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He earned an Oscar nomination as Cary Grant's
rival for Irene Dunne
in The Awful Truth
(1937),
with the film shot in six weeks with a minor script (above
right). The film itself was
most improvisations.
Ralph parodied himself in the brilliant comedy
His Girl
Friday (1940).
In 1942, he spotted a script on a producer's desk which had scribbled the description of the casting for a particular part, "Wealthy oilman from Southwest - able, but simple and naive. Typical Ralph Bellamy part." He immediately took his leave of Hollywood and its typecasting of him, knowing it was no more than a job. He took his risks, however, being at the height of a lucrative career for Broadway. As luck would have it, he had a string of stage and television successes that he would value more than any of his early films, along with the occasional film. In 1943, he played an antifascist professor in a Broadway melodrama written by James Gow and Arnaud d'Usseau, Tomorrow the World or Tomorrow's World. In 1945, he played a lionized Presidential aspirant in Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse's Pulitzer Prize winning comedy State of the Union, (incidentally, Spence would reprise the role in a film of the same name). August 1945 Ralph married Ethel Smith and the couple lived in Ethel's Park Vendome apartment. In 1947 Bellamy walked out, stating that he had no intention of paying his wife alimony. Ethel charged abandonment and claimed that he drank heavily, that he was moody, and would lock himself in his room. The organist said her husband became jealous when at their parties she received most of the attention. Bellamy contended that she had advised him to be home fifteen minutes after his final curtain or he would find the door locked. (3)
Throughout the 1930s and '40s, Bellamy was regularly seen socially with a select circle of friends known affectionately as the "Irish Mafia," although they preferred the less sensational "Boy's Club." This group consisted of a group of Hollywood A-listers who were mainly of Irish descent (despite Bellamy having no Irish family connections himself). Others included James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Spencer Tracy, Lynne Overman, Frank Morgan and Frank McHugh. (2) In 1948 he made his a television debut in
the Philco Television Playhouse. After divorcing his third wife and
paying for continuing medical bills for his daughter, Bellamy had little
finances when he was offered the part of Detective McLeod,
an overzealous police officer, in
Sidney Kingsley's drama Detective Story
(1949). The play was a hit and
lead to a part in the 1949 - 1954 television series Man
Against Crime (aka Follow
that Man). He played as a quick-fisted but otherwise well-liked
detective Mike Barnett. The show was the first live weekly half-hour dramatic show on
network television, and he won an Academy of Radio and Television Arts and
Sciences Award for his performance on it. Now married to Alice Murphy
(1949), his agent's assistant the Bellamys were now
living in New York, which was an ideal spot for Ralph's two hobbies. A cook
of distinction, he was given free run of the kitchen at Henri's Fifty-Second
Street restaurant. He also painted New York scenes and sold his first water
color at an Urban League competition.
In 1958, he would play FDR in Dore Schary's
Broadway play Sunrise at Campobello -- here Bellamy built his
reputation as an actor by portraying Franklin Delano Roosevelt. By delving
into the history of FDR the man and the politician, he came to an
understanding of the personality and psyche of the character. He then spent
weeks at a rehabilitation center learning how to manage braces, crutches,
and a wheelchair, so that his portrayal of FDR, after he was stricken with
polio, would be realistic and accurate. In preparing for the original part,
he would consult at length with Eleanor Roosevelt and her children. He
called Sunrise at Campobello
the "highlight of my professional career."
It can be said that character acting was defined and perfected by Ralph
Bellamy. He won the Tony and New York's Critics Circle Award as best actor
in Sunrise at Campobello and starred in the subsequent film version
in 1960. He would play FDR once again in the miniseries The Winds of War
and War and Remembrance (1988-89).
He played as a regular in many major television series including The Eleventh Hour (1963-1964), The Survivors (1969), The Mostly Deadly Game (1970), and Hunter (1976). He returned true to his roles as detective, villain, and other man in each of these series. It was in 1969 that Bellamy made a radical character shift by playing a diabolist in Rosemary's Baby (below left). His autobiography, When the Smoke Hit the Fan, was published in 1979. Director John Landis gave Bellamy's film career a big boost by casting him in Trading Places (1983), as a ruthless Wall Street manipulator and brother to Don Ameche. He received an honorary Oscar in 1986. We come to see him in several movies e.g. Amazon Women on the Moon (1987), and Coming to America (1988, a cameo) and of course a benevolent shipping magnate in the 1990 movie Pretty Woman
Bellamy was also one of the founding members of the Screen Actors Guild and a four-term president of Actors' Equity (between 1952 and 1964). Best remembered by his fellow actors as a champion of actors' rights. He doubled the equity's assets within six years and established the first actors' pension fund. Bellamy guided the Actors' Equity through the political blacklisting of the McCarthy era by forming a panel that established ground rules to protect members against unproved charges of Communist Party membership or sympathy. He also actively lobbied for the repeal of theatre admission taxes and for income averaging in computing taxes for performers. |
![]() Above: Ralph Bellamy with Mike Conners and Robert Mitchum! |
Bellamy died at St. John's Hospital and
Health Center in Los Angeles of a lung ailment at the age of 87 at 2:18 a.m.
He had been hospitalized earlier in the month for his long-standing lung
disease. In a 2007 episode of Boston Legal, footage of a 1957 episode of Studio One was used. The episode featured Bellamy and William Shatner as a father-son duo of lawyers. This was used in the present-day to explain the relationship between Shatner's Denny Crane character and his father in the show. |
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This actor profile is a part of
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The actor above played Ellery Queen in
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Page first published before May 24. 2016 Last updated March 31. 2022 |
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