Oscar Profile #215: Dana Andrews

Born January 1, 1909 in Covington County, Mississippi, (Carver) Dana Andrews was one of thirteen children of a Baptist minister and his wife. The family later moved to Huntsville, Texas where his younger siblings, including actor Steve Forrest, were born. Educated at Sam Houston State University, he moved to Los Angeles in 1931 seeking employment as a classically trained singer, but worked at odd jobs for nine years until he signed his first movie contract with Samuel Goldwyn. He had married first wife Janet Murray in 1932 with whom he had one child. She died in 1935 and he married second wife Mary Todd in 1939 with whom he had three children and would remain married to for the remainder of his life.

Andrews made his film debut in 1940’s The Westerner and was immediately cast in such major 1941 films as Tobacco Road, Belle Starr and Swamp Water. Perhaps his most famous early role was as Barbara Stanwyck’s gangster boyfriend in that year’s Ball of Fire. Busy during the war years, his best roles during this period were in The Ox-Bow Incident, The Purple Heart, Wing and a Prayer and the phenomenally successful Laura.

In 1945 he finally had his first role in a musical, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s State Fair, but he was dubbed because the studio (Fox) didn’t know he could sing. He had two more hits that year with Fallen Angel and A Walk in the Sun. In 1946 he had his career best role in The Best Years of Our Lives and scored with two big hits in 1947, Boomerang! and Daisy Kenyon. The period from 1949-1951 found him still at his peak in My Foolish Heart, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Edge of Doom and I Want You.

He alternated TV roles with film in the later 1950s and early 1960s, still playing starring roles in such films as Elephant Walk, Strange Lady in Town, While the City Sleeps, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Spring Reunion, Zero Hour!, The Crowded Sky and Madison Avenue.

Andrews served as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1963-1965. He made a spate of films in the mid-1960s in which he was not the star. Among them were The Satan Bug, In Harm’s Way, The Loved One and Battle of the Bulge. With roles becoming harder to get, he turned to real estate where he claimed to have made more money than he ever did in films. Still, he did manage to find an occasional role periodically through 1985. His best remembered later role was as the pilot he suffers a heart attack and flies his small plane into a passenger jet in 19774’s Airport 1975.

With his longtime alcoholism under control, Andrews became the first well-known actor to make a public service film against drinking to excess in 1972. Sadly never nominated for any major acting award, he was awarded a Golden Apple as the Most Cooperative Actor of 1946.

Dana Andrews spent the last years of his life in a care facility suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, a debilitating stroke and congestive heart failure. He died of pneumonia on December 17, 1992 at 83.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE OX-BOW INCIDENT (1943), directed by William A. Wellman

Wellman’s film of the Walter Van Tilburg Clark novel was under-appreciated at the time of its initial release, but has long since been acknowledged as one of the great screen westerns.

Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan are two drifters who, along with senior citizen Harry Davenport, are the sensible members of a quickly formed lynch mob led by Frank Conroy that seeks to capture and hang the horse thieves that killed a local rancher. They come upon Andrews, Anthony Quinn and Francis Ford as three strangers who purchased horses from the late rancher but are unable to prove it. The mob, including a snarling Jane Darwell, rushes to judgment and hangs them. The entire cast is splendid with Andrews making a heartbreakingly real impression as the leader of the wrongly accused men.

LAURA (1944), directed by Otto Preminger

Preminger made his reputation with this film version of Vera Caspery’s classic mystery novel.

Andrews is marvelous as the homicide detective bewitched by the portrait of glamorous society girl Gene Tierney, whose murder he is investigating while her story plays out in flashbacks. There aren’t a lot of suspects, but with Clifton Webb, Judith Anderson and Vincent Price filling those roles, you don’t really need anyone else.

This was the third of five films Andrews and Tierney made together. The others were Tobacco Road, Belle Starr, The Iron Curtain and Where the Sidewalk Ends.

THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946), directed by William Wyler

Wyler’s film about homecoming veterans of World War II still speaks volumes to returning members of the armed forces today. The types of wars our young men and women are now called upon to fight may be different, but the alienation that many of them feel in returning to their home towns is just as strong.

Fredric March won his second Oscar for playing the folksy small-town banker who returns to his old job but can’t relate to the way things are being done. Harold Russell, with his hooks for hands, won two Oscars, one for his supporting performance and one for bringing hope and courage to his former veterans through that performance. It’s Andrews, though, who most veterans identified with then, and perhaps even more so, now.

Andrews was a decorated fighter pilot who upon his return home is given the job of a soda jerk at the local drugstore instead of the management position he expected. On top of that he learns his wife, Virginia Mayo, has been cheating on him. Fortunately there’s March and Myrna Loy’s daughter, Teresa Wright, to console him.

BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT (1956), directed by Fritz Lang

Lang’s crafty film-noir is also a heartfelt plea for the banning of capital punishment.

Andrews plays an investigative reporter who conspires with intended father-in-law Sidney Blackmer to confess to a crime he didn’t commit so that after he’s convicted he can prove that he and other innocent men are sentenced are sitting on death row for crimes they haven’t committed when Blackmer comes forward with the proof that will exonerate him. Unfortunately Blackmer is killed in an automobile accident before he is able to do so and it’s now up to fiancée Joan Fontaine to prove his innocence.

This was one of several films that Andrews, a strong supporter of liberal causes, made warning against rushing to judgment after The Ox-Bow Incident. Boomerang! and Edge of Doom also fall into this category.

BATTLE OF THE BULGE (1965), directed by Ken Annakin

By this time in his career, Andrews was no longer a major star, but he was still a major name who could add prestige to a film by appearing in it in a small but often significant part. As with Preminger’s In Harm’s Way earlier in the same year, he is a thick-headed Army general who distrusts civilians. He main role seems to be to object to everything Robert Ryan, as another General, has to say, until he discovers something that he relays to Henry Fonda that saves the day.

After this the roles got smaller and Andrews’ films farther and farther between.