Best Known As: Three-time Oscar-winning western sidekick
Walter Brennan was a much-loved and much-Oscared character actor in American movies of the 1930s through 1960s. His specialty was cranky-but-good-hearted sidekicks, uncles, bosses and doctors, all played with his distinctively scratchy (and often exasperated) voice. Brennan joined the US Army in 1917 and fought in France during World War I. In the 1920s he moved to Los Angeles and caught on as a film extra and then moved up to small parts. In 1937 he was awarded the first Oscar ever given in the category of best supporting actor, for the 1936 film Come and Get It. He followed that with Oscars for Kentucky (1938) and The Westerner (1940, with Brennan as Judge Roy Bean). He appeared in more than 100 films but is best remembered for westerns like My Darling Clementine (1946, with Henry Fonda), Red River (1948, with John Wayne), The Far Country (1954, with Jimmy Stewart) and Rio Bravo (1959, again with Wayne). He poked fun at his own image as Grandpappy Amos in the TV sitcom The Real McCoys from 1957-63. He also starred in the TV series The Guns of Will Sonnett from 1967-69.
According to the National Cowboy Museum, Brennan "lost half of his teeth in a World War I gas accident and lost the remaining ones in an early movie accident" -- which gave his voice its distinctive whistle... Brennan owned a large cattle ranch near Joseph, Oregon... It's true: Brennan won three of the first five Oscars given for supporting actor. He was also nominated in year six for Sergeant York (1941) but did not win and was never nominated again. He and Jack Nicholson are the only men to win three acting Oscars.
Three-time Oscar winner and country musician Walter Brennan was born in Swampscott, MA, on July 25, 1894. A veteran of the First World War, Brennan began acting professionally in 1929. He received his first Oscar for his supporting role in Howard Hawks' Come and Get It, and two more followed for 1938's Kentucky and 1940s The Westerner. By the time he took a popular role as Grampa Amos McCoy on the TV show The McCoys in the late '50s, he had over 100 film credits to his name. His recording career was at its most prolific during the early '60s. A duet with Billy Vaughn, "Dutchman's Gold," was his first chart hit. Three more -- "Old Rivers," "Houdini," and "Mama Sang Me a Song" -- registered two years later. He passed away in 1974, due to emphysema, on the 21st of September. ~ Andy Kellman, All Music Guide
Representative Albums:
Old Rivers/Twas the Night Before Christmas...Back Home, Old Shep, Dutchman's Gold
Career Highlights: My Darling Clementine, Rio Bravo, To Have and Have Not
First Major Screen Credit: Neck and Neck (1931)
Biography
It had originally been the hope of Walter Brennan (and his family) that he would follow in the footsteps of his father, an engineer; but while still a student, he was bitten by the acting bug and was already at a crossroads when he graduated in 1915. Brennan had already worked in vaudeville when he enlisted at age 22 to serve in World War I. He served in an artillery unit and although he got through the war without being wounded, his exposure to poison gas ruined his vocal chords, leaving him with the high-pitched voice texture that made him a natural for old man roles while still in his thirties. (Other stories claimed that the gas attack had cost him his teeth, but that was a separate, later accident). His health all but broken by the experience, Brennan moved to California in the hope that the warm climate would help him and he lost most of what money he had when land values in the state collapsed in 1925. It was the need for cash that drove him to the gates of the studios that year, for which he worked as an extra and bit player. During this period, he befriended another young, struggling, would-be actor named Gary Cooper. At one point, they were even appearing as a team at casting offices, and although Cooper emerged in major and leading roles first, they would work together in the good years, too.
The advent of the talkies served Brennan well, as he had been mimicking accents in childhood and could imitate a variety of different ethnicities on request. It was also during this period that, in an accident during a shoot, another actor (some stories claimed it was a mule) kicked him in the mouth and cost him his front teeth. Brennan was fitted for a set of false teeth that worked fine, and wearing them allowed him to play lean, lanky, virile supporting roles; but when he took them out, and the reedy, leathery voice kicked in with the altered look, Brennan became the old codger with which he would be identified in a significant number of his parts in the coming decades. He can be spotted in tiny, anonymous roles in a multitude of early-'30s movies, including King Kong (1933) (as a reporter) and one Three Stooges short. In 1935, however, he was fortunate enough to be cast in the supporting role of Jenkins in The Wedding Night. Directed by King Vidor and produced by Samuel Goldwyn, it was supposed to launch Anna Sten (its female lead) to stardom; but instead, it was Brennan who got noticed by the critics. He was put under contract with Goldwyn -- eventually staying with the independent producer for nine years, longer than any other actor -- and was back the same year as Old Atrocity in Barbary Coast. He continued doing bit parts, as demonstrated by his tiny, virtually unnoticed appearance that year in The Bride of Frankenstein, but after 1935, his films grew fewer in number and the parts much bigger. It was in the rustic drama Come and Get It (1936), starring Frances Farmer and Edward Arnold, that Brennan won his first Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor, playing a Swede. Two years later, he won a second Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in Kentucky (1938). That same year, he played major supporting roles in The Texans and The Buccaneer, and delighted younger audiences with his moving portrayal of Muff Potter, the man wrongfully accused of murder in Norman Taurog's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (and a David O. Selznick production -- Brennan was already working with the two biggest independent filmmakers in Hollywood).
