John Dall

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John Dall

John Dall (born May 26, 1918 in New York , † January 15, 1971 in Hollywood ; actually John Jenner Thompson ) was an American actor .

Life

John Dall was born John Jenner Thompson in New York in 1918. He attended Panama Grade School and Horace Mann High School in his hometown. He completed his acting training at the Theodore Irvine School and the Pasadena Playhouse before taking on his first smaller roles on New York's Broadway from 1941 . His first leading role followed in 1944 with the part of William Seawright in the romantic comedy Dear Ruth , which is about the correspondence between a soldier and a teenager who secretly gives the name of her sister (played by Virginia Gilmore ) in the love letters . Under the direction of Moss Hart, the play was a success with the public and brought it to nearly seven hundred performances at the Henry Miller's Theater from 1944 to 1946. Hollywood then became aware of the sensitive actor, and he received a supporting role in Irving Rapper's drama The Green Corn in 1946 . The film adaptation of a play by Emlyn Williams takes place against the backdrop of a miners' settlement in Wales around 1895, in which an idealistic, elderly teacher (played by Bette Davis ) recognizes the potential of a young miner and enables him to study at Oxford . Although critics judged Rapper's film to be too theatrical, Dall received a 1946 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for the role of academic honors Morgan Evans , which was then awarded to James Dunn for his role in A Tree Growing in Brooklyn .

The success of his first film role brought Dall further engagements in Hollywood, mostly in dramas. In 1947 he got the male lead in Irving Pichel's musical and Deanna-Durbin star vehicle Something in the Wind . A year later he was represented with a supporting role in the Lillian Hellman film Out of the Darkness of the Forest alongside Fredric March , for which he received an Honorable Mention from the New York Times . Dall was known to a wide audience that same year as the co-star of Farley Granger in Alfred Hitchcock's Cocktail for a Corpse . He and Granger played the roles of two students putting their teacher's philosophical theses into practice and killing a fellow student . Linked by an implied same-sex relationship, they plan to stage the perfect crime in this way and to prove their superiority. The critics praised Dall for his aggressive style of play, with which he made the egocentric Brandon Shaw, who delivers a duel with James Stewart , highly contemptuous.

On Rope followed the 1950 low-budget production Gun Crazy , which are his two most famous films today. In the darkly staged gangster drama by Joseph H. Lewis , Dall is seen as a young man with a psychopathic passion for firearms, who, together with his wife ( Peggy Cummins ), gets involved in criminal acts of violence such as murder and bank robberies à la Bonnie and Clyde . That same year he played Lee J. Cobb's brother in Felix E. Feist's film noir The Man Who Cheated Himself before his film career came to an abrupt halt in the early 1950s. As a result, Dall was subscribed to television appearances in well-known series such as Studio One (1952), General Electric Theater (1958) or Schlitz Playhouse of Stars (1959). His return to Broadway with the farce Champagne Complex (1955) alongside Polly Bergen was also unsuccessful. It was not until the early 1960s that small character roles followed in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) and in George Pal's fantasy film Atlantis, the lost continent (1961), his last appearances in movies. The last television appearance completed Dall completed in 1965 with a guest role in the series Perry Mason .

In 1971 he died of a heart attack in Hollywood at the age of 52. He bequeathed his body to science.

Filmography

  • 1945: The green grain (The Corn Is Green)
  • 1947: Something in the Wind
  • 1948: Another Part of the Forest
  • 1948: Cocktail for a corpse (Rope)
  • 1949: The Chevrolet Tele-Theater (TV series, 1 episode)
  • 1950: Dangerous Passion (Gun Crazy)
  • 1950: The Man Who Cheated Himself
  • 1951: Lights Out (TV series, 1 episode)
  • 1951: The Clock (TV series, 1 episode)
  • 1952: Studio One (TV series, 1 episode)
  • 1952/1953: Broadway Television Theater (TV series, 2 episodes)
  • 1952/1954: Suspense (TV series, 2 episodes)
  • 1958: General Electric Theater (TV series, 1 episode)
  • 1959: Schlitz Playhouse of Stars (TV series, 1 episode)
  • 1960: Spartacus
  • 1961: Atlantis , the Lost Continent
  • 1962–1965: Perry Mason (TV series, 4 episodes)

Plays (selection)

  • 1944: Dear Ruth
  • 1948: Red Gloaves
  • 1950: The Heiress (Revival)
  • 1955: Champagne Complex

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. John Dall . In: Blum, Daniel: Theater world: Season 1947-48; Season 1949-50; Season 1950-1951 . New York: Norman Macdonald [et al.], 1948-1951
  2. ↑ a b cf. Katz, Ephraim: The Macmillan international film encyclopedia . New York: Macmillan, 1994.- ISBN 0-333-61601-4
  3. ↑ a b cf. Profile of John Dall at Allmovie.com (English)
  4. ↑ cf. Crowther, Bosley: The Screen in Review: Corn Is Green . In: The New York Times, March 30, 1945
  5. ↑ cf. Lexicon of International Films 2000/2001 (CD-ROM)
  6. ↑ cf. The Screen: 'Another Part of the Forest' . In: The New York Times, May 19, 1948
  7. ↑ cf. Crowther, Bosley: The Screen In Review: Rope . In: The New York Times, August 27, 1948
  8. ↑ cf. Rope . In: Variety, January 1, 1948  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.variety.com  
  9. ↑ cf. Profile at findagrave.com (English)
personal data
SURNAME Dall, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thompson, John Jenner (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH New York , New York
DATE OF DEATH 15th January 1971
Place of death Hollywood , California