Raymond Massey

Raymond Massey
File:Raymond Massey 1961 (cropped).JPG Massey in a publicity photo for Adventures in Paradise, May 1961
Born	Raymond Hart Massey (1896-08-30)August 30, 1896 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Died	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Resting place	Beaverdale Memorial Park in New Haven, Connecticut
Alma mater	University of Toronto Balliol College, Oxford
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1918–1973
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Margery Fremantle (m. 1921; div. 1929) Adrianne Allen (m. 1929; div. 1939) Dorothy Whitney (m. 1939; d. 1982)
Children	3, including Anna Massey and Daniel Massey
Relatives	Vincent Massey (brother) Lionel Massey (nephew)

Raymond Hart Massey (30 August 1896 – 29 July 1983) was a Canadian, later American, actor, known for his commanding, stage-trained voice. For his lead role in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), Massey was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Among his most well-known roles were Dr. Gillespie in the NBC television series Dr. Kildare (1961–1966), Abraham Farlan in A Matter of Life and Death and Jonathan Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace (1944).

Early life

Massey was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Anna Vincent, who was American-born, and her husband Chester Daniel Massey, the wealthy co-owner of the Massey-Harris tractor company. He was the grandson of businessman Hart Massey and great-grandson of company founder Daniel Massey. His branch of the Massey family immigrated to Canada from New England a few years before the War of 1812, their ancestors having migrated from England to the Massachusetts colony in the 1630s.

He attended secondary school at Upper Canada College in Toronto for two years before transferring to Appleby College in Oakville, Ontario. He also took several courses at the University of Toronto, where he was an active member of the Kappa Alpha Society.

Military service

First World War

Massey joined the Canadian Army at the outbreak of World War I, and served on the Western Front in the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery. Lieutenant Massey returned to Canada after being wounded at Zillebeke in Belgium during the Battle of Mont Sorrel in 1916 and was engaged as an army instructor for American officers at Yale University. In 1918, he was recalled to active service and joined the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force that went to Siberia during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. On the orders of his commanding general, he organized a minstrel show troupe with himself as end man in blackface to bolster morale of allied troops on occupation duty in Vladivostok.

After returning home in 1919, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford. He later went to work in the family business, selling farm implements, but he was drawn to the theater. He persuaded his reluctant family to allow him to pursue this career.

Second World War

In 1942, during World War II, Massey rejoined the Canadian Army and served as a major in the adjutant general's branch. After being wounded, he was invalided from the Canadian Army in 1943. He became an American citizen in 1944.

Acting career

He first appeared on the London stage in 1922 in Eugene O'Neill's In the Zone. According to his obituary in The New York Times, he appeared in "several dozen plays and directed numerous others" in England over the next decade. The Washington Post credited him with performances in over 80 plays, including Pygmalion with Gertrude Lawrence; Ethan Frome with Ruth Gordon; and the George Bernard Shaw works The Doctor's Dilemma and Candida with Katharine Cornell. In 1929, he directed the London premiere of The Silver Tassie. He received poor reviews in his debut on Broadway in an unorthodox 1931 production of Hamlet.

The first movie he was in was High Treason (1928). In 1931, he played Sherlock Holmes in The Speckled Band, the first sound film version of the story. In 1934, he played the villain in The Scarlet Pimpernel, and in 1936, he starred in Things to Come, a film adaptation by H.G. Wells of his own speculative novel The Shape of Things to Come (1933). In 1944, Massey played the district attorney in Fritz Lang's classic film noir The Woman in the Window, which starred Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett. He portrayed the American Revolutionary War character Abraham Farlan, who hated the British for making him a casualty of that war, in the 1946 film A Matter of Life and Death (titled Stairway to Heaven in the U.S.).

