John Carradine (Actor)

Portrait of John Carradine at the Stork Club, New York City. (Photo: Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

Gaunt, celebrated Hollywood supporting player who appeared in ten John Ford films, including the 1940 classic "The Grapes of Wrath". A specialist in eccentric roles who did much enjoyable and professional hamming in many routine horror films, Carradine was also a keen Shakespearean stage actor, and his habit of reciting soliloquies while walking in public earned him the nick-name "Bard of the Boulevard." Carradine was the son of a noted attorney father and a noted surgeon mother, but was not as inclined towards a conventional profession. Instead, he became an artist, working his way around the country doing portrait sketches in office buildings. In New Orleans in 1925, Carradine suddenly decided on a career on the stage and made his debut in a production of "Camille". He then joined a Shakespearean stock company and worked his way out to the west coast. There, he broke into films using the name John Peter Richmond. His first feature was "Tol'able David" in 1930. But though he can be sighted in Claudette Colbert's "Cleopatra" (1934), his career wasn't going anywhere until he signed a contract with Fox and took the name John Carradine. Beginning with "Anything Goes" (1935), Carradine appeared in 220 films, typically playing supporting roles in "A" pictures and leads in "B" horror films, often as a demented scientist or a Dracula. He played the latter beginning in 1945 in "House of Frankenstein" and played the vampire again in "House of Dracula" (1945), "Billy the Kid versus Dracula" (1966), and others, including the final go of it in "Nocturna" (1978). (Carradine played Dracula on screen as frequently -- if not more frequently -- than Bela Lugosi.) Some of his more memorable supporting roles in "A" films include Abraham Lincoln in "Of Human Hearts" (1938), Holocaust brain trust Reinhard Heydrich in "Hitler's Madman" (1943), writer Bret Harte in "The Adventures of Mark Twain" (1944), the title role of the pirate "Bluebeard" (1944), and Aaron, brother of Moses in "The Ten Commandments" (1956). Most of his films after 1970 were of dubious quality and low budget, but one of his last appearances before the camera was in a small role in "Peggy Sue Got Married" (1986). Still not ready to call it quits, Carradine went out with, perhaps aptly, "The Tomb" (1986) as the voice of warning as archaeologists are about the break through the walls of an accursed Egyptian pyramid. His reputation as a ham was used to comic advantage when he played Mr. Corday, an eccentric actor, on the 1953-54 season of the CBS TV series "My Friend Irma". Eager to work at all times, Carradine has actually begun in TV rather early, doing episodics in the late 40s and early 50s. He began in TV movies in 1969 with "Daughter of the Mind" (ABC), which was also Gene Tierney's debut in TV movies. He is perhaps better recalled for his work as Father Hale in the 1976 NBC miniseries "Captains and Kings". His final TV appearance was in an episode of "McCloud" aptly entitled "McCloud Meets Dracula". Carradine was the father of actors David, Keith, and Robert Carradine, and the adoptive father of actor Bruce Carradine.