Background
Wallace Beery was born on April 1, 1885, in Kansas City, Missouri, the youngest of the three sons of Noah Webster Beery, a policeman, and Margaret (Fitzgerald) Beery.
(In this adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic ad...)
In this adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure novel, young Jim Hawkins (Jackie Cooper) finds a treasure map and sets sail for a tropical island to find the riches--aboard a ship captained by pirate Long John Silver (Wallace Beery), who is eager to doublecross the boy and steal the buried treasure. When sold by Amazon.com, this product will be manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.
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(An American silent film classic, Beggars of Life (1928) s...)
An American silent film classic, Beggars of Life (1928) stars Louise Brooks as a train-hopping hobo who dresses like a boy to survive. After escaping her violent stepfather, Nancy (Brooks) befriends kindly drifter Jim (Richard Arlen). They ride the rails together until a fateful encounter with the blustery Oklahoma Red (Wallace Beery) and his rambunctious band of hoboes, leading to daring, desperate conflict on top of a moving train. Based on the memoir of real-life hobo Jim Tully, and directed with adventuresome verve by William Wellman (The Ox-Bow Incident), Beggars of Life is an essential American original. Special Features: Digitally restored from 35mm film elements preserved by the George Eastman Museum | Audio commentary by actor William Wellman, Jr. | Audio commentary by Thomas Gladysz, founding director of the Louise Brooks Society | Booklet essay by film critic Nick Pinkerton | Musical score compiled and performed by The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, employing selections from the original 1928 Paramount cue-sheet
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( When sold by Amazon.com, this product will be manufactu...)
When sold by Amazon.com, this product will be manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.
https://www.amazon.com/Viva-Villa-Wallace-Beery/dp/B00X3DC7V6?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00X3DC7V6
Wallace Beery was born on April 1, 1885, in Kansas City, Missouri, the youngest of the three sons of Noah Webster Beery, a policeman, and Margaret (Fitzgerald) Beery.
A husky child, poor at schoolwork, Wallace chafed under the nickname "Jumbo" given him by his schoolmates and under the piano lessons imposed by his mother. In his early teens he ran away from home, and though he soon returned, he never went back to school.
Wallace joined the Forepaugh-Sells circus as an elephant handler and later became the head elephant trainer for the Ringling Brothers circus. While with the circus, Beery learned some dance steps and developed an interest in acting. On the advice of his brother Noah, who had embarked on a stage career in musical comedy, he left the circus in 1904 and secured a job in the chorus of the musical comedy company of Henry W. Savage in New York. Among the productions in which he appeared were Babes in Toyland, The Prince of Pilsen, and The Student King. Between engagements with Savage, he worked in Midwestern summer stock.
Beery’s first break came in 1907 when he temporarily replaced the popular musical star Raymond Hitchcock in A Yankee Tourist. It was at this time that he began to develop the jowly face and burly figure that the film camera was later to make internationally famous. As early as 1908 Beery worked as a movie extra in New Rochelle, New York. In 1913, after closing in Chicago with The Balkan Princess, he left the stage and signed with a Chicago film-producing company, Essanay, to write and direct. In his first Essanay film he played the comic role of a Swedish housemaid, the effectiveness of the impersonation owing much to his six-foot-one-inch height and 250-pound bulk. So successful was the picture that Beery made an extended series of "Sweedie" films, as well as many other Essanay comedies. Among the actors in the company were Ben Turpin and sixteen-year-old Gloria Swanson.
In 1915 G. M. "Bronco Billy" Anderson, co-founder of Essanay, sent Beery to Niles, California, to manage a new studio. This was not successful, however, and the next year Beery went to Hollywood, where he found work as an actor and director at Universal Pictures. From Universal he moved to Keystone. Beery's career was now at a standstill. He was rescued from neglect by the director Marshall Neilan who cast him as a vicious German in the war picture The Unpardonable Sin (1919). Thus after years of comedy Beery became a leading screen villain. In the early 1920's he acted for many major Hollywood studios, appearing in such popular films as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), with Rudolph Valentino, and Robin Hood (1922), with Douglas Fairbanks.
In 1925 Beery began a five-year association with Paramount Pictures during which he made, among other films, a series of comedies with Raymond Hatton. Lacking confidence in Beery's ability to achieve popularity in sound pictures, Paramount dropped him in 1929. This, as it turned out, was the making of his fortune, for he went at once to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he soon developed into a major attraction. Under M-G-M guidance, Beery adopted the screen image of a lovable low character, often drunk and even dangerous, but at the same time warmly human. With his large frame, he was convincing as the convict who leads a prison uprising in The Big House (1930), a down-and-out prizefighter in The Champ (1931), a champion wrestler in Flesh (1932), and a Mexican revolutionary leader in Viva Villa! (1934). Co-starring with Marie Dressler, whose waning career had also been saved by M-G-M, he played in two popular comedies of rowdy middle-aged affection, Min and Bill (1930) and Tugboat Annie (1933). When permitted, Beery proved that he could still portray the villain effectively, as in the all-star Grand Hotel (1932) and Dinner at Eight (1933). A good performer with children, he was teamed repeatedly with M-G-M's numerous child stars and was especially successful with Jackie Cooper in The Champ and Treasure Island (1934) and with Mickey Rooney in Stablemates (1938).
In his last decade, the spell of his gruff manner and rasping voice began to fade. The studio's attempts to sustain his popularity by casting him with new juvenile actors and the character actress Marjorie Main did not fulfill expectations. In 1949, shortly after the completion of Big Jack with Miss Main, he died at his Beverly Hills home of a long-standing heart ailment. He was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. He left an estate reported to be in excess of $2 million. Though an uneven actor, Beery made an important contribution to the screen in the 1930's.
(In this adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic ad...)
(An American silent film classic, Beggars of Life (1928) s...)
( When sold by Amazon.com, this product will be manufactu...)
Beery enjoyed the outdoor life in his leisure hours and owned ranches in Wyoming and Idaho. Though one Hollywood historian has described him as "petty, testy, and mean" off screen, he was a devoted family man.
Wallace Beery married Gloria Swanson in February 1916 and divorced about two years later. On August 4, 1924, he married Mary Arieta Gilman, known as Rita Gilman, an actress whom he had met during the filming of Robin Hood; they adopted a daughter, Carol Ann. Beery and his second wife were divorced in 1939.