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The long, productive career
of a durable "actor's actor."
By JIM BAWDEN
of TheColumnists.com
If I had to name
an actor’s actor, I’d certainly pick Ralph Bellamy.
I became a fan early on, watching him in
everything from Grade "B" melodramatics to screwball
comedy on TV’s Late Late Show. And certainly he seemed to
be in every other TV movie being made in the Seventies. To me,
he seemed able to do it all with such ease.
I first met him by accident on the set of a super sci fi TV flick,
1978’s "The Clone Master" at Paramount Studios
in Hollywood and we talked at length. He invited me to call him
up when in L.A. and we finally met in 1983 at his home high in
the Hollywood hills.
Then again, in 1988, we enjoyed High Tea at his hotel in Toronto
where he was making the movie "The Good Mother."
Here are highlights of our conversations:
BAWDEN: How did you get started in acting and, eventually, into
the movies in 1931?
BELLAMY: I was born in Chicago (in 1904). My dad was an advertising
executive. I was president of the Drama Club in high school.
I guess I always wanted to act. I started out in bit parts in
road shows out of Chicago. Eventually, in my Twenties, I founded
my own repertory theater--The Ralph Bellamy Players-- and toured
in Nashville and Evanston and Des Moines. We’d be alternating
two plays at night and in the day we’d be learning a new
play for the next week. We played in all kinds of theaters and,
for me, it was the chance to understand modulation, stillness,
how to listen, which is the actor’s most important work.
When talkies came along, our company disbanded. I made my Broadway
debut in 1929. I was a mean bastard of a bootlegger. Even Broadway
was crumbling after the crash, so I came west in 1931 like so
many other stage actors.
BAWDEN: Your first film "The Secret Six" (1931) starred
Clark Gable and Jean Harlow?
BELLAMY: Wrong. It was my first movie but I wasn’t the star
and neither were Clark and Jean. We were all given plum parts
as sort of instant screen tests by MGM. And all three of us got
$650 a week and thought we were in heaven. Lewis Stone and Wallace
Beery were the stars. But as the movie progressed, Johnny Mack
Brown’s leading man part was whittled down and key scenes
given to Gable. Johnny has a Southern accent that limited his
range. And Jean who was red hot sex on wheels had her part built
up, too. I tried watching it on TV recently and it’s very
crude. But Irving Thalberg thought Harlow would soar and finally
bought out her contract from Howard Hughes and he was the one
who determined Clark would go to the top. At the time, Clark
looked like Jack Dempsey. MGM tried gluing his ears back but
it didn’t work. He had what’s called animal magnetism.
Anyway, after filming completed, I’m down in a shady bar
swilling down illegal liquor and in comes Clark. He told he he
figured he only had a couple of years in the biz before he was
found out and he wanted to salt away as much dough as possible.
BAWDEN: Then you made a second movie for MGM, "West of Broadway"
(1931).
BELLAMY: MGM did not know what to do with
Jack Gilbert. He’d signed a six-film contract at $300,000
a film, and they had to pay him off even if they couldn’t
use him. Just a grand guy in person. And the stories about his
voice are bogus. He had a lovely light Irish tenor. But the dialogue
they’d given him in his first talkie was just plain stupid:
“I love you” said over and over again. It was
the way he overacted in silent style that ruined him, not his
voice! So MGM tried to get him to leave. They’d call up
at 3 a.m. and order him to report to the studio. Failure to do
so would result in dismissal. But Jack showed up and one night
jumped in a frigid swimming pool a dozen times as ordered by
the director. Then they told him there was no film in the camera
and to go home. I hated that and told Mr. Mayer off at length
in his office. And he merely said I’d never work again at
MGM and I never did until 1968.
BAWDEN: You got work elsewhere?
BELLAMY: I got a deal at Fox, another at Columbia. Harry Cohn
(head of Columbia) loved to tweak Mayer. Both were very crude
guys, but the difference is Harry knew he was crude. He’d
belch in the screening room and then laugh. If a picture seemed
overlong, he’d shout, “My bum itches!”
