George Macready

Perhaps acting was meant for Macready all along--he claimed that he was descended from 19th-century Shakespearean actor William Macready.

Upon his death from emphysema in July 1973, George Macready's body was donated to the School of Medicine of the University of California at Los Angeles.

His next-to-last film appearance was as a very human Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, in Universal's splashy, big-budget but somewhat uneven story of Pearl Harbor, Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970).

He had a three-year run as Martin Peyton in the hit series Peyton Place (1964), the first prime-time soap opera and a launching pad for many a young rising star of the time.

His film roles became fewer, but there were some good ones--the Yul Brynner adventure period piece Taras Bulba (1962) and a meaty role as an advisor to US Prlesident Fredric March attempting to stop a coup by a right-wing general played by Burt Lancaster in the gripping Seven Days in May (1964).

Macready stayed busy into the 1960s, mainly in TV roles.

His Broadway career would extend to 1958, entailing 15 plays--mainly dramas but also some comedies--with the lion's share of roles in the 1930s.

He made the rounds of most of the hit shows of the period, including a slew of westerns, including such obscure series as The Texan (1958) and The Rough Riders (1958).

He was familiar to viewers of crime dramas--such as Perry Mason (1957)--and such classic sci-fi and horror series as Thriller (1960), The Outer Limits (1963) and Night Gallery (1969). He did some 200 TV roles altogether, but still continued his film appearances. He assayed what many consider his best role as the ambitious French Gen.

Paul Mireau, a fanatic and martinet whose lust for fame and glory leads to the deaths of hundreds of French soldiers in a senseless frontal attack on heavily fortified German lines in Stanley Kubrick classic antiwar film Paths of Glory (1957). Macready's performance stood out in a film brimming with standout performances, from such veterans as Kirk Douglas, Adolphe Menjou, Ralph Meeker and Timothy Carey. The film was even more striking when it turns out that it was based on a true incident.

He became a familiar presence in episodic TV series beginning in 1954.

He had many appearances on such anthology series as Four Star Playhouse (1952), The Ford Television Theatre (1952) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), among others.

By the early 1950s he had sampled the waters of early TV.

His standout role, however--and probably the one he is best remembered for--was the silver-haired, dark-suited and mysteriously rich Ballin Mundson in Gilda (1946), who malevolently inserted himself into the lives of smoldering Rita Hayworth and moody Glenn Ford.

Among his better roles in that period were in The Seventh Cross (1944), The Missing Juror (1944), Counter-Attack (1945) and My Name Is Julia Ross (1945) with a young Nina Foch.

George and Vincent Price opened the Little Gallery in Beverly Hills in the spring of 1943. According to Victoria Price (Vincent's daughter), their customers included Charles Laughton, Tallulah Bankhead, Barbara Hutton, Fanny Brice, Katharine Hepburn and Greta Garbo. Of Garbo, Vincent said she "dropped in to look and, if anyone else was looking, dropped out--quickly." Jane Wyatt said, "It was a great, fun gallery. It was the place to go to meet and mingle. There was nothing else like it around. It was a wonderful place." George and Vincent eventually closed the Little Gallery when they could no longer do it justice while maintaining full-time movie careers.

He did not turn to films until 1942 and did not weigh-in fully committed until 1944, with a host of both well-crafted and just fair movies until the end of World War II. When he went all in, though, he excelled as strong-willed authoritarian and ambitious, murderous--but well-bred--villains.

Averaging six or more films per year throughout the 1940s, he appeared not only in dramas and thrillers, but also period pieces and even some westerns.

He co-starred with her again in "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" and with with Helen Hayes in "Victoria Regina" twice (1936 and 1937). Macready's aquiline features coupled with distinctive high-brow bottom-voiced diction and superior, nose-in-the-air delivery that could be quickly tinged with a gothic menace made him perfect as the cultured bad guy.

The 1934 edition of the Brown University alumni newsletter said: "George Macready '21 is still touring the provinces with Katharine Cornell in 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'The Barretts of Wimpole Street.' Mrs. Macready [Elizabeth Dana] is in the company, and the Macready heir is in New York, where Miss Mary Macready, one of George's aunts, is looking out for it until the parents come home".

George Macready--the name probably does not ring any bells for most but the voice would be unmistakable. He attended and graduated from Brown University and had a short stint as a New York newspaperman, but became interested in acting on the advice of colorful Polish émigré classical stage director Richard Boleslawski, who would go on to Hollywood to direct some notable and important films, including Rasputin and the Empress (1932)--the only film in which siblings John Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore appeared together--and Clive of India (1935) with Ronald Colman.

His Shakespearean run included the lead as Benedick in "Much Ado About Nothing" (1927), "Macbeth" (1928) and "Romeo and Juliet" (1934), with Broadway legend Katharine Cornell.

In 1926 Macready made his Broadway debut in "The Scarlet Letter".

Macready was a graduate of Classical High School in his hometown of Providence, Rhode Island. He graduated from Brown University (also in Providence) in 1921.

Macready won a varsity letter in football at Brown University in 1920 -- but as the manager, not as a player.

Added to his demeanor was a significant curved scar on his right cheek, remnant of a car accident in about 1919--better PR that it was a saber slash wound from his dueling days as a youth.

Was initiated into the Beta chapter of Delta Phi fraternity at Brown University in 1918.