Background
Lew Ayres was born on 28 December 1908 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States.
Lew Ayres was born on 28 December 1908 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States.
He studied medicine at the University of Arizona.
A versatile musician, he was spotted by Paul Bern—then at Pathe—and given a small part in The Sophomore (29, Leo MeCarey). Bern moved to MGM and hired Ayres to play opposite Garbo in The Kiss (29, Jacques Feyder). On the strength of this, he was signed up by Universal to play the young soldier sickened by war in All Quiet on the Western Front (30, Lewis Milestone).
For a few years Avres remained at the top, only gradually undermined by his sheer boyishness: Doorway to Hell (30, Archie Mayo); Common Clay (30, Victor Fleming); East Is West (30, Tod Browning); The Iron Man (31, Browning); The Impatient Maiden (32, James Whale); Night World (32, W. S. Van Dyke); Okay America (32, Tay Garnett); and State Fair (33, Henry King).
Soon after this, Universal let him go to Fox, and he found himself in B pictures. One of them, Hearts in Bondage (36) at Republic, he even directed himself.
He worked with hectic energy, but hardly anything memorable survived until in 1938 he was put with Cukor, Grant, and Hepburn in Holiday, and produced a beautiful performance. MGM retrieved him and gave him some vacuously jolly parts before launching him as Dr. Kildare. With Lionel Barrymore as Dr. Gillespie and Laraine Day as his sweetheart, Avres made nine Kildare pictures in three years and became the idol of national hypochondria. But then he chose to display in life some of the humane feelings he was most admired for on-screen: he became a conscientious objector—and suffered a fierce boycott.
He did not work again until Robert Siodmak’s The Dark Mirror (46). He was good in The Unfaithful (47, Vincent Sherman) and a doctor again for Johnny Belinda (48, Jean Neguleseo). But after The Capture (49, John Sturges), New Mexico (50, Irving Reis), and No Escape (53, Charles Bennett), he retired to make a personal, religious documentary, Altars of the East. There was another interval before Preminger recalled him to the highest office, after which he made only The Carpetbaggers (64, Edward Dmvtrvk); Battlestar: Galactica (79, Richard A. Colla); Letters from Frank (79, Edward Parone); Salem’s Lot (79, Tobe Hooper); Of Mice and Men (81, Reza Badiyi); Under Siege (86, Roger Young); and Cast the First Stone (89, John Korty).
The moment in Advise and Consent (62, Otto Preminger) when Vice President Lew Ayres (still youthful-looking, honest, and likeable) is elevated by the death of Franchot Tone to the biggest opportunity is both touching and ironic—one of those barely visible barbs that Preminger liked to leave in his films.
Twice, he rose and fell; and still he remained decent and reasonable. It is not clear what special drive or ruthlessness he lacked or what led him from stardom into dreadful B pictures. But there went with it a calm that apparently enabled him to live through so much disappointment.