George Macready

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George Macready bigraphy, stories - Film

George Macready : biography

August 29, 1899 – July 2, 1973

George Peabody Macready, Jr. (August 29, 1899 – July 2, 1973), was an American stage, film, and television actor often cast in roles as polished villains.Obituary Variety, July 11, 1973, page 63.

Personal life

A cultured and expert art collector, he and his good friend, fellow-actor Vincent Price, were partners in a Beverly Hills art gallery in the 1940s. They later closed it as their acting careers mushroomed.

The veteran actor is father of actor/producer Michael Macready and the grandfather of the gymnast John Macready.

Macready died from emphysema in 1973, and he was among entertainers who donated their bodies to a medical school, joining Walter Pidgeon, Bobby Darin, Butterfly McQueen, and Spring Byington.

Partial filmography

  • Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942) film debut
  • Follow the Boys (1944)
  • The Seventh Cross (1944)
  • The Monster and the Ape (1945 serial)
  • Counter-Attack (1945)
  • My Name is Julia Ross (1945)
  • Gilda (1946)
  • Down to Earth (1947)
  • The Big Clock (1948)
  • Coroner Creek (1948)
  • Knock on Any Door (1949)
  • Alias Nick Beal (1949)
  • Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950)
  • The Swordsman (1947)
  • A Lady Without Passport (1950)
  • The Desert Hawk (1950)
  • Tarzan’s Peril (1951)
  • The Desert Fox (1951)
  • Detective Story (1951)
  • The Green Glove (1952)
  • The Golden Blade (1953)
  • Julius Caesar (1953)
  • Vera Cruz (1954)
  • A Kiss Before Dying (1956)
  • Paths of Glory (1957)
  • The Alligator People (1959)
  • Jet Over the Atlantic (1959)
  • Two Weeks in Another Town (1962)
  • Taras Bulba (1962)
  • Seven Days in May (1964)
  • Dead Ringer (1964)
  • Where Love Has Gone (1964)
  • "The Long Morrow", The Twilight Zone episode (1964)
  • "The Invisibles", The Outer Limits episode (1963)
  • "Production and Decay of Strange Particles", The Outer Limits episode (1964)
  • The Human Duplicators (1965)
  • The Great Race (1965)
  • Fame Is the Name of the Game (1966 TV film)
  • The Cemetery, segment of the Night Gallery pilot (1969)
  • Daughter of the Mind (1969 TV film)
  • Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) narrator
  • Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
  • The Return of Count Yorga (1971)

Background

Macready was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and graduated there from Classical High School (1917) and, in 1921, from Brown University, where he was a member of Delta Phi fraternity and won a letter as the football team manager. While in college, Macready was injured in an accident in a Model T Ford. He sustained a permanent scar on his right cheek, having been thrust through the windshield while traveling on an icy road when the vehicle skidded and hit a telephone pole. The injury, along with his high brow and perfect diction, gave Macready the Gothic look of an authoritarian or villainous character. Macready was stitched up by a veterinarian, but he caught scarlet fever during the ordeal.

Macready first worked in a bank in Providence and was then briefly a newspaperman in New York City before he turned to stage acting. He claimed to have been descended from the 19th century Shakespearean actor William Charles Macready. He made his Broadway debut in 1926 in The Scarlet Letter. Through 1958, he appeared in fifteen plays, both drama and comedy, including The Barretts of Wimpole Street, based on the family of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Acting career

Macready’s penchant for acting was spurred in part by the director Richard Boleslawski. His Shakespearean stage credits include Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (1927), Malcolm in Macbeth (1928), and Paris in Romeo and Juliet (1934). On film, he played Marallus in the 1953 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. He also played Prince Ernst in the original stage version of Victoria Regina (1936), starring Helen Hayes.