Brennan worked only in high-profile movies from then on, including The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, Stanley and Livingston, and Goldwyn's They Shall Have Music, all in 1939. In 1940, he rejoined Cooper in The Westerner, playing the part of the notoriously corrupt Judge Roy Bean; giving a beautifully understated performance that made the character seem sympathetic and tragic as much as dangerous and reprehensible, he won his third Best Supporting Actor award (in what was really a lead performance). There was no looking back now, as Brennan joined the front rank of leading character actors, except that, unlike most of them, he could convincingly play a vast range of roles. His ethnic portrayals, however, gradually tapered off as Brennan took on parts geared specifically for him. In Frank Capra's Meet John Doe and Howard Hawks' Sergeant York (both 1941), he played clear-thinking, key supporting players to leading men portrayed by Cooper, while in Jean Renoir's Swamp Water (released that same year), he played another virtual leading role as a haunted man driven by demons that almost push him to murder. He played only in major movies from that point on, and always in important roles -- Hawks used him again in To Have and Have Not and Red River, in the latter even working in a great plot gag involving Brennan's false teeth. In fact, he got to age into his cantankerous toothless character in Red River, playing a straight, two-fisted role alongside John Wayne in the opening section of the movie. Sam Wood used him in Goldwyn's The Pride of the Yankees (1942), Lewis Milestone cast him as a Russian villager in The North Star (1943), and he was in Goldwyn's production of The Princess and the Pirate (1944) as a comical half-wit who managed to hold his own working alongside Bob Hope. Brennan was able to pick and choose his roles, and turned down the coveted part of Jeeter Lester in John Ford's production of Tobacco Road because the part seemed too morally compromised. Instead, the role went to Charles Grapewin, who became a star in the movie. Brennan did get to play the even more choice role of Ike Clanton in Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946) and reprised his portrayal of an outlaw clan leader in more comic fashion in Burt Kennedy's Support Your Local Sheriff some 23 years later.
Remaining one of the top supporting actors in Hollywood into the 1950s, Brennan's name actually lent some box-office allure to weaker titles such as Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay! in 1948. He worked with Cooper again on Delmer Daves' Task Force (1949) and played prominent roles in John Sturges' Bad Day at Black Rock and Anthony Mann's The Far Country (both 1955). In 1959, the 64-year-old Brennan got one of the biggest roles of his career in Hawks' Red River, playing Stumpy, the game-legged jailhouse keeper who is backing up the besieged sheriff played by John Wayne. By that time, Brennan had moved to television, starring in the CBS series The Real McCoys, which became a six-season hit built around his portrayal of the cantankerous family patriarch Amos McCoy. From the outset, Brennan essentially devised the character himself -- even asking if the producers wanted him to play it with or without his teeth -- and designed every element of his costume, reportedly spending hours picking out the right hat. The series was such a hit that John Wayne's production company was persuaded to release a previously shelved film, William Wellman's Goodbye, My Lady (1956), about a boy, an old man, and a dog, during the show's run. Although he had disputes with the network and stayed a season longer than he had wanted, Brennan also liked the spotlight. He even enjoyed a brief, successful career as a recording artist on the Columbia Records label during the 1960s. Following the cancellation of The Real McCoys, Brennan starred in the short-lived series The Tycoon, playing a cantankerous, independent-minded multimillionaire who refuses to behave the way his family or his company's board of directors think a 70-year-old should.
