Raymond Massey

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Raymond Massey photographed by Carl Van Vechten

Raymond Hart Massey (August 30, 1896 – July 29, 1983) was a Canadian actor. Born in Toronto, Ontario, he was the son of Chester D. Massey, the wealthy owner of the Massey-Ferguson Tractor Company. He attended secondary school at Appleby College^[1] in Oakville, Ontario, and graduated from university at University of Toronto and Balliol College, Oxford.

At the outbreak of World War I he joined the Canadian Army, serving with the artillery in the Western Front. Later returned to Canada suffering shell-shock and was engaged as an army instructor for USA officers in Yale and in 1918 he was sent to serve at Siberia. His first stage appearance was in Siberia, where he entertained the American troops who were on occupation duty. Severely wounded in action in France, he was sent home where he eventually worked in the family business, selling farm implements. However, drawn to the theater, in 1922 he appeared on the London stage. His first movie role was High Treason in 1927, and he played Sherlock Holmes in The Speckled Band in the following year. In 1936 he starred in H. G. Wells' Things to Come.

Although there was a great outcry when he was first cast due to the fact that he was a Canadian playing a U.S. President from Illinois, he scored a great triumph on Broadway in Robert E. Sherwood's play Abe Lincoln in Illinois, and repeated his role in the 1940 film version. Early in Massey's career, the late President Abraham Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln (1843-1926), heard Massey perform and was struck by the close similarity of Massey's speaking voice to that of his father.^{[citation needed]}

Despite being Canadian, Massey became famous for his quintessential American roles, as Abraham Lincoln in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor), in 1940's Santa Fe Trail, in which he played abolitionist John Brown, as Lincoln again in 1962's How the West Was Won, and again as John Brown in the low-budget film Seven Angry Men. Interestingly, this second porrayal of Brown was much more sympathetic, presenting him as a well-intentioned, but misguided figure, while in Santa Fe Trail he was presented as a wild-eyed lunatic. Massey only played a Canadian on screen once, in Forty-Ninth Parallel (1941).

He rejoined the Canadian Army during World War II, though he would eventually be released from service and return to acting work. Following the war, he became an American citizen. Massey became well-known on television in the 1950s and 1960s, especially in his role as Doctor Gillespie in the series Dr. Kildare. He also dabbled in politics, appearing in a 1964 television advertisement in support of conservative Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

By his wife, noted London and Broadway stage actress Adrianne Allen (born February 7, 1907, died September 14, 1993), he had two children who followed him into acting: Anna Massey CBE, and the late Daniel Massey. His brother was the late Vincent Massey, the first Canadian-born Governor General of Canada.