Douglass Dumbrille
Dumbrille Douglas ( born October 13, 1889 in Hamilton, Ontario; † 2 April 1974 in Woodland Hills, California ) was a Canadian- American actor.
Life and career
The Canadian-born Dumbrille worked as a bank clerk and onion farmer, before he turned to acting. He joined a theater group and moved with her across North America. His Brodwaybedüt gave Dumbrille in 1924 as Banquo in Shakespeare's Macbeth. He also appeared in a Ziegfeld production of The Three Musketeers in the role of Athos. Ten years later he again played Athos in a film version of Allan Dwan.
His first film appearance was Dumbrille already in 1924, but until the beginning of Tonfilmes he appeared there regularly. With its beefy stature and his deep voice Dumbrille was predominantly used in unsymphatischen or hard rolls, for example as a brutal villain or strict authority figure. He has played gangsters in the movies The womanizer and Broadway Bill. Frank Capra occupied Dumbrille in 1936 as a power-hungry lawyer in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, who wants to bring Gary Cooper for his million inheritance. A year earlier Dumbrille had already been used as a darker opponent by Cooper in the film Bengali, namely as an exotic rebel leader Mohammed Khan.
Frequently Dumbrille played alongside comedians such as the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello and Bob Hope. Thus, the Marx Brothers propel him in the role of an unscrupulous manager in The Marx Brothers at the department store almost to madness, because they thwart all his attempts on his nephews. In the 1950s Dumbrille had increased guest roles on television and had minor roles in the period films Julius Caesar and The Ten Commandments. In 1964 he retired after nearly 200 films and several television appearances from the film business.
With his first wife, Jessie Lawson Dumbrille had been married from 1910 until her death in 1958. At the age of seventy, he married in 1960, the 28 -year-old Patricia Mowbray, the daughter of his fellow actor Alan Mowbray. They remained married until Dumbrilles death in 1974. He died at the age of 84 of a heart attack and was buried in Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in North Hollywood.