George Macready

Born in Rhode Island, George Macready graduated from Brown University. He was briefly a New York newspaperman before embarking upon a theatrical career on the advice of director Richard Boleslawski. Making his Broadway debut in a 1926 staging of The Scarlet Letter, Macready acted with Katherine Cornell in Romeo and Juliet and The Barretts of Wimpole Street and with Helen Hayes in Victoria Regina. When he entered films in 1943, the probing eye of the camera emphasized the sinister scar on Macready's cheek (the result of an automobile accident). Thus, he had very little choice but to specialize in cold, aristocratic screen villainy. His most complex film role was the evil, sexually ambivalent nightclub manager in Gilda (1946), who evidently has a yearning for both Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford. On television from 1948, Macready appeared in over 200 video productions, again working the evil side of the street often as not. Off-screen, Macready was a dedicated art connoisseur, who during the war years established a profitable Los Angeles gallery with his friend and fellow actor Vincent Price. Far from distressed at being typed as a villain, George Macready relished his niche: "I like heavies," he once noted, adding, "I think there's a little bit of evil in all of us." - Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide