John Carradine ( KARR-ə-deen; born Richmond Reed Carradine; February 5, 1906 – November 27, 1988) was an American character actor, who was considered one of the greatest in American cinema. He was a member of Cecil B. DeMille's stock company and later John Ford's company, known for his roles in horror films, Westerns, and Shakespearean theater, most notably portraying Count Dracula in House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945), Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966), and Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula (1979). Among his other notable roles was "Preacher Casy" in John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath. In later decades of his career, he starred mostly in low-budget B-movies.
Carradine was married four times, had five children, and was the patriarch of the Carradine family, including four sons and four grandchildren who are or were also actors. In total, he holds 351 film and television credits, making him one of the most prolific English-speaking film and television actors of all time.
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Early life
Carradine was born in New York City the son of William Reed Carradine, a correspondent for the Associated Press, and his wife, Genevieve Winnifred Richmond, a surgeon. William Carradine was the son of evangelical author Beverly Carradine. The family lived in Peekskill, New York and Kingston, New York. William Carradine died from tuberculosis when his son John was two years old. Carradine's mother then married "a Philadelphia paper manufacturer named Peck, who thought the way to bring up someone else's boy was to beat him every day just on general principle." Carradine attended the Christ Church School in Kingston and the Episcopal Academy in Merion Station, Pennsylvania, where he developed his diction and his memory skills from portions of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer meted out as a punishment.
Carradine's son David claimed his father ran away when he was 14 years old. He later returned and studied sculpture at Philadelphia's Graphic Arts Institute. Carradine lived with his maternal uncle, Peter Richmond, in New York City for a while, working in the film archives of the public library. David said that while still a teenager, his father went to Richmond, Virginia, to serve as an apprentice to Daniel Chester French, the sculptor who created the statue of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. He traveled for a time, supporting himself painting portraits. "If the sitter was satisfied, the price was $2.50," he once said. "It cost him nothing if he thought it was a turkey. I made as high as $10 to $15 a day." During this time, he was arrested for vagrancy. While in jail, Carradine was beaten, suffering a broken nose that did not set correctly. This contributed to "the look that would become world famous."
David Carradine said, "My dad told me that he saw a production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice when he was 11 years old and decided right then what he wanted to do with his life". He made his stage debut in 1925 in New Orleans in a production of Camille and worked for a time in a New Orleans Shakespeare company. Carradine joined a tent repertory theater under the management of R. D. MacLean, who became his mentor. In 1927, he took a job escorting a shipment of bananas from Dallas, Texas to Los Angeles, where he eventually picked up some theater work under the name of Peter Richmond, in homage to his uncle. He became friends with John Barrymore, and began working for Cecil B. DeMille as a set designer. Carradine, however, did not have the job long. "DeMille noticed the lack of Roman columns in my sketches," Carradine said. "I lasted two weeks." Once DeMille heard his baritone voice, however, he hired him to do voice-overs. Carradine said, "the great Cecil B. DeMille saw an apparition – me – pass him by, reciting the gravedigger's lines from 'Hamlet', and he instructed me to report to him the following day." He became a member of DeMille's stock company and his voice was heard in several DeMille pictures, including The Sign of the Cross.
Career
Carradine's first film credit was Tol'able David (1930), but he claimed to have done 70 pictures before getting billing. Carradine claimed to have tested, as an unknown – along with well-known leading men Conrad Veidt, William Courtenay, Paul Muni, and Ian Keith – for the title role in Dracula, but the historical record does not support the claim. The part eventually went to Bela Lugosi. Carradine later played the Count in the 1940s Universal Studios Dracula sequels House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula. Carradine also claimed to have tested for the monster role in Frankenstein (1931), though again, no account exists other than his own that he actually did so. By 1933, he was being credited as John Peter Richmond, perhaps in honor of his friend, John Barrymore. He adopted the stage name "John Carradine" in 1935, and legally took the name as his own two years later. In 1935's Bride of Frankenstein, Carradine had a brief uncredited walk-on role as a hunter in the forest.
On April 11, 1934, Wilfred Talbot Smith and Regina Kahl of Ordo Templi Orientis held a "Crowley Night on Winona Blvd." at Agape Lodge. Martin Starr recounts that "it included a program of recitation of [Aleister] Crowley's poetry, rituals and sacred texts... One surprising name was among the participants: the stage and motion picture actor John Carradine... who read the Crowley poem "O Madonna of the Golden Eyes."
By 1936, Carradine had become a member of John Ford's stock company and appeared in The Prisoner of Shark Island. In total, he made 11 pictures with Ford, including his first important role, as Preacher Casy in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Other Ford films in which Carradine appeared include The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Stagecoach (1939).
He also portrayed the Biblical hero Aaron in DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956), he dominated Hitler's Madman (1943) as Reinhard Heydrich, and he portrayed Bob Ford in Henry King's 20th Century Fox production Jesse James (1939), among many many others during this time frame.
