John Carradine facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
John Carradine
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Carradine in a 1967 publicity photo
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| Born |
Richmond Reed Carradine
February 5, 1906 New York City, U.S.
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| Died | November 27, 1988 (aged 82) Milan, Italy
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| Other names | Peter Richmond |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1930–1988 |
| Spouse(s) |
Ardanelle McCool Cosner
(m. 1935; div. 1944)Sonia Sorel
(m. 1944; div. 1956)Doris Rich
(m. 1957; died 1971)Emily Cisneros
(m. 1975) |
| Children | 5, including David, Keith, and Robert |
John Carradine ( karr-Ə-deen; born Richmond Reed Carradine; February 5, 1906 – November 27, 1988) was an American actor, considered one of the greatest character actors in American cinema. He was a member of Cecil B. DeMille's stock company and later John Ford's company, best known for his roles in horror films, Westerns, and Shakespearean theater, most notably portraying Count Dracula in House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945), Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966), and Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula (1979). He’s also best known as “Preacher Casy” in John Ford’s The Grapes Of Wrath. In later decades of his career, he starred mostly in low-budget B-movies. In total, he holds 351 film and television credits, making him one of the most prolific English-speaking film and television actors of all time.
Carradine was married four times, had five children, and was the patriarch of the Carradine family, including four sons and four grandchildren who are or were also actors.
Contents
Early life
Carradine was born in New York City, the son of William Reed Carradine, a correspondent for the Associated Press, and his wife, 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. William Carradine died from tuberculosis when his son John was two years old. Carradine's mother then married "a Philadelphia paper manufacturer named Peck, who thought the way to bring up someone else's boy was to beat him every day just on general principle." Carradine attended the Christ Church School in Kingston and the Episcopal Academy in Merion Station, Pennsylvania, where he developed his diction and his memory skills from portions of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer as a punishment.
Carradine's son David claimed his father ran away when he was 14 years old. He later returned and studied sculpture at Philadelphia's Graphic Arts Institute. Carradine lived with his maternal uncle, Peter Richmond, in New York City for a while, working in the film archives of the public library. David said that while still a teenager, his father went to Richmond, Virginia, to serve as an apprentice to Daniel Chester French, the sculptor who created the statue of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. He traveled for a time, supporting himself painting portraits. "If the sitter was satisfied, the price was $2.50," he once said. "It cost him nothing if he thought it was a turkey. I made as high as $10 to $15 a day." During this time, he was arrested for vagrancy. While in jail, Carradine was beaten, suffering a broken nose that did not set correctly. This contributed to "the look that would become world famous."
David Carradine said, "My dad told me that he saw a production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice when he was 11 years old and decided right then what he wanted to do with his life". He made his stage debut in 1925 in New Orleans in a production of Camille and worked for a time in a New Orleans Shakespeare company. Carradine joined a tent repertory theater under the management of R. D. MaClean, who became his mentor. In 1927, he took a job escorting a shipment of bananas from Dallas, Texas to Los Angeles, where he eventually picked up some theater work under the name of Peter Richmond, in homage to his uncle. He became friends with John Barrymore, and began working for Cecil B. DeMille as a set designer. Carradine, however, did not have the job long. "DeMille noticed the lack of Roman columns in my sketches," Carradine said. "I lasted two weeks." Once DeMille heard his baritone voice, however, he hired him to do voice-overs. Carradine said, "the great Cecil B. DeMille saw an apparition – me – pass him by, reciting the gravedigger's lines from 'Hamlet', and he instructed me to report to him the following day." He became a member of DeMille's stock company and his voice was heard in several DeMille pictures, including The Sign of the Cross.
Career
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Carradine's first film credit was Tol'able David (1930), but he claimed to have done 70 pictures before getting billing. Carradine claimed to have tested, as an unknown – along with well-known leading men Conrad Veidt, William Courtenay, Paul Muni, and Ian Keith – for the title role in Dracula, but the historical record does not support the claim. The part eventually went to Bela Lugosi. Carradine later played the Count in the 1940s Universal Studios Dracula sequels House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula. Carradine also claimed to have tested for the monster role in Frankenstein (1931), though again, no account exists other than his own that he actually did so. By 1933, he was being credited as John Peter Richmond, perhaps in honor of his friend, John Barrymore. He adopted the stage name "John Carradine" in 1935, and legally took the name as his own two years later. In 1935's Bride of Frankenstein, Carradine had a brief uncredited walk on role as a hunter in the forest.
