movie.
He made a fourth comedy with Hatton,Wife Savers (1929), then Beery starred inChinatown Nights (1929) for Wellman, produced by a youngDavid O. Selznick. This film was shot silent with the voices dubbed in by the actors afterward, which worked spectacularly well with Beery's resonant voice, although the technique was not used again during the silent era for another full-length feature. Beery then played inStairs of Sand (1929), a Western also starringJean Arthur, before being fired by Paramount.
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Irving Thalberg signed Beery to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) as a character actor. The association began well when Beery played the savage convict Butch, a role originally intended forLon Chaney (who died that same year), in the highly successful 1930 prison filmThe Big House, directed byGeorge W. Hill; Beery was nominated for theAcademy Award for Best Actor.
Beery's second film for MGM was also a huge success:Billy the Kid (1930), an earlywidescreen picture in which he playedPat Garrett. He supportedJohn Gilbert inWay for a Sailor (1930) andGrace Moore inA Lady's Morals (1930), portrayingP. T. Barnum in the latter.
Beery was well established as a leading man and top-rank character actor. The picture that really made him one of the cinema's foremost stars wasMin and Bill (1930) oppositeMarie Dressler and directed byGeorge W. Hill, a sensational success.[9]
Beery made a third film with Hill,The Secret Six (1931), a gangster movie withJean Harlow andClark Gable in key supporting roles. The picture was popular, but was surpassed at the box office byThe Champ, which Beery made withJackie Cooper for directorKing Vidor. The film, especially written for Beery, was another box-office sensation. Beery shared theBest ActorOscar withFredric March. Though March received one vote more than Beery, Academy rules at the time—since rescinded—defined results within one vote of each other as "ties."[10] (An alternate account has MGM headLouis B. Mayer storming backstage at the Oscars and demanding that March and Beery share that year'sAcademy Award for Best Actor since the vote was so close.)
Beery's career went from strength to strength.Hell Divers (1932), a naval airplane epic also starring a youngClark Gable billed under Beery, was a big hit. So, too, was the all-starGrand Hotel (1932), in which Beery was billed fourth, underGreta Garbo,John Barrymore, andJoan Crawford, one of the very few times he would not be top billed for the rest of his career. In 1932, his contract with MGM stipulated that he be paid a dollar more than any other contract player at the studio, making him the world's highest-paid actor.
Beery was a German wrestler inFlesh (1932), a hit directed byJohn Ford, but Ford removed his directorial credit before the film opened, so the picture screened with no director listed despite being labeled "A John Ford Production" in the opening title card. Next Beery was in another all-star ensemble blockbuster,Dinner at Eight (1933), with Jean Harlow holding her own as Beery's comically bickering wife. This time, Beery was billed third, underMarie Dressler andJohn Barrymore.
Beery was lent to the new20th Century Pictures for the boisterously fast-paced comedy/dramaThe Bowery (1933), also starringGeorge Raft, Jackie Cooper, andFay Wray, and featuringPert Kelton, under the direction of Raoul Walsh. The picture was a smash hit.
Back at MGM, he played the title role of Pancho Villa inViva Villa! (1933) and was reunited with Dressler inTugboat Annie (1933), a massive hit. He wasLong John Silver inTreasure Island (1934), MGM's third-largest hit of the season, and remains currently viewed as featuring one of Beery's iconic performances.[11]
Beery returned to 20th Century Productions forThe Mighty Barnum (1934), in which he played P. T. Barnum again. Back at MGM, he was a kindly sergeant inWest Point of the Air (1935) and was in an all-star spectacular,China Seas (1935), this time billed beneath Clark Gable.
O'Shaughnessy's Boy (1935) reunited Beery and Jackie Cooper. He had the lead as the drunken uncle in MGM's adaptation ofAh, Wilderness! (1936) and went back to 20th Century – now20th Century Fox – forA Message to Garcia (1936) withBarbara Stanwyck.
At MGM, he was inOld Hutch (1936) andThe Good Old Soak (1937), then he was back at Fox forSlave Ship (1937), taking second billing underWarner Baxter, a rarity for Beery afterMin and Bill catapulted his career into the stratosphere in 1931, during which he received top billing in all but six films (Min and Bill,Grand Hotel,Tugboat Annie,Dinner at Eight,China Seas with Gable and Harlow, andSlave Ship).
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The status of Beery's films went into a decline.[why?] After an abrupt European vacation,[12][13] Beery was inThe Bad Man of Brimstone (1938) withDennis O'Keefe (and Noah Beery Sr. in a cameo role as a bartender),Port of Seven Seas (1938) withMaureen O'Sullivan,Stablemates (1938) withMickey Rooney,Stand Up and Fight (1939) withRobert Taylor,Sergeant Madden (1939) withTom Brown,Thunder Afloat (1939) withChester Morris,The Man from Dakota (1940) withDolores del Río, and20 Mule Team (1940) withMarjorie Rambeau,Anne Baxter, andNoah Beery Jr., enjoying top billing in all of them.