Stuff like that. Ran a very tight studio. It was the cheapest
and located in Gower Gulch. And, yes, he had sweeties among the
chorines, but so did Mayer. I did a couple of quickies that made
piles of dough and I asked for double the salary for my next
one and he closed his office door and whispered, “Just
don’t tell Jack Holt,” who made quickies like I
did but was some 20 years older.
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opposite Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. |
BAWDEN: Let me ask you about a “B”
you made at Columbia as an example. Let me pick "Parole
Girl" (1933). How fast was it made and how much were you
paid?
BELLAMY: They all were shot in two weeks or less–10 to 12
working days since we worked Saturdays in those days. For the
men, you had to supply your own wardrobe, so I accumulated a
variety of suits, coats, shoes etc. Also I had to bring my own
makeup kit. The women got stuff from the wardrobe department,
but nothing was ever made specifically for them.
Eddie Cline was the director here–a
terrific guy. He shot at breakneck speed. Sometimes he used multiple
cameras. He didn’t shoot as on an “A” picture:
establishing shot, middle shots, then close ups. He only shot
what he needed. Mae Clarke was the leading lady and she was a
theater veteran, too, and worked quickly and efficiently. On
an Irene Dunne vehicle, they’d take an hour just to light
her close up. Not here. The others included Marie Prevost, Hale
Hamilton, Ferdinand Gottschalk. Never actually saw that one.
I made 11 movies in 1933, I was busy! I’d say I maybe got
$1,500 tops for it, perhaps a little less. Then it was on to
the next B.
BAWDEN: You told me "Wild Girl" (1932) was important
in your career.
BELLAMY: Because I met Charlie Farrell, who was the star. And
we got together and founded The Raquet Club, which is still in
operation. I was always founding stuff in those days. I was one
of the founding fathers of the Screen Actors Guild, which did
not entirely endear me to the big studio heads.
BAWDEN: But you also did “A“ movies.
BELLAMY: But not as the lead. That same year I made "Picture
Snatcher" at Warners with my pal Jimmy Cagney. We were part
of the so-called Irish Mafia that included Pat O’Brien,
Spencer Tracy, Frank Jenkins. Jimmy played an ex-con who becomes
a photographer for a tabloid. Today they call them paparazzi.
The girls were Patricia Ellis, who was all of 16, and Alice White
and he got to kick and shove them around with glee. One scene
we had a fight and I rearranged his mug, broke his nose and teeth.
He forgot to duck, I guess. I also did "The Narrow Corner"
with Doug Fairbanks Jr. at WB the same year. It was a South Sea
islands thing based on a Somerset Maugham story. We shot at Catalina
and used a lot of back projection that seems so phony these days.
Alfred Green shot it and much of the script was written by Darryl
Zanuck, who was head of WB production at the time.
BAWDEN: Another “A” was the Katharine
Hepburn film "Spitfire" (1934).
BELLAMY: What a stinker that was! Great Kate was a mountain girl
named Trigger who somehow had acquired a Bryn Mawr accent. Bob
Young was an engineer who is building a dam and has a romance
with her. She doesn’t know he’s married. We shot in
Hemet, California, both rural and hilly and John Cromwell directed.
The original male lead was Joel McCrea, but Hepburn had him dismissed,
I don’t know why. Anyhow, it’s Saturday night on the
last day of the shoot and Great Kate tells Cromwell her contract
is over at the stroke of midnight. A contingent of RKO execs
arrive and they go into a barn with her and she emerges, but
it’s now 1 a.m. on Sunday. Says she’ll finish the last
scene of the picture and when I asked out why from her gingham
dress pocket she pulls a check made out for an additional $10,000.
Pretty smart for a mountain lass, I must say.
BAWDEN: Why did "The Wedding Night"
(1935) turn out so poorly?
BELLAMY: It was called all over town “Goldwyn’s Folly.”
Every studio tried to import a central European actress to vie
with Garbo and Dietrich. C.B. DeMille had Franciscka Gaal, Universal
had Elisabeth Bergner. There was Gwilli Andre. Warners had Lil
Dagover. Sam Goldwyn’s choice was Anna Sten, fairly beautiful,
a grand actress. But she had no heart, she had no soul. The public
just wouldn’t accept her. That mystical bond with the audience
just wasn’t there. Nothing Sam could do could force her
on Americans. He made three expensive flops. Gary Cooper was
the big name and even Coop couldn’t bring in customers.
