Louis Calhern

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Louis Calhern
Nara, Nara, Japan
Resting placeHollywood Forever Cemetery
OccupationActor
Years active1921–1956
Spouses
(m. 1926; div. 1927)
Julia Hoyt
(m. 1927; div. 1932)
(m. 1933; div. 1942)
Marianne Stewart
(m. 1946; div. 1955)

Carl Henry Vogt (February 19, 1895 – May 12, 1956), known professionally as Louis Calhern, was an American stage and screen actor.[1] Well known to fans of film noir for his role as Alonzo Emmerich, the pivotal villain in 1950's The Asphalt Jungle, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for portraying Oliver Wendell Holmes in the film The Magnificent Yankee later that year.

Early life

Calhern was born Carl Henry Vogt in Brooklyn, New York, in 1895, the son of German immigrants Eugene Adolf Vogt and Hubertina Friese Vogt. He had one known sibling, a sister.[2] His father was a tobacco dealer.[3]

While in

St. Louis, Missouri, where he was raised. While playing high school football, a stage manager from a touring theatrical stock company noticed the tall, handsome youth and hired him as a bit player. Another source states "Grace George hired his entire high school football team as supers for a Shakespearean play."[3] Due to the anti-German sentiment during World War I, he changed his German given name, Carl. His stage name is an amalgam of his hometown of St. Louis and his first and middle names, Carl and Henry (Calhern).[citation needed
]

Stage

Just before World War I, Calhern returned to New York to pursue an acting career. He began as a prop boy and bit player with various touring and burlesque companies. He became a matinee idol after being in a play titled Cobra.[citation needed]

Calhern's Broadway credits include:[4][5]

  • Roger Bloomer (1923)
  • The Song and Dance Man (1923–1924)
  • Cobra (1924)
  • In a Garden (1925–1926)
  • Hedda Gabler (1926)
  • The Woman Disputed (1926–1927)
  • Up the Line (1926)
  • The Dark (1927)
  • Savages Under the Skin (1927)
  • A Distant Drum (1928)
  • Gypsy (1929)
  • The Love Duel (1929)
  • The Rhapsody (1930)
  • The Tyrant (1930)
  • Give Me Yesterday (1931)
  • Brief Moment (1931–1932)
  • The Inside Story (1932)
  • Birthday (1934–1935)
  • Hell Freezes Over (1935–1936)
  • Robin Landing (1937)
  • Summer Night (1939)
  • The Great Big Doorstep (1942)
  • Jacobowsky and the Colonel (1944–1945)
  • The Magnificent Yankee (1946)
  • The Survivors (1948)
  • The Play's the Thing (1948)
  • King Lear (1950–1951)
  • The Wooden Dish (1955)

Military service

Calhern's burgeoning career was interrupted by World War I; he served in France in the 143rd Field Artillery of the U.S. Army.[6]

Film

Calhern and Claire Windsor in The Blot (1921) directed by Lois Weber
Louis Calhern in the trailer for Annie Get Your Gun (1950)

Calhern began working in silent films for director Lois Weber in the early 1920s, the most notable being The Blot (1921). A newspaper article commented: "The new arrival in stardom is Louis Calhern, who, until Miss Weber engaged him to enact the leading male role in What's Worth While?, had been playing leads in the Morosco Stock company of Los Angeles."[7]

In 1923, Calhern left the movies, deciding to devote his career entirely to the stage. He returned to films early in the sound era where he was primarily cast as a character actor, while he continued to play leading roles on the stage. Among Calhern's notable screen portrayals were as the partner in crime to Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis in 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932), as Ambassador Trentino in the classic Marx Brothers comedy Duck Soup (1933), as Major Dort in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), and as the spy boss of Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious (1946).

In the late 1940s, Calhern joined

Julius Caesar (adapted from the Shakespeare play) in 1953, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
.

Calhern played the role of the devious George Caswell, the manipulative board member of Tredway Corporation, in the 1954 production of Executive Suite, followed by the role of a jaded, acerbic high school teacher in Blackboard Jungle (1955). His performance as lecherous Uncle Willie in High Society (1956), a musical remake of The Philadelphia Story, was his final film appearance.

Personal life

Calhern battled

atheist and considered AA to be a religious organization. Calhern ultimately overcame his alcohol addiction by the late 1940s.[8]

Death

Calhern died May 12, 1956, at age 61 of a sudden heart attack in

Selected filmography

References

  1. ^ Obituary Variety, May 16, 1956.
  2. ^ a b Dennis, Ken (Summer 2011). "Louis Calhern: Distinguished Gentleman". Films of the Golden Age (65): 58–68.
  3. ^
    Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  4. ^ "Louis Calhern". Playbill Vault. Retrieved February 13, 2016.
  5. ^ Louis Calhern at the Internet Broadway Database Edit this at Wikidata
  6. Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  7. ^ Natalie Schafer Rare 1989 TV Interview, Gilligan's Island, Astrology. YouTube. Archived from the original on December 11, 2021.
  8. . p. 195

External links