George Macready | |
|---|---|
 Macready in Johnny Allegro (1949) | |
| Born | August 29, 1899 Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. |
| Died | July 2, 1973 (aged 73) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Brown University |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1926–1973 |
| Spouse |
Elizabeth Patterson
(m. 1931; div. 1943) |
| Children | 3 |
| Relatives | John Macready (grandson) |
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]
Macready was born in Providence, Rhode Island[4] on August 29, 1899. He graduated from the local Classical High School[1] and, in 1917, from Brown University.[5]
Shortly thereafter, Macready suffered a disfiguring injury, which, as the actor would later note, proved a mixed blessing: affording him a reliably steady supply of jobs, but only within a rigidly circumscribed range.[5][6] As of October 1958, by Macready's own count, he had been cast as the "mastermind criminal" type in at least 65 of his 75 television and motion picture assignments. He explained:
Producers have found it effective to emphasize my rather nasty looking cheek scar, which I received in an auto accident many years ago.[7]
Macready also claimed to be a descendent of the 19th-Century English actor William Charles Macready, whose example he cited as the chief inspiration for his own pursuit of acting.[8]
Macready made his Broadway debut in 1926, performing in the role of Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale in an adaptation of The Scarlet Letter.[9] 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.
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.
In 1931, Macready married actress Elizabeth Dana Patterson; they divorced in 1943.[1]
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 ... 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."[10]
Macready died of emphysema on July 2, 1973. His body was donated to the UCLA School of Medicine.[2]
