Joel McCrea

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Joel McCrea

Joel Albert McCrea (born November 5, 1905 in South Pasadena , California , USA - † October 20, 1990 in Woodland Hills , California, USA) was an American actor .

life and career

Joel McCrea was the son of a businessman, studied acting at Pomona College and began working as an extra and stuntman in 1928. He got his first major role in 1929 in The Jazz Age , which earned him a contract with the MGM film studio . There he made friends with Marion Davies and Greta Garbo, among others .

In 1930 he went to the newly founded RKO . His relationship with Constance Bennett , the studio's biggest star, brought him media attention and numerous roles alongside Bennett in romantic love films such as Born to Love , The Common Law and Rockabye . In 1932 David O. Selznick gave him the lead role in Bird of Paradise . Directed by King Vidor , the film was intended as a response to the success of Tarzan, the ape-man who generated record revenues for MGM. Dolores del Río played a native princess who had a stormy love affair with an American. Both actors were seen almost naked for the majority of the film, which was partly shot in Hawaii, which was possible due to the censorship regulations that were still generous at the time. This role advanced McCrea's career. In the same year he acted alongside Fay Wray in Graf Zaroff - Genie des Evil , which tells the flight of castaways from a manhunter in the truest sense of the word. This film, too, was made before the strict Production Code came into effect and, in terms of depicting sex and violence, went to the limits of what was customary at the time. After appearing alongside Richard Dix and Erich von Stroheim in the long-forgotten drama The Last Four , he was given the male lead in 1933 alongside Irene Dunne in the film adaptation of Sidney Howard's eponymous play The Silver Cord . During the filming, he also met his future wife Frances Dee , whom he married that same year and with whom he lived until his death.

After RKO left, Joel McCrea worked on the basis of non-exclusive contracts, including for the film producer Samuel Goldwyn , which earned him increasingly demanding roles. So also in the drama Infame Lügen from 1936, which showed him alongside Miriam Hopkins and Merle Oberon in a defused version of Lillian Hellman's play The Children's Hour . His collaboration with Barbara Stanwyck in Internes Can't Take Money from 1937 was interesting in that McCrea portrayed the character of Dr. Kildare embodied, then played from 1939 Lew Ayres in a series of several films for MGM. Another significant film for McCrea was Dead End , the film adaptation of the stage success of the same name by Lillian Hellman. With the Western Union Pacific from 1939, directed by Cecil B. DeMille , McCrea's rise to one of the top male stars of the war years finally began. In the following years he shot the film The Foreign Correspondent with Alfred Hitchcock , among others, as well as a few films with Preston Sturges , including Sullivan's travels , which showed him at the side of Veronica Lake , and Breathless to Florida with Claudette Colbert as a partner. His personal favorite films of the period included Primrose Path from 1940, a love story between a seedy young woman and an upright young man, and Always More, Always Merry, from 1943. The Comedy Addressing Washington's War-induced housing shortage busy, featured McCrea directed by George Stevens as partner of Jean Arthur . Arthur played a patriotic young woman who rented half of her house to Charles Coburn , who, without telling her, sublet half of his house to a young officer. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture.

Since his role as Buffalo Bill, directed by William A. Wellman in the 1944 film of the same name, McCrea has worked primarily in westerns and has become one of the most acclaimed actors in the genre. In contrast, he now mostly turned down roles in other film genres because he found making western films more exciting. Between 1959 and 1960, he starred alongside his son Jody McCrea in the television series Wichita Town . In 1962 he was seen alongside Randolph Scott in Western Sacramento , directed by Sam Peckinpah , and then announced his retirement from the film business. In later years he returned to the big screen for a few character roles, most recently in the 1976 film Mustang Country .

Thanks to good investments, McCrea was one of the wealthiest actors in Hollywood, along with Corinne Griffith , Paulette Goddard , Bing Crosby and Bob Hope , whose net worth was well over $ 200 million. In the book People Will Talk by John Kobal, McCrea gave the author a very frank interview in which, in addition to his numerous affairs, he also gave information about his long-standing friendship with the director Gregory La Cava .

Filmography (selection)

literature

  • Gregor Hauser: Muzzle flashes: The 50 best B-Westerns of the 50s and their stars . Verlag Reinhard Marheinecke 2015, ISBN 978-3-932053-85-6 . Pp. 207-209.

Web links

Commons : Joel McCrea  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME McCrea, Joel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES McCrea, Joel Albert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH 5th November 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH South Pasadena , California , USA
DATE OF DEATH October 20, 1990
Place of death Woodland Hills , California , USA