George Macready

At 73 years old, George Macready has this physical status:

George Peabody Macready Jr. (August 29, 1899 – July 2, 1973) was an American stage, film, and television actor who was often seen as polished villains in films.

Early life

Macready was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and graduated from Brown University (1921), where he served as a member of Delta Phi fraternity and received a letter as the football team manager. After being pushed through the windshield of a Ford Model T while driving on an icy road and striking a telephone pole while in college, Macready sustained a permanent scar on his right cheek. He was stitched up by a doctor, but during the ordeal, he had scarlet fever. Macready's Gothic appearance, as well as his high brow and flawless diction, gave him the appearance of an authoritarian or villainous character.

Macready worked in a bank in Providence and then briefly as a newspaperman in New York City before switching to stage acting. He appeared to have been descendant from William Macready, a 19th-century Shakespearean actor.

Personal life

Macready, an art collector, was a partner with colleague Vincent Price in The Little Gallery in Beverly Hills, which opened in 1943. (Macready had appeared on Broadway in Victoria Regina with Price's brother). "During the months he was filming THE SONG OF BERNADETTE for 20th Century Fox, Vincent Price and Macready opened The Little Gallery in Beverly Hills," Lucy Chase Williams' book The Complete Films of Vincent Price. "We rented a hole in the wall next door to Martindale's book store and a very popular bar, figuring out that we'd have a mixed clientele of erudites and inebriates." The gallery was not only an extension of their own passions, but also as a showcase for young artists and a way to introduce the general public to art and art appreciation. In Newsweek magazine, the establishment deserved photographs and two complete columns, but rent increases forced The Little Gallery to close after two years. "Vincent] was a great guy," actor Robert Hutton recalls from one of the days when it was very slow. I used to go to Martindale's every morning to get up the trades. 'Why did I open up this art shop?' Vincent leaning up against the frame of the door, looking like, "Why did I open up this art store?"

I said, 'How're things going?

'And he just glared at me and said, 'F**k you, Hutton!' He knew that things weren't going well, but I knew it, and I knew I was aware! That just killed me. When I first stepped out of Martindale's house, I was already joking. He was such a good guy." Price remembered Igor Stravinksy, Thomas Mann, and Sergei Rachmaninoff, who were browsing through the Gallery and then heading to the deli for lox and bagels when things were better.

Macready married actress Elizabeth Dana Patterson in 1931; the couple divorced in 1943. Elizabeth Dana Macready, actor/producer Michael Macready, and Marcia Macready were both fathers. He was John Macready's grandfather.

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Acting career

In 1926, Macready made his Broadway debut in the role of Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale in a retelling of The Scarlet Letter by Arthur Dimmesdale. He appeared in fifteen plays, including The Barretts of Wimpole Street, based on Elizabeth Barrett Browning's family.

In part, Macready's penchant for acting was sparked by director Richard Boles' legislation. Benedick appeared in Much Ado About Nothing (1927), Malcolm in Macbeth (1928), and Romeo and Juliet (1934). In the 1953 film version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, he played Marallus. In the original stage version of Victoria Regina (1936), starring Helen Hayes, he also played Prince Ernst.

Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942), Macready's first film, starred Paul Muni. Ballin Mundson, Macready's character in Gilda (1946), enters a deadly love triangle with characters played by Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford. He appeared in the postwar film The Green Glove (1952).

Paths of Glory, Stanley Kubrick's antiwar film, (1957) brought Macready with his other important role, the sadistic and self-serving French World War I GI General Paul Mireau, who is brought down by Kirk Douglas's character, Colonel Dax. He had appeared in Detective Story (1951), and later in Douglas' Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) and John Frankenheimer's Seven Days (1964). In 1965, he appeared in Blake Edwards' film The Great Race as General Kuhster.

Cordell Hull, the US Secretary of State, was one of Macready's last film roles in Tora.

Tora!

Tora!

(1970) A representation of the events leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Macready made four guest appearances on Raymond Burr's Perry Mason, including the role of murder victim Milo Girard in the 1958 film "The Case of the Purple Woman." He appeared in such films as Four Star Playhouse, GM Electric Theatre, The Ford Television Theatre, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Adventures in Paradise, and The Islanders.

Macready appeared in a number of television series from the 1950s and 1960s, including many Westerns such as Bat Masterson, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Will Travel, The Rebel (once in the role of Confederate General Robert E. Lee), The Rifleman, Lancer, Laramie, Gunsmoke, The Rebel, The Rebel; The Rifleman, The Rifleman, Richard Laramie, and Steve McQue Texan's In addition on television, he was seen in episodes of The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Boris Karloff's Thriller, Kentucky Jones, Get Smart with Don Adams, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. With Robert Vaughn.

In the May 26, 1962, series finale of NBC's The Tall Man, Macready was cast as Cyrus Canfield, a vengeful father looking for his runaway teenaged daughter, portrayed by Floy Dean.

Macready appeared in three years in Martin Peyton in ABC's Peyton Place, the first primetime soap opera on American television, with Dorothy Malone in the lead role.

Glenn Howard, a publishing magnate, appeared in the television film Fame Is the Name of the Game (1966) starring Anthony Franciosa, but was replaced by Gene Barry in the role when the film was later used as the pilot for the television series The Name of the Game with Franciosa, Barry, and Robert Stack revolving in the lead.

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