Career Highlights: Les Miserables, The Cat and the Canary, Madame X
First Major Screen Credit: Another Language (1933)
Biography
Actor John Beal was playing boyish, sensitive Jimmy Stewart types long before there was a Jimmy Stewart (in Hollywood, at least). After stage work, Beal was brought to Hollywood to appear in the screen version of Rose Franken's stage play Another Language (1933). The best of his early film assignments was in the title role of The Little Minister (1934), in which his easily outraged Scottish piety didn't stand a chance opposite hoydenish Katharine Hepburn. Beal continued appearing in films during the war years while serving in Special Services as actor and director of Army Air Force camp shows and training films. After the war, Beal concentrated on theatrical work, though he kept showing up in films as late as 1983's Amityville 3-D. John Beal was also a regular on the TV soap operas The Nurses (1962-67) and Another World (1964). Beal passed away at age 87 in his Santa Cruz, California two years after suffering a debilatating stroke. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Beal was born James Alexander Bliedung in Joplin, Missouri. He began acting in the 1930s, opposite Katharine Hepburn (in the 1934 RKO film The Little Minister), among others; one of his notable screen appearances was Les Misérables (1935). He continued appearing in films during the war years while serving in Special Services as actor and director of Army Air Forces camp shows and training films.
He was hired to play the role of Jim Matthews in the television soap opera Another World when the show went on the air in 1964, but was fired by creator and headwriter Irna Phillips after only one episode because she did not like his appearance on screen.
He continued to work in films and television, notably as Judge Vail in the supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows (for 9 episodes), and also the theater up until the 1980s. Beal died at age 87 in Santa Cruz, California, two years after suffering a stroke.