Background

Born on September 17, 1928 in London, England, Roddy McDowall was the son of aspiring Irish actress Winifriede Corcoran and Scottish merchant seaman Thomas Andrew McDowall. Roddy became interested in acting at age nine.

Education

Roddy McDowall attended St. Joseph's College, a Roman Catholic secondary school in London. He also studied acting with Mira Rostova and David Craig.

Career

Roddy became interested in acting at age nine and appeared in the 1938 British film Murder in the Family with Jessica Tandy and Glynis Johns. By 1940, he had appeared in seventeen British films. In September 1940, McDowall traveled with his mother and sister to America to escape the World War II bombings of London by German planes. He appeared in his first Hollywood film Man Hunt in 1941. He then became one of the top child stars when he appeared in How Green Was My Valley.

In multiple films, McDowall appeared as the child version of characters played by major stars, such as Tyrone Power and Gregory Peck. Roddy McDowall's best-remembered child role came in 1943. He starred in Lassie Come Home with the collie dog of the title and an eleven-year-old Elizabeth Taylor. The film was a smash hit around the world.

When McDowall turned seventeen in 1945, the film company Twentieth-Century Fox let him go and told him that his film career was over. Undaunted, McDowall sought small roles in independent films like Orson Welles' 1948 adaptation of Macbeth. He also appeared in multiple "B" movies for Monogram Pictures.

McDowall left Hollywood in 1951 and went to New York to study stage acting. He appeared on early TV in anthology shows like Playhouse 90 and The Lux Video Theater that produced televised versions of stage plays. McDowall also performed on Broadway in the 1950s hit No Time for Sergeants and The Fighting Cock, which earned him a Tony Award in 1960. A film appearance in 1963's Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor earned McDowall a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He also appeared in the 1962 hit war movie The Longest Day. After resuming his film career, McDowall remained a familiar face on TV through the 1960s. He had notable roles in the Twilight Zone episode "People Are Alike All Over" and as the villain the Bookworm in Batman.

Roddy McDowall's film career surged in the late 1960s. He starred in Disney's 1967 hit The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin and the horror film It!. However, McDowall's most famous role came in 1968, when he co-starred with Charlton Heston in the original hit film of Planet of the Apes. The American Film Institute included the movie in its list of Top 100 Thrills. To play the sympathetic ape archaeologist Cornelius, McDowall spent hours in heavy prosthetic makeup. He also appeared in three sequel films. When Planet of the Apes became a TV series in 1974, McDowall received top billing playing the chimpanzee Galen.

After the success of Planet of the Apes, McDowall continued to act in a blend of Hollywood movies and TV shows. In 1971, he had another big Disney hit starring in Bedknobs and Broomsticks with Angela Lansbury. Through the rest of the 1970s, he became a beloved supporting actor in such hits as Funny Lady, Rabbit Test, and Black Hole. Among his TV appearances were cameos in Trapper John, M.D., Mork & Mindy, and The Love Boat.

McDowall had one more notable role in the 1980s. In 1985, he co-starred in the vampire comedy Fright Night as the TV host and reluctant vampire hunter Peter Vincent. McDowall appeared in the 1989 sequel Fright Night Part 2. The 1990s was another busy decade for McDowall. He appeared in a wide range of films and TV shows. He also delivered voice performances for animated shows like Batman: The Animated Series and films like A Bug's Life.

Widely respected in Hollywood, Roddy McDowall served on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Apart from acting and directing, McDowall was a reputed photographer who published five photography books featuring his co-stars and famous actors. He also was elected President of the Academy Foundation shortly before his death in 1998.

Achievements

• Roddy McDowall is remembered for his uniquely successful transition from child star to adult actor and his long, accomplished career in the film industry. His most popular works includes ‘Deadly Game’ (1991), ‘The New Lassie’ (1992), ‘Last Summer in the Hamptons’ (1995), and ‘Loss of Faith’ (1998). In December 1998, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) honored him for his acting career and critically acclaimed photography by naming its photo archive after him.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Double Exposure, Take Three

    (This collection of 100 photos of celebrities includes sho...)

