Victor-McLaglen-photo-9875.jpgVICTOR McLAGLEN
INFORMATION FROM IMDb
Date of birth
11 December 1883
Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, UK
Date of death
7 November 1959
Newport Beach, California, USA. (heart attack)
Birth name
Victor Everleigh McLaglen
Height
6' 3" (1.91 m)
Spouse
Margaret Pumphrey (1948 - 7 November 1959) (his death)
Suzanne M. Brueggeman (1943 - 1948) (divorced)
Enid Lamont (1919 - 1942) (her death)
Trivia
Father of film director Andrew V. McLaglen.
Brother of actor Clifford McLaglen
Brother of actor Cyril McLaglen
Brother of actor Kenneth McLaglen
Brother of actor and sculptor Arthur McLaglen
Father-in-law of actress Veda Ann Borg
Daughter Sheila McLaglen born 1920.
Interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California, USA
Grandfather of Mary McLaglen
Brother of actor Leopold McLaglen.
Before becoming an actor, he worked as a carnival boxer. If anyone could stay in the ring with him for one round, and not be knocked down, they won a box of cigars.
Naturalized U.S. citizen.
In spite of being a powerful hulk his whole life (his huge shoulders making even John Wayne's look small), he was 70 and in declining health by the time he was in The Quiet Man (1952). Even prickly John Ford had to be sensitive to McLaglen's condition while shooting that movie's grueling fight sequence.
Was over 50 before he became a bankable actor in films like The Lost Patrol (1934) and The Informer (1935).
He was cast mostly as Irishmen, particularly by John Ford, but he was actually English.
Boxed and wrestled under the nickname 'Sharkey' McLaglen, as well as under his real name, prior to his movie career. His lifetime boxing record (as far as is known) was 11-6-1, with 9 KOs. His 1909 bout with legendary champion Jack Johnson in Vancouver was a six-round exhibition bout.
Younger brother of boxer Fred McLaglen, aka Fred McKay (lifetime boxing record 6-11-2)
Under the pseudonym Paul Romano, McLaglen boxed future heavyweight champion Jess Willard in a four-round exhibition match in Springfield, Missouri, on 26 September 1911.
According to a 1912 newspaper report, McLaglen participated in a fencing duel with one Carl Brosius in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, prior to that date.
Is portrayed by Ron Kamien in Child Star: The Shirley Temple Story (2001) (TV)
First performer to win an Oscar for a performance in a remake. The Informer (1935), the movie that won him an Oscar, was a remake of The Informer (1929).
Born an Englishman, McLaglen became a U.S. citizen in January, 1933.
During the British occupation of the TransJordan (now Iraq) in the 1920s, McLaglen, who was a sergeant in the British army, was appointed provost marshal--chief of military police--for Baghdad.
Personal quotes
"Acting never appealed to me, and I was dabbling in it solely as a means of making money. I rather felt that the grease paint business was somewhat beneath a man who was once a reasonably useful boxer." - recalling his early years
Salary
The Call of the Road (1920) £180
Mini Biography
Rambunctious British leading man and later character actor primarily American films, a vital presence in a number of great motion pictures, especially those of director John Ford. McLaglen (pronounced Muh-clog-len, not Mack-loff-len) was the son of the Right Reverend Andrew McLaglen, a Protestant clergyman who was at one time Bishop of Claremont in South Africa. The young McLaglen, eldest of eight brothers, attempted to serve in the Boer War by joining the Life Guards, though his father secured his release. The adventuresome young man traveled to Canada where he did farm labor and then directed his pugnacious nature into professional prizefighting. He toured in circuses, vaudeville shows, and Wild West shows, often as a fighter challenging all comers. His tours took him to the U.S., to Australia (where he joined in the gold rush) and to South Africa. In 1909 he was the first fighter to box the newly-crowned heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, whom he fought in a six-round exhibition match in Vancouver (as an exhibition fight, it had no decision). When the First World War broke out, McLaglen joined the Irish Fusiliers and soldiered in the middle east, eventually serving as Provost Marshal