Noah Beery, Sr.
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Noah Beery (January 17, 1882 – April 1, 1946) was an American actor. Born Noah Nicholas Beery in Kansas City, Missouri, he and his legendary younger half-brother Wallace Beery both became Hollywood actors. Noah Beery worked in the theatre starting at the age of sixteen and by 1905 was performing on Broadway. After a dozen years on the stage, in 1915 he joined his brother in Hollywood to make motion pictures where he would become a respected character actor adept at playing the role of the villain. One of his most remarkable characterizations was as Sergeant Gonzales in The Mark of Zorro (1920) opposite Douglas Fairbanks; the Beery brothers always offered extremely energetic portrayals and gave the audience something extraordinary to behold.
Noah Beery worked during the silent film era (giving a fine performance as Sgt. Lejaune in the 1926 Beau Geste) and successfully made the transition to "talkies." He had a pleasant singing voice and he appeared in a number of lavish early Technicolor musicals such as The Show of Shows (1929), Song of the Flame (1930) (in which he wore unconvincing blackface makeup as an African native), Bright Lights (1930), Under A Texas Moon (1930) and Golden Dawn (1930). He seems to have reached his peak in popularity in 1930, even recording a phonograph record for Brunswick Records with songs from two of his films. Like his brother Wallace, he had an amazingly powerful and distinctive voice, and while he carved out a long and memorable career, he gradually lost popularity while his brother eventually gained a position in the screen pantheon (Wallace was the highest paid actor in the world in 1932, the year he won an Oscar). During a career that spanned three decades, Noah appeared in nearly two hundred films. In 1945 he returned to star in the Mike Todd Broadway production of "Up in Central Park."
Beery died in 1946 (on his brother Wallace's birthday) in Beverly Hills, California of a heart attack and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. His son, Noah Beery, Jr. (1913-1994), also became an extremely successful character actor with a career spanning several decades, most notably as "Rocky," the father of James Garner's character in the television series The Rockford Files (1974-1980). At the height of his career, Noah Beery began billing himself as "Noah Beery, Sr." in anticipation of his son's presence in films, but after his death, his son dropped the "Junior" from his own name and became "Noah Beery."
