Morris Carnovsky
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Morris Carnovsky (September 5, 1897 – September 1, 1992) was an American stage and film actor born in St. Louis, Missouri. He was briefly associated with the Yiddish theatre before attending Washington University in St. Louis. Opting for a mainstream acting career, he appeared in dozens of Broadway shows.
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[edit] Early stage career
At age 39, he made his New York City stage debut in The God of Vengeance. Two years later, Carnovsky joined the Theatre Guild's acting company and appeared in such plays as Uncle Vanya (by Anton Chekhov), Saint Joan (by Bernard Shaw), The Brothers Karamazov, and The Doctor's Dilemma (also by Shaw). In 1931, he helped found the Group Theatre, which specialized in dramas with socially relevant and politically tinged messages. He appeared in the anti-war musical Johnny Johnson in 1936 and earned acclaim for his portrayal of Mr. Bonaparte in Golden Boy in 1937.
[edit] Film career
Later in 1937, after the Group Theatre disbanded, he went to Hollywood and made his motion-picture debut as Anatole France in The Life of Emile Zola. In 1943, he played a retired Norwegian school teacher, Sixtus Andresen, in the Warner Bros. anti-Nazi film Edge of Darkness starring Errol Flynn. Carnovsky portrayed Papa Morris Gershwin in Rhapsody in Blue in 1945. In Dead Reckoning (1947), starring Humphrey Bogart, he played a villainous nightclub owner named Martinelli. In 1950, he portrayed Le Bret in Cyrano de Bergerac starring José Ferrer. Later that year, he played Dr. Raymond Hartley in the mystery The Second Woman. This would be his last Hollywood film for almost two decades.
[edit] Hollywood blacklist
His screen career abruptly ended during the 1950’s when Carnovsky, along with his actress wife, Phoebe Brand, went before the House Un-American Activities Committee after they had been named by director Elia Kazan as communists. They refused to "name names" themselves and were subsequently blacklisted by Hollywood. He was, however, invited by actor John Houseman to join the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, in 1956 where he appeared in many Shakespearean plays, including the three he considered his best, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice with Katherine Hepburn as Portia, as Prospero in The Tempest, and as King Lear (the role he first played in 1962 and subsequently repeated across the country). He later he appeared in a few more motion pictures: Vu du pont in 1962 (Sidney Lumet's adaptation of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge) and The Gambler in 1974, starring James Caan.
He was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1979. Morris Carnovsky died in Easton, Connecticut, on September 1, 1992, at the age of 94 (four days before his 95th birthday) from natural causes. His wife, Phoebe Brand, died on July 3, 2004, at the age of 96 from pneumonia. The couple had a son, Stephen Carnovsky.
