Background

Michael Rennie, born Eric Alexander Rennie, was born on 25 August 1909 in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, the son of James Rennie and Edith White. He had two brothers and a sister.

Education

He was educated at Oatlands Preparatory School in Harrogate and entered Leys College, Cambridge University, in 1927. There he won prizes for rowing, swimming, boxing, wrestling, fencing, and cricket. He graduated from Cambridge with a B. A. in 1931.

Career

He worked briefly at British Ropes, his uncle's steel rope factory.

He then worked as an automobile salesman, also without success. In his third and final attempt at the business world, he worked for a brief period in his parents' wool business, which had been in family hands for 150 years. Bitten by the acting bug unexpectedly in 1935, he hitchhiked to London with little money in his pocket and took a job at Gaumont-British film studios.

Lacking any acting experience, Rennie worked for a year on both sides of the camera for minimal compensation. Recognizing his limitations, he abandoned film to join the Yorkshire stock company, where he honed his talents with classical theater training.

In 1938, Rennie starred as Professor Henry Higgins in the York Repertory Company's production of Pygmalion at Wakefield. Rennie went back in front of the cameras in the movie Bank Holiday (1938).

After England entered World War II, he performed in a number of patriotic potboilers, including Ships with Wings and Suicide Squadron (both 1942). He joined the Royal Air Force as a flying officer in 1943 and went on to train American pilots in Georgia and Florida. He was invalided out of the service in 1944 and returned to making films in England. His first starring roles were in I'll Be Your Sweetheart (1945) and The Wicked Lady (1945), both opposite Margaret Lockwood. Soon his fan mail was running toward four thousand letters per week.

He was signed by producer Maurice Ostrer to a five-year contract for £300, 000, then the biggest contract ever offered to a British film actor.

In 1950, Rennie got a contract with Twentieth Century-Fox and moved to Hollywood.

He starred in the cult classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). His highly acclaimed portrayal of a sympathetic extraterrestrial bent on saving mankind from the follies of nuclear war inverted most of the myths of the 1950's science fiction genre and won him legions of fans.

He went on to play memorable roles in Les Misérables (1952), The Robe (1953), King of the Khyber Rifles (1953), and The Lost World (1960), among others. One role that he did not enjoy was that of corespondent in Otto Preminger's 1958 divorce from former model Mary Gardner. Rennie, who had an enviable reputation for dating Hollywood starlets, claimed that he and Gardner were not romantically involved.

Altogether, Rennie appeared in almost one hundred motion pictures. However, his greatest success, which made him a household name, was in playing debonair international financier and amateur detective Harry Lime in "The Third Man. " The Anglo-American production was broadcast on both NBC and the BBC from 1959 to 1962. One of the most popular television series ever made, it bore no relation to the Graham Greene-Carol Reed film on which it was supposedly based. Rennie became an American citizen in 1960 and offended British propriety by criticizing his native land. He said his countrymen were brought up "almost brainwashed - with the idea that England is the only place in the world and the only thing to be is an Englishman. " In 1961, he made his debut on the Broadway stage in the comedy Mary, Mary, by Jean Kerr.

Although in his later years he accepted roles in films of dubious quality, such as The Missile from Hell (1960), Cyborg 2087 (1966), and Assignment Terror (1970), they complemented critically successful films such as Hotel (1967) and The Devil's Brigade (1968). Regardless of any one film's quality, his performance in it was invariably superlative.

Suffering from emphysema, he died of a heart attack while visiting his mother in London in 1971.

Achievements

• He is best remembered for his starring role as the space visitor Klaatu in the science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). In a career spanning more than 30 years, Rennie appeared in more than 50 films and in several American television series.

Works

More photos

• book

  • 2 Film Collection (Les Misérables 1935 / Les Misérables 1952) DVD

    (Les Misérables (1935) Victor Hugo's most acclaimed novel ...)

  • The Tower Of Terror Blu-ray

    (Quick Shipping !!! New And Sealed !!! This Disc WILL NOT ...)

  • Day the Earth Stood Blu-ray

    (Directed by Robert Wise. Starring Patricia Neal, Michael ...)

  • Demetrius and the Gladiators VHS

    (In good condition. Has been sitting on a shelf for a deca...)

  • Titanic VHS

  • book

Views

Quotations: "You're never too old to be young, and never too young to be old. "

"Turn strategy into simple language so every staff member knows it. People must understand why you are doing, what you are doing and where you are going. Big almost impossible, highly meaningful goal + respectful & supportive team is the winning combination of fear & love. Meaning is the biggest sources of energy that gets you up in the morning. "

"Business is the most powerful institution on earth today. It is more powerful than politics. Business serves us very well in some ways, but it doesn't serve us as fully as it should; it doesn't serve us fully as people. "

Personality

Rennie looked like a movie star. Despite his provincial background, he had a "mid-Atlantic" accent and did not sound as distinctly "English" as many British actors. Fellow RAF officers thought he was Canadian. At six feet, four inches in height (which reportedly made him the tallest man in British film), a lean 185 pounds, and with piercing green eyes and an insolent hawklike face, the Yorkshireman radiated smooth confidence, sophisticated charm, effortless grace, and strength. Oddly enough, he never played a traditional romantic lead in his long Hollywood career.

Connections

He was married first to Joan England. On October 1, 1946, he married actress Margaret McGrath; they had one son. But their marriage was strained by the fact that he adored Hollywood and she detested it. They separated in 1955 and were divorced in 1960.

He then married Mary Gardner. They had no children and later divorced.

He had a son, John Marshall, with his longtime friend and mistress, Renée (née Gilbert), whose later married name was Taylor.

Father:

James Rennie

Mother:

Edith White

Spouse:

Joan England

Spouse:

Mary Gardner

Spouse:

Margaret McGrath

Son:

John Marshall Rennie

Son:

David Rennie