Walter Brennan (July 25, 1894 – September 21,
1974) was an American actor. Highly regarded as a film
character actor, Brennan won the
Academy Award for Best
Supporting Actor three times. He is tied with
Jack Nicholson for the most
Academy Award wins for a male actor.
Early life
Born in
Lynn,
Massachusetts
less than two miles from his family's home in
Swampscott
, to Irish immigrants,
he was christened Walter Andrew Brennan.
His father was an engineer and inventor.
Walter Brennan studied
engineering at Rindge Technical High
School in Cambridge, Massachusetts
.
While in school, Brennan became interested in acting, and began to
perform in
vaudeville. While working as a
bank clerk, he enlisted in the
U.S.
Army and served as a private with the 101st Field Artillery
Regiment in France
during
World War I. Following the war, he
moved to Guatemala
and raised pineapples,
before settling in Los
Angeles
. During the 1920s, he became involved in the
real estate market, where he made a
fortune. Unfortunately, he lost most of his money when the market
took a sudden downturn.
Career
Finding himself broke, he began taking extra parts in 1929 and then
bit parts in as many films as he could, including
The Invisible Man (1933) and
The Bride of
Frankenstein (1935), and also worked as a stunt man. In
the 1930s, he began appearing in higher-quality films and received
more substantial roles as his talent was recognized. This
culminated with his receiving the very first
Academy Award for Best
Supporting Actor for his role as Swan Bostrom in the period
film
Come and Get It
(1936). Two years later he portrayed town drunk and accused
murderer Muff Potter in
The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer.
Throughout his career, Brennan was frequently called upon to play
characters considerably older than he was in real life. A 1932
accident that cost him many teeth and his rapidly thinning hair,
thin build, and raspy voice all made him seem older than he really
was. He used these physical features to great effect. In many of
his film roles, Brennan wore dentures; in
Northwest Passage--a film set
in the late 18th century, when most people had bad teeth—he wore a
special dental prosthesis which made him appear to have rotting and
broken teeth.
Director
Jean Renoir gave the character
actor a leading role in 1941: Brennan played the top-billed lead in
Swamp Water, a drama directed
by Renoir and featuring
Walter
Huston.
In the
1941 Sergeant York, he played a sympathetic
preacher and dry goods store owner who advised the title character
played by
Gary Cooper. He was
particularly skilled in playing the hero's sidekick or as the
"grumpy old man" in a picture. Though he was hardly ever cast as
the villain, notable exceptions were his roles as Old Man Clanton
in the classic 1946 film
My
Darling Clementine opposite
Henry
Fonda, the 1962
Cinerama production
How the West Was
Won as the murderous Colonel Jeb Hawkins, and as
Judge Roy Bean in
The Westerner, for which he won
his third best supporting actor Academy Award, in 1940.
From 1957-1963, he starred in the
ABC's
television series The Real McCoys, which costarred
Richard Crenna, and
Kathleen Nolan.
The comedy about a
poor West
Virginia
family that
relocated to a farm in southern California ran on ABC from 1957 to
1962 before switching to CBS for a final season
as The McCoys. In the last season,
Janet De Gore and
Butch Patrick joined the cast as a widow and
son; she being the new romantic interest of the recently widowed
Luke McCoy, played by Richard Crenna. The revised format of
The
McCoys was no match in the ratings for
NBC's powerhouse western series,
Bonanza.
Brennan appeared in several other movies and television programs,
usually, as an eccentric "old timer" or "prospector". He also made
a few recordings, the most popular being "Old Rivers" about an
eccentric but much-beloved farmer; it was released as a single in
1962 by Liberty Records with "The Epic Ride Of John H. Glenn" on
the flip side, and peaked at number 5 in the U.S.
Billboard charts.
In his music, Brennan
sometimes worked with Allen "Puddler" Harris,
a Louisiana
native who was a member of the original Ricky Nelson Band.
Brennan starred as wealthy executive Walter Andrews in the
short-lived 1964-1965 series
The Tycoon, with
Van Williams. In 1967, he starred in another
series,
The Guns of Will
Sonnett, in which he played a man in search of his
gunfighter son, James, with his grandson, Jeff, played by
Dack Rambo. After the series went off the air in
1969, Brennan continued working in both television and feature
films. He received top billing over
Pat O'Brien in the
TV-movie The
Over-the-Hill Gang in 1969 and
Fred Astaire in
The Over-the-Hill Gang Rides
Again the following year. From 1970 to 1971, he was a
regular on the show
To Rome With
Love, which was his last TV show as a member of the
permanent cast.
Legacy
Film historians and critics have long regarded Brennan as one of
the finest
character actors in
motion picture history. While the roles he was adept at playing
were extremely diverse, he is probably best remembered for his
portrayals in movie
Westerns, such as trail
hand Nadine Groot in
Red
River and Deputy Stumpy in
Rio Bravo both directed by
Howard Hawks. He was the first actor to win
three
Academy Awards. He remains the
only person to have won three
Best Supporting
Actor awards. However even he remained somewhat embarrassed as
to how he won the awards. In the early years of the
Academy Awards, extras were given the right
to vote. Brennan was extremely popular with the Union of Film
Extras and since their numbers were overwhelming, each time he was
nominated, he won. Though never described as undeserving of the
awards he won, his third win was one of the catalysts leading to
the disenfranchisement of the Extras Union from Oscar voting.
Unlike many actors, Brennan's career never really went into
decline. As the years went on, he was able to find work in dozens
of high quality films, and later television appearances throughout
the 1950s and 60s. As he grew older, he simply became a more
familiar, almost comforting film figure whose performances
continued to endear him to new generations of fans. In all, he
would appear in more than 230 film and television roles in a career
spanning nearly five decades.
Private life
Brennan was politically
conservative.
In 1964, Brennan endorsed and made appearances on behalf of
U.S. Senator Barry
M. Goldwater, the
Republican nominee that year.
He supported American Independent Party
candidate (and former governor of Alabama
) George C. Wallace, Jr., over
GOP nominee and former
Vice President
Richard M. Nixon in the 1968 presidential campaign
because he felt Nixon was too
liberal. He
also supported
Ronald W. Reagan for
governor
of California.
In one of his films,
The One and
Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968), Brennan
portrayed a
Democratic supporter of
U.S. President Grover
Cleveland.
Buddy Ebsen, who played
Brennan's son in the film, was depicted as a supporter of
Cleveland's 1888 rival,
Benjamin
Harrison. In the comedy film, Brennan disparaged Ebsen's
character as "never too bright for he was a gol-dern Republican".
Ironically, both Brennan and Ebsen were considered Hollywood
Republicans.
For his
contribution to the television industry, Walter Brennan has a star
on the Hollywood Walk
of Fame
at 6501 Hollywood Blvd. In 1970, he was
inducted into the Western Performers Hall of
Fame at the National Cowboy
& Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma
, where his photograph adorns a wall.
Upon his
death from emphysema at the age of eighty
in Oxnard
in Ventura County
, Brennan was interred at San Fernando
Mission Cemetery
in Los Angeles. Brennan was married to the
former Ruth Wells (December 8, 1897–January 12, 1997), whom he
married in 1920.
At the time of her death at the age of
ninety-nine, Mrs. Brennan was residing in Camarillo
, also in Ventura County. She is interred
next to her husband. The Brennans had a daughter and two
sons.
Discography
Brennan had a hit record in 1962 called
Old Rivers.
Academy Awards
Wins:
Nominations:
Partial filmography
References
External links
(1955)
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