You see the public makes a star and not the producer. MGM tried
with Luise Rainer, who won two Oscars, but the public never warmed
to her. And eventually Sam just gave up on Miss Sten.
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"HIS GIRL FRIDAY" with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. |
BAWDEN: The same year you made the delightful screwball comedy "Hands Across the Table" (1935). Describe Carole Lombard.
BELLAMY: An angel in terms of screwball comedy. She did not have perfect features, you know. There was a big scar on her cheek, the result of a car crash as a child. But on the set, she was one of the gang. She sat with the crew between takes. No movie star airs for her. She always played jokes on all of us, like placing a squawk cushion on my wheelchair seat. One day she comes to me and asked why Freddie MacMurray didn’t make a pass at her. I said he was in a happy marriage, which floored her. She’d just gotten out of an abusive relationship with Bill Powell, so she didn’t know what a happy marriage was. Most days we laughed ourselves silly and that camaraderie really showed in the film.
BAWDEN: You got your only Oscar nomination for "The Awful Truth" (1937). How did this come about?
BELLAMY: It started out as just another assignment from Columbia. The script was sent to me and I was told what clothes to bring. The character at that stage was a stodgy Englishman. Then new scripts arrived–three–from Mary McCall, Dwight Taylor and finally Dorothy Parker. All were discarded by our director, Leo McCarey. I’d be reunited with Irene Dunne, who I first worked with in the drama "This Man is Mine" (1934). It became one of my favorite pictures. And Cary Grant, I’d never met. The story was constantly being reworked by Leo McCarey, who, by the way, was a complete clone of Cary. Only Cary then took some of Leo’s characteristics and interpolated them into his character. For days we’d sit around swapping stories and Cary, who is so disciplined, finally went to Cohn and said if Harry let him go he’d do two pictures for free. The first day Leo asked if I could sing. I said no, so he had me sing “Home on the Range” while Irene very shakily played the piano. It still gets a laugh when shown today. The result was serendipitous. Irene and I got Oscar nominations, Cary had a new career as THE light comedy actor of his day. I wish all assignments could be as wonderful as this one turned out to be.
BAWDEN: Not many directors could improvise.
BELL:AMY: One who couldn’t was Greg LaCava, who was on a downward spiral when Irene and I joined him for "Lady in A Jam" (1942). He decided he’d do a McCarey and here we were stuck in Phoenix in blazingly hot weather. We shot a few bits from a script that was awful, then Greg disappeared for weeks with a writer and Greg’s psychiatrist. Irene lost her serenity and trashed her trailer and, remember, there was no air conditioning in those days. And "Lady in A Jam" was so awful Greg only did one more movie before retiring to Malibu, where he spent his last years shooting sea gulls from his balcony window.
BAWDEN: What about "His Girl Friday" (1940)?
BELLAMY: Cary just asked for me and Howard Hawks readily agreed. It was a variant on my "Awful Truth" character. This is the fastest-talked movie of all time. The lines just fly. Look at all those reporters in the prison scenes, veteran theater actors all: Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Regis Toomey, Ernest Truex. All highly competitive. For variety and comparison Howard told me to talk ever so slow as a dimwit would. I savored every line while those characters chattered all around me. Roz Russell got so frightened at Cary’s glibness she told me she’d hired a gag writer on the side to interpolate bits for her. I first saw it complete with a preview audience. At one point Cary, asked to describe my character, ad libbed as “he’s like that actor in movies, Ralph Bellamy” and there was this roar of laughter and I jumped out of my seat!
BAWDEN: You had a lock on these characters.
BELLAMY: In "Brother Orchid" (1940) I was a dim chauffeur who was an amateur ornithologist. In one scene where I’m driving in a convertible with Eddie Robinson and Ann Sothern in the back, I’m supposed to imitate all these bird tweets. We did the scene against a transparency, then Eddie rushes to the director Lloyd Bacon and barks “Ralph is interpolating bird whistles not in the script. He’s trying to steal the scene with these tweet s.” We all dissolved in laughter but Eddie was dead serious.
