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Walter Pidgeon

Walter Pidgeon

Show Count: 23
Series Count: 0
Role: Old Time Radio Star
Born: September 23, 1897
Old Time Radio, Saint John, Canada
Died: September 25, 1984, Santa Monica, California, United States

Walter Davis Pidgeon (September 23, 1897 – September 25, 1984) was a Canadian actor, who starred in many films, including Mrs. Miniver, The Bad and the Beautiful, Forbidden Planet, Advise & Consent, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Funny Girl and Harry in Your Pocket.

Early life

Born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Pidgeon was the son of Hannah (née Sanborn), a housewife, and Caleb Burpee Pidgeon, a haberdasher.Pidgeon attended local schools and the University of New Brunswick, where he studied law and drama. His university education was interrupted byWorld War I, and he enlisted in the 65th Battery, Royal Canadian Field Artillery. Pidgeon never saw action, however, as he was severely injured in an accident. He was crushed between two gun carriages and spent seventeen months in a military hospital. Following the war, he moved to Boston,Massachusetts, where he worked as a bank runner, at the same time studying voice at the New England Conservatory of Music. He was a classically trained baritone.

Career

Discontented with banking, Pidgeon moved to New York City, where he walked into the office of E.E. Clive, announced that he could act and sing and could prove it. After acting on stage for several years, he made his Broadway debut in 1925.

Pidgeon made a number of silent films in the 1920s. However, he became a huge star with the arrival of talkies, thanks to his singing voice. He starred in extravagant early Technicolor musicals, including The Bride of the Regiment (1930), Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1930), Viennese Nights (1930) and Kiss Me Again (1931). He became associated with musicals; however, when the public grew weary of them, his career began to falter. He was relegated to playing secondary roles in films like Saratoga and The Girl of the Golden West. One of his better known roles was in The Dark Command, where he portrayed the villain (loosely based on American Civil War guerrilla William C. Quantrill) opposite John Wayne, Claire Trevor, and a young Roy Rogers.

It was not until he starred in the Academy Award-winning Best Picture How Green Was My Valley (1941) that his popularity rebounded. He then starred opposite Greer Garson in Blossoms in the Dust (1941), Mrs. Miniver (1942) (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor) and its sequel, The Miniver Story in 1950. He was also nominated in 1944 for Madame Curie, again opposite Garson. His partnership with her continued throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s with Mrs. Parkington (1944), Julia Misbehaves (1948), That Forsyte Woman (1949), and finallly Scandal at Scourie (1953). He also starred as Chip Collyer in the comedy Week-End at the Waldorf (1945) and later as Colonel Michael S. 'Hooky' Nicobar, who is given the difficult task of repatriating Russians in post-World War II Vienna in the drama film The Red Danube (1949).

Although he continued to make art films, including The Bad and the Beautiful and Forbidden Planet (the latter based on Shakespeare's The Tempest), Pidgeon returned to work on Broadway in the mid-1950s after a twenty-year absence, and was featured in Take Me Along with Jackie Gleason. He received a Tony Award nomination for the musical play.

He continued making films, playing Admiral Harriman Nelson in 1961's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, James Haggin in Walt Disney's Big Red (1962), and as the Senate Majority Leader inOtto Preminger's Advise & Consent. His role as Florenz Ziegfeld in Funny Girl (1968) was well received. Later, he played Casey, James Coburn's sidekick in Harry in Your Pocket (1973).

In addition, Pidgeon guest-starred in the episode "King of the Valley" (November 26, 1959) of CBS's Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater. Pidgeon plays Dave King, a prosperous rancher who quarrels with his banker over a $10,000 loan. When the banker dies of a heart attack on the job after a confrontation with King, it is discovered that the bank is missing $50,000. Leora Dana plays Anne Coleman, the banker's widow and the rancher's former paramour. The banker lost the funds with a bad investment, but the irate and uninformed townspeople are blaming King. Karl Swensonappears in this episode as Will Harmon.

His other television credits included Breaking Point, The F.B.I., and Marcus Welby, M.D.. In 1963 he guest starred as corporate attorney Sherman Hatfield in the fourth of four special episodes ofPerry Mason while Raymond Burr was recovering from surgery.

Pidgeon was active in the Screen Actors Guild, and served as president from 1952 to 1957. As such, he tried to stop the production of Salt of the Earth, which was made by a team blacklisted during the Red Scare. He retired from acting in 1978.

Walter Davis Pidgeon has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6414 Hollywood Blvd.

Personal life

Pidgeon married twice. In 1919, he wed the former Edna Muriel Pickles, who died in 1921 during the birth of their daughter, also named Edna. In 1931, Pidgeon married his secretary, Ruth Walker, to whom he remained married until his death at age 87 in Santa Monica, California, following a series of strokes.

Pidgeon was a Republican. In 1944, he joined other celebrity Republicans at a rally in the Los Angeles Coliseum arranged by David O. Selznick in support of the Dewey-Bricker ticket as well asGovernor Earl Warren of California, who would be Dewey's running mate in 1948. The gathering drew 93,000, with Cecil B. DeMille as the master of ceremonies and short speeches by Hedda Hopper and Walt Disney. Despite the good turnout at the rally, most Hollywood celebrities who took a public position sided with the Roosevelt-Truman ticket.


Source: Wikipedia


Broadcast: 16th February 1942
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Added: Oct 04 2007
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Added: Dec 24 2018
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Added: Dec 08 2012
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Added: Oct 12 2014