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Wyoming (1940) teamed Beery withMarjorie Main. AfterThe Bad Man (1941), which also stars Lionel Barrymore and futurePresident of the United StatesRonald Reagan, and was theremake of aWalter Hustonpicture, MGM reunited Beery and Main inBarnacle Bill (1941),The Bugle Sounds (1941), andJackass Mail (1942).
Beery appeared in a war film, aTechnicolor comedy titledSalute to the Marines (1943), then was back with Main inRationing (1944).Barbary Coast Gent (1944), an extremely broad Western comedy in which Beery played a bombastic con man, teamed him withBinnie Barnes. He did another war film,This Man's Navy (1945), then made another Western with Main,Bad Bascomb (1946), a huge hit, helped primarily byMargaret O'Brien's casting.
The Mighty McGurk (1947) put Beery with another child star of the studio,Dean Stockwell.Alias a Gentleman (1947) was the first of Beery's films to lose money during the sound era. Beery received top billing for the hitA Date with Judy (1949), a popular musical featuringElizabeth Taylor. Beery's last film, again featuring Main,Big Jack (1949), also lost money according to Mannix's reckoning.[14] Beery died of a heart attack three days after the picture's release.
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Many of Beery's colleagues considered him to be misanthropic and difficult to work with.Robert Young described Beery as a "shitty person". On set, he often never bothered to learn his lines and instead chose to take from other actors' characters and then resent it when his theft was pointed out. When prompting for another actor's close-up, Beery would read the wrong lines, making it harder for his co-stars to meet their marks. Beery was "loathed by everybody, and happily oblivious."[15]
Mickey Rooney was one of Beery's few co-stars at MGM to consistently speak highly of him in subsequent decades. In his memoir, Rooney described Beery as "... a lovable, shambling kind of guy who never seemed to know that his shirttail belonged inside his pants, but always knew when a little kid actor needed a smile and a wink or a word of encouragement." He did concede that "not everyone loved [Beery] as much as I did." Rooney noted thatHoward Strickling, MGM's head of publicity, once went toLouis B. Mayer to complain that Beery was stealing props from the studio's sets. "And that wasn't all", Rooney continued. "He went on for some minutes about the trouble that Beery was always causing him ... Mayer sighed and said, 'Yes, Howard, Beery's a son of a bitch. But he'sour son of a bitch.' Strickling got the point. A family has to be tolerant of its black sheep, particularly if they brought a lot of money into the family fold, which Beery certainly did."[16]
Several of MGM's child actors recalled unpleasant encounters with Beery.Jackie Cooper, who made several films with him early in his career, called him "a big disappointment." Cooper accused Beery of upstaging and other attempts to undermine his performances out of what Cooper presumed was jealousy. He recalled impulsively throwing his arms around Beery after one especially heartfelt scene, only to be gruffly pushed away.[17]Margaret O'Brien who co-starred with Beery inBad Bascomb (1946), stated that she got along with the actor but claimed that crew members had to protect her from Beery's insistence on constantly pinching her.[18]
On March 27, 1916, at the age of 30, Beery married 17-year-old actressGloria Swanson in Los Angeles.[19] The two had co-starred inSweedie Goes to College.[7] Although Beery had enjoyed popularity with hisSweedie shorts, his career had taken a dip, and during the marriage to Swanson, he relied on her as a breadwinner. According to Swanson's autobiography, Beery raped her on their wedding night, and later tricked her into swallowing anabortifacient when she was pregnant, which caused her to lose their child.[20] Swanson filed for divorce in 1917 and it was finalized in 1918.[19]
On August 4, 1924, Beery married actress Rita Gilman(née Mary Areta Gilman; 1898–1986) in Los Angeles.[21] The couple adopted Carol Ann Priester (1930–2013), daughter of Rita Beery's mother's half-sister, Juanita Priester(née Caplinger; 1899–1931) and her husband, Erwin William Priester (1897–1969). After 14 years of marriage, Rita filed for divorce on May 1, 1939, inCarson City,Ormsby County,Nevada. Within 20 minutes of filing, she won the decree. Rita remarried 15 days later, on May 16, 1939, to Jessen Albert D. Foyt (1907–1945), filing her marriage license with the same county clerk in Carson City.
