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Louis Calhern

Louis Calhern

Actor · 1895 – 1956 · Brooklyn [now in New York City], New York, USA

Carl Henry Vogt (February 19, 1895 – May 12, 1956), known professionally as Louis Calhern, was an American stage and screen actor. For portraying Oliver Wendell Holmes in the film The Magnificent Yankee (1950), he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. Calhern began working in silent films for director Lois Weber in the early 1920s; the most notable being The Blot in 1921. A 1921 newspaper article commented, "The new arrival in stardom is Louis Calhern, who, until Miss Weber engaged him to enact the leading male role in What's Worth While?, had been playing leads in the Morosco Stock company of Los Angeles." In 1923 Calhern left the movies, but would return to the screen eight years later after the advent of sound pictures. He was primarily cast as a character actor in films while he continued to play leading roles on the stage. He reached his peak in the 1950s as a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player. Among his many memorable screen roles were Ambassador Trentino in the Marx Brothers classic Duck Soup (1933) and three that he appeared in at MGM in 1950: a singing role as Buffalo Bill in the film version of the musical Annie Get Your Gun, the double-crossing lawyer and sugar-daddy to Marilyn Monroe in John Huston's film noir The Asphalt Jungle, and his Oscar-nominated performance as Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Magnificent Yankee (re-creating his role from the Broadway stage). He was also praised for his portrayal of the title role in the John Houseman production of Julius Caesar (adapted from the Shakespeare play) in 1953, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Calhern also played the role of the devious George Caswell, the manipulative board member of Tredway Corporation in the 1954 production of Executive Suite. Calhern's other film roles included the grandfather in The Red Pony (1949), adapted from the novel by John Steinbeck and starring Robert Mitchum, and the spy boss of Cary Grant in the Alfred Hitchcock suspense classic Notorious (1946). A performance as Uncle Willie in High Society (1956), a musical remake of The Philadelphia Story, turned out to be his final film. Description above from the Wikipedia article Louis Calhern, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Movies24

  • Movie7.7

    Notorious

    1946 · 1.8K votes

  • Movie6.8

    High Society

    1956 · 273 votes

  • Movie7.1

    Julius Caesar

    1953 · 243 votes

  • Movie7.5

    The Asphalt Jungle

    1950 · 547 votes

  • Movie7.3

    Duck Soup

    1933 · 880 votes

  • Movie7.3

    The Bad and the Beautiful

    1952 · 309 votes

  • Movie6.9

    Blackboard Jungle

    1955 · 164 votes

  • Movie6.9

    Heaven Can Wait

    1943 · 252 votes

  • Movie6.7

    The Life of Emile Zola

    1937 · 160 votes

  • Movie6.7

    Annie Get Your Gun

    1950 · 88 votes

  • Movie5.9

    We're Not Married!

    1952 · 28 votes

  • Movie7.1

    Executive Suite

    1954 · 63 votes

  • Movie4.6

    The Prodigal

    1955 · 9 votes

  • Movie7.0
  • Movie6.0

    Arch of Triumph

    1948 · 40 votes

  • Movie6.5

    Juarez

    1939 · 25 votes

  • Movie6.9

    The Prisoner of Zenda

    1952 · 60 votes

  • Movie6.8
  • Movie7.3

    Devenir Marilyn

    Becoming Marilyn

    2022 · 21 votes

  • Movie6.8

    The Man with a Cloak

    1951 · 20 votes

  • Movie7.0

    Washington Story

    1952 · 3 votes

  • Movie6.5
  • Movie6.0

    Remains to Be Seen

    1953 · 4 votes

  • Movie5.3

    A Life of Her Own

    1950 · 20 votes

Series1

  • TV6.8

    The Ed Sullivan Show

    1948 · 23 votes