for the city of Baghdad. After the war, he attempted to resume a boxing career, but was given a substantial acting role in The Call of the Road (1920) and was well received. He became a popular leading man in British silent films, and within a few years was offered the lead in an American film, The Beloved Brute (1924). He quickly became a most popular star in dramas as well as action films, playing tough or suave with apparent equal ease. With the coming of sound, his ability to be persuasively debonair diminished by reason of his native speech patterns, but his popularity increased, particularly when cast by John Ford as the tragic Gypo Nolan in The Informer (1935), for which McLaglen won the Best Actor Oscar. He continued to play heroes, villains, and simple-minded thugs into the 1940s, when Ford gave his career a new impetus with a number of lovably roguish Irish parts in such films as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and The Quiet Man (1952). This latter film won McLaglen another Oscar nomination, the first time a Best Actor winner had been nominated subsequently in the Supporting category. McLaglen formed a semi- militaristic riding and polo club, the Light Horse Brigade, and a similarly arrayed precision motorcycle team, the Victor McLaglen Motorcycle Corps, both of which led to apparently erroneous conclusions that McLaglen had fascist sympathies and was forming his own private army. The facts prove otherwise, and despite rumor to the contrary, McLaglen did not espouse the far right-wing sentiments often attributed to him. He continued to act in films into seventies and died, from heart failure, not long after appearing in a film directed by his son, Andrew V. McLaglen.
IMDb mini-biography by Jim Beaver
Mini Biography-2
from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
Once described, aptly, as "a British-born Wallace Beery," this hulking supporting player and character lead brought a similar gruff charm to his movie roles, often winning audience sympathy in unsympathetic characterizations. A clergyman's son, McLaglen took up prospecting and boxing before unleashing his extroverted personality in stage and music-hall performances. After debuting on-screen in The Call of the Road (1920), McLaglen labored in several other British films before emigrating to America; he made his tyro screen appearance here in The Beloved Brute (1924).
Typically cast as a two-fisted man of action-on either side of the lawMcLaglen brightened The Unholy Three, The Fighting Heart (both 1925), Men of Steel and Beau Geste (both 1926) before assuming the role of hard-bitten Captain Flagg in What Price Glory? (also 1926, directed by Raoul Walsh), the antiwar smash adapted from a hit Broadway play. Movie audiences seemed less interested in the film's pacifistic sentiments than in the gregarious, ribald byplay between Flagg and his sergeant, Quirt (played by Edmund Lowe). McLaglen and Lowe reprised their characterizations in The CockEyed World (1929) and Women of All Nations (1931), then went on to embellish them, without the Quirt or Flagg cognomen, in the similarly boisterous Guilty as Hell (1932), Hot Pepper (1933), No More Women (1934), Under Pressure and The Great Hotel Mystery (both 1935).
McLaglen made his talkie debut in John Ford's The Black Watch (1929) and went on to appear in Devil With Women (1930), Dishonored (opposite Marlene Dietrich), Not Exactly Gentlemen (both 1931, the latter a remake of Ford'sThree Bad Men), While Paris Sleeps, Devil's Lottery, The Gay Caballero (all 1932, in the last taking second billing to George O'Brien in this B-plus Western), Laughing at Life (1933, his only foray to Poverty Row), Murder at the Vanities and The Captain Hates the Sea (both 1934), before being reunited with Ford for two of his best starring vehicles:The Lost Patrol (1934), in which he played the commander of a small British detail stranded in the Arabian desert, and The Informer (1935), a remake of Liam O'Flaherty's story of the Irish Rebellion that cast McLaglen as dull-witted turncoat Gypo Nolan. He won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the dazed behemoth; legend has it that Ford encouraged him to drink before filming his scenes, and used the resultant mental fog to best advantage.