BAWDEN: You were serious in a series of Ellery Queen mysteries.
"
BELLAMY: I did four of them: Ellery Queen, Master Detective," "Ellery Queen’s Penthouse Mystery," "Ellery Queen and the Perfect Crime," "Ellery Queen and the Murder Ring." Made them for Columbia as “B”s with Margaret Lindsay, who was an old pal, and Charlie Grapewin as my dad. Jimmy directed the last three I did but they became ordinary. ordinary. I asked for more money and they replaced me with William Gargan. In the first, Marsha Hunt was one of the suspects, I remember, and Michael Whalen and Ann Shoemaker were there. And I loved doing them, although shooting was very fast. Kurt Neumann directed the first one but I forget why he was
replaced.
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of the famous literary sleuth ELLERY QUEEN in a series of movies. Later, he played a TV detective in "Man Against Crime." |
BAWDEN: You knew Errol Flynn well?
BELLAMY: A darling. Couldn’t or wouldn’t take himself seriously. And he drank like there was no tomorrow. Had a bum ticker from the malaria he’d picked up in Australia. Also a spot of TB. Tried to enlist but flunked his medical, so he drank some more. Knew he wouldn’t live into old age. He really had a ball in "Footsteps in the Dark" (1941). He was so glad to be out of swashbucklers. In "Dive Bomber" (1941) all the color shots of Pearl Harbor were shot only months before the Japanese attack. It made a fortune because war was coming by the time it got released.
BAWDEN: I want to ask you about "The Wolf Man" (1941).
BELLAMY: I already know the question. What the hell happened to Warren William? He gets second billing. I get third, but he disappears from the picture early on. The reason: Warren was quite the drinker, even boasted he could outlast John Barrymore. So he went on a bender and never came back to the set. We just worked around him. Craziest thing about that movie: that the diminutive Claude Rains is the father of hulking Lon Chaney Jr. The sets were impressive. They even built a small woods on a soundstage and the special effects when Lon turns into the wolf took days of stop action work. I asked Maria Ouspenskaya (the great Russian actress) why she was doing drek like this and she answered “Same as you. American bucks.” Curt Siodmak wrote it and he was always around and George Waggner directed. He should have had a long movie career, but wound up doing TV stuff.
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BAWDEN: Then came "The Ghost of Frankenstein" (1942).
BELLAMY: Ugh. It sort of picked up the story from "Son of Frankenstein." Lon Chaney, Jr. was the monster this time and he really resented that. Cedric Hardwicke was Ludwig Frankenstein, Lionel Atwill was the doctor, Bela Lugosi was Ygor and Evelyn Ankers, a wonderfully sensitive British lady, was Elsa Frankenstein. The damned dumb director was Erle C. Kenton, complete with whip and an air of pomposity. On one scene he was going on giving Evelyn directions: “Elsa, your father was killed by the monster, your husband dragged off by Ygor now what I want from you is one clear emotion-- that you’re fed up with it all.” At which moment Sir Cedric lay on the floor howling with laughter and he couldn’t stop for some time. And forever afterwards at Hollywood parties I’d see him and he’d shout “Fed up with it all?”
BAWDEN: The story goes that you were in producer Mark Hellinger’s office and saw on a secretary’s desk a script with a note about you.
BELLAMY: It said something like “A wonderfully comic creation – this character dumb as a doornail, clumsy, frightfully daft –a perfect Ralph Bellamy part!” At which I got up, walked out, walked out of Warners and rang my agent to say I was being typecast and I needed a Broadway part right away. And he delivered. Within days it was announced I’d be going back to Broadway in a new play "Tomorrow the World" (1943). And I left Hollywood two years later and I was away for 15 years with just one picture, 1955’s "The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell" in all that time. I never missed it. And I don’t think Hollywood missed me.
BAWDEN: So you decided to go back to Broadway?
