John Carradine

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John Carradine (born Richmond Reed Carradine; February 5, 1906 – November 27, 1988) was an American actor best known for his appearances in horror films, Westerns, and Shakespearean theatre.

Cecil B. DeMille's stock company and later John Ford's firm, he was one of Hollywood's most prolific character actors.

He was married four times, had five children, and was the patriarch of the Carradine family, including four of his sons and four of his grandchildren who are or were also actors.

Early life

Carradine was born in New York City, the son of William Reed Carradine, a Associated Press reporter, and his partner, Genevieve Winnifred Richmond, a surgeon. William Carradine was the son of evangelical author Beverly Carradine. The family lived in Peekskill, New York, and Kingston, New York. When William Carradine's son John was two years old, he died from tuberculosis. Carradine's mother later married Peck, a Philadelphia paper manufacturer who believed the best way to bring up someone else's child was to beat him every day, on a general principle." Carradine obtained his diction and memory skills from portions of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer as a punishment at the Christ Church School in Kingston and the Episcopal Academy in Merion Station, Pennsylvania.

David, Carradine's son, said his father fled when he was 14 years old. He later returned to Philadelphia as he studied sculpture at the Philadelphia Graphic Arts Institute. Carradine spent a brief time in New York City with his maternal uncle, Peter Richmond, while working in the public library's film archives. David said that when he was still a youth, his father went to Richmond, Virginia, to work as an apprentice to Daniel Chester French, the sculptor who fabricated the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.. He travelled for a time supporting himself by painting portraits. "If the sitter was happy, the price was $2.50," he once said. "If it was a turkey, it cost him nothing," he said. I made as much as $10 to $20 a day. He had been detained for vaping at this time. Carradine was beaten while in jail, and he had a broken nose that did not set correctly. "This made it possible to get the look that would be world famous."

"My dad told me that he saw a production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice when he was 11 years old and decided what he wanted to do with his life right then." He made his stage debut in 1925 in a production of Camille and spent a short time in a New Orleans Shakespeare company. Carradine, who later became his mentor, was a member of R. D. MaClean's tent repertory theater. He moved bananas from Dallas, Texas, to Los Angeles, where he later found some theatre work under the name of Peter Richmond in honor of his uncle. He became a friend of John Barrymore and began working as a set designer for Cecil B. DeMille. Carradine, on the other hand, did not have the job for long. "In my sketches, DeMille noticed the absence of Roman columns," Carradine said. "I lasted two weeks." Once DeMille heard his baritone voice, he was hired to do voice-overs. "The great Cecil B. DeMille saw an apparition – me – pass him by, and he ordered me to alert him the next day," Carradine said. He became a member of DeMille's stock company, and his voice was heard in several DeMille photographs, including The Sign of the Cross.

Personal life and death

Carradine has been married four times. In 1935, he married Ardanelle Abigail McCool, his first wife (January 25, 1911 – January 26, 1989). Bruce and David's mother was Janet. Bruce, Ardanelle's son from a previous marriage, was adopted by John. John had intended a large family but discovered a pattern of miscarriages after Ardanelle's attempted suicides, resulting in her inability to carry a baby to full term. Ardanelle Carradine filed for divorce after only three years of marriage, but the couple stayed married for another five years.

They divorced in 1944, when David was seven years old. Carradine left California to avoid court intervention in the alimony case. David joined his father in New York City after the couple became embroiled in a string of court disputes surrounding child rights and alimony, which at one point resulted in Carradine's detention. His father had remarried by this time. David was shuffled among boarding schools, foster homes, and a reform academy for the next two years.

Carradine married Sonia Sorel (May 18, 1921 – September 24, 2004,) who had appeared in the 1944 film Bluebeard, immediately after his divorce from Ardanelle. Sonia, the granddaughter of biochemist Max Henius, and a great-niece of the historian Johan Ludvig Heiberg, who had adopted the stage name Sorel. Christopher, Keith, and Robert were married together in Carradine and Sonia, which was a triplet. They divorced in 1957 and became wards of the court as wards of the family. "It was like being in prison," Keith Carradine said. We had bars on the windows, and we were only allowed to see our parents through glass doors. It was really sad. We'd be there on either side of the glass door yelling."

The children were eventually returned to Carradine's custody. Sonia was not allowed to see the children for the first eight years. Robert Carradine said he was raised primarily by his stepmother, his father's third wife, Doris (Rich) Grimshaw, and assumed she was his mother until he was introduced to Sonia Sorel at a Christmas party when he was 14 years old. "How do you do?" he told a journalist, "I said, 'How do you do?" he said.' 'That's our true mother,' Keith pulled me aside and said.' I had no idea what he was talking about. But he finally persuaded me."

Dale, a son from a previous marriage and Michael from a later marriage, was present when John Carradine married Doris (Erving Rich) Grimshaw in 1957. Both Dale and Michael, as well as Sonia Sorel's son Michael Bowen, are among John Carradine's eight sons. She was a one-time studio typist who wrote the script to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and was active in film and television. Doris died in 1971 in a fire in her Oxnard, California. A cigarette-based fire sparked the fire. She had been saved from a similar fire two weeks earlier. Carradine and her mother were divorced at the time of her death. Carradine married Emily Cisneros for the fourth time from 1975 to 1988.

Carradine, a semi-retired, suffered with rheumatoid arthritis before he died of heart and kidney disease at the Fatebenefratelli Hospital in Milan, Italy, on November 27, 1988. He had scaled the Duomo's 328 steep steps just hours before being stricken. According to David Carradine, his father had just finished a film (Buried Alive) in South Africa and was about to begin a European tour. When David died of his illness, he was with him, reading Shakespeare to him. He was unable to talk by the time David and Keith Carradine arrived at their father's bedside by the time. "I was told that his last words were 'Milan: What a beautiful place to die." "But he never talked to me or opened his eyes," David said. I was holding him in my arms when he died. I reached out and closed my eyes. It's not as straightforward as it is in the movies. At St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church in Hollywood, there was a mass for John Carradine. An Irish wake followed, and his body was buried at sea between the California coast and Catalina Island.