McLaglen finished out the 1930s in a variety of roles, many of them secondary leads, most of them in melodramas or spectacular adventure films, including Professional Soldier (1935), Klondike Annie (opposite Mae West), Under Two Flags, The Magnificent Brute (all 1936), Sea Devils, Nancy Steel Is Missing, This Is My Affair, Wee Willie Winkie (all 1937, the last fortuitously paired with Shirley Temple, again for director Ford), The Devil's Party, We're Going to Be Rich (both 1938), Pacific Liner, Let Freedom Ring, Captain Fury, Ex-Champ, Full Confession and Rio (all 1939). He concluded the decade in grand fashion, playing the dashing Sergeant MacChesney (an archetypal McLaglen part) in George Stevens'Gunga Din (1939), one of the screen's greatest adventure films.
McLaglen did most of his 1940s work in films of steadily diminishing quality, such as Broadway Limited (1941), Call Out the Marines (the last of his starring vehicles with Lowe, but a pale shadow of their earlier successes), China Girl (both 1942), Tampico, Roger Touhy, Gangster (both 1944), Rough, Tough and Ready (1945), Whistle Stop (1946), Calendar Girl andThe Michigan Kid (both 1947). Ford gave McLaglen juicy supporting parts in his Cavalry trilogy-Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950)-before awarding the burly Englishman his last formidable role, that of Maureen O'Hara's bullying brother in The Quiet Man (1952, for which he earned a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination).
After appearing in Fair Wind to Java (1953), Prince Valiant (1954), Many Rivers to Cross, City of Shadows, Bengazi, Lady Godiva (all 1955), Around the World in Eighty Days (1956, cameoing with Lowe), and The Abductors (1957), an increasingly ill McLaglen called it quits. He died of a heart attack two years later. His son Andrew is a director; while working his way up the ladder in Hollywood, he served as an assistant director on The Quiet Man He later directed his father in The Abductors
Copyright © 1994 Leonard Maltin, used by arrangement with Signet, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.
Filmography
Actor
1. "Rawhide"
- Incident of the Shambling Man (1959) TV Episode .... Harry Whitman
2. Italiani sono matti, Gli (1958)
... aka Italianos están locos, Los (Spain)
... aka The Italians They Are Crazy (International: English title)
3. "Have Gun - Will Travel"
- The O'Hare Story (1958) TV Episode .... Mike O'Hare
4. Sea Fury (1958) .... Captain Bellew
5. The Abductors (1957) .... Tom Muldoon
6. "Studio 57"
... aka Heinz Studio 57 (USA: alternative title)
- Big Joe's Coming Home (1957) TV Episode
7. Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) .... Helmsman of the 'Henrietta'
8. "Jane Wyman Presents The Fireside Theatre"
... aka Jane Wyman Presents (USA: rerun title)
... aka Jane Wyman Theater (USA)
- Big Joe's Comin' Home (1955) TV Episode .... Big Joe
9. Lady Godiva of Coventry (1955) .... Grimald
... aka Lady Godiva of Coventry (UK)
10. "The Eddie Cantor Comedy Theater"
- The Marine Went to Town (1955) TV Episode
11. Bengazi (1955) .... Robert Emmett Donovan
12. City of Shadows (1955) .... Big Tim Channing
13. Many Rivers to Cross (1955) .... Mr. Cadmus Cherne
14. Prince Valiant (1954) .... Boltar
15. "Lux Video Theatre"
... aka Summer Video Theatre (USA: summer title)
- The Exposure of Michael O'Reilly (1954) TV Episode .... Michael O'Reilly
