George Macready

 ( 1899 Births ) 

Shortly thereafter, Macready suffered a disfiguring injury in a car accident, which, as the actor would later note, proved a mixed blessing: affording him a reliably steady supply of jobs, but only within a rigidly circumscribed range. "George Macready Type-Cast Again". The Roanoke Times. October 18, 1958. p. 16. Retrieved August 26, 2023. As of October 1958, by Macready's own count, he had been cast as the "mastermind criminal" type in at least 65 of his 75 television and motion picture assignments. He explained:

Producers have found it effective to emphasize my rather nasty looking cheek scar, which I received in an auto accident many years ago. "Valuable Scar". The Modesto Bee. October 19, 1958. p. G-3. Retrieved August 26, 2023.

Macready's penchant for acting was spurred in part by the director Richard Boleslawski. His Shakespearean stage credits included Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (1927), Malcolm in Macbeth (1928), and Paris in Romeo and Juliet (1934). On film, he played Marallus in the 1953 film adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. He also portrayed Prince Ernst in the original stage version of Victoria Regina (1936), starring Helen Hayes.

Macready played the villain Younger Miles in the 1948 Randolph Scott film "Coroner Creek".

Macready played Marshal Sam Hughes in the 1949 Randolph Scott film "The Doolins of Oklahoma" (he narrated the film as well).

Stanley Kubrick's antiwar film Paths of Glory (1957) provided Macready with his other great role, the cold-hearted and self-serving French World War I General Paul Mireau, who is brought down by Kirk Douglas's character, Colonel Dax. He had worked with Douglas previously in Detective Story (1951), and later he appeared with Douglas in two more films: Vincente Minnelli's Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) and John Frankenheimer's Seven Days in May (1964). In 1965, he was cast in a rare comedy role as General Kuhster in Blake Edwards's film The Great Race.

One of Macready's last film roles was as United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), a depiction of the events leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Macready performed in a variety of television series produced in the 1950s and 1960s, including many Westerns such as Bat Masterson, Bonanza, The Dakotas, Gunsmoke, Have Gun - Will Travel, The Rebel (once in the role of Confederate General Robert E. Lee), The Rifleman, Lancer, Laramie, Riverboat, The Rough Riders, Chill Wills's Frontier Circus, The Texan and Steve McQueen's . Also on TV, he was seen in episodes of The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Boris Karloff's Thriller, Kentucky Jones, Get Smart with Don Adams, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. with Robert Vaughn.

Macready was cast as Cyrus Canfield, a vengeful father searching for his runaway teenage daughter, played by Floy Dean, in the May 26, 1962, series finale of NBC's The Tall Man.

He played publishing magnate Glenn Howard in the TV movie Fame Is the Name of the Game (1966) starring Anthony Franciosa, but was replaced by Gene Barry in the role when the film was subsequently used as the pilot for the television series The Name of the Game with Franciosa, Barry, and Robert Stack revolving in the lead.