Louis Calhern(1895-1956)
- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Tall, distinguished, aristocratic Louis Calhern seemed to be the poster
boy for old-money, upper-crust urban society, but he was actually born
Carl Vogt, to middle-class parents in New York City. His family moved
to St. Louis when he was a child, and it was while playing football in
high school there that he was spotted by a representative of a touring
acting troupe and hired as an actor. He returned to New York to work in
the theater, but his career was interrupted by military service in
France in World War I. He returned to the stage after the war, and
eventually broke into films. Although his regal bearing would seem to
pigeonhole him in aristocratic parts in serious drama, he proved to be
a very versatile actor, as much at home playing a comic foil to
The Marx Brothers in
Duck Soup (1933) as he was as Buffalo
Bill to Betty Hutton's Annie Oakley
in Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
or, most memorably, the lawyer involved with the criminal gang in
The Asphalt Jungle (1950).
Married four times, he was in Tokyo, Japan, filming
The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956)
when he suffered a fatal heart attack.