On April 11, 1934, Wilfred Talbot Smith and Regina Kahl of the O.T.O. Agape Lodge held a "Crowley Night on Winona Blvd". Martin Starr recounts that "It included a program of recitation of (Aleister) Crowley's poetry, rituals and sacred texts...One surprising name was among the participants: the stage and motion picture actor John Carradine...who read the Crowley poem, "O Madonna of the Golden Eyes."
By 1936, Carradine had become a member of John Ford's stock company and appeared in The Prisoner of Shark Island. In total, he made 11 pictures with Ford, including his first important role, as Preacher Casy in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Other Ford films in which Carradine appeared include The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Stagecoach (1939).
He also portrayed the Biblical hero Aaron in DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956), and he dominated Hitler's Madman (1943) as Reinhard Heydrich.
Carradine did considerable stage work, much of which provided his only opportunity to work in a classic drama context. He toured with his own Shakespearean company in the 1940s, playing Hamlet and Macbeth. His Broadway roles included Ferdinand in a 1946 production of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, the Ragpicker in a 13-month run of Jean Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot, Lycus in a 15-month run of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and DeLacey in the expensive one-night flop Frankenstein in 1981. He also toured in road companies of such shows as Tobacco Road and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which he was properly emaciated as the cancer-ridden Big Daddy, a part, he said, which Tennessee Williams wrote for him.
Carradine claimed to have appeared in more than 450 movies, but only 225 movies can be documented. His count is closer to fact if theatrical movies, made-for-TV movies, and television programs are included. He often played eccentric, insane, or diabolical characters, especially in the horror genre with which he had become identified as a "star" by the mid-1940s. He occasionally played a heroic role, as in The Grapes of Wrath, in which he played Casy, the ill-fated "preacher", and he occasionally played a sympathetic role, as in Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake, in which he played Blake's shipmate, who escapes with him to a tropical island full of riches.
He appeared in dozens of low-budget horror films from the 1940s onwards, to finance a touring classical theater company. He also played a small but important role in the very-high-budget comedy The Court Jester, which was at the time of its release the most expensive comedy film ever made. Carradine also made more than 100 acting appearances on television over a period of 39 years. His first performance on the "small screen" was on the DuMont Television Network in 1947, when he played Ebenezer Scrooge in a broadcast presentation of A Christmas Carol. His final role on television was in 1986 as Professor Alex Stottel on a revival of the classic series The Twilight Zone, in an episode segment titled "Still Life." Some examples of other television series on which he appeared include My Friend Flicka, Johnny Ringo (as The Rain Man), and Place the Face, NBC's Cimarron City as the foreboding Jared Tucker in the episode "Child of Fear" and on William Bendix's Overland Trail in the 1960 episode "The Reckoning," on Harrigan and Son starring Pat O'Brien in the episode "A Matter of Dignity," Maverick in "Red Dog" starring Roger Moore and Lee Van Cleef, Sugarfoot, The Rebel, and The Legend of Jesse James, on the syndicated adventure series Rescue 8 with actor Jim Davis and in two episodes of the western TV series Bonanza ("Springtime" and "Dead Wrong"). John Carradine also appeared in 1959 as the mind reader in The Rifleman episode of the same name.
Carradine also made recurring appearances as the mortician Mr. Gateman on the television comedy series The Munsters. He appeared as well in both of Irwin Allen's classic 1960s science-fiction television series Lost in Space and Land of the Giants. In 1985, Carradine won a Daytime Emmy Award for his performance as an eccentric man who lives by the railroad tracks in the Young People's Special Umbrella Jack.
In 1982, he supplied the voice of the Great Owl in the animated feature The Secret of NIMH. Also, he played the voice of the Wizard in the English-dubbed version of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. One of Carradine's later appearances was Peggy Sue Got Married in 1986. Carradine's last released film credit was Jack-O, released years after his death.
Carradine's deep, resonant voice earned him the nickname "The Voice". He was known as the "Bard of the Boulevard" due to his idiosyncratic habit of strolling Hollywood streets while reciting Shakespearean soliloquies, something he always denied.
Personal life and death
Carradine was married four times. He married his first wife, Ardanelle Abigail McCool (January 25, 1911 – January 26, 1989), in 1935. She was the mother of Bruce and David. John adopted Bruce, Ardanelle's son from a previous marriage. They divorced in 1944 when David was seven years old.
