Noah Beery | |
---|---|
Born |
Noah Nicholas Beery January 17, 1882 Clay County, Missouri, U.S. |
Died | April 1, 1946 Beverly Hills, California, U.S. |
(aged 64)
Cause of death | Heart attack |
Occupation | Actor |
Years active | 1898–1945 |
Spouse(s) | Marguerite Lindsay (1910–1946) |
Noah Nicholas Beery (January 17, 1882 – April 1, 1946) was an American actor who appeared in films from 1913 to 1945. He was the older brother of Academy Award-winning actor Wallace Beery and the father of character actor Noah Beery Jr. Beery was billed as either Noah Beery or Noah Beery Sr. depending upon the film.
Noah Beery was born on a farm in Clay County, Missouri not far from Smithville. The middle son of Noah Webster Beery and Frances Margaret (Fitzgerald) Beery, he and his brothers William C. Beery (1879 –1949) and Wallace Beery became Hollywood actors. The Beery family left the farm in the 1890s and moved to nearby Kansas City, Missouri where the father was employed as a police officer. While still a young boy Beery got his first exposure to theatre, and at the same time showed budding entrepreneurship by selling lemon drops at the Gillis Theater in Kansas City. Possessed of a deep, rich voice even in his early teens, several of the actors at the Gillis Theater encouraged Beery to take singing lessons and consider a career as a performer. A summer of singing at Kansas City's Electric Park amusement park led to Beery leaving for New York City while just sixteen years old.
Noah Beery found work in vaudeville and in the chorus of musical comedies during his early years in New York. Soon though he would turn his attention to acting in melodramas of the period, often under the direction of William A. Brady. After a dozen years on the stage, he joined his brother Wallace in Hollywood in 1915 to make motion pictures. He became a respected character actor, adept at playing the villain. One of his most memorable characterizations was as Sergeant Gonzales in The Mark of Zorro (1920) opposite Douglas Fairbanks. The tagline on the poster for 1923's Stormswept proclaimed "Wallace and Noah Beery, The Two Greatest Character Actors on the American Screen."