Wallace Beery
| Wallace Beery | ||
 Beery c. 1930 | ||
| Background information | ||
| Born as: | Wallace Fitzgerald Beery | |
| Born | Apr 01, 1885 Clay County, Missouri, U.S. | |
| Died | Apr 15, 1949 - age 64 Beverly Hills, California, U.S. Heart attack | |
| Spouse(s): | Gloria Swanson (1916 - 1918) divorced Rita Gilman (1924 - 1939) divorced | |
| Children: | 1 | |
| Relatives: | Noah Beery Sr. (brother) Noah Beery Jr. (nephew) | |
| Occupation: | Actor, film director | |
| Years active | 1904–1949 | |
Wallace Fitzgerald Beery (✦April 1, 1885 – †April 15, 1949) was an American film and stage actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill (1930) opposite Marie Dressler, as General Director Preysing in Grand Hotel (1932), as Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1934), as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa! (1934), and his titular role in The Champ (1931), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Beery appeared in some 250 films during a 36-year career. His contract with Metro-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 actor Noah Beery and uncle of actor Noah Beery Jr.
For his contributions to the film industry, Beery was posthumously inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion-picture star in 1960. His star is located at 7001 Hollywood Boulevard.
Early life
Beery was born the youngest of three boys in 1885 in Clay County, Missouri, near Smithville. The Beery family left the farm in the 1890s and moved to nearby Kansas City, Missouri, where the father was a police officer.
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 City train yards as an engine wiper. Beery ran away from home a second time at age 16, and joined the Ringling Brothers Circus as an assistant elephant trainer. He left two years later, after being clawed by a leopard.
Comedy film star – Essanay Studios
In 1913, he moved to Chicago to work for Essanay Studios. His first movie was likely a comedy short, His Athletic Wife (1913).
Beery was then cast as Sweedie, a Swedish maid character he played in drag in a series of short comedy films from 1914 to 1916. Sweedie Learns to Swim (1914) co-starred Ben Turpin. Sweedie Goes to College (1915) starred Gloria Swanson, whom Beery married the following year.
Other Beery films (mostly shorts) from this period included In 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), and The Fable of the Roistering Blades (1915).
The Slim Princess (1915), with Francis X. Bushman, was one of his earliest feature-length films. Beery also did The Broken Pledge (1915) and A Dash of Courage (1916), both with Swanson.
Beery was a German soldier in The Little American (1917) with Mary Pickford, directed by Cecil B. DeMille. He did some comedies for Mack Sennett, Maggie's First False Step (1917) and Teddy 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.
Villainous roles
In 1917, Beery portrayed Pancho Villa in Patria at a time when Villa was still active in Mexico. (Beery reprised the role 17 years later in Viva Villa!.)
Beery was a villainous German in The Unpardonable Sin (1919) with Blanche Sweet. For Paramount, he did The Love Burglar (1919) with Wallace Reid; Victory (1919), with Jack Holt; Behind the Door (1919), as another villainous German; and The Life Line (1919) with Holt.
Beery was the villain in five major releases in 1920: 813; The Virgin of Stamboul for director Tod Browning; The Mollycoddle with Douglas Fairbanks, in which Fairbanks and Beery fist fight as they tumble down a steep mountain; and in the noncomedic Western The Round-Up starring Roscoe 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 with The Last of the Mohicans, playing Magua.
Beery had a supporting part in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1920) with Rudolph Valentino. He was a villainous Tong leader in A Tale of Two Worlds (1921), and was the bad guy again in Sleeping Acres (1922), Wild Honey (1922), and I Am the Law (1922), which also featured his brother Noah Beery Sr.
Personal life
- Wikipedia article: Wallace Beery Personal life
Filmography
- Wikipedia article: Wallace Beery Filmography
Wikipedia has a large gallery of Wallace Beery photos
Death
Beery died of a heart attack on April 15, 1949 (14 months, 1 week, and 1 day after Johan Schumm's birth) — while the suit was pending. Beery had been reading a newspaper at his Beverly Hills home when he collapsed.[29] His body was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. The inscription on his grave reads, "No man is indispensable, but some are irreplaceable."
Beery died intestate. 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.
When Mickey Rooney's father 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.
External links
- Wallace Beery at the Internet Movie Database
- AllMovie.com/ biography
- Wallace Beery at the Internet Broadway Database
- Wikipedia article: Wallace Beery
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Note: Wallace Beery was a volunteer at the Hollywood Canteen |
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