In 1902, 16-year-old Wallace Beery joined the Ringling Brothers Circus as an assistant to the elephant trainer. He left two years later when a leopard clawed his arm. Beery next went to New York, where he found work in musical variety shows. He would become a leading man in musicals and appear on Broadway and in traveling stock companies. In 1913 he headed for Hollywood, where he would get his start as the hulking Swedish maid in the "Sweedie" comedy series for Essanay. In 1915 he would work with a young ingénue by the name of Gloria Swanson in Sweedie Goes to College. A year later they would marry and be wildly unhappy together. The marriage dissolved when Beery could not control his drinking and Gloria got tired of being black and blue. Beery finished with the Sweedie series and worked as the heavy in a number of films. Starting with Patria, he would play the beastly Hun in a number of films. In the 1920s he would be seen in a number of adventures, including The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk and The Pony Express. He would also play the part of Poole in So Big, which was based on the best-selling book of the same name. Paramount would start to move Beery back into comedies with Behind the Front. When sound came, Beery was one of the victims of the wholesale studio purge. He had a voice that would record well, but his speech was slow and his tone was a deep, folksy, down home-type. While not the handsome hero image, MGM executive Irving Thalberg saw something in Beery and hired him for the studio. Thalberg cast Beery in The Big House, which was a big hit and got Beery an Academy Award nomination. However, Beery would become almost a household word with the release of the sentimental Min and Bill, which would be one of 1930's top money makers. The next year Beery would win the Oscar for Best Actor in The Champ. He would be forever remembered as Long John Silver in Treasure Island (who says never work with kids?). Beery became one of the top ten stars in Hollywood, as he was cast as the tough, dim-witted, easy-going type (which, in real life, he was anything but). In Flesh he would be the dim-witted wrestler who did not figure that his wife was unfaithful. In Dinner at Eight he played a businessman trying to get into society while having trouble with his wife. After Marie Dressler died in 1934, he would not find another partner in the same vein as his early talkies until he teamed with Marjorie Main in the 1940s. He would appear opposite her in such films as Wyoming and Barnacle Bill. By that time his career was slowing as he was getting up in age. He continued to work, appearing in only one or two pictures a year, until he died from a heart attack in 1949.


That Night (1917): $50/week

Brother of actor William Beery and Noah Beery. Uncle of actor Noah Beery Jr.. Reports that Wallace and Noah were half-brothers are false; all three brothers were born to Noah W. Beery and Marguerite Fitzgerald Beery, according to U.S. census records. Ex-wife Rita Gilman, their daughter Carol Ann, his nephew Noah Beery Jr., and brother William Beery were all with him at the time of his death. Interred at Forest Lawn (Glendale), Glendale, California, USA, in the Vale of Memory section, lot #2157-9808. Brother of actor William Beery. In the summer of 1941, he was billed by MGM as the "champion movie location commuter," the studio estimating that he had journeyed more than 100,000 miles to make pictures. According to studio records, Beery covered 15,000 miles in Mexico alone while filming Viva Villa! (1934). Reportedly extremely difficult to get along with and completely lacking in any sort of manners or refinement. Beery's ex-wife, Gloria Swanson, once remarked that he had been invited to every fashionable home in Beverly Hills - once!. Died on the Queen Mary ship. Was transported to New York & placed in a hotel to avoid bad publicity. When the Academy Awards were first presented, the winners were announced ahead of the ceremony, partly with the hope the recipients would show up to collect their award. When it was announced that the winner of the 1931 prize for best actor went to Fredric March, Beery reportedly stormed the office of Louis Meyer, demanding he be given the award instead. The result was a "tie" for Best Actor that year. From then on, the Oscar votes were tabulated by Price Waterhouse, and the winners announced at the ceremony. Died at age of 64 from a heart attack, at the same age and from the same condition that caused the death of his older brother, Noah Beery, three years earlier. Elder brother, William Beery, died just eight months later on Christmas day. All three passed away in Beverly Hills.