File:Massey-Abe-Lincoln-in-Illinois-1938.jpg

Raymond Massey in the Broadway production of Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938)

Despite being Canadian, Massey became famous for playing archetypal American historical figures. He played abolitionist/insurrectionist John Brown in two films: Santa Fe Trail (1940) and again in the low-budget Seven Angry Men (1955). The character of Brown is a wild-eyed lunatic in Santa Fe Trail, whereas he is a well-intentioned but misguided character in the more sympathetic Seven Angry Men. Massey scored a great triumph on Broadway in Robert E. Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Abe Lincoln in Illinois despite reservations about Lincoln's being portrayed by a Canadian. He repeated his role in the 1940 film version, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Massey again portrayed Lincoln in The Day Lincoln Was Shot on Ford Star Jubilee (1956), a silent appearance in How the West Was Won (1962), and two TV adaptations of Abe Lincoln in Illinois broadcast in 1950 and 1951. He once complained jokingly that he was "the only actor ever typecast as a president." His preparation for the role was so detailed and obsessive that one person commented that Massey would not be satisfied with his Lincoln impersonation until someone assassinated him. On stage in a dramatic reading of Stephen Vincent Benét's John Brown's Body (1953), Massey, in addition to narrating along with Tyrone Power and Judith Anderson, took on the roles of both John Brown and Lincoln.

Massey played a Canadian on-screen only once, in 49th Parallel (1941).

During World War II, he teamed up with Katharine Cornell and other leading actors in a revival of Shaw's Candida to benefit the Army Emergency Fund and the Navy Relief Society.

File:Beverly Garland Richard Chamberlain Raymond Massey Dr. Kildare 1961.JPG

Beverly Garland, Richard Chamberlain and Raymond Massey in the first episode of Dr. Kildare (1961)

Massey portrayed Jonathan Brewster in the film version of Arsenic and Old Lace. The character had been created by Boris Karloff for the stage version, and a running gag in the play and the film was the character's resemblance to Karloff. Even though the film was released in 1944, it was shot in 1941, at which time Karloff still was contracted to the Broadway play and could not be released for the filming (unlike his costars Josephine Hull, Jean Adair and John Alexander). Massey and Karloff had appeared together earlier in James Whale's suspense film The Old Dark House (1932).

After Massey became an American citizen, he continued to work in Hollywood. Memorable film roles included the husband of Joan Crawford during her Oscar-nominated role in Possessed (1947) and the doomed publishing tycoon Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead (1949), with Patricia Neal and Gary Cooper. In 1955, he starred in East of Eden as Adam Trask, father of Cal, played by James Dean, and Aron, played by Richard Davalos.

Massey became well known on television in the 1950s and 1960s. He was cast in 1960 as Sir Oliver Garnett in the episode "Trunk Full of Dreams" of the NBC series Riverboat.

Massey is remembered as Dr. Gillespie in the popular 1961–1966 NBC series Dr. Kildare, with Richard Chamberlain in the title role. Massey and his son Daniel were cast as father and son in The Queen's Guards (1961).

Personal life

Richard Chamberlain, Daniela Bianchi and Massey in Dr. Kildare (1964)

Massey was married three times.

• Margery Fremantle from 1921 to 1929 (divorce); they had one child, architect Geoffrey Massey.
• Adrianne Allen from 1929 to 1939 (divorce); Allen was a stage actress in London and on Broadway. They had two children who followed them into acting: Anna Massey and Daniel Massey.
• Dorothy Whitney from 1939 until her death in 1982.

His high-profile estrangement and divorce from Adrianne Allen was the inspiration for Ruth Gordon's and Garson Kanin's script for the film Adam's Rib (1949), starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and indeed Massey married the lawyer who represented him in court, Dorothy Whitney, while his then former wife, Allen, married the opposing lawyer, William Dwight Whitney.

Massey's older brother, Vincent Massey, was the first Canadian-born governor general of Canada. Massey also dabbled in politics, appearing in a 1964 television advertisement in support of the conservative Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater. Massey denounced U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson for a "no-win" strategy in the Vietnam War, suggesting that Goldwater would pursue an aggressive strategy and win the war quickly.

Death

Massey died of pneumonia in Los Angeles, California on July 29, 1983, a month before he would have turned 87. His death came on the same day as that of David Niven, with whom he had co-starred in The Prisoner of Zenda and A Matter of Life and Death. Massey is buried in New Haven, Connecticut's Beaverdale Memorial Park.

