Teachers  who  later  starred  in  movies, TV or on stage 

This article and many others like it that will follow are included in my blog simply because they are interesting titbits of history which I believe you will find interesting. 

Our teachers from kindergarten to college and beyond played a very important role in our lives. We are what we are because of their teachings. They are for the most part, dedicated to that goal. However, some of them decided that acting in movies was more to their liking and many of them succeed in that occupation Here are some of them.                   

Will Greer

He was a botanist and gave lessons on vegetable gardening in various parts of the U.S. He then went into acting as a career. Geer made his Broadway debut as Pistol in a 1928 production of Much Ado About Nothing, created the role of Mr. Mister in Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock, played Candy in John Steinbeck's theatrical adaptation of his novella Of Mice and Men, and appeared in numerous plays and revues throughout the 1940s. From 1948 to 1951, he appeared in more than a dozen movies, including Winchester '73, Broken Arrow, Bright Victory and Seconds.

Geer became a member of the Communist Party of the United States in 1934. Geer was also influential in introducing Harry Hay to organizing in the Communist Party. In 1934, Geer and Hay gave support to a labor strike of the port of San Francisco; the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike lasted 83 days. Though marred by violence, it was an organizing triumph, one that became a model for future union strikes. Geer was blacklisted in the early 1950s for refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. As a result, Geer appeared in very few films over the following decade.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Geer played several seasons at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, where he created a second "Shakespeare Garden" on the theater's grounds. By this time he was also working sporadically on Broadway. In 1964 he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for 110 in the Shade. In 1972, he played the part of Bear Claw in Jeremiah Johnson along with Robert Redford. In 1972, he was cast as Zebulon Walton, the family patriarch on The Waltons, a role he took over from Edgar Bergen, who played the character in the pilot. He won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for The Waltons in 1975.

He died on April 22^nd 1978 at the age of 76.               

Margaret Hamilton

Anyone who has ever seen the movie, The Wizard of Oz will never forget the Wicked Witch of the West in the movie. That role was played by Ms. Hamilton. But prior to acting in movies, she was a kindergarten teacher. Drawn to the theater at an early age, Hamilton made her stage debut in 1923. Hamilton also practiced her craft doing children's theater while she was a Junior League of Cleveland member.

Hamilton's career as a film actress was driven by the very qualities that placed her in stark contrast to the stereotypical Hollywood glamour girl. Her image was that of a New England spinster, extremely pragmatic and impatient with all manner of tomfoolery. Hamilton's plain looks helped to bring steady work as a character actor. She made her screen debut in 1933 in the movie, Another Language. She went on to appear in These Three (1936), Saratoga, You Only Live Once, When's Your Birthday?, Nothing Sacred (all 1937), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), and My Little Chickadee (1940). She strove to work as much as possible to support herself and her son; she never put herself under contract to any one studio and priced her services at $1,000 a week. In 1939, Hamilton played the role of the Wicked Witch of the West, opposite Judy Garland's Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz, creating not only her most famous role, but one of the screen's most memorable villains.                                                                               

 

She died on May 16, 1985 at the age of 83.

Sam Jaffe

He began his career as a mathematics teacher in the Bronx. Around 1915, Jaffe joined the Washington Square Players. By 1918 he was no stranger to Broadway, having debuted in the original play Youth, and he appeared regularly through the 1920s, though less in the 1930s and only sporadically in the 1940s. He appeared in 21 plays on Broadway during his acting career, his final appearance in 1979.

Hollywood noticed him first for his unusual role of the mad Grand Duke Peter in Josef von Sternberg 's The Scarlet Empress (1934). Jaffe was no movie idol but his homely features were made for unusual character roles. He did not disappoint the studios while providing unforgettable performances. Frank Capra cast him as the mysterious High Lama in Lost Horizon (1937) He appeared in George Stevens’ Gunga Din (1939) which sported big star names as well. Stevens gave Jaffe the lead, Gunga Din, native regimental bhisti (Hindi for water-carrier). It was probably Jaffe's most familiar film role.  Jaffe would not appear in another film for eight years. His second of two movies in 1947 was Elia Kazan 's powerful anti-Semitic expose Gentleman's Agreement (1947) in which Jaffe played an Albert Einstein-like professor. Jaffe would play doctors of one sort or another in the handful of movies for the next few years. Then in 1950 he played a very different doctor - Doc Erwin Riedenschneider, criminal mastermind in John Huston's taut The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Jaffe would receive a nomination for a supporting actor Oscar for his effort in that movie. Of the three films he did in 1951, Jaffe also appeared in an Einstein-like role in the Robert Wise sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

He died in on the 24^th of March, 1984 at the age of 93.