Around December 1939, Beery, recently divorced, adopted a seven-month-old girl, Phyllis Ann Beery.[22] Phyllis appeared in MGM publicity photos when adopted, but was never mentioned again.[23] Beery told the press he had taken the girl in from a single mother, recently divorced, but he had filed no official adoption papers.[24]
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On February 13, 1948, Gloria Schumm (or Gloria Smith Beery,née Florence W. Smith; 1916–1989) filed a paternity suit against Beery. Beery, through his lawyer, Norman Ronald Tyre (1910–2002), initially offered $6,000 as a settlement, but denied being the father of her child. Gloria had given birth on February 7, 1948, to Johan Richard Wallace Schumm, while married to Stuttgart-born Hollywood actorHans Schumm (né Johann Josef Eugen Schumm; 1896–1990). In the early stages of pregnancy, Gloria had met with Beery at his home, where he gave her the name and address of a physician to submit to an examination.[25] At or around that time, she also asked Beery to marry her to "legitimatize the expected child" (her words), which Beery refused. Gloria and Schumm had divorced in 1944, but remarried on August 21, 1947, after realizing that she was pregnant.
According to newspapers, Gloria claimed to have been intimate with Wallace Beery on or about May 1, 1947, at his home inBeverly Hills (in the court proceedings, however, she claimed it had occurred on May 17). Beery conceded that he had known Gloria for about 15 years, and that under the pseudonym "Gloria Whitney", she had playedbit roles in six films in which he starred. She again separated from Hans Schumm on April 15, 1948.
In December 1937, comedic actor andThree Stooges founderTed Healy was involved in a drunken altercation atCafe Trocadero on theSunset Strip. E. J. Fleming, in his 2005 book,The Fixers: Eddie Mannix, Howard Strickling and the MGM Publicity Machine, asserts that Healy was attacked by three men: future James Bond producerAlbert "Cubby" Broccoli, local mob figurePat DiCicco (who was Broccoli's cousin as well as the former husband ofThelma Todd and the future husband ofGloria Vanderbilt), and Wallace Beery. Fleming writes that this beating led to Healy's death a few days later.[12][13]
There is no documentation in contemporaneous news reports that either Beery or DiCicco was present.[26] Broccoli admitted that he was indeed involved in a fistfight with Healy at the Trocadero.[27] The official autopsy names Healy's cause of death as acute toxicnephritis secondary to acute and chronicalcoholism.[28]
Beery owned and flew his own planes,[29] including aHoward DGA-11. On April 15, 1933, he was commissioned a lieutenant commander in theUnited States Navy Reserve atNRAB Long Beach.[30] One of his proudest achievements was catching the largestgiant black sea bass in the world — 515 pounds (234 kg) — offSanta Catalina Island in 1916, a record that stood for 35 years.[31]
In 1943, PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order creatingJackson Hole National Monument to protect the land adjoining the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. Local ranchers, outraged at the loss of grazing lands, compared FDR's action to Hitler's taking of Austria. Led by an aging Beery, they protested by herding 500 cattle across the monument lands without a permit.[32]
Beery supportedThomas Dewey in the1944 United States presidential election.[33]
Beery died of aheart attack on April 15, 1949, at age 64, collapsing while reading a newspaper at his Beverly Hills home.[34] His body was interred atForest Lawn Memorial Park inGlendale, California. The inscription on his grave reads, "No man is indispensable, but some are irreplaceable."
Beery diedintestate. In the paternity suit, Gloria Schumm's attorneys demanded $104,135 against Beery's $2,220,000 estate. In February 1952, Judge Newcomb Condee approved a $26,750 settlement from the estate. Gloria Schumm accepted the settlement, and Beery's paternity of Johan Schumm was not acknowledged.
WhenMickey Rooney'sfather died less than a year later, Rooney arranged to have him buried next to his old friend. "I thought it was fitting that these two comedians should rest in peace, side by side," he wrote.[35]
For his contributions to the film industry, Wallace Beery posthumously received amotion-picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, located at 7001Hollywood Boulevard.[2]
Beery is mentioned in the filmBarton Fink, in which the lead character has been hired to write a wrestling screenplay to star Beery. It is called "a Wallace Beery wrestling picture" as though its own subgenre.[36] Another Coen brothers film,Hail, Caesar!, features a mockingly named "Wallace Beery Conference Room" scene within a Hollywood studio.
Beery is also mentioned in an episode of the 1980s sitcom classic “The Golden Girls.” Estelle Getty (Sofia) uses an analogy pairing Beery with Adolphe Menjou, a rival film star of the bygone era.
In the Sopranos episode "House Arrest" (S2 EP11), Richie Aprile makes a disparaging comment about Tony Soprano to Uncle Junior by saying that he saw him at the Garbagemen's Ball and that "You should see him in the golf outfit, he looked like Wallace Beery".
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| Year | Award | Film | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1930 | Best Actor | The Big House | Nominated |
| 1932 | The Champ | Won |
| Year | Award | Film | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1934 | Volpi Cup for Best Actor | Viva Villa! | Won |
