George Macready

George Macready (August 29, 1899 – July 2, 1973) was an American stage, film, and television actor who was noted for playing polished villains.

He was born in Providence, Rhode Island and claimed to be a descendant of the 19th-century Shakespearean actor William Charles Macready. He graduated from Brown University.

He was a newspaper reporter briefly until he switched to acting on the advice of director Richard Boleslawski. Macready made his Broadway debut in 1926 and had major roles in a number of Broadway plays into the 1930s. 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.

His first film was Commandos Strike at Dawn in 1942, featuring Paul Muni. His voice and appearance, including a scar on his cheek (the result of a car accident), made him ideal as a cultured villain. Two performances in particular stand out. As Ballin Mundson in Gilda (1946), he is part of a deadly love triangle with the characters played by co-stars Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford. He would again play opposite Ford several years later in the post-war adventure The Green Glove (1952). Stanley Kubrick's anti-war classic, Paths of Glory (1957), provided his other great role, self-serving French World War I General Paul Mireau, who is brought down by Kirk Douglas's Colonel Dax. In 1964, Macready appeared with Kirk Douglas again in John Frankenheimer's Seven Days in May.

In 1948, Macready turned to television. He portrayed Martin Peyton in the popular soap opera Peyton Place (1965-1968). In all, he made more than 200 appearances in the new medium.

One of Macready's most effective film roles was also one of his last - the role of Cordell Hull in the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!, a painstakingly accurate depiction of the events leading up to and the attack on Pearl Harbor.

A cultured and expert art collector, he and his good friend, fellow-actor Vincent Price, were partners in a Los Angeles art gallery in the 1940s.

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

Macready died from emphysema in 1973 and is on the short list of entertainers to donate their body to a medical school, joining Walter Pidgeon, Bobby Darrin, Butterfly McQueen, Spring Byington, among others.

Partial filmography

External links

• George Macready at the Internet Movie Database
• George Macready at Allmovie
• George Macready at the Internet Broadway Database
• Older Photo