 Agnes Moorehead   

She originally taught at a public school but found that boring and decided to go into acting. Moorehead met Orson Welles and by 1937 was one of his principal Mercury Players, along with Joseph Cotten. She performed in his The Mercury Theatre on the Air radio adaptations, and had a regular role opposite Welles in the serial The Shadow as Margo. In 1939, Welles moved the Mercury Theatre to Hollywood, where he started working for RKO Pictures. Several of his radio performers joined him, and Moorehead made her film debut as his mother in Citizen Kane (1941), considered one of the best films ever made. She also appeared in his films Journey Into Fear (1943), based on a novel by Eric Ambler, and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), based on a novel by Booth Tarkington. She received a New York Film Critics Award and an Academy Award nomination for her performance in the latter film. Moorehead received positive reviews for her performance in Mrs. Parkington, as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress and an Academy Award nomination.

Moorehead skillfully portrayed puritanical matrons, neurotic spinsters, possessive mothers, and comical secretaries throughout her career. She played Parthy Hawks, wife of Cap'n Andy and mother of Magnolia, in MGM's hit 1951 remake of Show Boat. She was in many important films, including Dark Passage and Since You Went Away, either playing key small or large supporting parts. Moorehead was in Broadway productions of Don Juan in Hell in 1951–1952, and Lord Pengo in 1962–1963.

She died in 1974 at the age of 68.

Carroll O’Connor

He was a substitute teacher before he went into acting in theatrical productions in Dublin (Ireland) and New York during the 1950s, O'Connor's breakthrough came when he was cast by director Burgess Meredith in a featured role in the Broadway adaptation of James Joyce's novel Ulysses. O'Connor made his television acting debut as a character actor on two episodes of Sunday Showcase. These two parts led to other roles on such television series as The Americans, The Eleventh Hour, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Fugitive, The Wild Wild West, Armstrong Circle Theatre, Death Valley Days, The Great Adventure, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Dr. Kildare, I Spy, That Girl, Premiere, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, among many others. O'Connor starred as an Eastern European  villain in the first season of Mission Impossible.

O'Connor was living in Italy in 1968 when producer Norman Lear first asked him to come to New York to star in a pilot he was creating for ABC called Justice For All, with O'Connor playing Archie Justice, a lovable yet controversial bigot. After three pilots were aired between 1968 to 1970, and after a network change to CBS, the last name of the character changed to Bunker.  Subsequently the new sitcom was renamed All in the Family.

He died on June 21, 2001 at the age of 76.

George C. Scott

He originally taught Western Literature in College before he began working as an actor. Scott first rose to prominence for his work with Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival. In 1958, he won an Obie Award for his performances in Children of Darkness (in which he made the first of many appearances opposite his future wife, actress Colleen Dewhurst), He also won that award for his performance in As You Like It, and for playing the title character in William Shakespeare's Richard III (a performance one critic said was the angriest Richard III of all time).

He made many television appearances, including an episode of NBC's The Virginian, in the episode The Brazen Bell, in which he recites Oscar Wilde's poem The Ballad Of Reading Gaol. That same year, he appeared in NBC's medical drama The Eleventh Hour, in the episode I Don't Belong in a White-Painted House. He appeared opposite Laurence Olivier and Julie Harris in Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory in a 1961 television production.

Scott's most famous early role in movies was called Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, in which he played General ‘Buck’ Turgidson.                                                                                   

Scott portrayed George S. Patton in the 1970 film Patton and researched extensively for the role, studying films of the general and talking to those who knew him. Scott refused the Oscar nomination for Patton, just as he had done for his 1962 nomination for The Hustler, but won the award anyway.

He died on September 22^nd 1999, at age 71.

Monty Woolley

He taught English and coached graduate dramatics at Yale as an assistant professor.  Woolley began directing on Broadway in 1929 and began acting there in 1936 after leaving his academic career. In 1939 he starred in the Kaufman and Hart comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner for 783 performances. It was for this well-reviewed role he was typecast as the wasp-tongued, supercilious sophisticate.

He became a familiar guest presence on such shows as The Fred Allen Show, Duffy's Tavern, The Big Show, The Chase and Sanborn Hour with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. He performed in some movies and after completing his last film, Kismet (1955), he returned to radio for about a year, after which he was forced to retire due to ill health.

He died on May 6^th 1963 at the age of 74.

I will write another article sometime in the future about movie, TV and stage stars and when I do, it will be those people who served in the military or participated in one way or another in a war.