Louis Calhern

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Louis Calhern (born February 19, 1895 in Brooklyn , New York , NY , † May 12, 1956 in Tokyo ; actually Carl Henry Vogt ) was an American actor .

Life

Broadway successes

Carl Henry Vogt was of German American descent. He began an acting training during the First World War in New York, where he took a pseudonym for his German name by contracting the two first names Charles and Henry to Calhern . He chose the first name Louis after St. Louis , where he had spent much of his youth and was discovered as an actor by employees of a touring theater.

As Louis Calhern he celebrated his first major success on New York's Broadway in 1923 . Numerous stage successes were to follow there, including as King Lear after William Shakespeare , as Colonel in Franz Werfels Jakobowsky and the Colonel, and in the role of the American doctor and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes , who not only worked for a long time in the stage production of The Magnificent Yankee , but also embodied in the film version of the same name from 1950, for which he received an Oscar nomination.

Film career

The tall mime with the distinguished voice made his feature film debut as early as 1921 and has since played mostly bon vivants and high-class gangsters in a number of silent films . With the advent of the talkie , he was able to continue his career seamlessly and showed in his roles a wide range between aristocratic, fatherly, emotionally cold, tragic and comedic characters. He also played in comedies by the Marx Brothers (as Ambassador Trentino von Sylvanien in Die Marx Brothers im Krieg , 1933) and the comedian duo Robert Woolsey and Bert Wheeler ( Diplomaniacs , also 1933) , extremely popular in the 1930s , and as a little stiffer Father of Don Ameche in Ernst Lubitsch's profound A Heavenly Sinner (1943), in thrillers like 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932) alongside Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis , in literary adaptations such as the unscrupulous public prosecutor Villefort alongside Robert Donat in Alexandre Dumas ' Graf von Monte Christo (1934), in historical dramas such as The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), in thrillers such as Hitchcock's espionage drama Notorious (1946) and in dramas such as alongside Ingrid Bergman in In the Shadow of the Triumphal Arch (1948).

From 1950 he experienced his late career high point in productions in the MGM studios. In 1950 he played in addition to his Oscar nomination role as Oliver Wendell Holmes the aging Buffalo Bill in the film version of the musical Annie Get Your Gun and Marilyn Monroe's fatherly friend and at the same time head of a gang of criminals in John Huston's asphalt jungle . Two years later he starred in the romantic comedy We're Not Married at all once again alongside Marilyn Monroe. This was followed by roles in the adventure films Im Schatten der Krone alongside Stewart Granger (1952) and as a Baal Priest alongside Lana Turner Temple of Temptation (1955), the title role in Joseph L. Mankiewicz ' Julius Caesar (with Marlon Brando as Marc Anton ), alongside Clark Gable in the war drama Betrayed (1954), as a cynical teacher in the drama The Saat of Violence (1955) and in the musicals Symphony of the Heart (1954, with Elizabeth Taylor ) and The Upper Ten Thousand (as the uncle of Grace Kelly ).

In 1956 he was in Japan for the filming of the war satire The Little Tea House by Vern Sneider with Glenn Ford and Marlon Brando. Calhern, who suffered from alcohol problems for many years, died there of heart failure on May 12, 1956. The eulogy was given by the star of the production, Glenn Ford, with whom he had already played together in the Seed of Violence . Calhern's part as Colonel Wainwright Purdy III. Paul Ford took over .

Private life

Louis Calhern was married four times - each to actresses: from 1926 to 1927 with Ilka Chase (1900–1978), from 1927 to 1932 with Julia Hoyt (1897–1955), from 1933 to 1942 with Natalie Schafer (1900–1991) and from 1946 to 1955 with Marianne Stewart (1922–1992), Reinhold Schünzel's daughter .

Filmography (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Calhern, Louis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vogt, Carl Henry (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH February 19, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York , NY
DATE OF DEATH May 12, 1956
Place of death Tokyo