Mini Biography
Already trained in dance and theater, he quit school at age 13 to study music and painting. By 19 he was a professional ballroom dancer in New York, and by his mid-twenties he was performing in musicals, dramas on Broadway and in London, and in silent movies. His first real success in film came in middle age as the classy villain Waldo Lydecker in Laura (1944), followed by the part of Elliott Templeton in The Razor's Edge (1946) - both of which won him Oscar nominations. His priggish Mr. Belvedere (series) was supposedly not far removed from his real life persona: he was inseparable from his mother, Maybelle, with whom he lived until her death (Noel Coward said "It must be tough to be orphaned at seventy-one"). The recent success of Titanic (1997) created a brief revival of interest due his having played, with Barbara Stanwyck, in a 1953 version of the story. He is interred at Abbey of the Psalms, Hollywood Memorial Cemetery.
Mini Biography By:
Ed Stephan
Nominated for 3 Oscars.
Another
2 wins
&
1 nomination