Celebrity Grave: Louis Calhern, Actor

 

Louis Calhern (February 19, 1895 – May 12, 1956) was an American stage and screen actor.

Early life

Louis Calhern was born Carl Henry Vogt on February 19, 1895 in Brooklyn, New York. His family left New York City while he was still a child and moved to St. Louis, Missouri where he grew up. While playing high school football, a stage manager from a touring theatrical stock company spotted him, and hired him as an extra. Just prior to World War I, Calhern decided to move back to New York to pursue an acting career. He began as a prop boy and bit player with touring companies and burlesque companies. His burgeoning career was interrupted by the war and he served overseas in the military during World War I.

 

Career

He became a matinee idol by virtue of a play titled The Cobra, and soon began to act in films. In the early 30s he was primarily cast as a character actor in Hollywood, while he continued to play leading roles on stage. He reached his peak in the 1950s as an MGM contract player. Among his most memorable roles were three that he played in 1950: a singing one as Buffalo Bill in the film version of Annie Get Your Gun, the double-crossing lawyer and sugar-daddy to Marilyn Monroe in John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle, and his Oscar-nominated role as Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Magnificent Yankee (re-creating his stage role), as well as his portrayal of the title role in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's film Julius Caesar in 1953 (adapted from Shakespeare's play). Prior to this, he most famous appearance was as Ambassador Trentino in the Marx Bros. movie, Duck Soup, in 1933.

 

In addition to The Magnificent Yankee, Calhern had Broadway successes in the English-language production of Franz Werfel's Jacobowsky und der Oberst (1944) and in the title role of King Lear (also in 1950). He also played the grandfather in The Red Pony (1949), a film adapted from the novel by John Steinbeck and starring Robert Mitchum, and the spy boss of Cary Grant in the 1946 Alfred Hitchcock suspense classic Notorious. A performance as "wicked Uncle Willie" in 1956's High Society, a musical remake of The Philadelphia Story, turned out to be the actor's final film.

 

Marriages

Calhern was married four times, to Ilka Chase from 1926 to 1927, to Julia Hoyt from 1927 to 1932, to Natalie Schafer from 1933 to 1942, and Marianne Stewart from 1946 to 1955. All four marriages ended in divorce.

Death

Calhern died of a sudden heart attack in Tokyo, while filming The Teahouse of the August Moon. He was replaced in the film by Paul Ford, who had played Calhern's role in the original stage version. By an odd coincidence, when playing Buffalo Bill in Annie Get Your Gun, Calhern had replaced Frank Morgan, who had died of a sudden heart attack during the making of that film. Calhern is interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Partial filmography

What's Worth While? (1921)
Too Wise Wives (1921)
The Blot (1921)
The Road to Singapore (1931)
Blonde Crazy (1931)
Night After Night (1932)
20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932)
Diplomaniacs (1933)
Frisco Jenny (1933)
Duck Soup (1933)
The Affairs of Cellini (1934)
The Count of Monte Cristo (1934)
The Last Days of Pompeii (1935)
The Life of Emile Zola (1935)
Fast Company (1938)
5th Ave Girl (1939)
Heaven Can Wait (1943)
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1944)
Notorious (1946)
Arch of Triumph (1948)
The Red Pony (1949)
The Red Danube (1949)
A Life of Her Own (1950)
The Magnificent Yankee (1950)
Nancy Goes to Rio (1950)
Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Devil's Doorway (1950)
The Man with a Cloak (1951)
Invitation (1952)
We're Not Married! (1952)
The Prisoner of Zenda (1952)
Julius Caesar (1953)
Rhapsody (1954)
Executive Suite (1954)
The Student Prince (1954)
Betrayed (1954)
Athena (1954)
Blackboard Jungle (1955)
The Prodigal (1955)
Forever, Darling (1956)
High Society (1956)