Walter Pidgeon

1897–1984 · Canadian-born American actor

Biography

Walter Pidgeon (Saint John, New Brunswick, 1897 - Santa Monica, 1984) was a Canadian-born actor who spent most of his career in Hollywood and eventually became an American citizen. He belonged to the generation of steady, sensible leading men of Hollywood's Golden Age, and his name is mostly associated with the films of the 1940s and 1950s.

Before acting he studied law and drama at the University of New Brunswick, though the First World War interrupted those plans. After the war he worked as a bank runner in Boston, where he also studied voice and elocution. Unhappy with banking, he moved to New York, made his Broadway debut in 1925 and soon began appearing in silent films in Hollywood.

The arrival of sound gave him a wider following, thanks largely to his baritone voice. He starred in early Technicolor musicals, but he was quickly typecast in the genre, and his career lost momentum when audiences tired of musicals in the late 1930s. His comeback came with How Green Was My Valley (1941), and his pairing with Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver and Madame Curie earned him two Academy Award nominations for Best Actor.

In the 1940s and 1950s he moved between drama, comedy and science fiction, including Forbidden Planet. He worked with Robert Wise on Executive Suite and appeared in The Bad and the Beautiful. From 1952 to 1957 he served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and during that period he tried to halt the production of Salt of the Earth. In the mid-1950s he returned to Broadway for the musical Take Me Along and also appeared on television series such as Perry Mason.

He stepped back from acting in the 1970s and died in 1984 in Santa Monica after a series of strokes. His legacy rests on a steady filmography of Golden Age dramas and on a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Key films

Mrs. Miniver (1942): a leading role that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
How Green Was My Valley (1941): the film that revived his career after years of supporting parts.
Madame Curie (1943): his second Oscar nomination, again opposite Greer Garson.
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952): a Hollywood drama that confirmed his reputation as a respected supporting actor.
Forbidden Planet (1956): a science fiction title now regarded as a genre classic.

Trivia

Head of the actors' union

Between 1952 and 1957 he presided over the Screen Actors Guild. In that role he tried to halt the production of Salt of the Earth, made by a crew that had been blacklisted.