Adolphe Menjou

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Adolphe Menjou and Kathryn Carver shortly before their wedding in Paris in 1928

Adolphe Jean Menjou (born February 18, 1890 in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , † October 29, 1963 in Beverly Hills , California ) was an American actor who played in just over 150 films between 1914 and 1960 and embodied elegant gentlemen.

life and career

Adolphe Menjou was born in Pittsburgh in 1890 to a French and an Irish woman. His mother was widely related to James Joyce . After initially completing a university degree as an engineer, Menjou was drawn to the vaudeville theater and made his film debut in the 1914 short film The Acid Test . During the First World War he served as a medic.

After the war Menjou was best known for his roles in the adventure films The Sheikh with Rudolph Valentino and The Three Musketeers with Douglas Fairbanks senior . In the 1920s, films like Charlie Chaplin's romantic drama The Nights of a Beautiful Woman became an internationally famous film actor. Menjou cultivated the image of the style-conscious gentleman with European charm, who appears cultivated, ironic and occasionally cynical. With the introduction of talkies in the late 1920s, his career, like that of many silent film stars, initially stalled. But he was finally able to establish himself in the sound film and appeared next to Marlene Dietrich in the film Morocco . The role of a shrewd reporter in Lewis Milestone's comedy The Front Page earned Menjou an Oscar nomination in 1931 .

In the course of the 1930s Menjou took on leading roles in mostly smaller film productions, while at the same time he appeared in lavish and popular films such as In Another Land , Stage Entrance and A Star Rises as the second leading actor or most important supporting character alongside the main star . As he got older, he could shift from his amateur roles to character portrayals. In the 1940s the quality of Menjou's films deteriorated, one of the few exceptions being Frank Capra's comedy The Best Man . With the advent of television after 1950, he also took on roles in several television series. Menjou played one of his most famous roles in 1957 as the cold-blooded General Broulard in Stanley Kubrick's classic film Paths to Fame . He ended his career in 1960 with the film Everyone loves Pollyanna .

After World War II , Menjou was a leader in the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals , a McCarthy-era group that hunted communists and liberals in Hollywood. Adolphe Menjou wrote an autobiography called It Took Nine Tailors . A star commemorates him on the Hollywood Walk of Fame . The actor is also immortalized by the Menjou mustache : a narrow mustache that was named after him because he popularized him.

Menjou was married three times. First with Kathryn Conn Tinsley, then from 1928 to 1934 with Kathryn Carver and most recently with Verree Teasdale from 1934 until his death in 1963. Menjou and Teasdale had a child and also appeared in two films together. He is buried next to Teasdale in Hollywood Forever Cemetery .

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Commons : Adolphe Menjou  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Adolphe Menjou, the film cynic. Illustrierte Filmwoche 1926 (Die Bühne), accessed on May 10, 2020 .
  2. ^ Google Books
  3. ^ Adolphe Menjou | Biography, Movie Highlights and Photos. Retrieved May 11, 2020 (American English).
  4. ↑ Steven J. Ross: Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics . Oxford University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-19-991143-1 ( google.de [accessed May 11, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Menjou, Adolphe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Menjou, Adolphe Jean (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH October 29, 1963
Place of death Beverly Hills