In many ways the most successful and familiar character actor of American sound films and the only actor to date to win three Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, Walter Brennan attended college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studying engineering. While in school he became interested in acting and performed in school plays. He worked some in vaudeville and also in various jobs such as clerking in a bank and as a lumberjack. He toured in small musical comedy companies before entering the military in 1917. After his war service he went to Guatemala and raised pineapples, then migrated to Los Angeles, where he speculated in real estate. A few jobs as a film extra came his way beginning in 1923, then some work as a stuntman. He eventually achieved speaking roles, going from bit parts to substantial supporting parts in scores of features and short subjects between 1927 and 1938. In 1936 his role in Come and Get It won him the very first Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. He would win it twice more in the decade, and be nominated for a fourth. His range was enormous. He could play sophisticated businessmen, con artists, local yokels, cowhands and military officers with apparent equal ease. An accident in 1932 cost him most of his teeth, and he most often was seen in eccentric rural parts, often playing characters much older than his actual age. His career never really declined, and in the 1950s he became an even more endearing and familiar figure in several television series, most famously The Real McCoys. He died in 1974 of emphysema, a beloved figure in movies and TV, the target of countless comic impressionists, and one of the best and most prolific actors of his time.
First actor to accumulate three Academy Awards and to date still the only actor to win three Oscars as Best Supporting Actor. Daughter: Ruth Brennan Sons: Arthur Wells 'Mike' Brennan and Andy Brennan. Interred at San Fernando Mission Cemetery, San Fernando, Los Angeles County, California, USA Had four top 100 singles, including the Top 5 hit "Old Rivers" (Liberty Records) which first charted on April 7, 1962. The single spent 11 weeks on the Billboard charts and peaked at number 5. He won the first ever Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Come and Get It. Inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1970. His relatives still live in and around Joseph, Oregon where the actor maintained a functioning ranch. Owned a ranch and several businesses in Joseph, Oregon, including the Indian Lodge Motel which still displays several of his portraits in the office. Hardly ever played the villain, usually being cast as the somewhat eccentric pal to the hero. An exception was his turn as the heartless Old Man Clanton in My Darling Clementine, directed by the prickly John Ford. Ford and Brennan did not get along, and Ford was one of the few directors Brennan didn't collaborate with more than once throughout his career. Always fiscally conservative, he became politically active in later life when he saw many of the things he held dear being eroded by the counterculture movement. He supported George Wallace's presidential campaign in 1968 and in 1972 supported extreme right-wing Republican Representative John Schmitz, as the incumbent President Richard Nixon was viewed as too progressive by many Republicans. After his military service during World War I, Brennan moved to Los Angeles, where he got involved in the real-estate market and made a fortune. Unfortunately the market took a sudden downturn and Brennan lost almost all of his money. Broke, he began taking bit parts in films in order to earn money, and his career progressed from there.