Background

John Cullum was born on March 2, 1930, in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States.

Education

Cullum attended Knoxville High School and graduated from the University of Tennessee with a bachelor's degree in speech. He also was a member of a winning tennis team.

Career

After studies at the University of Tennessee, John Cullum made his first appearance on Broadway in 1960 at the Majestic Theatre, playing Sir Dinadan in the original cast of Lerner and Loewe's Camelot, alongside Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and Robert Goulet. As an understudy for Burton, he played King Arthur on a few occasions. Continuing his association with Burton, Cullum played Laertes in John Gielgud's 1964 production of Hamlet at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, in which Burton played the title role.

Already in 1966, Cullum landed a starring role in a Broadway musical, playing Dr. Mark Bruckner in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever by Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner.

In the later 1960s and early 1970s, he starred in the musicals Man of La Mancha as Don Quixote and 1776, in which he played Edward Rutledge, a part he reprised in the 1972 film version. He also played Lord Bothwell in Robert Bolt's play Vivat! Vivat Regina!

In 1975 he once again took center stage, starring in the original Broadway production of Shenandoah, a hit musical (based on the Jimmy Stewart film of the same name) by Gary Geld and Peter Udell. The production enjoyed a total of 1,050 performances. He is featured on the original Broadway cast recording.

He starred in 1976 in the short-lived Kings, a Sophoclean drama adapted by Cullum and his wife Emily Frankel. The following year he starred in The Trip Back Down, a play by John Bishop.

Starring opposite Madeline Kahn and Imogene Coca, Cullum returned to musical comedy in On the Twentieth Century (1978), by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, playing Broadway producer Oscar Jaffee.

Returning to plays, Cullum starred in the Broadway premieres of David Wiltse's Doubles (1985), playing opposite Ron Leibman, and Bernard Sabath's The Boys in Autumn (1986), a two-man play in which his onstage partner was George C. Scott.

Cullum kept busy with stage work throughout the 1990s, and in 2001 played in Urinetown, a musical by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis.

More recently, Cullum played opposite Audra McDonald in the 2007 Broadway revival of 110 in the Shade (by N. Richard Nash, Harvey Schmidt, and Tom Jones), and he assumed the title role in Shakespeare's Cymbeline at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre in 2007-2008. He appeared in a new musical drama by Kander and Ebb, The Scottsboro Boys.

Notable off-Broadway stage performances include Arthur Miller's All My Sons, Cullum's UK debut in Miller's Mr. Peter's Connections, Wasserstein's Old Money, the erotic chamber musical Wilder (by Erin Cressida Wilson, Jack Herrick, and Mike Craver), Neil Simon's Rose's Dilemma, Michael Murphy's Sin: A Cardinal Deposed, and the musical Candide at Lincoln Center.

While the stage has dominated Cullum's career, he is also a familiar presence on television, having appeared in such series as Northern Exposure, ER, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Mad Men, Madam Secretary, The Blacklist. His films include The Prodigal, Sweet Country, Inherit the Wind, Held Up, and Blackwater Elegy.

Achievements

• John Cullum is a two-time Tony Award winner, best known for his Emmy-nominated portrayal of Holling Vincoeur on television's Northern Exposure.
  
  In 1966 he gained his first Tony nomination as the lead in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, in which he introduced the title song, and more recently received Tony nominations for Urinetown The Musical and as Best Featured Actor in the revival of 110 in the Shade. Some of his other notable roles included tavern owner Holling Vincoeur in the television drama series Northern Exposure, gaining an Emmy Award nomination.
  
  In 2007 John Cullum was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame.
  
  In 2015, the American Theatre of Actors and The Araca Group renamed their largest off-Broadway venue, the theater at 54th Street in Manhattan, as the John Cullum Theater.
  
  University of Tennessee Knoxville Chancellor Bill Snyder presented Cullum with the Founder's Day Medal in 1998. He was named a Distinguished Alumnus in 2010 and given the Clarence Brown Theatre Artistic Excellence Award at the theater's annual gala in 2015.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Held Up

    (What should have been a romantic getaway turns into one h...)

    1999
  • Love Is Strange

    (After Ben and George get married, George is fired from hi...)

    2014
  • Inherit the Wind

    (In the 1920s, Tennessee schoolteacher Bertram Cates (Dick...)

    1999
  • The Notorious Bettie Page

    (The naive Bettie Page aspires to become an actress but en...)

    2006
  • The Night Listener

    (Gabriel Noone (Robin Williams), a writer and host of a la...)

    2006
  • The Conspirator

    (Following the assassination of President Lincoln, seven m...)

    2011
  • The Prodigal

    (The Stuart family has been fuming with internal conflicts...)

    193
  • They Call Me Trinity

    (They Call Me Trinity is a Spaghetti Western comedy spoof ...)

    1971
  • Hawaii

    (After getting married to beautiful Jerusha, Abner Hale, a...)

    1966
  • Kilimanjaro

    (After his girlfriend moves out, a man (Brian Geraghty) de...)

    2013
  • Kill Your Darlings

    (In 1944, young Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) has a ri...)

    2013
  • 1776

    (A musical retelling of the American Revolution's politica...)

    1972
  • All The Way Home

    (In the early 1900's Tennessee, a loving family undergoes ...)

    1963
  • Christine

    (In Sarasota, Florida, circa 1974, an ambitious, 29-year-o...)

    2016
  • Adult World

    (A recent college graduate and aspiring poet takes a job a...)

    2013
  • Before We Go

    (Nick, a street musician, meets Brooke in the subway when ...)

    2014
  • Ricochet River

    (High school sweethearts Wade and Lorna spend their days d...)

    1988
  • Hamlet 1964

• TV series

  • Madam Secretary

    (Having left her job as a CIA analyst for ethical reasons,...)

    2017
  • Northern Exposure

    (Following the misadventures of a transplanted New York Ci...)

    1990
  • Mad Men

    (Donald Draper, the creative director at Sterling Cooper i...)

    2007
  • The Middle

    (Frances Heck is a middle-class, married woman and mother ...)

    2009
  • Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

    (Rescued after 15 years in a cult, Kimmy Schmidt decides t...)

    2015
  • The Good Wife

    (Alicia Florrick deals with life and caring for her two ch...)

    2013
  • Law & Order

    (Filmed on location in New York, the drama showcases the s...)

    2001
  • Nurse Jackie

    (Jackie Peyton, an emergency room nurse addicted to drugs,...)

    2013
  • ER

    (Set in Chicago, this medical drama deals with the persona...)

    1997
  • Quantum Leap

    (Former scientist Sam Beckett finds himself trapped in tim...)

    1989
  • Touched by an Angel

    (Monica, Tess, and Andrew are angels sent on Earth to help...)

    1997
  • The Blacklist

    (A wanted fugitive mysteriously surrenders himself to the ...)

    2019
  • 30 Rock

    (Liz Lemon, head writer of a sketch comedy show, has to de...)

    2012
  • Law & Order - Special Victims Unit

    (A special victims unit of NYPD detectives solve cases bas...)

    2003

Interests

• Sport & Clubs

  Tennis

Connections

John married Emily Frankel in 1959. The couple has a son.

Wife:

Emily Cullum

colleague:

George C. Scott

colleague:

Madeline Kahn

colleague:

Imogene Coca

colleague:

Audra McDonald