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]
George Macready | |
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Born | (1899-08-29)August 29, 1899 Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. |
Died | July 2, 1973(1973-07-02) (aged 73) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Alma mater | Brown University |
Occupation | Actor |
Years active | 1926–1971 |
Spouse | Elizabeth Patterson
(m. 1931; div. 1943) |
Children | 3 |
Relatives | John Macready (grandson) |
Macready was born in Providence, Rhode Island[4] on August 29, 1899. He graduated from the local Classical High School[1] in 1917 and from Brown University in 1921, 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.
Macready first worked in a bank in Providence and then briefly for a newspaper in New York City before he turned to stage acting. He claimed to have been descended from the 19th-century Shakespearean actor William Macready.
Macready made his Broadway debut in 1926, performing in the role of Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale in an adaptation of The Scarlet Letter.[5] 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.
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.
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 Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford. He again played opposite Ford several years later in the postwar adventure The Green Glove (1952).
Stanley Kubrick's antiwar film Paths of Glory (1957) provided Macready with his other great role, the sadistic and 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.
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 performed in a variety of television series produced in the 1950s and 1960s, including many Westerns such as 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, Laramie, 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, The Twilight Zone, Boris Karloff's Thriller, Kentucky Jones, Get Smart with Don Adams, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. with Robert Vaughn.
Macready was cast as Cyrus Canfield, a vengeful father searching for his runaway teenage 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 primetime 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.
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, "In the spring of 1943, during the months he was filming THE SONG OF BERNADETTE for 20th Century Fox, Vincent Price and Macready opened The Little Gallery in Beverly Hills. "We rented a hole in the wall next door to Martindale's book shop and a very popular bar, figuring correctly that we'd catch a mixed clientele of erudites and inebriates." Price and Macready saw the gallery not only as an indulgence of their own interests, but as a showcase for young artists, and a way to expose the general public to art and art appreciation. The establishment merited photos and two full columns in Newsweek magazine, but rent increases forced The Little Gallery to close after two years. Actor Robert Hutton remembers one of the slow days: "[Vincent] was a great guy. I used to go to Martindale's every morning to pick up the trades. I saw Vincent leaning up against the frame of the door and looking like, 'Why did I open up this art shop??'... I said, 'How're things going?' and he just glared at me and said, 'F**k you, Hutton!' He knew that things were not going well, I knew it, and he knew I knew! That just killed me. I was still laughing when I came out of Martindale's. He was such a good guy." When things were better, Price remembered Igor Stravinksy, Thomas Mann and Sergei Rachmaninoff browsing through the Gallery and then going to the deli for lox and bagels."[6]
In 1931, Macready married actress Elizabeth Dana Patterson; they divorced in 1943.[1] He was the father of activist Elizabeth Dana Macready, actor/producer Michael Macready, and Marcia Macready. He was the grandfather of gymnast John Macready.[citation needed]
Macready died of emphysema on July 2, 1973. His body was donated to the UCLA School of Medicine.[2]
Year | Film | Role | Director | Notes |
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1942 | Commandos Strike at Dawn | Schoolteacher | John Farrow | |
1944 | Follow the Boys | Walter Bruce | A. Edward Sutherland | |
1944 | The Story of Dr. Wassell | Dutch Army captain | Cecil B. DeMille | uncredited |
1944 | Wilson | William McCombs | Henry King | uncredited |
1944 | The Seventh Cross | Bruno Sauer | Fred Zinnemann | |