16. Fair Wind to Java (1953) .... O'Brien
17. Trouble in the Glen (1953) .... Parlan
18. "Schlitz Playhouse of Stars"
... aka Herald Playhouse (USA: syndication title)
... aka Schlitz Playhouse (USA: new title)
... aka The Playhouse (USA: syndication title)
- Port of Call (1952) TV Episode
19. The Quiet Man (1952) .... Squire 'Red' Will Danaher
20. Rio Grande (1950) .... Sgt. Maj. Timothy Quincannon
... aka John Ford and Merian C. Cooper's Rio Grande (USA: complete title)
21. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) .... Top Sgt. Quincannon
22. Fort Apache (1948) .... Sgt. Festus Mulcahy
... aka War Party
23. The Foxes of Harrow (1947) .... Captain Mike Farrell
24. The Michigan Kid (1947) .... Curley
25. Calendar Girl (1947) .... Matthew O'Neil
... aka Star Dust and Sweet Music (USA: reissue title)
26. Whistle Stop (1946) .... Gitlo
27. Love, Honor and Goodbye (1945) .... Terry O'Farrell
28. Rough, Tough and Ready (1945) .... Owen McCarey
... aka Men of the Deep (UK)
29. The Princess and the Pirate (1944) .... Captain Barrett ak The Hook
30. Roger Touhy, Gangster (1944) .... Herman 'Owl' Banghart
... aka Roger Touhy
... aka The Last Gangster (UK)
31. Tampico (1944) .... Fred Adamson
32. Forever and a Day (1943) .... Archibald Spavin (hotel doorman)
33. China Girl (1942) .... Major Weed
34. Powder Town (1942) .... Jeems O'Shea
35. Call Out the Marines (1942) .... Jimmy McGinnis
36. Broadway Limited (1941) .... Maurice 'Mike' Monohan
... aka The Baby Vanishes
37. Diamond Frontier (1940) .... Terrence Regan
38. South of Pago Pago (1940) .... Bucko Larson
39. The Big Guy (1939) .... Warden Bill Whitlock
... aka Warden of the Big House (USA: reissue title)
40. Rio (1939) .... Dirk
41. Full Confession (1939) .... McGinnis
42. Captain Fury (1939) .... Blackie
43. Ex-Champ (1939) .... Tom 'Gunner' Grey
... aka Golden Gloves (UK)
44. Let Freedom Ring (1939) .... Chris Mulligan
45. Gunga Din (1939) .... Sgt. 'Mac' MacChesney
46. We're Going to Be Rich (1938) .... Dobbie
47. The Devil's Party (1938) .... Marty Malone
48. Battle of Broadway (1938) .... Big Ben Wheeler
49. Pacific Liner (1938) .... J.B. 'Crusher' McKay, Chief Engineer
50. Wee Willie Winkie (1937) .... Sgt. Donald MacDuff
51. This Is My Affair (1937) .... Jock Ramsay
... aka His Affair (UK)
52. Nancy Steele Is Missing! (1937) .... Dannie O'Neill
53. Sea Devils (1937) .... CPO William 'Medals' Malone
54. Magnificent Brute (1936) .... Big Steve
55. Under Two Flags (1936) .... J.C. Doyle
56. Klondike Annie (1936) .... Bull Brackett
57. Professional Soldier (1935) .... Michael Donovan
58. The Informer (1935) .... Gypo Nolan
59. The Great Hotel Murder (1935) .... Andrew W. 'Andy' McCabe
60. Under Pressure (1935) .... Jumbo Smith
61. The Captain Hates the Sea (1934) .... Schulte
62. Murder at the Vanities (1934) .... Police Lt. Bill Murdock
63. Wharf Angel (1934) .... Turk
64. No More Women (1934) .... Forty-Fathoms
65. The Lost Patrol (1934) .... Sergeant
66. Laughing at Life (1933) .... Dennis P. McHale
67. Hot Pepper (1933) .... Jim Flagg
68. Dick Turpin (1933) .... Dick Turpin
69. Rackety Rax (1932) .... 'Knucks' McGloin
70. Guilty as Hell (1932) .... Detective Capt. T.R. McKinley
... aka Guilty as Charged (UK)
71. While Paris Sleeps (1932) .... Jacques Costaud
72. Devil's Lottery (1932) .... Jem Meech
73. The Gay Caballero (1932) .... Don Bob Harkness aka El Coyote
