Ralph Bellamy

At 87 years old, Ralph Bellamy physical status not available right now. We will update Ralph Bellamy's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Ralph Rexford Bellamy (June 17, 1904–November 29, 1991) was an American actor whose career spanned 62 years on stage, film, and television.

He appeared in leading roles as well as supporting roles, winning acclaim and accolades, including an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for The Awful Truth (1937).

Early life

Bellamy was born in Chicago. He was the son of Lilla Louise (née Smith), a resident of Canada, and Charles Rexford Bellamy. When he was 15 years old, he ran away from home and found work in a road show. He toured with road shows before eventually landing in New York City. He started performing on stage and owned his own theater company by 1927. He made his film debut in 1931 and continued to do well both as a lead and as a strong supporting actor throughout the decade. He co-starred in five films with Fay Wray.

Personal life and death

Bellamy was often seen socially with a select group of friends known affectionately as the "Irish Mafia," but they preferred the less glamorous "Boy's Club" in the 1930s and 1940s. Despite Bellamy's having no Irish family links himself, this group was made up of a group of Hollywood A-listers mainly of Irish descent (despite this group having no Irish family links). Other notables included James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Spencer Tracy, Lynne Overman, Frank Morgan, and Frank McHugh. Bellamy and fellow actor Charles Farrell opened the Palm Springs Racquet Club in 1934.

Bellamy was married four times, first to Alice Delbridge (1927-1930), then to Catherine Willard (1931-1945). "Ralph Bellamy, 41, veteran stage (Tomorrow the World) and film (Guest in the House) actor, and Ethel Smith, 32, a thin, Tico-Tico-famed cinema electric organist, was in fact 42 years old at the time, according to Time magazine. Alice Murphy, Bellamy's fourth wife (1949-1991; his death), was born in Bellamy (1949-1991).

Bellamy, a Democrat, was attending the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.

Bellamy died of a lung ailment at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, on November 29, 1991. He was 87 years old.

Source

Film and television career

Wallace Beery's career began with The Secret Six (1931), starring Jean Harlow and Clark Gable. He had already appeared in 22 films by the time of 1933, including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1932) and James Cagney's second lead in the action film Picture Snatcher (1933). He appeared in seven other films in 1934 alone, including Woman in the Dark, which was based on a Dashiell Hammett story in which Bellamy was the lead, second-billed under Fay Wray. Bellamy maintained her high energy throughout the decade, receiving a nomination for Best Supporting Actor (1937) with Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, and he appeared in a similar role in His Girl Friday (1940), where a naive boyfriend competes with Grant's sophisticated character. During the 1940s, he portrayed detective Ellery Queen in a few films, but as his film career didn't advance, he returned to the stage, where he continued to appear throughout the 1950s. Bellamy appeared in other films during this period, including Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) with Maulle Ball and The Wolf Man (1941) with Lon Chaney, Jr. and Evelyn Ankers, as well as the horror film The Wolf Man (1941). He appeared in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) with Chaney and Bela Lugosi.

Bellamy appeared on the television noir private eye series Man Against Crime (also known as Follow That Man) on the DuMont Television Network in 1949; the programme remained televised live on Dumont and NBC until 1956 and then aired on CBS for a season. Frank Lovejoy, who later appeared in NBC's Meet McGraw detective series, was the lead role.

Bellamy appeared on television in a number of roles over the years. During its first run, he was a regular panelist on CBS television game show To Tell the Truth. In the 1961 episode "The Haven" of CBS's anthology series Willard Mitchell, Bellamy, joined Patricia Breslin and Paul Fix as Willard Mitchell, alongside Patricia Breslin and Paul Fix. He appeared on NBC's anthology film The Barbara Stanwyck Show at the same time. In the episode "Judgement at Hondo Seco" on CBS' Rawhide, he portrayed Judge Quince in December 1961.

Bellamy appeared in The Eleventh Hour, NBC medical drama, in the role of a psychiatrist in private practice, during 1963-1964 television drama. Wendell Corey had appeared in the first season of the series.

Bellamy appeared on Broadway as Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello, winning a Tony Award for his work in 1957. In the 1960 film version, he reprised his role.

Bellamy produced nine original episodes of a CBS Western anthology series called Frontier Justice in 1961, a Dick Powell Four Star Television production. Bellamy became a member of The Lambs, an actor club based in New York in 1950.

Bellamy appeared in the syndicated anthology book "The Vintage Years," 1962) as Daniel Quint, a minister. Lorna Erickson (Merry Anders), a young woman who Quint befriends on a stagecoach ride, brings him up to be robbed by her paramour, Johnny Meadows (William Bryant).

Bellamy, who is well-known within the industry, served for four years as President of Actors' Equity from 1952 to 1964. Bellamy appeared on film in the Western The Professionals (1966) as an oil tycoon married to Claudia Cardinale opposite adventurers Burt Lancaster and Lee Marvin, and in Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968) as an evil physician before returning to television in the 1970s. He appeared on several television shows, some as a series regular. In 1970, he appeared in The Most Deadly Game, an ABC television series. In the TV show The Missiles of October (1974), a rendition of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bellamy portrayed Adlai Stevenson. In 1977, he appeared on the cast of the short-lived CBS espionage drama Hunter.

In 1983, an Emmy Award nomination for the mini-series The Winds of War (1983), in which Bellamy reprised his Sunrise at Campobello role of Franklin D. Roosevelt, brought him right into the spotlight. Randolph Duke, a conniving billionaire commodities trader in Trading Places (1983), was immediately followed by his appearance as Don Ameche. Bellamy and Don Ameche reprised their roles as the Duke brothers in Eddie Murphy's film Coming to America (1988). In the sequel to The Winds of War, Wars, and Remembrance, Franklin Roosevelt was depicted again (also 1988).

Jimmy Smits' character on an episode of L.A. Law had one of his later appearances as a once-brilliant but increasingly senile advocate. Bellamy continued to work and gave his best appearance in Pretty Woman (1990).

Source