1944 | The Soul of a Monster | Dr. George Winson | Will Jason | |
1944 | The Conspirators | Schimitt's Special Agent | Jean Negulesco | uncredited |
1944 | The Missing Juror | Harry Wharton / Jerome K. Bentley | Budd Boetticher(as Oscar Boetticher Jr.) | |
1945 | The Bandit of Sherwood Forest | Fitz-Herbert | George Sherman | |
1945 | A Song to Remember | Alfred de Musset | Charles Vidor | uncredited |
1945 | I Love a Mystery | Jefferson Monk | Henry Levin | |
1945 | The Monster and the Ape | Prof. Ernst | Howard Bretherton | |
1945 | Counter-Attack | Col. Semenov | Zoltan Korda | |
1945 | Don Juan Quilligan | District Attorney | Frank Tuttle | uncredited |
1945 | My Name is Julia Ross | Ralph Hughes | Joseph H. Lewis | |
1946 | The Fighting Guardsman | Gaston de Montrevel | Henry Levin | |
1946 | Gilda | Ballin Mundson | Charles Vidor | |
1946 | The Man Who Dared | Donald Wayne | John Sturges | |
1946 | The Walls Came Tumbling Down | Matthew Stoker | Lothar Mendes | |
1946 | The Return of Monte Cristo | Henri de la Roche | Henry Levin | |
1947 | Down to Earth | Joe Manion | Alexander Hall | |
1948 | The Swordsman | Robert Glowan | Joseph H. Lewis | |
1948 | The Black Arrow | Sir Daniel Brackley | Gordon Douglas | |
1948 | The Big Clock | Steve Hagen | John Farrow | |
1948 | Coroner Creek | Younger Miles | Ray Enright | |
1948 | Beyond Glory | Maj. General Bond | John Farrow | |
1949 | The Gallant Blade | Gen. Cadeau | Henry Levin | |
1949 | Knock on Any Door | Dist. Atty. Kerman | Nicholas Ray | |
1949 | Alias Nick Beal | Reverend Thomas Garfield | John Farrow | |
1949 | Johnny Allegro | Morgan Vallin | Ted Tetzlaff | |
1949 | The Doolins of Oklahoma | Marshal Sam Hughes | Gordon Douglas | |
1950 | The Nevadan | Edward Galt | Gordon Douglas | |
1950 | Fortunes of Captain Blood | Marquis de Riconete | Gordon Douglas | |
1950 | Rogues of Sherwood Forest | King John | Gordon Douglas | |
1950 | A Lady Without Passport | Palinov | Joseph H. Lewis | |
1950 | The Desert Hawk | Prince Murad | Frederick De Cordova | |
1951 | Tarzan's Peril | Radijeck | Byron Haskin | |
1951 | The Golden Horde | Raven the Shaman | George Sherman | |
1951 | The Desert Fox | Gen. Fritz Bayerlein | Henry Hathaway | |
1951 | Detective Story | Dr. Karl Schneider | William Wyler | |
1952 | The Green Glove | Count Paul Rona | Rudolph Maté | |
1953 | Treasure of the Golden Condor | Marquis de St. Malo | Delmer Daves | |
1953 | I Beheld His Glory | Cornelius | TV Movie | |
1953 | Julius Caesar | Marullus | Joseph L. Mankiewicz | |
1953 | The Stranger Wore a Gun | Jules Mourret | André DeToth | |
1953 | The Golden Blade | Jafar | Nathan Juran | |
1954 | Duffy of San Quentin | John C. Winant | Walter Doniger | |
1954 | Vera Cruz | Emperor Maximilian | Robert Aldrich | |
1956 | A Kiss Before Dying | Leo Kingship | Gerd Oswald | |
1956 | Thunder Over Arizona | Mayor Ervin Plummer | Joseph Kane | |
1957 | The Abductors | Jack Langley | Andrew V. McLaglen(as Andrew McLaglen) | |
1957 | Paths of Glory | Brigadier General Paul Mireau | Stanley Kubrick | |
1957 | Gunfire at Indian Gap | Mr. Jefferson | Joseph Kane | |
1959 | Plunderers of Painted Flats | Ed Sammpson | Albert C. Gannaway | |
1959 | The Alligator People | Dr. Mark Sinclair | Roy Del Ruth | |
1959 | Jet Over the Atlantic | Lord Robert Leverett | Byron Haskin | |
1960 | Family Classics: The Three Musketeers | TV Movie | ||
1962 | Two Weeks in Another Town | Lew Jordan | Vincente Minnelli | |
1962 | Taras Bulba | Governor | J. Lee Thompson | |
1964 | Seven Days in May | Christopher Todd | John Frankenheimer | |
1964 | Dead Ringer | Paul Harrison | Paul Henreid | |
1964 | Where Love Has Gone | Gordon Harris | Edward Dmytryk | |
1965 | The Human Duplicators | Prof. Vaughn Dornheimer | Arthur C. Pierce | |
1965 | Memorandum for a Spy | Graham Jutland | TV Movie | |
1965 | The Great Race | General Kuhster | Blake Edwards | |
1966 | Fame Is the Name of the Game | Gleen Howard | Stuart Rosenberg | TV Movie |
1969 | Night Gallery | William Hendricks | TV Movie, segment "The Cemetery" | |
1969 | Daughter of the Mind | Dr. Frank Ferguson | Walter Grauman | TV Movie |
1970 | Count Yorga, Vampire | Narrator | Bob Kelljan | |
1970 | Tora! Tora! Tora! | Cordell Hull | Kinji Fukasaku | |
1971 | The Return of Count Yorga | Prof. Rightstat | Bob Kelljan | final film role |
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National libraries | |
Other |