BELLAMY: Luckily I picked a huge hit, "Tomorrow the World," which opened in 1943 and ran over a year. I had a wonderful co-star in Shirley Booth, Arnaud D’Usseau and James Gow wrote it and Elliott Nugent directed and we opened at the Ethel Barrymore. It was all about a little blond boy who is on the last boat out of Nazi Germany before war is declared and it turns out he’s already been turned into a Nazi. Little Skippy Homeier was the boy and when they made the movie he was 18 months older and no longer quite as effective. He then retired to finish high school but then came back in adult parts, but always as a villain.
BAWDEN: An even bigger hit was "State of the Union."
BELLAMY: We opened in 1945. Opening night at the Hudson there was this huge cheering. It was a political play by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse, who’d done the monster hit "Life with Father," Leland Hayward packaged it all up and Bretaigne Windust directed it. We had quite the cast: Margalo Gillmore, Ruth Hussey as my wife, Myron McCormick, Minor Watson. It was about a captain of industry who is fed up with the mess in Washington. Later on Kay Francis replaced Ruth and we even toured in it. Spence Tracy got the movie part, but the film directed by Frank Capra was a big messy thing. Our version ran 765 times and I did it for years.
BAWDEN: Then came "Detective Story" (1949).
BELLAMY: It ran over 580 times. Opened in March, 1949, closed in August, 1950, and only because the summer heat that year was horrendous. It was the perfect play, really. I loved our cast: Jean Adair from "Arsenic and Old Lace"; Ed Binns, his first detective part; Lee Grant, who repeated her dazzling turn in the film; Horace McMahon--a lot of these wonderful people repeated their work in the 1951 film but I was replaced by Kirk Douglas. Reason? Box office. Sidney Kingsley directed his own play. How can one argue with the playwright, I ask you? We started at the Hudson, transferring to the Broadhurst, and road companies played everywhere.
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in "Sunrise at Campobello," which Bellamy also starred in on stage. |
BAWDEN: Then came your role as Franklin D. Roosevelt in "Sunrise at Campobello," which I understand is your favorite.
BELLAMY: It’s the reason I’m still active today. I wasn’t in such great shape by then, but I had to play in a chair every night, so I got a great physical instructor in. We had to work on my arm and back muscles. FDR had great biceps, he had to to drag himself around. My neck muscles grew. I no longer had backaches. And I’ve continued that regimen ever since.
BAWDEN: What was it like Opening Night?
BELLAMY: We opened (in) January, 1958. Opening night I took a peek through the stage curtain and the entire contingent of New Dealers were sitting in the first few rows. I nearly had a heart attack. I mean you have to remember FDR had been dead 14 years. That’s not a whole lot of time. But Mrs. Roosevelt was sitting right there and the “children” now all grown up. Mary Fickett was Eleanor, Anne Seymour was Mrs. Sara Delano Roosevelt, a young pup by the name of James Earl Jones was there. Crowds cheered. It was something special in my acting life. We played 556 performances at the Cort, always to the same rapturous reaction. I got the Tony Award as best actor which pleased me to no end.
BAWDEN: But you told me you hated the movie version.
BELLAMY: I overplayed to the rafters. We had Vince Donohue do the movie as well as the play and he had precious little movie experience. I took one look at the finished product and it was awful. There’s no modulation. We’re all shouting our lines, except Greer Garson, who came in as Eleanor and she’s perfect. She was the only one nominated for an Oscar. I certainly did not deserve one. But I got a whole new career playing FDR. He’s been very good for my bank account. And I always thought there was more than a little rich, ripe ham in him.
BAWDEN: Explain to me how you could do eight performances a week AND do a live TV series for CBS all at the same time?
BELLAMY: It’s back to the routine I’d done in repertory. And also I was quite a bit younger. From 1949 through 1953, we played the half hour detective saga ("Man Against Crime") on CBS and that meant live from Grand Central studios. In 1952 we switched to film which made things easier for me. One night while I was on in "Detective Story," I finished the broadcast exactly at 9 p.m. They’d hold the curtain another 15 minutes while I cabbed it over to the theater and I’d just stroll on without makeup. But that night a drunk hit the cab and I had to run for the last few blocks. Dripping with perspiration I raced in, staggered on stage and gave what was called my best-ever performance. The filmed shows were made at the old Edison studios in the Bronx. CBS cancelled us in 1953 and we then ran on two separate networks NBC and DuMont exactly at the same time, Sundays at 10:30. When I took a vacation in 1951 Robert Preston came on as my brother Pat and kept things going. I loved doing it!
