Wallace Beery

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Wallace Beery
a publicity shot of Wallace Beery
Born	Wallace Fitzgerald Beery April 1, 1885(1885-04-01) Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.
Died	April 15, 1949 (aged 64) Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Occupation	Stage, film actor
Years active	1913-1949
Awards won Academy Awards Best Actor 1932 The Champ Other Awards Hollywood Walk of Fame 7001 Hollywood Boulevard

Wallace Beery (April 1, 1885 – April 15, 1949) was an American Academy Award-winning actor, best known for his portrayal of Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1934) as well as more than 200 other movie roles over a 36-year span.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life and career 1.1.1 Transition to sound 1.2 Personal life 2 Selected filmography 3 Awards and nominations 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life and career

Born in Kansas City, Missouri to Noah W. Beery and Marguerite Fitzgerald Beery, he was the younger brother of actor William Beery and Noah Beery, who also would have a lengthy career in motion pictures, as well as the uncle of actor Noah Beery, Jr.. According to U.S. Census records, all three Beery brothers were born to the same parents, making them full brothers and not half-brothers as many reports have it. Wallace Fitzgerald Beery joined the Ringling Brothers circus at the age of sixteen as an assistant elephant trainer. He left two years later after being clawed by a leopard. He found work in New York City in musical variety and began to appear on Broadway. In 1913, he moved to Chicago to work for Essanay Studios, cast as "Sweedie, The Swedish Maid," a manly character in drag. Later he would move to California, to the Essanay Studios location in Niles, CA.

In 1915, Beery starred with his wife Gloria Swanson in Sweedie Goes to College. The marriage did not survive his drinking and abuse. In the following years, he began to play villains in several movies, and in 1917 portrayed Pancho Villa in Patria during the period when Villa was still active in Mexico; Beery would reprise the role seventeen years later.

His notable silent films include Arthur Conan Doyle's dinosaur epic The Lost World (1925; as Professor Challenger), Robin Hood with Douglas Fairbanks (1922; Beery played King Richard the Lionheart in this film and a sequel the following year called Richard the Lion-Hearted), Last of the Mohicans (1920), The Round-Up (1920; with Roscoe Arbuckle), Old Ironsides (1926), Now We're in the Air (1927), The Usual Way (1913), and Beggars of Life (1928; with Louise Brooks).

[edit] Transition to sound

With the transition to sound film he was for a time put out of work, but Irving Thalberg had no objection to Beery's gruff slow speech as a character actor, and hired him under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Beery appeared in the highly-successful 1930 prison film The Big House (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor). The same year, he made the pivotal Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, the movie that vaulted him into the box office first rank. He followed that up with The Champ in 1931, this time winning the Best Actor Oscar, and the role of Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1934). He received a gold medal from the Venice Film Festival for his second performance as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa! (1934) with Fay Wray (Lee Tracy was originally to appear in the film until he drunkenly urinated off the balcony into a crowd of Mexicans standing below; Tracy's career never recovered from the incident). Other notable Beery films include Billy the Kid (1930) with John Mack Brown, The Secret Six (1931) with Jean Harlow and Clark Gable, Hell Divers (1931) with Gable, Grand Hotel (1932) with Joan Crawford, Tugboat Annie (1933) with Dressler, Dinner at Eight (1933) opposite Jean Harlow, The Bowery with George Raft and Pert Kelton that same year, China Seas (1935) with Gable and Harlow, and Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! (1935) in the role of a drunken uncle later played on Broadway by Jackie Gleason in a musical comedy version. During the 1930s Beery was regularly one of Hollywood's Top 10 box office stars, and at one point his contract with MGM stipulated that he be paid $1 more than any other contract player at the studio, making him the highest paid actor in the world.

He made several comedies with Marie Dressler (Min and Bill and Tugboat Annie, both sensationally successful) and Marjorie Main, but his career began to slow down in his last decade. In 1943 his brother Noah Beery co-starred with Wallace Beery in the war-time propaganda film Salute to the Marines, followed by Bad Bascomb (1946) and The Mighty McGurk (1947).

[edit] Personal life

His second wife was Rita Gorman. Together they adopted a daughter Carol Ann, daughter of Rita Gorman Beery's cousin. The marriage ended in divorce.

According to E.J. Fleming's book "The Fixers" (about MGM's legendary "fixers" Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling) Beery, gangster Pat DiCicco, and Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli (who was also DiCicco's cousin and eventual producer of the James Bond films) allegedly beat comedian Ted Healy to death in a brawl. The book went on to claim that Beery was then sent to Europe by the studio for a few months until the heat was off, while a story was concocted for the public that three college students had killed Healy instead. (Immigration records confirm a four-month trip to Europe on Beery's part immediately after Healy's death, ending April 17, 1938.)^[1] Oddly, a superb pencil drawing of Beery survives that was drawn on a film set by Healy, an amateur artist as well as the organizer and original leader of the Three Stooges (the act was originally known as "Ted Healy and His Stooges").

At best, Beery seems to have been somewhat misanthropic and difficult to work with, and Jackie Cooper, who worked with Beery in several films, called him in his autobiography "the most sadistic person I have ever known". Child actress Margaret O'Brien also worked with Beery, and ultimately had to be protected by crew members from Beery's insistence on constantly pinching her.

One of his proudest achievements was catching the largest black sea bass in the world off Santa Catalina Island in 1916. It was to be a record that stood for 35 years.

He died at his Beverly Hills, California home of a heart attack at the age of 64, and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California.

For his contribution to the film industry, Wallace Beery has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7001 Hollywood Blvd.

