George Macready
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George Macready (August 29, 1908 – July 2, 1973) was a movie actor with a distinctive scar (from an auto accident) that helped him land roles as an aristocratic villain.
Macready was born in Providence, Rhode Island and graduated from Brown University. He was an art collector, and claimed to be a descendant of the 19th-century Shakespearean actor William Macready. He established a profitable Los Angeles art gallery with his friend and fellow actor Vincent Price during the 1940s. His movies include A Kiss Before Dying (1956), Vera Cruz (1954), The Big Clock (1948), and, maybe most famously, as sexually ambivalent casino owner Ballin Mundson in Gilda (1946). He also made a one-scene appearance as Flavius in the opening scene of MGM's Julius Caesar, the critically acclaimed 1953 film version of Shakespeare's play, in which Marlon Brando played Marc Antony.
However, some film aficionados consider his best role to be the fanatical French general from World War I he played in Stanley Kubrick's classic, Paths of Glory, where he ordered his artillery to fire on his own troops when they failed to take an impossible objective.
Later in his career, Macready appeared in many television programs. He portrayed the character of Martin Peyton in the television series Peyton Place (1965-1968). Probably one of the most sympathetic characters he ever played was FDR's first Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, in the 1970 Pearl Harbor film Tora! Tora! Tora!.
Macready died from emphysema in 1973.
