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In Remembrance: Darren McGavin
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. |
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.