Image: Wikimedia CommonsWalter Brennan
American actor (1894–1974)
- Born July 25, 1894
- 9 movies
Walter Brennan (25 July 1894 to 21 September 1974) was an American actor and singer, and the only performer to win three Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor: for Come and Get It (1936), Kentucky (1938) and The Westerner (1940). Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, he served in France in the First World War and drifted into film as a Universal extra in 1925. His high, reedy voice and knack for playing men older than himself made him the westerns' favourite sidekick, and he later starred in the sitcom The Real McCoys.
Walter Brennan appears in 9 films in The Rerun, from 1946 to 1962. Most of that work is in western, adventure and comedy. Frequent collaborators in The Rerun: John Wayne (3), John Ford (2), Henry Fonda (2), Spencer Tracy (2), James Stewart (2).
Known for
- Rio Bravo (1959).
- My Darling Clementine (1946).
- Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). A 1955 film with Brennan in the cast.
- The Real McCoys (1957). His starring sitcom, which ran from 1957 to 1963.
Career
Brennan spent a decade as an extra and bit player at Universal, with fleeting parts in The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein. A kick to the face during a fight scene knocked out his teeth; with false teeth he could take them out and play men decades older, which became his calling card. The first of his three Oscars, all won within five years, came for Come and Get It, with a fourth nomination for Sergeant York (1941).
The 1940s and 1950s were his richest period, much of it in westerns: Old Man Clanton in John Ford’s My Darling Clementine, Groot in Howard Hawks’s Red River, and Stumpy, the cantankerous jailer of Rio Bravo (1959). He also played the drunk Eddie in Hawks’s To Have and Have Not. On television he led The Real McCoys from 1957 to 1963 as the patriarch of a West Virginia family transplanted to California.
Where to start
- Rio Bravo (1959): Hawks’s relaxed western, with Brennan as the funniest man in the jailhouse.
- My Darling Clementine (1946): a rare menacing turn, as the head of the Clanton clan.
- Bad Day at Black Rock (1955): John Sturges’s lean desert thriller with Spencer Tracy.
- The Westerner (1940): his third Oscar, opposite Gary Cooper, as Judge Roy Bean.
Movies
Quick answers
- What movies and TV shows has Walter Brennan been in?
- Walter Brennan appears in How the West Was Won (1962), Rio Bravo (1959), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), The Far Country (1954), A Ticket to Tomahawk (1950), Red River (1948), Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! (1948), My Darling Clementine (1946) and A Stolen Life (1946) on The Remote.
- When was Walter Brennan born?
- Walter Brennan was born on 25 July 1894.
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