74. Wicked (1931) .... Scott Burrows
75. Annabelle's Affairs (1931) .... John Rawson aka Hefly Jack
... aka Good Gracious Annabelle
... aka The Affairs of Annabelle
... aka Two Can Play
76. Women of All Nations (1931) .... Capt ain Jim Flagg
77. Dishonored (1931) .... Col. Kranau
78. The Slippery Pearls (1931) .... Sergeant Flagg
... aka The Stolen Jools
79. Three Rogues (1931) .... Bull Stanley
... aka Not Exactly Gentlemen
80. A Devil with Women (1930) .... Jerry Maxton
81. On the Level (1930) .... Biff Williams
82. Hot for Paris (1929) .... John Patrick Duke
83. The Cock-Eyed World (1929) .... Top Sergeant Flagg
... aka The Cockeyed World
84. The Black Watch (1929) .... Capt. Donald Gordon King
... aka King of the Khyber Rifles (UK)
85. Strong Boy (1929) .... Strong Boy
86. Captain Lash (1929) .... Captain Lash
87. The River Pirate (1928) .... Sailor Fritz
88. Hangman's House (1928) .... Citizen Denis Hogan
89. A Girl in Every Port (1928) .... Spike Madden
90. Mother Machree (1928) .... The Giant of Kilkenny (Terence O'Dowd)
91. The Loves of Carmen (1927) .... Escamillo
92. What Price Glory (1926) .... Capt. Flagg
93. Beau Geste (1926) .... Hank
94. Men of Steel (1926) .... Pete Masarick
95. The Isle of Retribution (1926) .... Doomsdorf
96. The Fighting Heart (1925) .... Soapy Williams
... aka Once to Every Man (UK)
97. The Unholy Three (1925) .... Hercules, the strongman
98. Winds of Chance (1925) .... Poleon Doret
99. Percy (1925) .... Reedy Jenkins
... aka Mother's Boy (UK)
100. The Hunted Woman (1925) .... Quade
101. The Passionate Adventure (1924) .... Herb Harris
102. The Beloved Brute (1924) .... Charles Hinges
103. The Gay Corinthian (1924) .... Squire Hardcastle
... aka The Three Wagers (UK: reissue title)
104. The Boatswain's Mate (1924) .... Ned Travers
105. Women and Diamonds (1924) .... Brian Owen
106. The Romany (1923) .... The Chief
107. Heartstrings (1923) .... Frank Wilson
108. M'Lord of the White Road (1923) .... Lord Annerley/John
109. In the Blood (1923) .... Tony Crabtree
110. Woman to Woman (1923) (uncredited) .... Nubian Slave
111. The Glorious Adventure (1922) .... Bulfinch
112. The Crimson Circle (1922)
113. Little Brother of God (1922) .... King Kennidy
114. A Sailor Tramp (1922) .... The Sailor Tramp
115. A Romance of Old Baghdad (1922) .... Miski
116. Carnival (1921)
117. Corinthian Jack (1921) .... Jack Halstead
... aka Fighting Jack (UK: reissue title)
118. The Prey of the Dragon (1921) .... Brett 'Dragon' Mercer
119. The Sport of Kings (1921) .... Frank Rosedale
120. The Call of the Road (1920) .... Alf Truscott
Himself
1. Jack Johnson, the Big Fights (1970) .... Himself
... aka Jack Johnson
2. "This Is Your Life"
- Victor McLaglen (1953) TV Episode .... Himself
3. The 25th Annual Academy Awards (1953) (TV) .... Himself
4. "The Name's the Same"
- Episode dated 13 August 1952 (1952) TV Episode .... Himself - Contestant
5. Picture People No. 1: Stars in Defense (1941) .... Himself
6. Ali Baba Goes to Town (1937) (uncredited) .... Himself
7. Happy Days (1929/I) .... Himself
Archive Footage
1. John Ford (1990) (TV) (uncredited) .... Gypo Nolan [in 'The Informer']
2. George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey (1984) (uncredited) .... Himself, on set of 'Gunga Din'
3. That's Action (1977) .... Himself
4. Hollywood Without Make-Up (1963) .... Himself
and the Mrs. 