By this time, Brennan had become one of the more successful actors in Hollywood, with a 12,000-acre ranch in Northern California that was run by his sons, among other property. He'd invested wisely and also owned a share of his first series. Always an ideological conservative, it was during this period that his political views began taking a sharp turn to the right in response to the strife he saw around him. During the '60s, he was convinced that the anti-war and civil rights movements were being run by overseas communists -- and said as much in interviews. He told reporters that he believed the civil rights movement, in particular, and the riots in places like Watts and Newark, and demonstrations in Birmingham, AL, were the result of perfectly content "Negroes" being stirred up by a handful of trouble-makers with an anti-American agenda. Those on the set of his last series, The Guns of Will Sonnett -- in which he played the surprisingly complex role of an ex-army scout trying to undo the damage caused by his being a mostly absentee father -- say that he cackled with delight upon learning of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. Brennan later worked on the 1972 presidential campaign of reactionary right-wing California Congressman John Schmitz, a nominee of the American Party, whose campaign was predicated on the notion that the Republican Party under Richard Nixon had become too moderate. Mostly, though, Brennan was known to the public for his lovable, sometimes comical screen persona, and was still working as the '60s drew to a close, on made-for-TV movies such as The Over-the-Hill Gang, which reunited him with one of his favorite directors, Jean Yarbrough, and his old stablemate Chill Wills. Brennan died of emphysema in 1974 at the age of 80. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Born in Swampscott, Massachusetts to Irish emigrants, he was christened Walter Andrew Brennan. His father was an engineer and inventor.
Walter Brennan studied engineering before becoming an actor.
While in school, he became interested in acting, and began to perform in vaudeville. After
service in World War I (where, according to legend, his vocal cords were damaged by mustard
gas, which also caused him to age prematurely), he moved to Guatemala and raised
pineapples, before settling in Los Angeles.
During the 1920s, he would become involved in the real estate
market, where he would make a fortune. Unfortunately, he lost most of his money when the market took a sudden downturn.
Career
Finding himself broke, he began taking bit parts in as many films as he could, including The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and also worked as a stunt
man. In the early 1930s, he began appearing in higher quality films and received more substantial
roles as his talent was recognized. This culminated with his receiving the very first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1936 for his role as Swan Bostrom in the period film Come and
Get It.
Throughout his career, Brennan was frequently called upon to play characters considerably older than he was in real life. A
1932 accident that cost him many teeth, his rapidly thinning hair, thin build, and raspy voice all made him seem older than he
really was. He used these physical features to great effect. In many of his film roles, Brennan wore dentures; in
Northwest Passage -- a film set in the late 18th century, when most people had
bad teeth -- he wore a special dental prosthesis which made him appear to have rotting and broken teeth.
In the 1941Sergeant York, he played a
sympathetic preacher and dry goods store owner who advised the title character played by Gary
Cooper. He was particularly skilled in playing the hero's sidekick or as the "grumpy old man" in a picture. Though he was
hardly ever cast as the villain, notable exceptions were his roles as Old Man Clanton in the classic 1946 film My Darling Clementine opposite
Henry Fonda, the 1962Cinerama production How the West Was Won as the
murderous Colonel Jeb Hawkins, and as Judge Roy Bean in The Westerner, for which he won his third best supporting actor Academy Award, in
1940.
In the 1950s, he starred in the ABC's
television seriesThe Real McCoys,
which costarred Richard Crenna, and Kathleen
Nolan. The comedy about a poor West Virginia family which relocated to a farm in
southern California ran on ABC from 1957-1962, before switching to
CBS for a final season as The McCoys. Brennan appeared in several other movies and television
programs, usually as an eccentric "old-timer" or "prospector". He also made a few recordings, the most popular being "Old
Rivers", released as a single in 1962 by Liberty Records with "The Epic Ride Of John H. Glenn" on the flip side. Brennan starred
as wealthy executive Walter Andrews in the short-lived mid-1960s television seriesThe Tycoon. In 1967, he starred in the television series The Guns of Will Sonnett, where he played a man in search of his gunfighter son, James,
with his grandson, Jeff, played by Dack Rambo. After the series went off the air in
1969, Brennan continued working in both television and feature films. From 1970 to
1971, he was a regular on the show To Rome With Love, which would be his last
TV show as a regular.
Legacy
Film historians and critics have long regarded Brennan as one of the finest character
actors in motion picture history. While the roles he was adept at playing were extremely diverse, he is probably best
remembered for his portrayals in movie Westerns, such as trail hand Nadine Groot in
Red River and Deputy Stumpy in Rio
Bravo (film) both directed by Howard Hawks. He was the first actor to win three
Academy Awards, as well as the only person to win three Best Supporting Actor awards.
Unlike many actors, Brennan's career never really went into decline. As the years went on, he was able to find work in dozens
of high quality films, and later television appearances throughout the 1950s and 60s. As he grew older, he simply became a more
familiar, almost comforting film figure whose performances continued to endear him to new generations of fans. In all, he would
appear in more than 230 film and television roles in a career spanning nearly five
decades.
On his death from emphysema, aged 80, in Oxnard, Brennan was interred in San Fernando Mission
Cemetery in Los Angeles. His widow, Ruth, whom he married in 1920, lived to be 100, and is
buried next to him. They had a daughter and two sons.
