Gavin Gordon (actor)

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Gavin Gordon (born April 7, 1901 in Chicora , Mississippi , † April 7, 1983 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American actor.

Life

A native of rural Mississippi, Gavin Gordon made his Broadway debut in the 1924 musical comedy Annie Dear . There it should also occur more frequently in the following years. After a respectable stage career, he came to Hollywood in 1929 with the start of talkies , as actors with language experience were wanted there. Directed by Clarence Brown , he played Greta Garbo's partner in Romance (1930) in 1930. Nevertheless, he did not make the hoped-for breakthrough to become a film star. In the next few years he was mainly used in supporting roles, for example as the pious missionary and fiance of Barbara Stanwyck in Frank Capra's drama The Bitter Tea of ​​General Yen (1933) and in the role of Marlene Dietrich's lover in Josef von Sternberg's lavish historical drama Die Scharlachrote Empress (1934). In 1935, Gordon played Lord George Byron in the horror classic Frankenstein's Bride by James Whale .

From the mid-1930s onwards, the number of films on offer decreased and he began to play more and more in the theater. In later years his film roles were mostly of a minor nature, in a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941), for example, he played a forensic doctor and in the musical film Centennial Summer (1946) he was seen as railroad president. Between 1947 and 1951, Gordon appeared on three successful Broadway productions and made his first appearances on emerging television before returning to Hollywood and signing a studio contract with Paramount Pictures . Here he played for example in comedies with Danny Kaye ( Die Lachbombe , 1954) and Jerry Lewis (inter alia The Heulboje , 1964). In Cecil B. DeMille's monumental film The Ten Commandments , he made a brief appearance as the Ambassador of Troy . He had a bigger appearance in 1959 in the horror film The Beast alongside Vincent Price , in which he played the title character of a serial killer. Gordon had his last role in 1968 in an episode of the series Petticoat Junction . He died in 1983 on his 82nd birthday in Los Angeles.

Gordon was homosexual, he had a longstanding relationship with the actor Edward Everett Horton , among others . Both appeared in 1961 in The Lower Ten Thousand alongside Bette Davis , but had no scenes in common.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Gavin Gordon at Allmovie
  2. ↑ Gavin Gordon in the Internet Broadway Database (English)
  3. ^ Anthony Slide: Eccentrics of Comedy. Scarecrow Press, 1998, ISBN 9780810835344 Limited preview in Google Book Search
  4. ↑ Edward Everett Horton at Immortal Ephemera
personal data
SURNAME Gordon, Gavin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicora , Mississippi , United States
DATE OF DEATH April 7, 1983
Place of death Los Angeles , California , United States