Charles McGraw

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Charles McGraw (born May 10, 1914 in Des Moines , Iowa , † July 30, 1980 in Studio City , Los Angeles ; actually Charles Butters ) was an American theater and film actor. During his four-decade career, the character actor played roles in over 140 film and television productions, including numerous Hollywood films.

Life

Charles McGraw was born in 1914 as Charles Butters in the American Midwest (according to other sources in New York ). He went to sea from the age of 18. He then moved to New York , where he made his stage actor debut in the play The Golden Boy . His theater career was interrupted by the Second World War. After the war, he returned to Broadway and received several extras in film productions, including The Seventh Cross (1944) with Spencer Tracy . He also worked for the radio. In the mid-1940s, McGraw was discovered by Mark Hellinger . The film producer and screenwriter persuaded the actor to go to Hollywood , where McGraw was seen several times in 1946 with the supporting role of Al in Robert Siodmaks for the Oscar- nominated film noir Avengers of the Underworld .

Further appearances in film noir followed, in which McGraw, as in his theater work, was mostly subscribed to the supporting role of the tough guy, which ranged from the police officer ( The Long Night , 1947) to the villain. This was mainly due to his distinctive voice and emotionless face. McGraw played one of his few leading movie roles in Richard Fleischer's At a Hair's Width (1952). In the film noir, the actor, who was under contract with RKO at the time, was seen as a hardened police officer who had to protect the wife of a murdered gangster (played by Marie Windsor ) during a train ride, who was supposed to testify in court. The critics praised McGraw for his incisive appearance as Brown.

From the mid-1950s, McGraw increasingly worked for American television. As the unconventional hero Mike Waring, he appeared in over 30 episodes of the series The Adventures of Falcon (1954–1956) and took on the role of café owner Rick Blaine ( Casablanca , 1955–1956) for a series adaptation of the Oscar-winning film Casablanca . His over 70 television roles earned him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame . As he got older, McGraw also took on character roles in the cinema, including the part of Marcellus in Stanley Kubrick's award-winning monumental film Spartacus (1960). In his last film role, he was seen in 1976 as Air Force General in Robert Aldrich's thriller The Ultimatum .

McGraw was married to Freda Choy Kitt from 1938 to 1967. A child emerged from the relationship. The actor died at the age of 66 after falling through a glass shower door at his home. 2007 appeared under the title Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy, a biography written by Alan K. Rode.

Filmography (selection)

literature

  • Alan K. Rode: Charles McGraw: biography of a film noir tough guy . McFarland & Co., Jefferson, NC (et al.) 2007, ISBN 978-0786431670

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b cf. Charles McGraw . In: Ephraim Katz: The Macmillan international film encyclopedia . Macmillan, New York, NY, 1994, ISBN 0-333-61601-4 , p. 870.
  2. a b c d cf. AP : Charles McGraw, Actor, Dies in Fall at His Home . In: The New York Times . Aug. 2, 1980, Section 2, p. 26, Column 5, Cultural Desk.
  3. a b cf. Biography in the All Movie Guide (accessed February 20, 2009)
  4. cf. Film review of The Narrow Margin in The New York Times, May 5, 1952 (accessed February 20, 2009 via movies.nytimes.com)
  5. cf. Biography in the Internet Movie Database (accessed February 20, 2009)