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Career

Tol'able David (1930), Carradine's first film role, but he said he had done 70 pictures before receiving billing. Carradine claimed to have tested as an unknown, alongside well-known leading men Conrad Veidt, William Courtenay, Paul Muni, and Ian Keith, for the title role in Dracula, but the historical evidence contradicts this. The piece was eventually transferred to Bela Lugosi. Carradine later appeared in the 1940s Universal Studio Dracula sequels: House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula. Carradine also said he had tested for the role in Frankenstein (1931), but no evidence contradicts that he did so. By 1933, he was being credited as John Peter Richmond, perhaps in honor of his friend, John Barrymore. In 1935, he adopted the stage name "John Carradine" and later adopted the name as his own two years later. Carradine had a brief uncredited walk in 1935's Bride of Frankenstein in which she appeared as a hunter in the forest.

Wilfred Talbot Smith and Regina Kahl of the O.T.O. died on April 11, 1934. On Winona Blvd., Agape Lodge held a "Crowley Night." "It included a program of recitation of (Aleister) Crowley's poems, rituals, and sacred texts," Martin Starr says. "O Madonna of the Golden Eyes" was among the participants' names: John Carradine, stage and motion picture actor John Carradine...

Carradine became a member of John Ford's stock company and appeared in The Prisoner of Shark Island by 1936. He shot 11 photographs with Ford, including his first important role as Preacher Casy in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Stagecoach (1939) were two other Ford films in which Carradine appeared.

In DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956), he portrayed Aaron, the Biblical hero, and he ruled Hitler's Madman (1943) as Reinhard Heydrich.

Carradine produced some fine stage work, but this was his first opportunity to work in a classic drama style. In the 1940s, he toured with his own Shakespearean company, performing Hamlet and Macbeth. Ferdinand appeared in Ferdinand in a 1946 film of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, the Ragpicker in a 13-month run of Jean Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot, Lycus, and in 1981's costly one-night flop Frankenstein. He worked in road companies such as Tobacco Road and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, where he was properly nourished as the cancer-ridden Big Daddy, a part, according to him, which Tennessee Williams wrote about him.

Carradine is said to have appeared in more than 450 films, but only 225 movies can be backed up. If theatrical films, made-for-TV films, and television shows are included, his count will be closer to reality. He played eccentric, insane, or diabolical characters, particularly in the horror genre in which he had first been identified as a "star" by the mid-1940s. He had occasional appearances in The Grapes of Wrath, in which he played Casy, the ill-fated "preacher," and he occasionally appeared in Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake, in which he played Blake's shipmate who flies with him to a tropical island brimming with treasures.

He appeared in hundreds of low-budget horror films from the 1940s to the present of a touring classical theatre company. He also appeared in The Court Jester, a very high-budget comedy that was at the time of its debut, which was also the most expensive comedy film ever made. He sang the theme song to one film in which he appeared briefly in Red Zone Cuba. Over the course of 39 years, Carradine has appeared on television for more than 100 times. His first appearance on the "small screen" was on the DuMont Television Network in 1947, when he appeared Ebenezer Scrooge in a broadcast preview of A Christmas Carol. In an episode segment titled "Still Life," Professor Alex Stottel appeared on television in 1986 as Professor Alex Stottel on a revival of the classic series "The Twilight Zone." Here are some examples of other television series on which he appeared, including My Friend Flicka, Johnny Ringo (as The Rain Man) and Place the Face, NBC's Cimarron City as the foreboding Jared Tucker in the 1960 episode "Child of Fear" and "The Legend of Jesse James," starring Roger Moore and Lee Van Cleef, Sugarfoot, The Rebel, and "Dead Wrong," starring Jared Tucker in the actor Peter Peter Peter Peter Peter starring actor Kevin Moore and "The Recognimation in the actor Josh Barko starring Johnny Ringo ("The Rain Man" on the starring Jared Tucker on William Bendix's, starring Pat O's in the starring Jared Tucker on Harrigan's starring Terry Jones on Harrigan" and "The Legend of Dignity" and Moirong's, and Lee Van Cleef, starring Jared Tucker on the "The Rebel" and "The Rebel" and Lee Van Cleebrien" on "Red Cowboy" on Harrigan Clee and Levance" and Son, The Guardian's" and Lee Van Clee and Kevin Davis on & Son" starring Jared Tucker" on the Sunflower" and Fia on & Son's and "The Legend of Fia." In 1959 as the mind reader in The Rifleman episode of the same name, John Carradine appeared in 1959.

On the television comedy series The Munsters, Carradine made regular appearances as the mortician Mr. Gateman. He appeared in both of Irwin Allen's classic 1960s science-fiction television series Lost in Space and Land of the Giants. Carradine received a Daytime Emmy Award in 1985 for his efforts as an eccentric man who lives by the railroad tracks in the Young People's Special Umbrella Jack.

In 1982, he played the Great Owl in the animated film The Secret of Northern Ireland. In addition, he appeared as the Wizard in the English-dubbed Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. Peggy Sue Got Married, 1986, was one of Carradine's later appearances. Jack-O, Carradine's last film role, was released years after his death.

Carradine's deep, resonant voice earned him the nickname "The Voice." He was nicknamed the "Bard of the Boulevard" for his idiosyncratic habit of strolling Hollywood streets while reciting Shakespearean soliloquies, something he never denied.

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