Raymond Massey

Early life

Massey was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Anna (née Vincent), who was American-born, and Chester Daniel Massey, the wealthy owner of the Massey-Harris Tractor Company and son of Hart Massey and grandson of founder Daniel Massey. His branch of the Massey family emigrated to Canada from New England a few years before the War of 1812, their ancestors having migrated from England to the Massachusetts colony in the 1630s. He attended secondary school briefly at Upper Canada College, before transferring to Appleby College in Oakville, Ontario, and taking several courses at University of Toronto, where he was an active member of the Kappa Alpha Society.

First World War

At the outbreak of the First World War, Massey joined the Canadian Army, serving with the artillery on the Western Front. Lieutenant Massey returned to Canada after being wounded in action in France in 1916 and was engaged as an Army instructor for American officers at Yale University. In 1918, he served in Siberia during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, where he made his first stage appearance, entertaining American troops on occupation duty.

After mustering out, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford. He later went to work in the family business, selling farm implements, but he was drawn to the theater. He persuaded his reluctant family to allow him to pursue this career.

Acting career

He first appeared on the London stage in 1922 in Eugene O'Neill's In the Zone. According to The New York Times obituary, he appeared in "several dozen plays and directed numerous others" in England over the next decade, while The Washington Post credited him with performances in over 80, including Pygmalion, with Gertrude Lawrence; Ethan Frome with Ruth Gordon; and the George Bernard Shaw works The Doctor's Dilemma and Candida with Katharine Cornell. In 1929, he directed the London premiere of The Silver Tassie. He received poor reviews in his Broadway acting debut in an unorthodox 1931 production of Hamlet.

His first movie role was in High Treason (1928). In 1931, he played Sherlock Holmes in The Speckled Band, the first sound film version of the story. In 1934, he played the villain in The Scarlet Pimpernel, and in 1936 he starred in Things to Come, a film adaptation by H.G. Wells of his own speculative novel, The Shape of Things to Come (1933). In 1944, Massey played the district attorney in Fritz Lang's classic film noir, The Woman in the Window, which starred Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett. He portrayed the American Revolutionary War character Abraham Farlan, who hated the British for making him a casualty of that war, in the 1946 film A Matter of Life and Death (titled Stairway to Heaven in the U.S.).

Despite his being Canadian, Massey became famous for playing archetypal American historical figures. He played abolitionist/insurrectionist John Brown in two films: Santa Fe Trail (1940) and again in the low-budget Seven Angry Men (1955). The character of Brown is portrayed as a wild-eyed lunatic in Santa Fe Trail, whereas he is a well-intentioned but misguided character in the more sympathetic Seven Angry Men. Massey scored a great triumph on Broadway in Robert E. Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Abe Lincoln in Illinois, despite American reservations about Lincoln being portrayed by a Canadian. He reprised his role in the 1940 film version, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Massey again portrayed Lincoln in The Day Lincoln Was Shot on Ford Star Jubilee (1956), and, in a wordless appearance, in How the West Was Won (1962), as well as in two TV adaptations of Abe Lincoln in Illinois broadcast in 1950 and 1951. He once complained jokingly that he was "the only actor ever typecast as a president." His preparation for the role was so detailed and obsessive that one wag commented that Massey would not be satisfied with his Lincoln impersonation until someone assassinated him. On stage in a dramatic reading of Stephen Vincent Benét's John Brown's Body (1953), Massey, in addition to narrating along with Tyrone Power and Judith Anderson, took on the roles of both John Brown and Lincoln.

Raymond Massey played a Canadian on screen only once, in 49th Parallel (1941).

Also in 1941, Massey starred in George Bernard Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma, opposite Katharine Cornell, opening just one week before Pearl Harbor. During the war, he teamed up with Cornell and other leading actors in a revival of Shaw's Candida to benefit the Army Emergency Fund and the Navy Relief Society.

Massey portrayed Jonathan Brewster in the film version of Arsenic and Old Lace. The character had been created by Boris Karloff for the stage version, and a running gag in the play and the film was the character's resemblance to Karloff. Even though the film was released in 1944, it was shot in 1941, at which time Karloff was still contracted to the Broadway play and could not be released for the filming, unlike his costars Josephine Hull, Jean Adair and John Alexander. Massey and Karloff had appeared together earlier in James Whale's suspense film The Old Dark House (1932).

Massey rejoined the Canadian Army for the Second World War, serving as a major in the Adjutant General's branch of the Canadian Army, though he was eventually released from service and returned to acting.

Following the war, Massey became an American citizen. His memorable film roles after that included the husband of Joan Crawford during her Oscar-nominated role in Possessed (1947) and the doomed publishing tycoon Gail Wynand in The Fountainhead (1949), opposite Patricia Neal and Gary Cooper. In 1955, he starred in East of Eden as Adam Trask, father of Cal, played by James Dean, and Aron, played by Richard Davalos.

Massey became well-known on television in the 1950s and 1960s. He was cast in 1960 as Sir Oliver Garnett in the episode "Trunk Full of Dreams" of the NBC western series, Riverboat. In the story line, Garnett is part of a floating theater on the river vessel, the Enterprise. Bethel Leslie is cast as Juliet, Willard Waterman as de Lesseps, and Mary Tyler Moore as Lily Belle de Lesseps.

Massey is particularly remembered as Dr. Gillespie in the popular 1961-1966 NBC series Dr. Kildare, with Richard Chamberlain in the title role. Massey and his son, Daniel, were cast as father and son in The Queen's Guards (1961).

Personal life

Massey was married three times.

1. Margery Fremantle from 1921 to 1929 (divorce); they had one child, architect Geoffrey Massey.
2. Adrianne Allen from 1929 to 1939 (divorce); Allen was a London and Broadway stage actress. They had two children who followed him into acting: Anna Massey and Daniel Massey.
3. Dorothy Whitney from 1939 until her death in 1982.

His high-profile estrangement and then divorce from Adrianne Allen was the inspiration for Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin's script for the film Adam's Rib (1949), starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and indeed Massey married the lawyer who represented him in court, Dorothy Whitney, while his then former wife, Allen, married the opposing lawyer, William Dwight Whitney.

Raymond Massey's older brother was Vincent Massey, the first Canadian-born Governor General of Canada. Raymond Massey also dabbled in politics, appearing in a television advertisement in 1964 in support of the conservative Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Massey denounced U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson for a "no-win" strategy in the Vietnam War, suggesting that Goldwater would pursue an aggressive strategy and win the war quickly. (Johnson, who defeated Goldwater, later did expand the war without success.)

Massey died of pneumonia in Los Angeles, California on July 29, 1983, a month before he would have turned 87. That was the same day as the death of David Niven, who had co-starred with him in The Prisoner of Zenda and A Matter of Life and Death. Massey is buried in New Haven, Connecticut's Beaverdale Memorial Park.

Honours

Massey has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for films at 1719 Vine Street and one for television at 6708 Hollywood Blvd. His achievements have also been recognised in a signature cocktail, the Raymond Massey. Massey also provided the voice of Abraham Lincoln in two Disney exhibits. The Hall of Presidents at Magic Kingdom in Disney World and at Disneyland in A Conversation with the President.