Oscar Profile #275: Adolphe Menjou

Born February 18, 1890 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to a French father and Irish mother who was a distant cousin of James Joyce, Adolphe Menjou was the epitome of debonair and suave to generations of film-goers for nearly fifty years, but he didn’t start out that way. He toiled as a laborer, haberdasher and sometimes waiter in one of his restauranteur father’s restaurants before making it as an actor.

The aspiring found extra work in films beginning in the 1910s, going west with the film industry when it moved from New York to Hollywood. He began to attract notice in several films in 1921, most notably as Rudolph Valentino’s friend in The Sheik, becoming a star in Charlie Chaplin’s 1923 film, A Woman of Paris. He played leading roles for the remainder of the 1920s, turning to character roles of distinction with 1930’s Morocco in support of Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper.

Menjou quickly won acclaim for his performances in such 1930s classics as The Front Page (his only Oscar nomination), A Farewell to Arms, Morning Glory, Little Miss Marker, A Star Is Born, Stage Door and Golden Boy. His 1940s output was highlighted by Roxie Hart, The Hucksters and State of the Union. In the 1950s he could be seen in such films as The Ambassador’s Daughter, Bundle of Joy and most notably, Paths of Glory. His last film was 1960’s Pollyanna.

The actor was as famous for his hardcore conservative political views as he was for his sartorial splendor. He was a staunch Republican who equated the Democratic Party with Communism. He supported the political ideology of Herbert Hoover’s administration in rejecting the belief that the federal government had a responsibility to aid the unemployed and intervene to ameliorate social ills. In 1947 he cooperated with the House Committee on Un-American Activities in its hunt for Communists in Hollywood. He was a leading member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a group formed in 1944 to expose the Communist influence in Hollywood. Other prominent members included John Wayne (its President from 1947 to 1953), Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor, Ronald Reagan, Ginger Rogers, Cecil B. DeMille, Walt Disney, Hedda Hopper, Walter Brennan, Ward Bond, Charles Coburn, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Irene Dunne.

Menjou had an ongoing feud with the very liberal Katharine Hepburn with whom he appeared in three films, Morning Glory, Stage Door and State of the Union. The hostility between the two was so severe by the time of State of the Union that they only spoke only when they had to on-screen.

Married three times, Menjou’s longest lasting marriage to actress Verree Teasdale from 1934 to his death from hepatitis in 1963. He was 73.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

A Farewell to Arms (1932), directed by Frank Borzage

Menjou received an Oscar nomination for playing the editor in the 1931 film version of The Front Page, but his best remembered performance of the early 1930s was as Major Grimaldi, ambulance driver Gary Cooper’s friend and rival for the hand of nurse Helen Hayes. Far and away the best version of Ernest Hemingway’s oft-filmed classic, the performances of all three principals are extraordinary with Menjou’s acid delivery nicely counterbalancing the film’s often overwhelming romanticism. Vittorio De Sica received an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Menjou’s character in the otherwise inferior 1957 version.

A Star Is Born (1937), directed by William A. Wellman

Menjou often played theatrical producers in films such as Morning Glory and Stage Door, but in this first official version of the oft-filmed Hollywood classic, an unofficial remake of 1932’s What Price Hollywood? , he was promoted to studio head. Although the film clearly belongs to its two stars, Janet Gaynor as the rising actress and Fredric March as the fading director, Menjou’s contribution to the film is likewise unforgettable. He was equally good in the same year’s Stage Door with Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, Ann Miller and Andrea Leeds.

State of the Union (1948), directed by Frank Capra

Menjou said of Hepburn during the House Committee on Un-American Activities investigation into alleged Communist infiltration, “Scratch a do-gooder, like Hepburn, and they’ll yell, ‘Pravda’.” In response, Hepburn called Menjou, “Wisecracking, witty—a flag-waving super-patriot who invested his American dollars in Canadian bonds and had a thing about Communists. When Hepburn replaced Claudette Colbert as star of the film opposite Spencer Tracy, it needless to say did not please Menjou who had already been cast in a major supporting role. The two did not speak on set except to say their lines to each other.

Paths of Glory (1957), directed by Stanley Kubrick

One of the greatest antiwar films ever made, the performances of Kirk Douglas as the fiery World War I French colonel, George Macready as the malevolent general who orders his men on a suicide mission and then prosecutes the survivors for cowardice and Menjou as Macready’s sly superior each provide career high performances in this film that the French military successfully had banned in France until 1975. After years of throwaway roles in films like The Ambassador’s Daughter and Bundle of Joy, Menjou not only finally had a role worthy of comparison to his early work but one that surpassed all of them.

Pollyanna (1960), directed by David Swift

Menjou played against type as the unkempt town recluse charmed, as is everyone else, by town matriarch Jane Wyman’s irrepressible orphaned niece, Hayley Mills. Mills won the last juvenile Oscar ever awarded for her beguiling performance, but she’s matched by the film’s strong supporting cast which in addition to Wyman and Menjou, includes Agnes Moorehead, Karl Malden, Donald Crisp, Richard Egan, Kevin Corcoran, Reta Shaw, Nancy Olson, James Drury, Leora Dana, Anne Seymour and Ian Wolfe, all in top form in one of the most successful live action films of Walt Disney’s long career.