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Great Character Actors: Walter Brennan
It’s been a while since I’ve published a post about one of my favorite character actors, and it’s high time I wrote a little
about another of the greats, that being Walter Brennan. I don’t know too much more about his life than that presented in his Wikipedia page, but I won’t let that slow me down much.
The details of Brennan’s life are a bit sketchy until he started getting Hollywood screen credits, circa 1927. He was born on July 25, 1894 to parents of Irish origin, and was raised in Lynn, Massachusetts, in an upper middle class neighborhood. His father was a successful engineer and his mother a homemaker. His father wished his son to follow in his footsteps and sent him to Rindge Technical High School in nearby Cambridge, which was viewed at the time as a sort of prep school for M.I.T. The plan didn’t work as intended, as young Walter got the acting bug and spent his time participating in as many school plays as he could.
He was working as a bank clerk when the U.S. entered into World War I and he immediately enlisted in the U. S. Army. He served in the 101st Field Artillery Regiment, which was one of the first units sent overseas, and he spent the better part of two years in France. He saw combat and suffered an injury to his vocal cords during a mustard gas attack. I’m sure it didn’t seem so at the time, but the vocal cord injury turned out to be a blessing in disguise for his future acting career, changing his voice to the distinctive high-pitched voice he became so well known for.
He married his wife, Ruth, in 1920, and that union would produce three children, two boys and a girl. The marriage lasted until his death at age 80 in 1974.
He continued to work in a series of odd jobs for several more years (ditchdigger, messenger boy, fruit picker), moving to Los Angeles circa 1923, where he began work as an extra and as a stunt man. During this time, he met and became close friends with another struggling actor who would go on to have even more success – Gary Cooper. Over the years, the two would make seven pictures together with Cooper as the lead and Brennan usually as his sidekick.
Long after his pal Coop had become a major star, he continued his labors as an extra and stunt man in near-anonymity, appearing in more than a dozen pictures per year. According to Old Familiar Faces by Robert Juran, he appeared in at least 49 and maybe as many as 67 movies from 1932 to 1935. It was during this time that he had his teeth knocked out while performing a stunt. This would also turn out to be a blessing in disguise for his acting career. As he described it years later, “I have two acting styles, false teeth in or false teeth out. Without my teeth, I’m 30 years older.”
He got his big break in 1935 with his biggest role to date in Barbary Coast, starring Edward G. Robinson, Miriam Hopkins and Joel McCrea, where he played a toothless barfly called Old Atrocity who hung out at Robinson’s gambling casino. After this, it was off to the races for Brennan. He would win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1937 (the first one given) for his role in Come and Get It, as a lumberjack probably 15-20 years older than his actual age (which was a regular occurrence for him), where he employed a thick Swedish accent – sorry about the poor sound quality on this clip. This scene is with Edward Arnold and Frances Farmer:
He would win two more Best Supporting Actor Oscars in the next four years, with the second being for the 1938 movie Kentucky in which he again played a much older man (about 80 years of age this time), and his third and last Oscar for his role as Judge Roy Bean in the 1940 picture The Westerner, opposite of and outshining his buddy Gary Cooper. His three Oscars in this category are the still the most for any actor. Unfortunately, this 3-1/2 minute clip is all I could find for this fine film.
In 1941, Brennan appeared in six movies, including two blockbusters: Meet John Dee and Sergeant York. Let me include a clip or two from each picture. First, from Meet John Dee: where newspaper columnist Barbara Stanwyck is feeding hungry hobos Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan after Cooper accepts her newspaper’s offer to become John Doe. Another great character actor, James Gleason, playing the newspaper editor, also makes an appearance in the scene (1:48).
Next, The Colonel (Brennan) explains his philosophy of life (3:36).
Moving on to Sergeant York, the movie opens with Brennan’s character, Pastor Rosier Pile, delivering a sermon in church (4:02).
In 1942’s Pride of the Yankees, sports reporter Brennan befriends the young ballplayer Lou Gehrig (Cooper again) and becomes his biggest booster. This scene, with Teresa Wright as Gehrig’s wife teasing Brennan’s character, is a little over two minutes long, but you’ll be able to watch the rest of the movie if you so desire. Jeesh, turns out Pride of the Yankees, about as PG a movie as possible, is age-restricted so you’ll have to click the Go to YouTube icon to see the scene in question (pathetic).
Brennan played Clanton clan patriarch, “Old Man” Clanton, in 1946’s My Darling Clementine. I’ll provide two clips from the movie. First, a short one minute clip in which “Old Man” Clanton apologizes to Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) for his sons’ misbehavior and proceeds to whip those sons.
Next, the final eleven minutes of the movie, which features the O.K. Corral shootout. I apologize for the length, but don’t worry, I sure won’t hold it against you if you don’t watch it. Oh, yeah, the other main players in the scene are Henry Fonda, Victor Mature and Ward Bond.
