Home >

Louis Calhern

Louis Calhern

Birthday: 1895-02-19 | Place of Birth: 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.

...

Known For

Acting

Year
Title

Role

1956
Forever, Darling

as    Charles Y. Bewell

1956
High Society

as    Uncle Willie

1955
Blackboard Jungle

as    Jim Murdock

1954
Betrayed

as    Gen. Ten Eyck

1954
Executive Suite

as    George Nyle Caswell

1954
Athena

as    Grandpa Ulysses Mulvain

1954
Rhapsody

as    Nicholas Durant

1953
Remains to Be Seen

as    Benjamin Goodman

1953
Latin Lovers

as    Grandfather Eduardo Santos

1953
Julius Caesar

as    Jules César

1953
Confidentially Connie

as    Opie Bedloe

1952
The Prisoner of Zenda

as    Col. Zapt

1952
We're Not Married!

as    Freddie Melrose

1951
The Man with a Cloak

as    Charles Theverner

1950
The Asphalt Jungle

as    Alonzo D. Emmerich

1950
Annie Get Your Gun

as    Col. Buffalo Bill Cody

1950
Nancy Goes to Rio

as    Gregory Elliott

1950
Two Weeks with Love

as    Horatio Robinson

1950
A Life of Her Own

as    Jim Leversoe

1950
Devil's Doorway

as    Verne Coolan

1949
The Red Danube

as    Colonel Piniev

1949
The Red Pony

as    Grandfather

1946
Notorious

as    Captain Paul Prescott

1944
Up in Arms

as    Colonel Ashley

1943
Nobody's Darling

as    Curtis Farnsworth

1943
Heaven Can Wait

as    Randolph Van Cleve

1939
5th Ave Girl

as    Dr. Kessler

1938
Fast Company

as    Elias Z. 'Eli' Bannerman

1937
The Life of Emile Zola

as    Major Dort

1936
The Gorgeous Hussy

as    Leroy Sunderland