Conried was born on April 15, 1917, in Baltimore, Maryland, to parents Edith Beryl (née Gildersleeve) and Hans Georg Conried. His Connecticut-born mother was a descendant of Pilgrims, and his father was a Jewish immigrant from Vienna, Austria.[1] He was raised in Baltimore and in New York City.[citation needed]
Career
Conried studied acting at Columbia University and went on to play major classical roles onstage. This led him into radio in 1937, when he appeared in a supporting role in a broadcast of The Taming of the Shrew on KECA in Los Angeles, California.[2] Four years later, a newspaper reported about his role on Hedda Hopper's Hollywood: "But at the mike, he's equally convincing as old men, drunks, dialeticians, or Shakesperean tragedians. Miss Hopper favors him for her dramatizations when the script will allow him, as she puts it, 'to have his head.'"[3]
Impressed with Conried's versatility, a scout for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer signed him as a character player in 1938.[citation needed]
Conried's early screen roles were incidental bits, usually comic but sometimes shady or cowardly, depending on the context. He stayed with MGM until 1941, then began freelancing. His first major featured role was at Columbia Pictures as a worldly, architectural visionary who disrupted the household in Blondie's Blessed Event (1942). That established him as a comic figure in feature films. His Germanic surname got him cast as enemy agents in many wartime films, and he became a dialect specialist.[citation needed]
During World War II, Conried enlisted in the U.S. Army in September 1944.[4] He trained at Fort Knox as a tank crewman until the army decided he was too tall. He became a heavy mortar crewman then was sent to the Philippines as an engineer laborer until fellow actor Jack Kruschen obtained his release for service with the Armed Forces Radio Network.[5]
Conried remained active in radio during the 1940s and 1950s. He was in the regular cast of Orson Welles' Ceiling Unlimited, for which he wrote the December 14, 1942, episode, "War Workers".[6] On The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, he played a psychiatrist whom George regularly consults for help in dealing with the ditzy Gracie.
Conried was also a regular on the CBS Radio program Life with Luigi, portraying Schultz, a German classmate. He also played occasional dialect roles on CBS's detective series Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.
Even as a younger man, Conried appeared much older than his actual age and he was frequently cast as middle-aged or even elderly pompous, scholarly types. His impeccable diction and inimitable growl were well suited to the roles he played, whether portraying the dim Professor Kropotkin on the radio show My Friend Irma or as comic villains and mock-sinister or cranky types. In 1949, while filming the movie version of My Friend Irma, character actor Felix Bressart, cast as Professor Kropotkin, died suddenly during production. Conried, who played Kropotkin on radio, stepped in to finish the picture. Most of the finished film features Bressart with Conried's voice overdubbed; Conried appears in a few scenes in identical costume and makeup, with his voice used throughout.[citation needed]
Theodor Geisel, better known as children's author Dr. Seuss, was preparing a documentary feature largely made up of captured Japanese newsreel footage, Design for Death (1948). Geisel hired actor Kent Smith as the "American" narrator, and Hans Conried as the "Japanese" narrator. The film won an Academy Award.[citation needed]
Geisel remembered Conried when he was preparing an expensive Technicolor fantasy, The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953), which included the dominant role of a demanding, dictatorial piano teacher. Conried was cast as the foreboding "Dr. Terwilliker" and turned in a bravura performance that might have changed his career. Unfortunately the film was a costly failure. He reflected on the film's boxoffice fate in a 1970 interview with Leonard Maltin: "The picture never made its print money back. It was comparable only to Wilson as one of the great money-losers of all time; it would stop conversation for some years at any Hollywood social gathering."[9]
Ward and Scott also cast him as the live-action host of Fractured Flickers, a wildly satirical, tongue-in-cheek redub of silent movies. During that show he had a tightly scripted segment where he absurdly interviewed guest stars and celebrities, while usually mistaking their identities, misunderstanding answers, taking umbrage or getting into mock disagreements.
Conried as the grumpy Uncle Tonoose, a recurring role he played on Make Room for Daddy
From 1955 to 1964, Conried made 19 guest appearances as "Uncle Tonoose" in Make Room for Daddy on ABC and then CBS, and four appearances as other characters.
He was featured in the 1958 episode, "What Makes Opera Grand?", on the anthology series Omnibus. The episode, an analysis by Leonard Bernstein, showing the powerful effect of music in opera, featured Conried as Marcello in a spoken dramatization of Act III of Puccini's La Bohème. The program demonstrated the effect of the music in La Bohème by having actors speak portions of the libretto in English, followed by opera singers singing the same lines in the original Italian.[10]
In 1977, Conried joined the cast for the second and final season of The Tony Randall Show in the recurring role of Judge Franklin's irascible father, Wyatt.
Conried made his Broadway debut in the Cole Porter musical Can-Can,[11] where he played a struggling artist and sang two musical numbers.[12] In 1971, he appeared in 70, Girls, 70 and two years later was a replacement performer in the revival of Irene starring Debbie Reynolds.[13]
Personal life
Conried married Margaret Grant on January 29, 1942; they had four children.[14]
Death
Conried had a long history of heart problems and had a stroke in 1974 and a mild heart attack in 1979.[15] He remained active until his death on January 5, 1982, one day after suffering a major heart attack.[14] His body was donated to medical science.[16]
^"Shirley Temple on Air Tonight". Belvidere Daily Republican. January 27, 1941. p. 5. Retrieved May 3, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.
^National Archives and Records Administration. U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, US: The Generations Network, Inc., 2005.
^Gargiulo, Suzanne. Hans Conried: A Biography; With a Filmography and a Listing of Radio, Television, Stage and Voice Work, page 46. McFarland, August 22, 2002.
^"The Twonky (1953)". Archived from the original on March 7, 2016. Conried was interviewed in 1970 and said that he told Oboler during production of The Twonky that he was worried that the film was not working and that it would bomb at the box office. According to Conried, the producer replied, "That's all right. I need a tax write-off this year anyway." - no doubt to offset the enormous profits reaped from Bwana Devil.
^Maltin, Leonard. The Disney Films. Bonanza Books. p. 122.
^Hans Conried to Leonard Maltin, reprinted in The Real Stars, New York: Curtis Books, 1973, p. 84.
^"Hans Conried Actor dies of heart ailment". Desert Sun. No. 132. Palm Springs, CA. January 6, 1982. p. 5. Retrieved May 15, 2020 – via University of California Riverside Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research.
Maltin, Leonard (2015) [First published 1969]. "Hans Conried". The Real Stars : Profiles and Interviews of Hollywood's Unsung Featured Players (softcover) (Sixth / eBook ed.). Great Britain: CreateSpace Independent. pp. 57–80. ISBN978-1-5116-4485-3.
