Raymond Massey

Raymond Massey photographed by Carl Van Vechten

Raymond Hart Massey (August 30 1896–July 29 1983) was a Canadian actor. Born in Toronto, Ontario, he was a son of Chester D. Massey, the wealthy owner of the Massey-Ferguson Tractor Company. He attended secondary school briefly at Upper Canada College, before transferring to Appleby College in Oakville, Ontario, and graduated from university at University of Toronto where both he and his brother were active members in the Kappa Alpha Society, and Balliol College, Oxford.

At the outbreak of World War I, he joined the Canadian Army, serving with the artillery on the Western Front. He returned to Canada suffering shell-shock and was engaged as an army instructor for American officers at Yale. In 1918, he was sent to serve at Siberia, where he made his first stage appearance, entertaining American troops on occupation duty. Severely wounded in action in France, he was sent home, where he eventually worked in the family business, selling farm implements.

Acting career

Drawn to the theater, in 1922, he appeared on the London stage. His first movie role was High Treason in 1927. He played Sherlock Holmes in The Speckled Band in 1931. In 1936, he starred in H. G. Wells' Things to Come. Although there was a great outcry when a Canadian was cast as an American president, he scored a great triumph on Broadway in Robert E. Sherwood's play Abe Lincoln in Illinois, and repeated his role in the 1940 film version. Early in Massey's career, Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, heard him perform and was struck by the similarity between Massey's speaking voice and that of his father. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1944.

Despite being Canadian, Massey became famous for his quintessential American roles, as Abraham Lincoln in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor), abolitionist John Brown in 1940's Santa Fe Trail, Lincoln again in the 1956 production of The Day Lincoln Was Shot on Ford Star Jubilee, Lincoln yet again (a wordless cameo this time) in 1962's How the West Was Won, and again as John Brown in the 1955 low-budget film Seven Angry Men. Interestingly, his second portrayal of Brown was much more sympathetic, presenting him as a well-intentioned, but misguided figure, while in Santa Fe Trail he was presented as a wild-eyed lunatic. Massey only played a Canadian on screen once, in Forty-Ninth Parallel (1941).

On stage in the 1953 dramatic reading of Stephen Vincent Benét's John Brown's Body, Massey, in addition to narrating along with Tyrone Power and Judith Anderson, took on both the roles of John Brown and Abe Lincoln in the same work.

He rejoined the Canadian Army for World War II, though he would eventually be released from service and return to acting work. Following the war, he became an American citizen. Massey became well-known on television in the 1950s and 1960s, especially as Doctor Gillespie in the popular series Dr. Kildare.

Personal life

Massey was married three times.

1. Margery Fremantle from 1921 to 1929 (divorce); they had one child, Geoffrey Massey.
2. Adrianne Allen (February 7 1907-September 14, 1993), the noted London and Broadway stage actress, from 1929 to 1939 (divorce). They had two children who followed him into acting: Anna Massey CBE, and the late Daniel Massey.
3. Dorothy Whitney from 1939 until his death.

His older brother was the late Vincent Massey, the first Canadian-born Governor General of Canada.

He dabbled in politics, appearing in a 1964 television advertisement in support of conservative Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

He died of pneumonia on July 29 1983 (the same day as his The Prisoner of Zenda and A Matter of Life and Death co-star David Niven) in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 86, and is buried in New Haven, Connecticut.

Honors

Massey has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for movies at 1719 Vine Street and one for television at 6708 Hollywood Blvd.

Selected filmography

• High Treason (1928)
• The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934)
• Things to Come (1936)
• The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)
• Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940)
• Santa Fe Trail (1940)
• Forty-Ninth Parallel (1941)
• Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
• A Matter of Life and Death (1946)
• The Fountainhead (1949)
• East of Eden (1955)
• The Naked and The Dead (1957)

See also

• Other Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood

External links

• Raymond Massey at IMDb
• Raymond Massey at the BFI's Screenonline