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In Remembrance: Darren McGavin
Darren McGavin, the husky voice actor who played the irrasciable
father in the holiday favorite A Christmas Story (1983), has
passed away on February 25, 2006 in Los Angeles, CA. He was 83.
Born on May 7,
1922 in Spokane, Washington, McGavin was reluctant to discuss his
childhood in interviews, though he would intimate he was a frequent
runaway and had run-ins with the law. After a year at College of the
Pacific in Stockton, California, McGavin headed to Los Angeles,
landing a job as a set painter at Columbia Studios. It was while
working on the sets for the 1945 musical A Song To Remember
when an agent informed him of an opening for a small role in the
film. McGavin promptly put down his paintbrush and washed up at a
nearby gas station before returning to the studio with the agent to
audition. He won the part, though his studio foreman fired him from
his set painting job.
McGavin
appeared in small, uncredited roles in a few more films at Columbia
before heading to New York to study at the Neighborhood Theater and
then at the Actor’s Studio. He also appeared in several off-Broadway
productions and in a touring production of Death Of A Salesman.
In 1951, McGavin landed his first television role, the lead in Crime
Photographer, a mystery series based on the popular pulp and radio
series character Casey, Crime Photographer. Over the course
of his career, McGavin would also star in the series Mike Hammer
(1956-1959), Riverboat (1959-1961), The Outsider
(1968) and the cult favorite Kolchak: The Night Stalker
(1974-1975) as well as make numerous guest appearances on numerous
series.
Although he
worked primarily in television, he appeared in several motion
pictures over the course of his career including the Frank Sinatra
drama The Man With The Golden Arm, The Court-Martial Of
Billy Mitchell (both 1955), the Jerry Lewis comedy The
Delicate Delinquent (1957), the Audie Murphy western Bullet For
A Bad Man (1964), the comedy No Deposit, No Return (1976),
Airport `77 and the baseball story The Natural (1984).
But it was in The Christmas Story that McGavin found his most
recognizable role as The Old Man, the grouchy father of the film’s
lead character Ralphie.
His last film
appearance was in the 1999 comedy Pros And Cons. |