BAWDEN: I have the VHS copy of you and Bill Shatner co-starring in "The Defenders" live in 1957 on CBS’s "Studio One" series but when the actual series started, you and Bill had been replaced. So what happened?
BELLAMY: Why, I was a bad boy. It took CBS almost three years to decide to do it as a series and then they wanted to film it in California. They were phasing out live drama. I simply asked for too much dough and I think Bill’s movie career had heated up. So E.G. Marshall and Bob Reed replaced us and that’s that. I just continued on TV elsewhere. In 1962, I was asked to replace Wendell Corey in the medical series "The Eleventh Hour." I did about 30 of those and then I tried to get on every drama show around. I wanted it all.
BAWDEN: How did you get the choice part of Dr. Sapirstein in "Rosemary’s Baby" (1968)?
BELLAMY: Oh, the little man wanted me-- (director) Roman Polanski. Very dwarfish creature with a high giggle. After a take, he wouldn’t say, “Cut”? One would just hear a “Tee hee hee”. He used a lot of veterans: Patsy Kelly, Elisha Cook Jr., Maurice Evans, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer. I knew most of them from way back when. Roman presented everything in a calm, matter of fact way that the creeping terror just builds. It’s sheer genius on his part. It’s a very quiet movie where a door creaking can unnerve one. There’s a lot of dark comedy in there, too. He was a very careful director, explained everything, multiple takes, very demanding, very appreciative when one got it right. Loved to talk old movies with me.
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BAWDEN: Then he offered you another role which you turned down?
BELLAMY: Oh, yes, phoned me up when he was starting work on "Chinatown" (1974) . Told me he wanted me for Noah Cross. I’d be the stern old man who had raped his own daughter, had the illegitimate child and… And I said, “Whoa! Wait a minute!” And that was that. It may be a brilliant movie, but I still had to look at my wife across the breakfast table every morning and I had grown children. And Roman said I was afraid of being evil. But that’s not the case at all! Johnny Huston did it, but I don’t think he should have. So I got the little man mad at me and that was that.
BAWDEN: You had another big hit with "Trading Places" (1983).
BELLAMY: Went in for costume rehearsals and Ray Milland, chosen as my brother Mortimer Duke, was having difficulties. Finally he had to bow out just before filming and they got in Don Ameche. The script was choice. First morning in the makeup trailer, I said, “Why, this is my 72nd movie.” And Don answers, “Why. this is my 56th.” And Eddie Murphy looks embarrassed and says “Boys, this is my first. Ever.” It broke everybody up and the movie became my biggest ever hit.
In 1988, I met with Bellamy in Toronto for our last interview:
BAWDEN: As usual you’ve been busy.
BELLAMY: I got to play FDR again in "The Winds of War" (1983). That was challenging. And I’m back at it in "War and Remembrance," which comes on next season. (in 1988-1989). I’m still doing my FDR exercises every morning. Then they asked me to join "Hotel" (1985-86) as Uncle Jake Cabot. Had a grand reunion with Anne Baxter, who I’d last worked with on "Guest in the House" in 1944. She bade me goodbye one weekend and went back to New York city and died there of a stroke right on the street. I’m also doing the mystery movies titled "Christine Cromwell" with Jackie Smith, a great beauty. And here I am in Toronto, my first time here simce selling War Bonds in 1944. My mother, who was Canadian-born, asked me to get her some maple leaves and it was fall, so we got some red ones and pressed them on wax paper and preserved them for her. This part is small, buit dandy and I‘m getting to know and love Teresa Wright, the latest in a long line of wonderful leading ladies. And I just know I’ll continue for a little bit longer at least.
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©2012 by Jim Bawden. This column first posted June 25, 2012.
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