Joel McCrea

Joel McCrea - Quick Facts

Profile Overview of Joel McCrea

Joel Albert McCrea (November 5, 1905 – October 20, 1990) was an American actor whose career as a leading man spanned a wide variety of genres over almost five decades, including comedy, drama, romance, thrillers, adventures, and Westerns, for which he became best known.

This profile of Joel McCrea covers Early Life and Family Background, Career and Rise to Fame, Personal Life, Death and Legacy and Awards and Honours.

McCrea appeared in over 100 films, starring in over 80, between 1927 and 1976. He starred in three Best Picture Oscar nominees: William Wyler's Dead End (1937), Alfred Hitchcock's espionage thriller Foreign Correspondent (1940), and George Stevens' romantic comedy The More the Merrier (1943).

His other notable films included Preston Sturges' comedies Sullivan's Travels (1941) and The Palm Beach Story (1942), Bird of Paradise (1932) The Most Dangerous Game (1932), Bed of Roses (1933), These Three, Come and Get It (1936) and Barbary Coast (1935), and several Westerns, including Wichita (1955) as Wyatt Earp and Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962). Except for the British thriller Rough Shoot (1953) and film noir Hollywood Story (1951), McCrea appeared in Western films exclusively from 1946 until his retirement in 1976.

Early Life and Family Background of Joel McCrea

McCrea was born in South Pasadena, California, the son of Thomas McCrea, an executive with the L.A. Gas & Electric Company, and Louise "Lou" Whipple. As a boy, he had a paper route delivering the Los Angeles Times to Cecil B. DeMille and other people in the film industry. He also had the opportunity to watch D. W. Griffith filming Intolerance, and was an extra in a serial starring Ruth Roland.

McCrea graduated from Hollywood High School and then Pomona College (class of 1928.) There he had acted on stage and took courses in drama and public speaking, while also appearing regularly at the Pasadena Playhouse. In 1928 he also met Wyatt Earp in Hollywood – later in 1955, McCrea would portray Earp in the film, Wichita. As a high school student McCrea worked as a stunt double and held horses for Hollywood cowboy stars William S. Hart and Tom Mix. McCrea had a love and understanding of horses from an early age, and later he was considered one of the best riders in Western films.

The strapping 6'2½" McCrea variously worked as an extra, stunt performer, and bit player from 1927 to 1928, when he signed a contract with MGM. He was cast in a major role in The Jazz Age (1929), and got his first leading role that year in The Silver Horde. He moved to RKO in 1930, where he established himself as a handsome and versatile leading man capable of starring in both dramas and comedies.

Career and Rise to Fame of Joel McCrea

In the 1930s, McCrea starred in the pre-code film Bird of Paradise (1932), directed by King Vidor, co-starring with Dolores del Río. In RKO's The Sport Parade (1932), McCrea and William Gargan are friends on the Dartmouth football team, who are shown snapping towels at each other in the locker room, while other players are taking a shower. In 1932 he starred with Fay Wray in The Most Dangerous Game – which used some of the same jungle sets built for King Kong (1933) as well as cast members Wray and Robert Armstrong, and was filmed at night while King Kong was filmed during the day. He was originally intended for the character Jack Driscoll in King Kong, but he turned down the role which later went to Bruce Cabot.

In 1934 he made his first appearances with two leading ladies he would be paired with often, Miriam Hopkins in The Richest Girl in the World, the first of their five films together, and Barbara Stanwyck in Gambling Lady, the first of their six pairings.

Later in the decade he was the first actor to play "Dr. Kildare", in the film Internes Can't Take Money (1937), and starred in two large-scale Westerns, Wells Fargo (1937) with his wife Frances Dee, and Cecil B. DeMille's Union Pacific (1939).

McCrea reached the peak of his early career in the early 1940s, in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller Foreign Correspondent (1940), a romantic comedy, The More the Merrier (1943), directed by George Stevens, and two comedies by Preston Sturges: Sullivan's Travels (1941) and The Palm Beach Story (1942).

McCrea turned down playing in several films; he was offered the lead role in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) but he refused, saying "This character is too much of a gigolo. I don't like his moral standards." Among other movies he declined were Spitfire (1934), The Impatient Years (1944), Intruder in the Dust (1949), and The Story of Will Rogers (1952). During World War II, McCrea refused to portray military heroes, with the explanation, "Since I was too old to be called, I was too old for that kind of a show". He was also notoriously modest about his acting abilities, and would say that he didn't feel good enough to play certain parts. He also preferred playing roles that he could see himself in. Despite his own opinion of his acting, Katharine Hepburn reportedly felt that he was one of the best actors with whom she had worked. She believed McCrea should have been ranked alongside Spencer Tracy or Humphrey Bogart.

McCrea also starred in two William A. Wellman Westerns, The Great Man's Lady (1942), again with Stanwyck, and Buffalo Bill (1944), with character actor Edgar Buchanan and a young Maureen O'Hara. After the success of the film The Virginian in 1946, McCrea made Westerns exclusively for the rest of his career, with two exceptions: an uncredited role in the 1951 film noir Hollywood Story and the British-made Rough Shoot (1953).

By that time the multi-millionaire McCrea had long been working his own ranch in Ventura County outside of L.A.. Specializing in Westerns was not merely a return to what he had done earlier in his career, but a genre he immensely enjoyed. As he described it (in a 1978 interview):

On November 19, 1950, McCrea appeared on Television Theatre in an adaptation of Foreign Correspondent. In the early 1950s, McCrea starred as Jace Pearson on the radio series Western, Tales of the Texas Rangers. In 1955 he was Wyatt Earp in Wichita directed by Jacques Tourneur. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association awarded the film with "Best Picture – Outdoor Drama" that year.

In 1959, McCrea and his son Jody starred in the brief NBC-TV series Wichita Town. Earlier he had turned down the lead in Rawhide, feeling it would make too heavy a workload. A few years later, McCrea united with fellow veteran of Westerns Randolph Scott in Ride the High Country (1962), directed by Sam Peckinpah, after which he did not make another feature film until The Young Rounders (1966). Four more years were to pass before his next film, but 1970 saw the release of two: Cry Blood, Apache, again with his son Jody, and Sioux Nation. He made his final film appearance in 1976, in Mustang Country.

Source: adapted from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_McCrea), text available under CC BY-SA 4.0.