Carradine did considerable stage work, much of which provided his only opportunity to work in a classic drama context. He toured with his own Shakespearean company in the 1940s, playing Hamlet and Macbeth. His Broadway roles included Ferdinand in a 1946 production of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, the Ragpicker in a 13-month run of Jean Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot, Lycus in a 15-month run of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and DeLacey in the expensive one-night flop Frankenstein in 1981. He also toured in road companies of such shows as Tobacco Road and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, in which he was properly emaciated as the cancer-ridden Big Daddy, a part, he said, which Tennessee Williams wrote for him.
Personal life and death
Carradine was married four times. He married Ardanelle Abigail McCool (January 25, 1911 – January 26, 1989), in 1935. She was the mother of Bruce and David. John adopted Bruce, Ardanelle's son from a previous marriage. John had planned a large family, but according to the autobiography of his son David, after Ardanelle had had a series of miscarriages, Carradine discovered that she had repeated "coat hanger" abortions, without his knowledge, which rendered her unable to carry a baby to full term. After only three years of marriage, Ardanelle Carradine filed for divorce, but the couple remained married for another five years.
They divorced in 1944 when David was seven years old. Carradine left California to avoid court action in the alimony settlement. After the couple engaged in a series of court battles involving child custody and alimony, which at one point landed Carradine in jail, David joined his father in New York City. By this time, his father had remarried. For the next few years, David was shuffled among boarding schools, foster homes, and reform school.
In 1945, immediately following his divorce from Ardanelle, Carradine married Sonia Sorel (May 18, 1921 – September 24, 2004), who had appeared with him in the 1944 film Bluebeard. Sonia, who had adopted the stage name of Sorel, was the daughter of San Francisco brewer Henry Henius, granddaughter of biochemist Max Henius, and a great-niece of the historian Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Together, Carradine and Sonia had three sons, Christopher, Keith, and Robert. Their divorce in 1957 was followed by an acrimonious custody battle, which resulted in their sons being placed in a home for abused children as wards of the court. Keith Carradine said, "It was like being in jail. There were bars on the windows, and we were only allowed to see our parents through glass doors. It was very sad. We would stand there on either side of the glass door crying."
Eventually, Carradine won custody of the children. For the next eight years, Sonia was not permitted to see the children. Robert Carradine said that he was raised primarily by his stepmother, his father's third wife, Doris (Rich) Grimshaw, and believed her to be his mother until he was introduced to Sonia Sorel at a Christmas party when he was 14 years old. He told a journalist, "I said, 'How do you do?' Keith took me aside and said 'That's our real mother.' I didn't know what he was talking about. But he finally convinced me."
Legacy
For his contributions to the film industry, Carradine was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 with a motion pictures star located at 6240 Hollywood Boulevard. In 2003, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Four of Carradine's five sons became actors: David, Robert, Keith, and Bruce. David had a prolific career, amassing 227 movie and television credits by the time of his death in 2009. He also had a brief Broadway career and produced and directed a number of independent projects. His success often led to work for other members of his family, including his father. The two appeared together in a few films, including The Good Guys and the Bad Guys (1969) and Boxcar Bertha (1972), produced by Roger Corman and directed by Martin Scorsese.
David's television series Kung Fu featured his father John and half-brother Robert in the episode "Dark Angel". John appeared as the same character, the Reverend Serenity Johnson, in two more episodes: "The Nature of Evil" and "Ambush". David's brothers Bruce and Keith appeared in the series, with Keith playing David's character as a teenager for a brief period. David, Keith, and Robert appeared together in a humorous cameo on The Fall Guy, on an episode titled "October the 31st", in which their father co-starred.
Robert appeared with his father in an episode of the first Twilight Zone revival television series in 1986. The episode segment titled "Still Life" featured Robert as a photographer who discovers an unusual camera and his father as a college professor who helps him discover the camera's secret.
Filmography
Television roles
The following are only a few examples of the many roles John Carradine performed on television between 1947 and 1986:
My Friend Irma, CBS comedy (1952–1954) as Mr. Corday
An Evening with Hamlet, CBS comedy (1954) as Cameron Whitfield
Cheyenne, TV western (1957); episode: "Decision at Gunsight" as Delos Gerrard
The Restless Gun; episode: "More Than Kin" as Arch
The Rifleman, TV western (1959); episode: "The Photographer" as Abel Goss, and as the mentalist James Barrow McBride in S1 E40 "The Mind Reader"
Gunsmoke, TV western (1959) as Kader
The Twilight Zone (1959); episode: "The Howling Man" (1960) as Brother Jerome
Maverick; episode: "Red Dog" (1960) starring Roger Moore, Lee Van Cleef and Sherry Jackson
The Rebel, TV western (1961) as Elmer Dodson
Lawman, TV western (1962); episode: "The Actor" as Geoffrey Hendon
The Beverly Hillbillies (1966); episode: "The Great Jethro" as Marvin Bagby/Marvo the Magnificent
The Munsters (1964–1966) as Mr. Gateman (Herman's boss)
Lost in Space (television series 1965–1968); episode: "The Galaxy Gift" (April 26, 1967)
Land of the Giants (television series 1968–1970); episode: "Comeback" (November 23, 1969) as Egor