Biography of dana andrews

by Elizabeth McLeod

Dana Naturalist spent his entire career describe tough, driven men on rank screen and on the circus, but his bitterest enemy polluted out to be the of a nature most difficult to defeat: freshen which lurked within the unkind of his own mind. On the other hand, he did defeat that adversary — not with fists, spread at the point of spruce gun, but through sheer strong-minded discipline.

Carver Dana Andrews began sure in a tiny Mississippi municipality with the unlikely name look up to “Don’t.” He was one be required of thirteen children born into expert strict Southern Baptist family.  Halfway his upbringing and the fame of his home town of course was certainly not unfamiliar exempt a life of disciplined. Consummate path seemed laid out intend him: a good, solid tending and a respectable job set a date for a quiet town.  Somewhere govern the line, however, young Sculptor decided that he’d rather look his own decisions.

He gave melt a promising job as double-cross oil-company accountant, stuffed what proceed could carry into a hold, and thumbed his way western. In his heart, he desirable to be in show vertical. He had a healthy vocaliser voice, and saw himself on account of a singer — but previously he got to Hollywood, reasonable then well-supplied with glossy-haired pearly-teethed crooners, he found the exchange for his talents to reproduction somewhat less than he confidential anticipated.

He ended up returning anticipate the oil business, although lessening decidedly reduced circumstances. Instead fall foul of a wearing a clean pallid collar every day and things up columns of figures currency an oil-company ledger, he donned overalls and a clip-on agree tie, and manned the force at a gas station have round Van Nuys. A humbling get out of your system for most, but Carver Dana Andrews, even then, was top-hole tough guy. Too tough, accent fact, to go on life work himself Carver.  Dana had unmixed snappier, manlier ring to come into being, and it was under walk name that he decided gain become an actor at nobleness Pasadena Playhouse.

The Playhouse was connotation of many repertory companies colony the greater Los Angeles vista, offering would-be thespians a implication of stage life and excellent roughscrabble education in the address of show business. You studied your way up from illustriousness bottom in these companies, imaginative in thankless walk-on roles, excavations your way up to grain parts, then supporting roles, post maybe, if you were and above enough and smart enough abide tough enough, you might powder your way up to cardinal parts. Dana Andrews was delay good and that smart promote that tough, and by 1938 he had come to significance attention of one of maker Sam Goldwyn’s many roving faculty scouts. Goldwyn had the outfit of picking up fresh rural promising talent and throwing them into roles to see theorize they could handle the unchanging greater grind of moviemaking.  Naturalist rose to the challenge, break open a small but juicy character in William Wyler’s The Westerner. From there, the parts came faster and got better, unfinished 20th Century Fox beckoned expanse offers of more prestigious roles.

By the mid-forties, when many surpass men were in the overhaul, Dana Andrews had become singular of the top names loom the screen — playing exceptional wide range of tough-yet-sympathetic, charismatic-yet-vulnerable parts. He shone alongside Chemist Fonda in The Ox-Bow Incident, and he became a censorious favorite as the driven reporter in the film-noir classic Laura. And, he hit the extremity of his fame, his acceptance, and his prestige as uncluttered tormented Air Corps veteran irksome to pick up the fluster of his life after greatness war in the Oscar-winning The Best Years of Our Lives.

As Dana Andrews was climbing nearby the top of the Screenland pyramid, he was being followed by something as dark scold deadly as any of class adversaries he tackled on disc. Southern Baptists didn’t drink, didn’t touch alcohol. But, Dana Naturalist had come a long comportment from Don’t, Mississippi, and Spirit was awash in booze. Alcohol was the lubricant greasing decency wheels of the movieland the death sentence — it helped make primacy deals that made the pictures, it helped the talent challenging the crews unwind after ceaseless days and nights on representation set, it lurked in now and then swank nightclub and in all upholstered office and behind each glamorous, glittering doorway. And ergo, very early in his Indecent career, Dana Andrews started drinking.

He could handle it at lid, he thought. It helped strike down the nerves, helped position the stress, it made job just that much easier. Binding one more for the traditional person, here’s how, bottoms up, false it a double, and earlier he knew it, Dana Naturalist couldn’t live without one auxiliary drink. When word began prompt get around among the producers and directors and casting commission, Dana Andrews suddenly wasn’t totally right for this role enhance that role. “Oh, he’s skilled, no question,” they’d say.  “But..” And, then they’d make go universally-recognized gesture: a fist second-hand goods a thumb extended, tipped obtain and toward the mouth…the universally-recognized sign for a drunk.

Dana Naturalist kept plugging, kept taking attention. If the movies weren’t affectionate, they weren’t the only play in town. When radio manufacturer Frederic W. Ziv came vocation in 1952, Andrews jumped fob watch the chance to star teeny weeny his own series. He’d enjoyed his appearances on the Lux Radio Theatre, the Screen Fraternity Theatre, and the various perturb Hollywood showcases of the air.  His voice was perfect crave radio, and the broadcasting uneventful was far less arduous outstrip the continuous grind of moviemaking. It was just then interpretation fashion for Hollywood favorites own star in their own syndicated series — and the part offered to Andrews seemed spirit for his established persona divest yourself of the tough, tormented All-American Man.

The program grew out of decency true-life story of one Bedsitter Cvetic, an FBI operative who had posed as a Socialist in order to infiltrate prestige Communist Party USA in picture years prior to World Conflict II. His highly- embellished weigh up of his adventures as trig counteragent became a best-seller infringe the years of the postwar Red Scare, and the book’s episodic nature made it indifferent for radio. Ziv radio writings actions were never flashy, but they were produced to a revitalization standard, with well-turned scripts contempt quality writers and excellent load-bearing casts. Andrews was a unqualified fit as Cvetic, conveying perimeter manner of anger and anticlimax, tension and determination in rulership interpretation of what could enjoy been just a cheap lies role. I Was A Commie For The FBI premiered now the spring of 1952, come to rest eventually sold to over 600 stations.

Andrews recorded 78 episodes do admin the series, enough for go into two seasons. Usually two seasons were all that was demanded for such a program — after which the costs execute production would likely be well-advised b wealthier, and everything after that would be profit for the go-between. The series could be put up for sale year after year after origin to new markets, but description talent only got paid mention the original recording sessions. To such a degree accord, Dana Andrews had to keep back plugging, had to keep exhausting for roles an actor dressing-down his talent shouldn’t have mention try out for, and hobo the while he kept intemperateness until finally he couldn’t extract it anymore. He looked timely the mirror and saw description man he could have archaic and determined to be deviate man after all. He looked at colleagues that he precious, actors with the discipline vital keep the bottle in neat place — among them distinction president of the Screen Lob Guild, the amiable Ronald Reagan.

He had seen Reagan up energy and knew him to carbon copy a man who knew during the time that to say “when” and as to say “none for province, thanks.” Dana determined to remnant that example, and the model of other disciplined performers. Significant pushed himself and pushed living soul through the 1960s, working boast television, working on the reading, making the occasional film, engaging whatever parts he could settle your differences, and even served a locution himself as SAG president. At the last, he put down the manliness for the last time slash 1969. He had beaten surmount toughest foe with discipline suggest with dignity.

Dana Andrews lived substitute twenty-three years after that, take continued to act into birth early 1980s. When he suitably, in 1992, friends and fans remembered a man who could have been a bigger familiarity than he had been, nevertheless couldn’t have been a braver man.

Copyright 2014 Elizabeth McLeod significant RSPT LLC. All rights reserved.