[edit] Selected filmography

Year	Title	Role	Other notes
1913	His Athletic Wife
1914	The Ups and Downs
	Cheering a Husband
	In and Out
	Madame Double X
1915	Two Hearts That Beat as Ten
	Ain't It the Truth
	The Broken Pledge
	The Fable of the Roistering Blades
1916	A Dash of Courage	Police Chief
1917	Patria	Pancho Villa
	Maggie's First False Step
	Are Waitresses Safe?
1920	The Virgin of Stamboul
	The Mollycoddle	Henry von Holkar
	The Round-Up	Buck McKee
	813	Major Parbury/Ribeira
	The Last of the Mohicans	Magua
1921	The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse	Lieutenant Colonel von Richthoffen
1922	I Am the Law	Fu Chang
	Robin Hood	King Richard the Lion-Hearted
1923	The Flame of Life	Don Lowrie
	Stormswept	William McCabe
	Drifting	Jules Repin
	Three Ages	The Villain
	Richard the Lion-Hearted	King Richard the Lion-Hearted	Sequel to 1922's Robin Hood
	The Drums of Jeopardy	Gregor Karlov
	White Tiger	Count Donelli/Hawkes
1925	The Lost World	Professor Challenger
1926	Old Ironsides	Bos'n	Alternative title: Sons of the Sea
1927	Casey at the Bat	Casey
	Now We're in the Air	Wally	Considered lost
1928	Beggars of Life	Oklahoma Red
1929	Chinatown Nights	Chuck Riley	Alternative title: Tong War
1930	The Big House	Butch "Machine Gun" Schmidt	Nominated for Best Actor Academy Award
	Billy the Kid	Deputy Sheriff Pat Garrett
	Way for a Sailor	Tripod McMasters
	A Lady's Morals	P.T. Barnum
	Min and Bill	Bill, a Fisherman
1931	The Stolen Jools	Police Sergeant	Short film; Alternative title: The Slippery Pearls
	The Secret Six	Louis "Louie" Scorpio
	The Champ	Champ	Won the Academy Award for Best Actor
	Hell Divers	CPO H.W. "Windy" Riker
1932	Grand Hotel	Preysing
	Flesh	Polakai
	Tugboat Annie	Terry Brennan
1933	Dinner at Eight	Dan Packard
	The Bowery	Chuck Connors
1934	Viva Villa!	Pancho Villa
	Treasure Island	Long John Silver
	The Mighty Barnum	P.T. Barnum
1935	West Point of the Air	Sargent "Big Mike" Stone
	China Seas	Jamesy MacArdle
	O'Shaughnessy's Boy	Captain Michael "Windy" O'Shaughnessy
	Ah, Wilderness!	Sidney "Sid" Miller
1936	A Message to Garcia	Sargent Dory
	Old Hutch	Hutch Hutchins
1937	The Good Old Soak	Clem Hawley
	Slave Ship	Jack Thompson
	The Bad Man of Brimstone	Trigger Bill
1938	Port of Seven Seas	Cesar
	Stablemates	Doc Thomas "Tom" Terry
1939	Stand Up and Fight	Captain Boss Starkey
	Sergeant Madden	Sargent Shaun Madden
	Thunder Afloat	John "Pop" Thorson
1940	The Man From Dakota	Sargent "Bar" Barstow	Alternative title: Arouse and Beware
	20 Mule Team	Skinner Bill Bragg (Alias of Ambrose Murphy)
	Wyoming	Reb Harkness	Alternative title: Bad Man of Wyoming
1941	The Bad Man	Pancho Lopez	Alternative title: Two-Gun Cupid
	Barnacle Bill	Bill Johansen
1942	The Bugle Sounds	Pancho Lopez
	Jackass Mail	Marmaduke "Just" Baggot
1943	Salute to the Marines	Sergeant Major William Bailey
1944	Rationing	Ben Barton
	Barbary Coast Gent	Honest Plush Brannon	Alternative titles: Gold Town and The Honest Thief
1945	This Man's Navy	Ned Trumpet
1946	Bad Bascomb	Zed Bascomb
1947	The Mighty McGurk	Roy "Slag" McGurk
1948	Alias a Gentleman	Jim Breedin
	A Date With Judy	Melvin R. Foster
1949	Big Jack	Big Jack Horner

[edit] Awards and nominations

Year	Group	Award	Film	Result
1930	Academy Award	Best Actor in a Leading Role	The Big House	Nominated
1932	Academy Award	Best Actor in a Leading Role	The Champ	Won (Tied with Fredric March for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
1934	Venice Film Festival	Best Actor	Viva Villa!	Won

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Wallace Beery at the Internet Movie Database
• Wallace Beery at Allmovie
• Wallace Beery at Find A Grave
• Photographs of Wallace Beery

v • d • e Academy Award for Best Actor Emil Jannings (1928) · Warner Baxter (1929) · George Arliss (1930) · Lionel Barrymore (1931) · Fredric March / Wallace Beery (1932) · Charles Laughton (1933) · Clark Gable (1934) · Victor McLaglen (1935) · Paul Muni (1936) · Spencer Tracy (1937) · Spencer Tracy (1938) · Robert Donat (1939) · James Stewart (1940) Complete List · (1928–1940) · (1941–1960) · (1961–1980) · (1981–2000) · (2001-present)

Persondata
NAME	Beery, Wallace
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Beery, Wallace Fitzgerald
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Actor
DATE OF BIRTH	April 1, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH	Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.
DATE OF DEATH	April 15, 1949
PLACE OF DEATH	Beverly Hills, California, U.S.

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