Honors

Massey has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for films at 1719 Vine Street and one for television at 6708 Hollywood Boulevard. His achievements have also been recognized in a signature cocktail, the Raymond Massey.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1928	High Treason	Member of Federated States Council	Uncredited
1929	The Crooked Billet	Undetermined role	Uncredited
1931	The Speckled Band	Sherlock Holmes
1932	The Face at the Window	Paul le Gros
	The Old Dark House	Philip Waverton
1934	The Scarlet Pimpernel	Citizen Chauvelin
1936	Things to Come	John Cabal / Oswald Cabal
1937	Fire Over England	Philip II of Spain
	Dreaming Lips	Miguel del Vayo
	Under the Red Robe	Cardinal Richelieu
	The Prisoner of Zenda	Black Michael
	The Hurricane	Governor Eugene De Laage
1938	The Drum	Prince Ghul
	Black Limelight	Peter Charrington
1940	Abe Lincoln in Illinois	Abraham Lincoln	Nominated — Academy Award for Best Actor
	Santa Fe Trail	John Brown
1941	49th Parallel	Andy Brock
	Dangerously They Live	Dr. Ingersoll
1942	Reap the Wild Wind	King Cutler
	Desperate Journey	Major Otto Baumeister
1943	Action in the North Atlantic	Capt. Steve Jarvis
1944	Arsenic and Old Lace	Jonathan Brewster
	The Woman in the Window	Dist. Atty. Frank Lalor
1945	Hotel Berlin	Arnim von Dahnwitz
	God Is My Co-Pilot	Maj. Gen. Claire L. Chennault
1946	A Matter of Life and Death	Abraham Farlan
1947	Possessed	Dean Graham
	Mourning Becomes Electra	Brig. Gen. Ezra Mannon
1949	The Fountainhead	Gail Wynand
	Roseanna McCoy	Old Randall McCoy
1950	Chain Lightning	Leland Willis
	Barricade	Boss Kruger
	Dallas	Will Marlow
1951	Sugarfoot	Jacob Stint
	David and Bathsheba	Nathan
	Come Fill the Cup	John Ives
1952	Carson City	A. J. "Big" Jack Davis
1953	The Desert Song	Sheik Yousseff
1955	Prince of Players	Junius Brutus Booth
	Battle Cry	Maj. Gen. Snipes
	East of Eden	Adam Trask
	Seven Angry Men	John Brown
1957	Omar Khayyam	The Shah
1958	The Naked and the Dead	Gen. Cummings
1959	Alfred Hitchcock Presents	Sam Pine	Season 5 Episode 11: "Road Hog"
1960	Wagon Train	Montezuma IX	Season 4, episode 6, "Princess of a Lost Tribe"
1961	The Great Impostor	Abbott Donner
	The Fiercest Heart	Willem Prinsloo
	The Queen's Guards	Capt. Fellowes
1961–1966	Dr. Kildare	Dr. Leonard Gillespie
1962	How the West Was Won	Abraham Lincoln
1969	Mackenna's Gold	The Preacher
1971–1972	Night Gallery	Colonel Archie Dittman Doctor Glendon	Season 1, episode 4, second segment: "Clean Kills and Other Trophies" Season 3, episode 4: "Rare Objects"
1972	All My Darling Daughters	Matthew Cunningham	TV movie
1973	The President's Plane Is Missing	Secretary of State Freeman Sharkey	TV movie
	My Darling Daughters' Anniversary	Matthew Cunningham	TV movie

Radio appearances

Year	Program	Episode/source
1941	Philip Morris Playhouse	Wuthering Heights
1942	Philip Morris Playhouse	The Man Who Played God
1944	The Doctor Fights	Narrator
1945	Inner Sanctum Mystery	Death Across the Board
1952	Cavalcade of America	With Malice Towards None
1952	The Endless Frontier	Only One to a Customer

See also

• Other Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood
• Massey family

External links

• Raymond Massey at the Internet Movie Database
• Raymond Massey at the Internet Broadway Database
• Raymond Massey at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Raymond Massey Collection at the Victoria University Library
• Raymond Massey Photographs at the Digital Collections, Victoria University Library
• Raymond Massey Photographic Records at the Photograph Database, Victoria University Library
• Photographs and literature
• Raymond Massey at Find a Grave