In 1945, immediately following his divorce from Ardanelle, Carradine married Sonia Sorel (May 18, 1921 – September 24, 2004), who had appeared with him in the 1944 film Bluebeard. Sonia, who had adopted the stage name of Sorel, was the daughter of San Francisco brewer Henry Henius, granddaughter of biochemist Max Henius, and a great-niece of the historian Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Together, Carradine and Sonia had three sons, Christopher, Keith, and Robert. They divorced in 1957.
When John Carradine married Doris (Erving Rich) Grimshaw in 1957, she already had a son, Dale, from a previous marriage and a son, Michael, from a later relationship. Both Dale and Michael, along with Sonia Sorel's son, Michael Bowen, are sometimes counted among John Carradine's eight sons.
Carradine died from heart and kidney failure at the Fatebenefratelli Hospital in Milan, Italy on November 27, 1988 at the age of 82. Hours before he was stricken, he had climbed the 328 steep steps of Milan's Gothic cathedral, the Duomo. According to David Carradine, his father had just finished a film (Buried Alive) in South Africa and was about to begin a European tour. David was with him, reading Shakespeare to him in his hospital bed, when he succumbed to his condition. By the time David and Keith Carradine had arrived at their father's bedside at the hospital, he was unable to speak. "I was told that his last words were 'Milan: What a beautiful place to die.'"
Legacy
For his contributions to the film industry, Carradine was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 with a motion pictures star located at 6240 Hollywood Boulevard. In 2003, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Four of Carradine's five sons became actors: David, Robert, Keith, and Bruce. David had a prolific career, amassing 227 movie and television credits by the time of his death in 2009. He also had a brief Broadway career and produced and directed a number of independent projects. His success often led to work for other members of his family, including his father. The two appeared together in a few films, including The Good Guys and the Bad Guys (1969) and Boxcar Bertha (1972), produced by Roger Corman and directed by Martin Scorsese.
David's television series Kung Fu featured his father John and half-brother Robert in the episode "Dark Angel". John appeared as the same character, the Reverend Serenity Johnson, in two more episodes: "The Nature of Evil" and "Ambush". David's brothers Bruce and Keith appeared in the series, with Keith playing David's character as a teenager for a brief period. David, Keith, and Robert appeared together in a humorous cameo on The Fall Guy, on an episode titled "October the 31st", in which their father co-starred.
Robert appeared with his father in an episode of the first Twilight Zone revival television series in 1986. The episode segment titled "Still Life" featured Robert as a photographer who discovers an unusual camera and his father as a college professor who helps him discover the camera's secret.
Filmography
Television roles
The following are only a few examples of the many roles John Carradine performed on television between 1947 and 1986:
- My Friend Irma, CBS comedy (1952–1954) as Mr. Corday
- Cheyenne, TV western (1957) Episode – "Decision at Gunsight" as Delos Gerrard
- The Restless Gun as Arch in Episode "More Than Kin"
- The Rifleman, TV western (1959) Episode – "The Photographer" as Abel Goss
- Gunsmoke, TV western (1959) as Kader
- The Twilight Zone (1959) Episode – "The Howling Man" (1960) as Brother Jerome
- Maverick in "Red Dog" (1960) starring Roger Moore, Lee Van Cleef and Sherry Jackson
- The Rebel, TV western (1961) as Elmer Dodson
- The Beverly Hillbillies (1966) Episode - “The Great Jethro” as Marvin Bagby/Marvo the Magnificent
- The Munsters (1964–1966) as Mr. Gateman
- Lost In Space (television series 1965–1968) Episode – "The Galaxy Gift" (April 26, 1967)
- Daughter of the Mind (ABC Movie of the Week 1969) as Bosch (December 9, 1969)
- Night Gallery (episode: "Big Surprise/Quoth the Raven/Prof. Peabody's Last Lecture", 1971)
- Kung Fu (3 episodes: 1972, 1974 and 1975); as Preacher Serenity Johnson, John played opposite his son David, who was the star of the series.
- The Night Strangler (1973) as Llewelyn Crossbinder
- The New Adventures of Wonder Woman (1978) as Harlow Gault
- The Twilight Zone (1985) Episode – "Still Life" (1985) as Professor Stottel
Images for kids
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The Hurricane (1937)
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Stagecoach (1939)
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Carradine leans over the seat, Lucille Ball at front right (1939)
See also
In Spanish: John Carradine para niños
