Joel Albert McCrea, (November 5, – October 20, )
was an
American actor
and
film star whose career spanned 50
years and appearances in over 90 films.
Early life
McCrea was
born in South Pasadena, California
, the son of Thomas McCrea, who was an executive
with the L.A. Gas & Electric Company, As a boy, he had a
paper route, and delivered the
Los
Angeles Times to
Cecil B.
DeMille and other people in the
film industry. He also had the opportunity to watch
D. W. Griffith filming
Intolerance, and was an extra in a
serial starring
Ruth Roland.
McCrea
graduated from Hollywood High
School and then Pomona College
, where he had acted on stage and took courses in
drama and public speaking, and appeared regularly at the Pasadena
Playhouse
, Even as a high school student, he was working as a
stunt double and held horses for cowboy stars William S. Hart and
Tom Mix. He
worked as an extra, stunt man and bit player from 1927 to 1928,
when he signed a contract with
MGM, where he was
cast in a major role in
The Jazz
Age ( ), and got his first leading role that same year, in
The Silver
Horde. He moved to
RKO in 1930, where
he established himself as a handsome leading man who was considered
versatile enough to star in both dramas and comedies.
Career
In the 1930s, McCrea starred in
Bird of Paradise ( ),
directed by
King Vidor, causing
controversy for his scenes with
Dolores del Río. In , he made his first
appearances with two leading ladies he would be paired with often:
with
Miriam Hopkins he made
The Richest Girl in
the World, the first of their five films together, and
with
Barbara Stanwyck he appeared
in
Gambling Lady, the first
of their six films. Later in the decade, he was the first actor to
play "Dr. Kildare", in the film
Internes Can't Take Money (
), and he starred in two large-scale westerns,
Wells Fargo (1937) with his wife
Francis Dee, and Cecil B. DeMille's
Union Pacific (
).
McCrea reached the peak of his early career in the early 1940s, in
such films as
Alfred Hitchcock's
Foreign
Correspondent ( ),
The
More the Merrier ( ) directed by
George Stevens, and two by
Preston Sturges,
Sullivan's Travels ( ), and
The Palm Beach Story (
).
McCrea also starred in two
William
A. Wellman westerns,
The Great Man's Lady (
), again with Stanwyck, and
Buffalo Bill, with character
actor
Edgar Buchanan ). After the
success of
The
Virginian in , McCrea made westerns exclusively for the
rest of his career, with the exception of the British-made
Rough Shoot ( ).
Performing in Westerns was a return to what he had done earlier in
his career, and McCrea enjoyed the genre. In a 1978 interview, he
said:
I liked doing comedies, but as I got older I was better
suited to do Westerns.
Because I think it becomes unattractive for an older
fellow trying to look young, falling in love with attractive girls
in those kinds of situations...Anyway, I always felt so much more
comfortable in the Western.
The minute I got a horse and a hat and a pair of boots
on, I felt easier.
I didn't feel like I was an actor anymore.
I felt like I was the guy out there doing
it.
In the 1950s, McCrea appeared on radio in the Western
procedural police drama,
Tales of the Texas
Rangers.
Later career
In , Joel McCrea and his son
Jody McCrea
starred in the
NBC-TV series
Wichita Town, which lasted only one
season. A few years later, McCrea united with fellow veteran of
westerns
Randolph Scott in
Ride the High Country
( ), directed by
Sam Peckinpah, which
was to be his last feature film for four years, when he made
The Young Rounders ( ).
Four more years were to pass before his next release, but saw the
release of two films:
Cry Blood,
Apache, again with his son Jody, and
Sioux Nation McCrea made his last film
appearance in , in
Mustang
Country.
In 1968, McCrea received a career achievement award from the L.A.
Film
Critics Association, and the following year he was inducted into
the Western Performers
Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy
& Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma
. For his contribution to the motion picture
industry, Joel McCrea has a star on the Hollywood Walk
of Fame
at 6901 Hollywood Blvd. and another star at 6241
Hollywood Blvd. for his contribution to radio.
Personal life
McCrea married actress
Frances Dee in
1933, after they met while filming
The Silver Cord. The couple had three
children, David, who became a rancher, Peter, who both became a
real estate developer, and
Jody, who
became an actor. Joel and Frances remained married until his death
— 57 years together.
According to David Ragan's
Stars of the '30s, the McCreas
were prodigious savers, accumulating a large estate, which included
working-ranch properties. Joel McCrea's work ethic was in part
attributed to his Scottish heritage and it also may have stemmed
from his friendship in the 1930s with fellow personality and
sometime actor,
Will Rogers. McCrea
recounted that "the Oklahoma Sage" gave him a profound piece of
advice: "Save half of what you make, and live on just the other
half."
McCrea –
who was an outdoorsman who had once listed his occupation as
"rancher" and his hobby as "acting" – had begun buying property as
early as 1933, when he purchased his first in what was then an
unincorporated area of eastern Ventura County,
California
, but later became Thousand Oaks,
California
. This was the beginning of what became a
spread on which McCrea and his wife Frances lived, raised their
children, and rode their horses.
By the time the 1940s ended, McCrea was a multi-millionaire, as
much from his real-estate dealings as from his movie stardom. In
the late 1960s, he sold of land to an oil company, on the condition
that they would not drill within sight of his home.
The
McCreas ultimately donated several hundred acres of their personal
property to the newly formed Conejo Valley YMCA
for the city of Thousand Oaks, California. Today, the land on which the Conejo Valley
YMCA rests is called "Joel McCrea Park".
Joel
McCrea made his final public appearance on October 3, 1990, at a
fundraiser for Republican gubernatorial candidate Pete Wilson in Beverly Hills
. He died less than three weeks later, on
October 20, in Woodland Hills, California
from pneumonia, at the age
of 84.
Selected filmography
References
Notes
- Erickson, Hal Biography (Allmovie)
- McCrea and Hopkins appeared together in The Richest Girl in the
World ( ), Barbary Coast ( ),
Splendor
(1935), These
Three ( ) and Woman Chases Man ( ).
- McCrea and Stanwyck appeared together in Gambling Lady ( ),
Banjo on My Knee ( ),
Internes Can't Take Money (
), Union Pacific ( ),
The Great Man's Lady ( ) and
Trooper
Hook ( ).
- McCrea also appeared in Sturges' The Great
Moment, which was filmed in 1942 but not released until
because of studio interference; it was not a success, and marked a
decline in Sturges' career.
- "Old Time Radio: Tales of the Texas Rangers"
- Allmovie Awards
- McCrea and Dee appeared together in six films:
The
Silver Chord ( ), One Man's Journey (1933),
Come and Get It ( ),
Wells Fargo ( ), Four Faces West
( ) and Cattle
Drive ( ).
- Raban, David Stars of the '30s
Further reading
- Nott, Robert Last of the Cowboy Heroes: The Westerns of
Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, and Audie Murphy, 2000, McFarland
& Company, Inc., ISBN 0786422610
- Ragan, David Movie stars of the '30s: A complete reference
guide for the film historian or trivia buffStars of the '30s,
1985, Prentice-Hall, ISBN 013604901X
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