In the 1948 movie Red River, Brennan supported John Wayne and Montgomery Clift as they engage in an arduous cattle drive. This scene is a little over four minutes long. Oh, and in this movie, Brennan’s false teeth are a humorous recurring theme.
One of my favorite movies is Rio Bravo from 1959, starring John Wayne, Dean Martin, Angie Dickinson and Ricky Nelson. Wayne plays the Sheriff of small town who, with a motley crew of helpers, is trying to hold off the enraged local, wealthy rancher and his army of gun men trying to free said wealthy rancher’s murdering brother from Wayne’s jail.
In this scene, the wealthy rancher pays a visit to his jailed brother (5:21).
In the gun battle at the end of the movie, Stumpy (Walter Brennan) has an idea (3:40)
My last movie clip is from the 1969 movie Support Your Local Sheriff, starring James Garner. In this scene, Brennan spoofs his Rio Bravo role. The clip is a little over a minute long.
When television came along Brennan eventually jumped into it in the 1950s. He appeared in several TV-movies and from 1957-1963 starred in the TV series The Real McCoys. The show was a hit with ratings that were usually in or near the top 10. Here’s a link to the first episode of the series. He starred in a couple of other TV series, neither of which met with much success.
Around the same time he also embarked on a recording career. As best I can tell, his recordings were spoken word over musical accompaniment. One of those songs “Old Rivers” made it to number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1962.
I have a few odds and ends to close out this remembrance. Brennan made good money, of course, and he seems to have been a good manager of that money. In 1940, he bought a 12,000-acre ranch near Joseph, Oregon. He built a motel, movie theater and variety store there. Later, he bought a much smaller ranch in Ventura County, and between his TV and movie work spent most of his time at one or the other of these ranches.
Brennan was quite open about his conservative political philosophy. He was a proud member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals; was extremely anti-communist, maybe to the point of eventually becoming John Birch Society member, and a supporter of bringing prayer back to school following the Supreme Court decisions which banned the practice in the early 1960s. He was part of Project Prayer which pursued this goal with peaceful public gatherings featuring various celebrities. I came across this May 1964 column by national columnist Drew Pearson which drips with condescension that any other than a few yokels would deign to disagree with wise practice of banning prayer in school.
That’s all.
Published in General
Good stuff.
I can’t find a YT clip, but I like the part in Support Your Local Sheriff where Brennan mentions his “eatin’ teeth.”
“StageCoach“, “My Darling Clementine“, and “Red River” are my favorite Western movies from that period. All directed by John Ford and I’m fairly sure filmed in Monument Valley along the Utah–Arizona state line.
One of mine too, and since he remade it twice (El Dorado and Rio Lobo) one can assume director Howard Hawks liked it as well.
My first experience with Brennan was in “The Guns of Will Sonnett.”
Aren’t all actors character actors?
Awesome post, Tiger, thank you!
Speaking of “Rio Bravo,” (how’s that for a segue?) If I were to pick one tune to exemplify Dean Martin’s easy way with a song, it would be this one:
Thanks Addiction. Yeah, one of the things I like about the movie is that the music and the musical scenes fit so seamlessly into the story.
You left out one of my favorite movies, To Have and Have Not, where Walter plays the addled protector of Humphrey Bogart.
“You ever been stung by a dead bee?”
YouTube is a massive, cursed library that has all sorts of things you didn’t know you wanted, but is also ugly and full of maniacs and demons, and periodically the librarian sidles up to you and recommends things she thinks you’ll like. Yesterday the “Recommended” pane offered a video about how Walter Brennan was THE MOST EVIL MAN IN HOLLYWOOD. Wow. A predatory sexual deviant who used the system to exploit and defraud people? No: it was his politics.
Yeah, Juliana – I spent a fair amount of time looking for just that clip (or the one where Lauren Bacall pulls that schtick on Brennan) without success.
Yep, saw a ton of those when I was roaming around YT looking for short Walter Brennan clips for this post.
The full Dead Bee Chronicles (plus bonus Hoagy Carmichael at the very end):
I was drawn in by that clickbait scam! I watched the whole half-hour to see what made Walter so EEEEEVIL. You’re right, it was because he was a conservative and hated communism! Except nobody back then hated him. It was only the guy who made the recent documentary that did.
Great video clips in this essay, but for me the most interesting link is the Drew Pearson column.
Notwithstanding the tone, Pearson is correct and Granpappy Amos wrong about the court’s decision on school prayer. This is a successsful 70 year precedent that hopefully even today’s SCOTUS dares not weaken. It’s a very slippery slope behind any watering down of the 1st Amendment’s establishment clause.
What might start with Louisiana using public dollars to pay for religious indoctrination in private schools could lead to Alabama composing a non-sectarian Christian prayer for all its public schools. Then Utah goes its own way. Eventually Michigan lets the local districts decide and voila: with a little help from friends abroad to supplement the taxpayer contributions, madrassas teaching Wahhabism.
It seems preposterous, but look what’s happened to the colleges since there are no 1st Amendment protections against Marxism.
