Born July 25, 1894, Walter Brennan was the second of three children of an engineer and inventor and his wife. He became interested in acting in high school and began performing in vaudeville at the age of 15. While serving with the U.S. Army in France during World War I, he suffered a gas attack which permanently affected his vocal chords which gave him the gravelly voice he would later employ to great effect to play older men in his movies.

Moving to Guatemala after the war, he raised pineapples before settling in Los Angeles where he made a fortune in real estate. Having lost all his money early by the mid-1920s, he turned to the movies where at first he could only get extra work. Although he graduated to occasional bit roles by 1929, most of his appearances prior to 1935 were unbilled.

Singled out by critics for his performance in 1935’s Barbary Coast, he became the first actor to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor with 1936’s Come and Get It. He followed that with a second win on his second nomination for 1938’s Kentucky, both wins said to be due to the high level of support he recived from the extras union whose members were allowed to vote in the Academy Awards from 1936 to1940. His third win on his third nomination for 1940’s The Westerner caused such a scandal that the extras’ voting rights were taken away. His fourth nomination for 1941’s Sergeant York did not result in a win.

Brennan’s post-Oscar winning performances in such films as 1941’s Meet John Doe; 1942’s The Pride of the Yankees; 1944’s To Have and Have Not; 1946’s A Stolen Life; Centennial Summer and My Darling Clementine; 1948’s Red River and Blood on the Moon; 1955’s Bad Day at Black Rock; 1956’s Good-bye, My Lady; 1957’s Tammy and the Bachelor; 1959’s Rio Bravo and 1963’s How the West Was Won kept him in the forefront of working character actors. From 1957 to 1963 he starred in the highly successful TV series, The Real McCoys. He also had several hit recordings in the early 1960s in which he talk-sang his way through the likes of “Dutchman’s Gold” and “Old Rivers”.

Still busy throughout his 70s, his later years were marked by his support of conservative causes bolstered by his belief that the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s were being run by Communists from China and the Soviet Union, which he talked about in interviews. He attended rallies protesting the Supreme Court’s ruling against school prayers and campaigned for Barry Goldwater for President in 1964 and George Wallace in 1972, the latter because he didn’t think Richard Nixon was conservative enough.

Brennan was signed to co-star in 1974’s Herbie Rides Again but had to withdraw because of illness. He died of emphysema on September 21, 1974 at the ago of 80. His wife Ruth, whom he had married in 1920, survived another 23 years, dying just short of her 100th birthday in 1997.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE WESTERNER (1940), directed by William Wyler

Brennan’s portrayal of Judge Roy Bean, the self-appointed hanging judge, was arguably the strongest of the three performances for which the actor won Oscars every other year from 1936 to 1940.

That rare long time extra that made good as a speaking actor, Brennan was popular with the extras union which was allowed to vote for the Oscars during the period. His first win was for his marvelous performance as the Swedish lumberjack who marries Frances Farmer after lead Edward Arnold leaves her. His second was for his elderly horse breeder in the Romeo and Juliet inspired Kentucky in which his character is first seen as a child in 1961 and then 77 years later in 1938, which would put him somewhere in his 80s. The Westerner gave him a rare chance to play a villain, albeit one with a great deal of charm.

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944), directed by Howard Hawks

Best known as the film that introduced Lauren Bacall to the world as well as to Humphrey Bogart, the film’s best performance is turned in by Brennan in one of his signature performances in which he plays Bogie’s alcoholic sidekick in Hawks’ bastardization of Ernest Hemingway’s novel later filmed as The Breaking Point with John Garfield and yet again as The Gun Runners with Audie Murphy..

This was the film in which Brennan first employed the limp he would use equally effectively in the long-running TV series, The Real McCoys and in Rio Bravo.

MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946), directed by John Ford

This was just one of two times in which Brennan played an out-and-out villain, nasty Old Man Clanton, the head of the gang which fought the Earps at the infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral. He would be equally nasty seventeen years later in the James Stewart segment of How the West Was Won.

Arch conservative Brennan and arch liberal Ford intensely despised each other and never worked together again. Although Ford directed the Civil Wear segment of How the West Was Won he had nothing to do with Brennan’s segment which was directed by Henry Hathaway.

RED RIVER (1948), directed by Howard Hawks

Brennan’s narration in the theatrical release version of the film elevates it to even greater heights than it was in the preview or “book” version in which pages of a book are used to mark passages of time.

Happily, the Brennan narrated version has been restored and released on both Blu-ray and DVD in Criterion’s new dual format release as the main feature along with the “book” version on a second disc of each.

Brennan plays John Wayne and Montgomery Clift’s sidekick in this classic western about the early days of the west with a narrative taken from Mutiny on the Bounty.

Wayne, after nearly twenty years a star, finally gave a performance that proved he could act and newcomer Clift became an immediate star with his soulful portrayal of Wayne’s adopted son. Brennan is equally fine and his narration gives his character and performance an even greater heft than is there without it. The only drawback to the narrated version is that Hawks’ long climatic cut of the confrontation between Wayne and Clift is shortened thanks to a suit from Howard Hughes who found the original ending to close to Hughes’ The Outlaw, the direction of which was begun by Hawks a few years earlier.

RIO BRAVO (1959), directed by Howard Hawks

Two years into the six year run of TV’s The Real McCoys, Brennan took time out to play John Wayne and Dean Martin’s sidekick in Hawks’ classic western filmed as a rebuke to Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon which Hawks and Wayne had considered anti-American in the way that none of the townspeople would help sheriff Gary Cooper defend the town and especially in the manner in which Cooper throws his badge on the ground in disgust at the film’s end.

The film is a more typical western featuring drunken Martin, crippled Brennan and kid Ricky Nelson as beleaguered sheriff Wayne’s helpers. Hawks so loved the film that he all but remade it twice as 1966’s El Dorado and 1970’s Rio Lobo, the last two films the prolific director would ever make.

WALTER BRENNAN AND OSCAR

• Come and Get It (1936) – Oscar – Best Supporting Actor
• Kentucky (1938) – Oscar – Best Supporting Actor
• The Westerner (1940) – Oscar – Best Supporting Actor
• Sergeant York (1941) – nominated – Best Supporting Actor