Wallace Beery

Film actor, born in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. The half-brother of Noah Beery, he worked in the circus and in Broadway musicals, then went to Hollywood and began his long film career in 1913. At first he played tough villains, but with the advent of sound films he assumed a new persona as a rough-edged but loveable character. He won a Best Actor Oscar for The Champ (1931), and though he did not retain the popularity he enjoyed during the 1930s, he continued in films until his death.

Wallace Beery (April 1, 1885 – April 15, 1949) was an American actor, best known for his many cinema appearances.

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he was the younger half-brother of Noah Beery, who also would have a lengthy career in motion pictures, as well as the uncle of Noah Beery, Jr., who played James Garner's character's father in the television series The Rockford Files in the 1970s.

In 1915, Beery starred with his wife Gloria Swanson in Sweedie Goes to College.

His notable silent films include The Lost World, Robin Hood, Last of the Mohicans, Old Ironsides, Now We're in the Air, and Beggars of Life.

With the transition to sound film he was for a time put out of work, but Irving Thalberg had no objection to Beery's gruff slow speech as a character actor, and hired him under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Beery appeared in the highly-successful 1930 prison film The Big House (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor). Other notable Beery films include Min and Bill (1930) with Marie Dressler, Billy the Kid (1930) with Johnny Mack Brown, The Secret Six (1931) with Jean Harlow and Clark Gable, Hell Divers (1931) with Gable, Grand Hotel (1932) with Joan Crawford, Tugboat Annie (1933) with Dressler, Dinner at Eight (1933) opposite Jean Harlow, The Bowery (1933 film) with George Raft and Pert Kelton that same year, China Seas (1935) with Gable and Harlow, and Ah, Wilderness! (1935) in the role of a drunken uncle later played on Broadway by Jackie Gleason in a musical comedy version.

He made several comedies with Marie Dressler (Min and Bill and Tugboat Annie) and Marjorie Main, but his career began to slow down in his last decade. Oddly, a superb pencil drawing survives of Beery that was drawn on a film set by Healy, an amateur artist as well as the organizer and original leader of the Three Stooges (originally known as "Ted Healy and His Stooges"). At best, Beery seems to have been somewhat misanthropic and difficult to work with, and Jackie Cooper, who worked with Beery in several films, called him in his autobiography "the most sadistic person I have ever known". Child actress Margaret O'Brien also worked with Beery, and ultimately had to be protected by crew members from Beery's insistence on constantly pinching her.

Academy Awards and Nominations

1932 Won The Champ (tied with Fredric March for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) 1930 Nominated The Big House

For his contribution to the film industry, Wallace Beery has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7001 Hollywood Blvd.

Preceded by: Lionel Barrymore for A Free Soul

Academy Award for Best Actor 1932 for The Champ co-awardee with Fredric March

Succeeded by: Charles Laughton for The Private Life of Henry VIII