Adolphe Jean Menjou

Background

Adolphe Jean Menjou was born on February 18, 1890 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Jean Adolphe ("Albert") Menjou, who had emigrated from France and become a restaurateur, and Nora Joyce, an immigrant from Ireland. After the birth of a second son in 1891, Menjou's parents opened a restaurant in Pittsburgh. Since both parents worked, the two children were cared for by their paternal grandmother. When the restaurant failed in 1897, the family moved to Cleveland.

Education

Menjou attended St. Joseph's Seminary, Rockwell Public School, and East High School. He played hookey in high school in order to perform as a supernumerary in the Euclid Avenue Opera House. When his father discovered it, he sent Menjou to the Culver Military Academy for the 1906-1907 term. Wanting him to attend Cornell University and eventually become an engineer, Albert Menjou enrolled his son in the Stiles University Preparatory School in Ithaca, New York. In 1908, Menjou began studying engineering at Cornell but soon transferred to the College of Liberal Arts. At the end of his junior year he returned to Cleveland, where he worked in his father's restaurant.

Career

In 1912 Menjou moved to New York City to become an actor. Since he could not secure steady employment as an actor, he worked on a farm and in a haberdashery, and at other jobs. During this time he obtained some work as an extra at the New York movie studios. He first appeared as a ringmaster in The Man Behind the Door (1914), a film produced at the Vitagraph studio. In 1915 he helped his father open a restaurant on Long Island but soon left this venture to look again for acting roles. He got a small part in A Parisian Romance (1916) for $100 a week. Later, he played minor roles in a number of films. When the United States declared war on Germany, Menjou enlisted in the army. He served in an ambulance unit in France in 1918, eventually rising to the rank of captain. After the war he briefly abandoned acting to become production manager in A. J. Van Buren's motion picture company. He found this position unsuitable and traveled to Hollywood in 1920 with his bride, Katherine Tinsley. After several months of disappointment, he eventually obtained a role as a reporter in a Mabel Normand film. He then had minor roles in The Faith Healer (1921), Through the Back Door (1921), The Three Musketeers (1921), The Sheik (1921), The Fast Mail (1922), The Eternal Flame (1922), Arabian Love (1922), and Bella Donna (1923). His first starring role came in 1923 when he played a wealthy Frenchman in Charlie Chaplin's A Woman of Paris. The reviews were laudatory, and job offers subsequently came easily. Menjou's roles in the sophisticated comedies of this period established his image as the suave, well-dressed man with the elegant waxed moustache.

He was earning $7, 500 a week, but the new talking pictures put his career in jeopardy. When his contract was not renewed in 1929, Menjou went to Paris and appeared in Mon Gosse de Père (1930). In 1930 he returned to Hollywood, where his fluency in various languages allowed him to play in foreign-language films. The turning point in Menjou's career occurred in 1930 when he replaced an actor who had became seriously ill during the filming of The Front Page (1931). Menjou then acted in A Farewell to Arms (1932), Little Miss Marker (1934), Sing, Baby, Sing (1936), and A Star Is Born (1937). During World War II Menjou traveled with the United Service Organizations in England, North Africa, and Sicily, and worked for the Office of War Information, making broadcasts in Italian, French, Russian, Spanish, and German. After the war Menjou played important supporting roles in State of the Union (1948), Man on a Tightrope (1953), and Paths of Glory (1957). He was also the host for My Favorite Story, a television series. In 1960 he played a disheveled eccentric in Walt Disney's Pollyanna, an unusual role for this debonair actor with the reputation as one of the world's "ten best-dressed men. " Menjou was a member of the John Birch Society. In 1947 he named alleged Communists in the film industry before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In 1962 he made his last public appearances as a guest on the Merv Griffin and Johnny Carson television shows. When he died in Beverly Hills, California, he was considered to be one of the wealthiest men in Hollywood.

Achievements

• Menjou had appeared in more than two hundred films. His performance as the editor in The Front Page earned him an Academy Award nomination. For his contributions to the motion picture industry, Menjou has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6826 Hollywood Boulevard.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Comedy Classics Gift Set

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  • One In A Million

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  • It Took Nine Tailors: An Autobiography

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  • Odsan Gallery Heartbeat, Ginger Rogers, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Adolphe Menjou, 1946 - Premium Movie Poster Reprint 28" by 42" Unframed

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  • Sonja Henie and Jean Hersholt and Adolphe Menjou in One in a Million 24x36 Poster

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  • Heartbeat by Ginger Rogers

    (A French diplomat falls for a recent graduate of a Paris ...)

  • Heartbeat

    (A French diplomat falls for a recent graduate of a Paris ...)

  • Friends and Lovers

    (Spain released, PAL/Region 0 DVD: it WILL NOT play on sta...)

  • Hollywood's Greatest Actresses

    (Hollywood's most famous actresses in 10 of their most mem...)

  • Ginger Rogers: Shriek in Night & Heartbeat VHS

Politics

An active Republican, he enthusiastically supported Richard M. Nixon in his campaign for the presidency in 1960.

Views

Quotations: "It was my mustache that landed jobs for me. In those silent-film days it was the mark of a villain. When I realized they had me pegged as a foreign nobleman type I began to live the part, too. I bought a pair of white spats, an ascot tie and a walking stick. "

"He has a heart of gold - only harder. "

"Aren't grown up people just little children at heart?"

"Clothes have always had a wonderful influence on my physical well-being as well as my self-assurance. All I have to do to make me feel like a new and younger man is to order three new suits of clothes. My fur-lined overcoat gave me such a glow of health that very shortly after acquiring it I was able to enjoy the hazards of a Gargantuan studio cocktail party without a single twinge of pain. "

"I'm a Red-baiter; I'm a witch-hunter if the witches are Communists. "

"My success has been as full of luck as a crapshooter's dream. "

Membership

a member of the John Birch Society

Connections

Menjou was first married to Katherine Tinsley. In 1927 Menjou divorced his first wife and married Kathryn Carver. In 1933 Menjou divorced his second wife and on August 25, 1934, he married Verree Teasdale; they adopted a son. Menjou had no children by his two previous marriages.

Father:

Jean Adolphe ("Albert") Menjou

Mother:

Nora Joyce

Wife:

Verree Teasdale

Wife:

Kathryn Carver

Wife:

Katherine Tinsley