But look what’s happened in public schools since they outlawed prayer. Not a good outcome to boast about.
Correlation not causation.
Remember that scene in The Godfather where they’re deciding where the narcotics could be distributed? Maybe that’s where the problems started.
Remember “The Great Society” enabling chain generations of government dependence?
Consider the divorce epidemic of the 1970s.
Consider the impact of changing technology of the lives of young people.
Consider everything from dumbed down exams to Schools of Education more focused on equity than high standards.
When my wife grew up in a mostly Jewish neighborhood of the Bronx in the 1950s/60s crime was rare, grandparents eyes saw all, and kids worked hard to earn “SP” or “SPE” — special progress (enriched) status and then admissions to tough public high schools like Bronx Science. All amidst complete separation of synogogue and state. Strong cultural heritage is passed on at home.
Jim: Remember, the people who passed the First Amendment intended it to apply to the Federal government only (“Congress shall make no law …”). Creation, regulation, and abolition of religious establishments was left to the States: for example, Connecticut didn’t — voluntarily — abolish its religious establishment until about 50 years later.
They also intended the amendment to apply only to literal religious establishments — that is, installing a particular sect into the civil service — not any and all government support for religion. N.B.: Even the liberal courts that sought to rewrite the Constitution to be hostile to religion didn’t dare mess with the employment of chaplains by the military. (Not yet, anyway!)
If all this is true, then you must follow your own dictum “correlation is not causation.” You have to discount all the factors you just listed.
The more you discourage religious beliefs and practice, the worse things generally get. That may not be as immutable as the laws of physics, but it is pretty commonsense. The first two countries in the world to significantly turn away from a belief in religion were Germany and France. One became a tyrant and the other became a punching bag. The next ones to significantly turn away were all the Communist countries. They don’t have a good track record.
Since the passage of the 14th Amendment, much of the Bill of Rights now applies to the States as well, including the 1st Amendment, under the incorporation doctrine.
Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing TP (1947) specifically ruled on application of the establishment clause to the States.
Maybe check out foreign madrasses before arguing for reversal of this precedent in the U.S.
We never had a problem with Madrasas in the United States before they outlawed prayer in schools. I don’t see how you connect strict Muslim schools in foreign countries with the outlawing of prayer in our schools.
The point I’m trying to make is that all religions must be treated equally here under our Constitution.
So when envisioning American students praying in public schools, don’t just picture them praying in your own faith.
Imagine them receiving the doctrine and practicing the rituals of other religions. And “strict” understates what goes on in the world in the name of religion.
I am technically an agnostic, though I “dabble” in Judaism.
I don’t think there was a ban on other religions when we used to have prayer in public schools. Besides, I don’t think the prayers were even compulsory, if I’m not mistaken. When the Founding Fathers wrote the Establishment Clause in the Constitution, I’m sure they had no intention of banning prayers or religion in public places. I think they would be dumbfounded to see what this has turned into.
“Since the passage of the 14th Amendment …” — that glosses over a great deal. To be precise, it took more than half a century after the passage of the 14th Amendment for the Supreme Court to first “discover” it could be used as a sort of blank check, to arbitrarily impose on the States whichever bits of the Bill of Rights the Court liked, while ignoring the bits it didn’t like.
In the Twenties, American elites, including the Justices, thought local censorship (e.g., “banned in Boston”) was retarding the progress of literature in the U.S. relative to Europe.
And then it was another 35 years before the Court further “discovered” that Amendments 1 + 14 = no prayer in public schools.
In much of Canada, Catholic and Protestant schools are supported by the government, as a matter of Constitutional right. They have to meet objective standards set by provincial governments. Interestingly, where they are permitted, the religious public schools are growing faster than the secular public schools. Parents prefer them, for some “mysterious” reason.
When the relevant Constitutional provisions were set down, Muslims were not a significant part of the Canadian population; so Canada’s growing number of Muslim schools does not currently receive the same public support.
If they do someday, so what?
Sharia law?
It seems you’ve skipped a few steps …
The Muslim schools will be so good, everybody will send their children to them; all the children will become fundamentalist Muslims; and when they become the majority of voters (in about 40 years) they will elect an Islamic regime in Canada?
Then again, predictions that the Papists will take over never came true, either.
The Papists are not as ruthless as Muslims.
The Bible is different from the Koran in radically important ways.
And when we look around the world, Islam’s track record for peaceful and amicable coexistence (and assimilation) is…sketchy.
So why should the West welcome millions of immigrants who may destroy the culture we enjoy and which our ancestors worked so hard to create?
Islam in Europe is behaving like a malevolent invader, not like a friendly neighbor.
Florida imam calls on Allah to “annihilate the Jews”:
Regarding the erroneous idea that every culture and religion is equal and is compatible with our civilization:
I thought the question was about allowing people to pray in schools, not welcoming in millions of Muslims. You are making some huge inferences into what other people are saying.