Oscar Profile #291: James Gleason

Born May 23, 1882 in New York, New York, writer-actor-producer-director James Gleason was the son of actors William and Mina Gleason (nee Crolius). He began acting in his parents’ stock company in Oakland, California as a teenager before serving in the U.S. Army during the Spanish-American War. After the war he played on the London stage for two years before returning to the U.S. where he married actress Lucile Gleason (nee Webster) in 1905. Their son, Russell Gleason, born in 1907, was also an actor.

Gleason wrote and acted in numerous plays on Broadway, later producing them as well. Both his wife and mother appeared in several of his plays. He made his film debut in 1922’s Polly of the Follies, but did not become a regular Hollywood contributor until 1928. Among his earliest credits was writing the dialogue for the 1929 Oscar winner, The Broadway Melody, the year before son Russell played one of the doomed German soldiers in the 1930 Oscar winner, All Quiet on the Western Front. His early film successes as an actor included 1929’s Oh, Yeah? opposite ZaSu Pitts, 1931’s A Free Soul with Lionel Barrymore, 1932’s Penguin Pool Murders opposite Edna May Oliver and its sequels with Oliver, Helen Broderick and ZaSu Pitts as well as 1938’s The Higgins Family and its sequels co-starring wife Lucile and son Russell.

Two of the actor’s greatest screen performances were as the hard-boiled newspaper editor in 1941’s Meet John Doe with Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck and as the perplexed fight trainer in Here Comes Mr. Jordan with Robert Montgomery for which he received his only Oscar nomination. Other memorable 1940s films included Crash Dive with Tyrone Power, A Guy Named Joe with Spencer Tracy, Arsenic and Old Lace with Cary Grant, The Keys of the Kingdom with Gregory Peck, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn with James Dunn, The Clock with Judy Garland, The Hoodlum Saint with William Powell, Down to Earth with Rita Hayworth, The Bishop’s Wife with Loretta Young, The Dude Goes West with Gale Storm, When My Baby Smiles at Me with Dan Dailey and The Life of Riley with William Bendix.

Gleason’s son Russell died tragically on December 26, 1945, the night before his Army unit was scheduled to be deployed to Europe, when he fell out of a fourth story window in the New York City hotel where he was being billeted. He was 36. Gleason’s wife Lucile died less than a year later at 59.

Alternating between TV and film in the 1950s, Gleason’s best work during the decade was in such films as Come Fill the Cup with James Cagney, Forever Female with William Holden, Suddenly with Frank Sinatra, The Night of the Hunter with Robert Mitchum, Loving You with Elvis Presley and his last, The Last Hurrah with Spencer Tracy, released less than six months before his death on April 12, 1959 at 76.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

PENGUIN POOL MURDER (1932), directed by George Archainbaud

Gleason was at his hilarious best as the perplexed Police Inspector Oscar Piper opposite an equally delightful Edna May Oliver as the schoolteacher sleuth, Hildegarde Withers in this surprisingly successful RKO programmer. It was such a hit that it continued as a series with Olivier and Gleason in 1934’s Murder on the Blackboard and 1935’s Murder on the Honeymoon. Gleason soldiered on as Piper after Oliver left RKO for MGM in three subsequent features through 1937, one with Helen Broderick and two with ZaSu Pitts, but they weren’t the same without the redoubtable Oliver.

HERE COMES MR. JORDAN (1941), directed by Alexander Hall

Gleason reached his peak as the hard-boiled newspaper editor in Frank Capra’s Meet John Doe earlier in the year, then topped even that great performance with his beloved portrayal of Max Corkle, the fight manager who does one of the screen’s great double-takes as he realizes the character embodied by Robert Montgomery is his buddy Joe Pendleton in another body. It earned him his only Oscar nomination in his long career. He later reprised the role in the inferior 1947 musical Down to Earth which starred Rita Hayworth and Larry Parks under Jordan’s Alexander Hall’s direction.

THE CLOCK (1945), directed by Vincente Minnelli

Gleason was in top form earlier in the year as the kindly bar owner who gave alcoholic piano player James Dunn a job in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but his most memorable role of the year was as the friendly milkman who along with his wife (Gleason’s real-life wife, Lucile) shows young lovebirds Judy Garland and Robert Walker what mature love is all about. He had a similar role as the friendly taxi driver in 1947’s The Bishop’s Wife in support of Cary Grant and Loretta Young. In-between he was a Runyonesque gangster in 1946’s The Hoodlum Saint.

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955), directed by Charles Laughton

Gleason once again a one-two punch in two films made fairly close together. He was a standout in Suddenly as the old man under siege by hired killer Frank Sinatra who uses his hilltop home as the base from which he plans to shoot the President of the United States when he disembarks from a train within clear sight of Gleason’s house in late 1954. A year later he was a standout again in a relatively small role in Laughton’s only film as a director. Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters and Lillian Gish may have more complex roles, but Gleason’s old drunk with the peculiar name of Birdie Steptoe is equally memorable.

THE LAST HURRAH (1958), directed by John Ford

Ford’s film of Edwin O’Connor’s novel about the last days of a fictitious mayor in a fictitious New England city, clearly meant to be Boston, Massachusetts was a showcase for a number of actors, particularly Spencer Tracy as the fictional Frank Skeffington and the actors who played his old cronies, chief among them Pat O’Brien, Gleason, Ed Brophy and Ricardo Cortez. With Donald Crisp, Basil Rathbone, John Carradine, Jane Darwell and many others of a certain age it was predictable that many of them would be dead within ten years of the film’s release. Sadly, Gleason was the first to go not long after the film’s release.