Wallace Beery

Besides his official 1885 birth date and place, Beery's birth year has variously been listed as 1881, 1886, and 1889.

In 1902, 16-year-old Wallace Beery joined the Ringling Brothers Circus as an assistant to the elephant trainer. He left two years later after a leopard clawed his arm. Beery next went to New York, where he found work in musical variety shows. He became a leading man in musicals and appeared on Broadway and in traveling stock companies.

He got a big break while appearing in the Raymond Hitchcock musical farce "A Yankee Tourist", which opened on August 12, 1907. Beery had a featured role and as understudy to the star stepped into the lead role when Hitchcock reportedly had emergency surgery. An alternative to that story had Hitchcock charged with criminal conduct involving a 15 year-old girl. When Hitchcock returned to the production, he explained away his absence as a nervous breakdown. Beery was disappointed as his mother was en route to see her son's first starring performance. Although Hitchcock was later cleared, Beery played the lead in the road version of the hit.

In 1913 he headed for Hollywood, where he would get his start as the hulking Swedish maid in the Sweedie comedy series for Essanay.

In 1915 he would work with young ingénue Gloria Swanson in Sweedie Goes to College (1915). A year later they would marry and be wildly unhappy together. The marriage dissolved when Beery could not control his drinking and Gloria got tired of his abuse. Beery finished with the Sweedie series and worked as the heavy in a number of films.

An avid fisherman, for 35 years he held the world's record for the largest black sea bass, which he caught off California's Santa Catalina Island in 1916.

Starting with Patria (1917), he would play the beastly Hun in a number of films.

In the 1920s he would be seen in a number of adventures, including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), Robin Hood (1922), The Sea Hawk (1924) and The Pony Express (1925).

He would also play the part of Poole in So Big (1924), which was based on the best-selling book of the same name by Edna Ferber.

He took up flying in 1925, and from then until 1941 he accumulated 14,000 hours of flight time as a pilot. While making Treasure Island (1934) on Santa Catalina Island, he commuted daily by plane from his Beverly Hills home.

Paramount began to move Beery back into comedies with Behind the Front (1926). When sound came, Beery was one of the victims of the wholesale studio purge. He had a voice that would record well, but his speech was slow and his tone was a deep, folksy, down home-type. While not the handsome hero image, MGM executive Irving Thalberg saw something in Beery and hired him for the studio.

When Paramount dropped Beery's (and other actors') contracts at the end of the silent era in 1929, the actor was off the screen for a year before making a triumphant comeback at MGM with an Oscar-nominated performance in The Big House (1930). The role had been intended for Lon Chaney, who had recently died from cancer.

Thalberg cast Beery in The Big House (1930), which was a big hit and got Beery an Academy Award nomination.

However, Beery would become almost a household word with the release of the sentimental Min and Bill (1930), which would be one of 1930's top money makers.

The next year Beery would win the Oscar for Best Actor in The Champ (1931).

In Flesh (1932) he would be the dim-witted wrestler who did not figure that his wife was unfaithful.

In Dinner at Eight (1933) he played a businessman trying to get into society while having trouble with his wife, Jean Harlow.

He would be forever remembered as Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1934) (who says never work with kids?). Beery became one of the top ten stars in Hollywood, as he was cast as the tough, dim-witted, easy-going type (which, in real life, he was anything but).

After Marie Dressler died in 1934, he would not find another partner in the same vein as his early talkies until he teamed with Marjorie Main in the 1940s.

Turned down the role of Captain William Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) because he was unwilling to work with Clark Gable.

He was notoriously abusive towards the juvenile performers he supposedly adored onscreen. For one scene in Slave Ship (1937), he had to slap his 16 year-old co-star Mickey Rooney across the face. Beery didn't fake the action and, without warning, slapped Rooney so hard he was knocked to the floor, spoiling the take and causing outrage among the crew. Director Tay Garnett took Beery aside and told him that everyone on the set loved Rooney, and that it would be most unfortunate if some lighting equipment were to "accidentally" fall on Beery's head. Beery got the message and behaved himself for the rest of the shoot. Interestingly, Rooney was one of the very few actors to work with Beery who later expressed no resentment towards him. He said, "Not everyone loved him the way I did". When Dickie Moore interviewed former child stars for his 1984 book "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" Wallace Beery and W.C. Fields were the two actors the child stars disliked working with the most. Jackie Cooper said about Beery "We did four long film together" and "They couldn't find eight guys to carry his casket.".

Almost played the title role in MGM's The Wizard of Oz (1939) but due to other film roles at MGM, he was forced to turn down the role. The part of The Wizard/Prof. Marvel was given to MGM's resident character actor, Frank Morgan.

He would appear opposite her in such films as Wyoming (1940) and Barnacle Bill (1941). By that time his career was slowing as he was getting up in age.

In the summer of 1941, he was billed by MGM as the "champion movie location commuter," the studio estimating that he had journeyed more than 100,000 miles to make pictures. According to studio records, Beery covered 15,000 miles in Mexico alone while filming Viva Villa! (1934).