Oscar Profile #234: Raymond Massey

Born August 30, 1896 in Toronto, Canada, Raymond Massey was the son of an American mother and a wealthy Canadian father, the owner of the Massey-Harris Tractor Company. His older brother was Vincent Massey who became the first Canadian-born Governor General of Canada from 1952 to 1959. He often said that American audiences thought he was British and British audiences thought he was American.

Massey joined the Canadian Army at the outbreak of World War I but after suffering shell-shock on the Western Front, he returned to Canada and assigned to the U.S. Army, he taught American Army officers at Yale. He made his acting debut entertaining American troops in Siberia. Wounded in France, he returned to Canada where he sold farm equipment for the family business. Bitten by the acting bug, he made his stage debut in London in 1922 a year after his first marriage to Margery Fremantle with whom he had a son, architect Geoffrey Massey. His first film was 1927’s High Treason. He made his talkie debut as Sherlock Holmes in 1931’s The Speckled Band two years after his divorce from Fremantle and his marriage to actress Adrienne Allen with whom he had two children, future actors Daniel and Anna Massey.

Massey made a splendid villain in such 1930s films as The Old Dark House, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Fire Over England, The Prisoner of Zenda, The Hurricane and Drums. The sole exception to his on-screen villainy in this period was his dual role as two generations of optimists in 1936’s Things to Come. In 1938 he assumed his greatest role, that of the 16th President of the United States, in Broadway’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois.

Massey and second wife Allen had been great friends of divorce lawyers William and Dorothy Whitney. William Whitney represented Allen at the Masseys’ 1939 divorce while his wife represented Massey. After the divorce Allen married William Whitney and Massey married Dorothy Whitney. Ruth Gordon, his co-star in the 1940 film version of Abe Lincoln in Illinois, based her Oscar nominated 1949 screenplay for Adam’s Rib on the Whitneys.

The actor received his first and only Oscar nomination for Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Before re-enlisting in the Canadian Army during World War II where he again suffered an injury, Massey played a Canadian on screen for the first and only time in 1941’s 49th Parallel. Once again in character roles, Massey remained in steady demand throughout the 1940s and 50s in such films as Arsenic and Old Lace, The Woman in the Window, Stairway to Heaven, Mourning Becomes Electra, The Fountainhead, Battle Cry, East of Eden, Seven Angry Men and The Naked and the Dead.

Massey achieved renewed fame as the co-star of one of the most successful TV series of the 1960s, Dr. Kildare, which ran from the Fall of 1961 through the Spring of 1966. His last theatrical film was 1969’s MacKenna’s Gold. In several TV movies after that, he retired from acting in 1973.

Raymond Massey died in 1983 at the age of 86. His son Daniel Massey died in 1998 at 64. His daughter Anna Massey died in 2011 at 73. His grandson Raymond Massey (by son Geoffrey) is a successful film producer. He also has a grand-daughter, Alice Massey, whose mother was Daniel’s second wife, Downton Abbey’s Penelope Wilton. Taking a leaf from his parents’ unusual divorce and subsequent marriages, Daniel divorced Penelope to marry her sister Lindy in 1984.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL (1934), directed by Harold Young

Baroness Orczy’s of-filmed novel had its most famous large screen adaptation to date in this sumptuous British-made classic with Leslie Howard as Sir Percy Blakeney, Merle Oberon as Lady Blakeney and Massey as arch-villain Chauvelin. A strong supporting cast including Nigel Bruce, Bramwell Fletcher and Anthony Bushell also turn in fine performances, but it’s the romantic scenes between Howard and Oberon and the tension-filled scenes between Howard and Massey that keep this version the most compelling despite numerous remakes.

ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS (1940), directed by John Cromwell

Massey’s greatest role by far was that of the newly elected 16th President of the United States in both the stage and screen versions of Robert E. Sherwood’s play. Ruth Gordon as Mary Todd Lincoln and Gene Lockhart as Stephen Douglas contribute strong supporting perforamcnes, but it’s Massey’s show all the way.

The actor was said to be so entrenched in the role that during the run of the play he was known to sign his name as “Abraham Lincoln”. He reprised the role so many times that pundits said that Massey wouldn’t be happy until he is assassinated in the role.

EAST OF EDEN (1955), directed by Elia Kazan

Kazan cultivated the disdain Massey had for James Dean’s method acting in order to set the stage for the two actors’ big confrontation scene and it works. Dean is at his most poignant in the birthday scene where his father not only rejects his present, but his love. Jo Van Fleet as Dean’s whorehouse mother got an Oscar and Dean a nomination, but Massey who was equally good came up empty-handed.

This was the first of Dean’s three starring roles and the one that established his persona. It is also to many, the best of the three even though it only encompasses the last portion of John Steinbeck’s classic novel.

SEVEN ANGRY MEN (1955), directed by Charles Marquis Warren

Massey’s most famous real-life character aside from Abraham Lincoln was abolitionist John Brown. He played him twice, first in 1940’s Santa Fe Trail. Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland had top billing, but it was Massey as Brown who dominated the film, playing the self-proclaimed abolitionist whose bloody Kansas raids provoked the North and South into going to war in the 1850s. This time Massey has the lead as Brown whose seven sons are also involved in the raids. The film really should be titled “Eight Angry Men” but why quibble. Massey’s Brown is a more sympathetic character this time around, as he loses three of his sons before he meets his own demise.

DR. KILDARE (1961-1966), directed by various directors

Richard Chamberlain and Raymond Massey proved even more popular than Lew Ayres and Lionel Barrymore were in the late 1930s and early 1940s in this highly successful updated look at the lives of the young intern (later resident) physician and his mentor as well as their myriad patients and fellow physicians..

Massey’s Dr. Gillespie is a tower of moral turpitude throughout the series and Massey is given plenty of character arcs of his own including several romances and an episode in Season 4 where he plays a dual role. He is both Gillespie and a dying writer. The guest list includes a veritable list of the greatest actors from the 1930s through the then present, among them Mary Astor, Joan Blondell, Joseph Cotten, Lee Marvin, Robert Young, Anne Baxter, Dan O’Herlihy, James Mason, Fay Bainter, Cathleen Nesbitt, Dean Stockwell, Diane Baker, Lois Nettleton, Barbara Bel Geddes, Angie Dickinson, James Earl Jones, Ricardo Montalban, Suzanne Pleshette, Ed Begley, Jack Nicholson, Spring Byington, Robert Redford, Claire Trevor, Glynis Johns, Joseph Schildkraut, Celeste Holm, Polly Bergen, Gloria Swanson, Ellen Burstyn, Eileen Heckart, Peggy Wood and Glenda Farrell.