Andy Devine

Andy Devine
from the film A Star Is Born (1937).
Born	Andrew Vabre Devine October 7, 1905(1905-10-07) Flagstaff, Arizona, U.S.
Died	February 18, 1977 (aged 71) Orange, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1926–1977
Spouse(s)	Dorothy House (1933-1977; his death)

Andrew Vabre "Andy" Devine (October 7, 1905 – February 18, 1977) was an American character actor and comic cowboy sidekick known for his raspy voice.

Early life

Born in Flagstaff, Arizona on October 7, 1905, Andy Devine grew up in nearby Kingman, where his family moved when he was a year old. His father was Thomas Devine Jr., born in 1869 in Kalamazoo County, Michigan. Andy's grandfather, Thomas Devine Sr., was born in 1842 in Tipperary County, Ireland, and immigrated to the United States in 1852. Andy's mother was Amy Ward, the granddaughter of Commander James H. Ward, the first officer of the United States Navy killed during the Civil War.

He was a star football player at Ball State University.^{[citation needed]} He also played semi-professional football under the pseudonym "Jeremiah Schwartz" -- it was not his birth name as has been erroneously reported elsewhere. His football experience led to his first film role in the silent film The Fighting Football Cardinals.^{[citation needed]}

Career

It was in 1933 on a film, Doctor Bull, directed by John Ford at Universal Studios, that Andy met his wife-to-be, Dorothy House. They were married on October 28, 1933, in Las Vegas, Nevada, and remained united until his death on February 18, 1977.

Although it was first thought that his peculiar voice would prevent him from moving to the talkies, it became his trademark. Devine told people that his speech resulted from a childhood accident. (He said that he had been running with a curtain rod in his mouth at the Beale Hotel in Kingman, and when he fell, it pierced the roof of his mouth. When he was able to speak, he had a wheezing, duo-tone voice.) However, a biographer explains that this wasn't true, but was one of several stories about his voice fabricated by Devine.^[1] Devine's son Tad told an Encore Westerns Channel interviewer (Jim Beaver, reporting from 2007 Newport Beach Film Festival) that the accident had indeed happened, but that Devine was uncertain whether it was the cause of his unique voice.

Film, radio and television

He appeared in more than 400 films and shared with Walter Brennan, another character actor, the rare ability to move with ease from "B" Westerns to "A" pictures. His notable roles included ten films as sidekick "Cookie" to Roy Rogers, a role in Romeo and Juliet (1936), and "Danny" in A Star Is Born (1937). He made several appearances in films with John Wayne, including Stagecoach (1939), Island in the Sky (1953), and as the frightened marshal in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). He also played "The Cheerful Soldier" in The Red Badge of Courage and the First Mate of the S.S. Henrietta in Around the World in Eighty Days (1956). While most of his characters were reluctant to get involved in the action, he played the hero in Island in the Sky, as an expert pilot who leads his fellow aviators through the arduous search for a missing airplane.

His film appearances in his later years included movies such as The Over-the-Hill Gang, and "Coyote Bill" in Myra Breckinridge.

Devine also worked in radio. He is well-remembered for his role as "Jingles", Guy Madison's sidekick in The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, which Devine and Madison reprised on television. He appeared over 75 times on Jack Benny's radio show between 1936 and 1942, often appearing in Benny's semi-regular western series of sketches "Buck Benny Rides Again".

And Devine worked in television. He hosted a children's TV show, Andy's Gang on NBC from 1955 to 1960. He played "Hap" on the TV series Flipper, also on NBC, in the 1960s. He starred in a Twilight Zone episode as "Frisby", a talkative fibster faced with an alien invasion called "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby". He was also a frequent guest star on many television shows throughout the 1950s and 1960s, including the role of Jake Sloan in the 1961 episode "Big Jake" of the acclaimed NBC anthology series, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, He was threafter Honest John Denton in the episode "A Horse of a Different Cutter" of the short-lived ABC series The Rounders.

Finally, Devine performed voice parts in animated films, including "Friar Tuck" in Disney's Robin Hood. He provided the voice of Cornelius the Rooster in several Kellogg's Corn Flakes TV commercials.

In 1973, Devine came to Monroe, Louisiana, at the request of George C. Brian, an actor and filmmaker who headed the theater department at the University of Louisiana at Monroe, to perform in Edna Ferber's Show Boat.

Devine died of leukemia at the age of seventy-one in Orange, California. The main street of his home town of Kingman was renamed "Andy Devine Avenue" in his honor. His career is highlighted in the Mohave Museum of History and Arts in Kingman, and there is a star in his honor in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

See also

• Froggy the Gremlin

Quotation

• When asked if he had strange nodes on his vocal cords, Devine replied, "I've got the same nodes as Bing Crosby, but his are in tune."

References

External links

• Andy Devine at the Internet Movie Database
• Andy Devine at Find a Grave