Wallace Beery(1885-1949)
- Actor
- Director
- Writer
In 1902, 16-year-old Wallace Beery joined the Ringling Brothers Circus
as an assistant to the elephant trainer. He left two years later after
a leopard clawed his arm. Beery next went to New York, where he found
work in musical variety shows. He became a leading man in musicals and
appeared on Broadway and in traveling stock companies. In 1913 he
headed for Hollywood, where he would get his start as the hulking
Swedish maid in the Sweedie comedy series for Essanay. In 1915 he would
work with young ingénue Gloria Swanson in Sweedie Goes to College (1915). A year later they would
marry and be wildly unhappy together. The marriage dissolved when Beery
could not control his drinking and Gloria got tired of his abuse. Beery
finished with the Sweedie series and worked as the heavy in a number of
films. Starting with Patria (1917), he would play the beastly Hun in a number
of films. In the 1920s he would be seen in a number of adventures,
including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), Robin Hood (1922), The Sea Hawk (1924) and The Pony Express (1925). He would also play the
part of Poole in So Big (1924), which was based on the best-selling book of
the same name by Edna Ferber. Paramount began to move Beery back into
comedies with Behind the Front (1926). When sound came, Beery was one of the victims of
the wholesale studio purge. He had a voice that would record well, but
his speech was slow and his tone was a deep, folksy, down home-type.
While not the handsome hero image, MGM executive Irving Thalberg saw something
in Beery and hired him for the studio. Thalberg cast Beery in The Big House (1930),
which was a big hit and got Beery an Academy Award nomination. However,
Beery would become almost a household word with the release of the
sentimental Min and Bill (1930), which would be one of 1930's top money makers. The
next year Beery would win the Oscar for Best Actor in The Champ (1931). He would
be forever remembered as Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1934) (who says never
work with kids?). Beery became one of the top ten stars in Hollywood,
as he was cast as the tough, dim-witted, easy-going type (which, in
real life, he was anything but). In Flesh (1932) he would be the dim-witted
wrestler who did not figure that his wife was unfaithful. In Dinner at Eight (1933) he
played a businessman trying to get into society while having trouble
with his wife, Jean Harlow. After Marie Dressler died in 1934, he would not find
another partner in the same vein as his early talkies until he teamed
with Marjorie Main in the 1940s. He would appear opposite her in such films
as Wyoming (1940) and Barnacle Bill (1941). By that time his career was slowing as he was
getting up in age. He continued to work, appearing in only one or two
pictures a year, until he died from a heart attack in
1949.
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