    1992
  • Double Exposure Take Four

    (The award-winning actor turned photographer offers portra...)

    1993
  • Double Exposure, Take Two 1989

• movie

  • Dead of Winter

    (Academy Award Winner Mary Steenburgen (Melvin and Howard)...)

    1987
  • Circle of Iron

    (David Carradine, Christopher Lee, Roddy McDowall and Eli ...)

    1979
  • Dead Of Winter

    (Mary Steenburgen stars as an out-of-work actress who acco...)

    1987
  • Evil Under the Sun

    (Trying to find how a millionaire wound up with a phony di...)

    1982
  • Molly and Me

    (Molly (Fields), a poor struggling actress, decides to "pl...)

    1945
  • Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes

    (A talking chimpanzee in the distant future leads his fell...)

    1972
  • Mean Johnny Barrows

    (Former NFL star Fred Williamson (making his debut as a di...)

    1975
  • Mean Johnny Barrows

    (Former NFL star Fred Williamson (making his debut as a di...)

    1975
  • Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen

    (Famous detective, Charlie Chan is called out of retiremen...)

    1981
  • My Friend Flicka

    (My Friend Flicka recounts Mary O'Hara's sentimental story...)

    1943
  • The Legend Of Hell House

    (A millionaire hires a team of paranormal investigators to...)

    1973
  • Star Hunter

    (From a remote prison colony in space, a pair of ruthless ...)

    1998
  • Mirror Mirror 2: Raven Dance

    (A mysterious mirror is found hidden in a church orphanage...)

    1994
  • Lassie Come Home

    (The original adventure of a boy and his dog is considered...)

    1943
  • Unlikely Angel

    (Ruby Diamond (Dolly Parton), is a brassy & sassy lounge s...)

    1996
  • The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin

Politics

McDowall was a Democrat and was supportive of Adlai Stevenson's campaign during the 1952 presidential election.

Views

Quotations: "My whole life I've been trying to prove I'm not just yesterday."

"Intellectually, I'd love to play Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire". Can't you just imagine me down in the streets yelling, "Stella! Stella!". God, the critics would have a lot of fun with that one."

"I absolutely adore movies. Even bad ones. I don't like pretentious ones, but a good bad movie, you must admit, is great."

"All you can do is make a piece of product, sell it on its own terms, stand behind it and hope that people will go see it. If you try to be like something else or appeal to any given group, then you can very easily end up being gratuitous and imitative. There's not much to be gained by that and I think too much time is spent going around trying to be like someone else."

Membership

• Screen Actors Guild

• National Film Prestation Board

Personality

Roddy McDowall was self-effacing, a great listener, a loyal friend, and that rare thing, a person Hollywood people could open their hearts to without any tear of betrayal. A more sharply intelligent or adult man might have lacked his patience with so many self-centered neurotics. McDowall knew a lot and never breathed an unfair or improper word. Which is not to say that he was anything less than immensely helpful to biographers or researchers who wanted to do honest work on Hollywood people.

In a business marked by competitiveness and coldbloodedness, he was known as a man to be trusted. His sense of loyalty could be traced back to his earliest years, when he took heart and also a moral lesson from those idealistic films that first made his reputation.

Physical Characteristics: McDowall's announcement that he was suffering from terminal cancer a few weeks before he died rocked the film community.

Interests

• collecting film memorabilia

Connections

Roddy McDowall never married and said that his commitment was to his career, his friends and his voracious collecting of movie memorabilia. Many authors and friends have stated that he was possibly homosexual and refrained from speaking about it.

Father:

Thomas Andrew McDowall

Mother:

Winsfriede L. Corcoran

Sister:

Virginia McDowall

Friend:

Elizabeth Taylor

Friend:

Robert Lantz

Friend:

Peggy Ann Garner

Friend:

Maureen O'Hara

Friend:

Judy Garland

Friend:

Judy Holliday

Friend:

Katharine Hepburn

Friend:

Lauren Bacall

References

• The Moving Picture Boy: An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995
  1996
• Child and Youth Actors: Filmographies of Their Entire Careers, 1914-1985
  1988
• Those Endearing Young Charms: Child Performers of the Screen
  1971