Lloyd Nolan
Lloyd Nolan | |
|---|---|
| File:Lloyd Nolan.jpg | |
| Born | Lloyd Benedict Nolan August 11, 1902 |
| Died | September 27, 1985 (aged 83) |
| Years active | 1935–85 |
| Spouse(s) | Mell Efrid (5/23/33-1/6/81) (her death) Virginia Dabney (1/26/83-9/27/85) (his death) |
Lloyd Benedict Nolan (August 11, 1902 – September 27, 1985) was an American film and television actor.
Biography
Nolan was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Margaret and James Nolan, who was a shoe manufacturer.[1] He began his career on stage and was subsequently lured to Hollywood, where he played mainly doctors, detectives, and police officers in many movie roles.
He was a brother to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Sigma Rho chapter). The origin of the Commemorative Air Force dates back to 1957, when Lloyd Nolan and four friends purchased a P-51 Mustang, each sharing in the $1,500 cost of the aircraft.[2] With the purchase of the Mustang, known as Red Nose, the group was unofficially founded.
Film career
Although Nolan's acting was often praised by critics, he was, for the most part, relegated to B pictures. Despite this, Nolan costarred with a number of well-known actresses, among them Mae West, Dorothy McGuire, and former Metropolitan Opera soprano, Gladys Swarthout. Under contract to Paramount and 20th Century Fox studios, he assayed starring roles in the late 30s and early-to-mid 40s and appeared as the title character in the Michael Shayne detective series. Raymond Chandler's novel The High Window was adapted from a Philip Marlowe adventure for the seventh film in the Michael Shayne series, Time to Kill (1942). The film was remade five years later as The Brasher Doubloon, truer to Chandler's original story, with George Montgomery as Marlowe.
The majority of Nolan's films comprised light entertainment with an emphasis on action. His most famous films include: Atlantic Adventure, costarring Nancy Carroll; Ebb Tide; Wells Fargo; Every Day's A Holiday, starring Mae West; Bataan; and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, with Dorothy McGuire and James Dunn. He also gave a strong performance in the 1957 film Peyton Place with Lana Turner.
Nolan subsequently contributed many solid and key character parts in numerous other films. One of these films, The House on 92nd Street, was a startling anomaly to audiences in 1945. It was a conflation of several true incidents of attempted sabotage by the Nazi regime - incidents which the FBI was able to thwart during World War II - and many scenes were filmed on location in New York City, an unusual occurrence at the time. Nolan portrayed FBI agent Briggs, and actual FBI employees interacted with Nolan throughout the film. He repeated the role in a subsequent movie, The Street with No Name.
Other endeavors
Later in his career, he returned to the stage and appeared on television to great acclaim in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, for which he received an Emmy award for portraying Captain Queeg, the role made famous by Humphrey Bogart. Nolan also made guest appearances in television shows including NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford, The Bing Crosby Show, a sitcom on ABC and the Emmy-winning NBC anthology series The Barbara Stanwyck Show. Nolan also starred in a classic 1964 episode of The Outer Limits, "Soldier", written by Harlan Ellison. He appeared in the NBC western Bonanza as LaDuke, a New Orleans detective. In 1967, he and Strother Martin guest starred in the episode "A Mighty Hunter Before the Lord" of NBC's The Road West series starring Barry Sullivan. Nolan co-starred in the pioneering NBC series Julia, with Diahann Carroll, who became the first African-American to star in her own television series outside of the role of a domestic worker.
He founded the Jay Nolan Autistic Center (now known as Jay Nolan Community Services) in honor of his son Jay who had autism and was chairman of the annual Save Autistic Children Telethon.
Nolan died of lung cancer in Los Angeles at the age of 83.
Filmography
References
- ^ Burt A. Folkart (September 28, 1985). "Lloyd Nolan, the Actor's Actor, Dies". Los Angeles Times.
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Further reading
Lloyd Nolan: An Actor's Life With Meaning, by Joel Blumberg and Sandra Grabman. BearManor Media, Albany, 2010. ISBN 1593936001.
