Dana Andrews

Dana Andrews
from the trailer for the film The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Born	Carver Dana Andrews January 1, 1909(1909-01-01) Covington County, Mississippi, U.S.
Died	December 17, 1992(1992-12-17) (aged 83) Los Alamitos, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1940–85
Spouse	Janet Murray (m. 1932–1935) «start: (1932)–end+1: (1936)»"Marriage: Janet Murray to Dana Andrews" Location: (linkback://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Andrews) (her death) Mary Todd (m. 1939–1992) «start: (1939)–end+1: (1993)»"Marriage: Mary Todd to Dana Andrews" Location: (linkback://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Andrews) (his death)

Dana Andrews (January 1, 1909 – December 17, 1992) was an American film actor. He was one of Hollywood's major stars of the 1940s, and continued acting, though generally in less prestigious roles, into the 1980s.

Early life

He was born Carver Dana Andrews on a farmstead outside Collins, Covington County, Mississippi, the third of nine children of Charles Forrest Andrews, a Baptist minister, and his wife Annis (née Speed).^[1] The family subsequently moved to Huntsville, Texas, where his younger siblings (including actor Steve Forrest) were born.

Andrews attended college at Sam Houston State University and also studied business administration in Houston, Texas, working briefly as an accountant for Gulf & Western^{[citation needed]} . In 1931, he travelled to Los Angeles, California seeking opportunities as a singer. He worked at various jobs to earn a living, including pumping gas at a filling station in Van Nuys. One of his employers believed in him and paid for his studies in opera and also at the Pasadena Playhouse, a theater and acting school.^{[citation needed]}

Career

Andrews signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn and nine years after arriving in Los Angeles was offered his first movie role in William Wyler's The Westerner (1940), starring Gary Cooper. He was also memorable as the gangster in the 1941 comedy Ball of Fire. In the 1943 movie adaptation of The Ox-Bow Incident with Henry Fonda, often cited as one of his best films, he played a lynching victim.^{[citation needed]} Andrews' two signature roles came as an obsessed detective in Laura (1944) opposite Gene Tierney, and as a soldier returning home from the war in the Oscar-winning 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives. He played a crooked cop in Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), also with Gene Tierney. Around this time, alcoholism began to derail Andrews' career, and on a couple of occasions it nearly cost him his life on the highway.^{[citation needed]}

By the middle 1950s, Andrews was acting almost exclusively in B movies. A handful of films Andrews starred in during the late '50s, however, contain memorable work. Two movies for Fritz Lang in 1956, While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, and two for Jacques Tourneur, Night of the Demon (1957) and The Fearmakers (1958), are particularly noteworthy. From 1952 to 1954, Andrews starred in the radio series I Was a Communist for the FBI about the experiences of Matt Cvetic, an FBI informer who infiltrated into the Communist Party. In 1963, he was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild. Between 1969 and 1970^[2], he appeared in a leading role as college president Tom Boswell on the NBC daytime soap opera Bright Promise. In 1960 he and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. starred in The Crowded Sky; Zimbalist played the part of a military jet pilot who crashes into a large passenger airliner that Andrews is flying. Coincidentally, fifteen years later, Andrews and Zimbalist appeared in Airport 1975 in which Andrews plays a businessman pilot who has a heart attack and crashes his plane into a 747 that Zimbalist is flying.

Personal life

Andrews married Janet Murray on New Year's Eve, 1932. She died in 1935, not long after the birth of their son, David (a musician and composer who died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1964). On November 17, 1939, he married actress Mary Todd. They had three children, Katharine (born in 1942), Stephen (born in 1944), and Susan (born in 1948). Dana MacDuff, a film producer and the son of Andrews' friend Tyler MacDuff, is named for Dana Andrews. For 20 years the Andrews family lived in Toluca Lake in the home now owned by Jonathan Winters. After his children were grown, Andrews lived out his later years with his wife Mary in the Studio City home bought from Jacques Tourneur (the director of Canyon Passage and Night of the Demon, in which Andrews had appeared).

Andrews eventually brought his alcoholism under control. In 1972, he appeared in a television public service advertisement on the subject.^[3] In the early 1980s, after former movie star Ronald Reagan had become president, Andrews told a magazine interviewer that Reagan's disciplined attitude toward alcohol (which Andrews had witnessed first-hand) was a big factor in his success.

In the last years of his life, Andrews suffered from Alzheimer's disease. In 1992, at the age of 83, he died of congestive heart failure and pneumonia.

Filmography

The Westerner (film debut, 1940) Lucky Cisco Kid (1940) Sailor's Lady (1940) Kit Carson (1940) Tobacco Road (1941) Belle Starr (1941) Ball of Fire (1941) Swamp Water (1941) Berlin Correspondent (1942) Crash Dive (1943) The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) The North Star December 7th (1943) Up in Arms (1944) The Purple Heart (1944) Wing and a Prayer (1944) Laura (1944) State Fair (1945) Fallen Angel (1945) A Walk in the Sun (1945) Canyon Passage (1946) The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) Daisy Kenyon (1947) Boomerang (1947) Night Song (1948) The Iron Curtain (1948) No Minor Vices (1948) Deep Waters (1948) Britannia Mews (1949) My Foolish Heart (1949) Sword in the Desert (1949) The Forbidden Street (1949) Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) Edge of Doom (1950) Sealed Cargo (1951) The Frogmen (1951) I Want You (1951) Assignment: Paris (1952)

Elephant Walk (1954) Three Hours to Kill (1954) Duel in the Jungle (1954) Strange Lady in Town (1955) Smoke Signal (1955) While the City Sleeps (1956) Comanche (1956) Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956) Zero Hour! (1957) Spring Reunion (1957) Night of the Demon (1957) Enchanted Island (1958) The Fearmakers (1958) The Crowded Sky (1960) Madison Avenue (1962) The Twilight Zone: "No Time Like the Past" (1963) In Harm's Way (1965) The Satan Bug (1965) Brainstorm (1965) Berlin, Appointment for the Spies (1965) Crack in the World (1965) Town Tamer (1965) Battle of the Bulge (1965) The Loved One (1965) The Frozen Dead (1966) Johnny Reno (1966) Hot Rods to Hell (1967) Il Cobra (The Cobra) (1967) The Devil's Brigade (1968) Innocent Bystanders (1972) Airport 1975 (1974) Take a Hard Ride (1975) The Last Tycoon (1976) Good Guys Wear Black (1978) A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud (1978) Born Again (1978) The Pilot (1979) Prince Jack (1984)

References

1. ^ Dana Andrews' obituary in New York Times
2. ^ Schemering, Christopher (1987). The Soap Opera Encyclopedia. New York: Ballentine. pp. 48. ISBN 345-35344-7. 
3. ^ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE6DF1E3BF93AA25751C1A964958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

External links

Biography portal

• Dana Andrews Radio Work
• Dana Andrews on I Was a Communist for the FBI Radio Program
• Dana Andrews at the Internet Movie Database
• Dana Andrews at the Internet Broadway Database
• Dana Andrews at Allmusic
• Dana Andrews at the TCM Movie Database
• Dana Andrews at Find a Grave
• Photographs and literature

Persondata
Name	Andrews, Dana
Alternative names	Andrews, Carver Dana
Short description	Actor
Date of birth	January 1, 1909
Place of birth	Covington County, Mississippi, U.S.
Date of death	December 17, 1992(1992-12-17) (aged 83)
Place of death	Los Alamitos, California, U.S.