Victor Andrew de Bier Everleigh McLaglen (10 December 1886 – 7 November 1959) was a British-American actor and boxer.[1] His film career spanned from the early 1920s through the 1950s, initially as a leading man, though he was better known for his character acting. He was a well-known member of John Ford’s Stock Company, appearing in 12 of the director’s films, seven of which co-starred John Wayne.
The McLaglen family is ultimately of Scottish origin, descended from a MacLachlan who settled in South Africa in the 19th century. The name was rendered into McLaglen from Dutch pronunciation. A.C.A. McLaglen was christened Andries Carel Albertus McLaglen in Cape Town on 4 April 1851.[5]
One of ten siblings, Victor had eight brothers and a sister.[2][6] Four of his brothers also became actors: Arthur, an actor and sculptor, and Clifford, Cyril, and Kenneth.[7]
Other siblings included Frederick, Lewis, and a sister, Lily. Another brother, Sydney Temple Leopold McLaglen, who appeared in one film, gained notoriety prior to World War I as a showman and self-proclaimed world jujutsu champion,[8] who authored a book on the subject.[9]
Victor moved with his family to South Africa for a time, where his father was Bishop of Claremont.[10]
Army service and boxing career
McLaglen left home at 14 to join the British Army with the intention of fighting in the Second Boer War,[11] but much to his chagrin, he was stationed at Windsor Castle in the Life Guards and was later forced to leave the army when his true age was discovered.[11]
Four years later, he moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, where he became a local celebrity,[12] earning a living as a wrestler and heavyweight boxer, with several notable wins in the ring.[13] He also briefly served as a constable in the Winnipeg Police Force in 1907.[14][15]
One of his most famous fights was against heavyweight champion Jack Johnson in a six-round exhibition bout at the Vancouver Athletic Club on 10 March 1909.[11][16][17] This was Johnson's first bout since winning the heavyweight title from Tommy Burns. Between bouts, McLaglen toured with a circus, which offered $25 to anyone who could go three rounds with him.
After the war, he continued boxing, including a defeat at the hands of British champion Frank Goddard.[11][22] His final fight was a loss by knockout to Arthur Townley in October 1920.[11] He finished his professional career with a record of 16 wins, eight losses, and a draw.
McLaglen was visiting a sporting club when spotted by a film producer who was looking for a boxer to play the lead in a film, The Call of the Road (1920).[11] Although McLaglen had never acted before, he auditioned and got the part.[23]
McLaglen's career took a surprise turn in 1925 when he moved to Hollywood.[11] He became a popular character actor, with a particular knack for playing drunks. He also usually played Irishmen, leading many film fans to mistakenly assume he was Irish rather than English. McLaglen played one of the titular characters of The Unholy Three (1925) in Lon Chaney Sr.'s original silent version of the macabre crime drama.
McLaglen was one of many Fox stars who had cameos in the musical Happy Days (1929). He was reunited with Edmund Lowe and Raoul Walsh in a sequel to What Price Glory?, The Cock-Eyed World (1929), which was another huge success at the box office.[30]
Back at Fox he was in Rackety Rax (1932) then made a fourth What Price Glory? film with Lowe, Hot Pepper (1933). McLaglen starred in Laughing at Life (1933) and returned to Britain to make Dick Turpin (1933).[32]
McLaglen starred opposite Boris Karloff's crazed religious fanatic in John Ford's The Lost Patrol (1934) at RKO, a picture about desperate soldiers gradually losing their minds fighting Arabs in the desert of what is now Iraq.
Another highlight of his career was winning an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Ford's The Informer (1935), shot at RKO, based on a novel of the same name by Liam O'Flaherty.[11] In 1945, McLaglen said that winning the Oscar had no economic benefit and that he didn't know where it was because his son had taken it to college for use as a paperweight.[33]
McLaglen and Lowe reprised their roles from What Price Glory? in the radio program Captain Flagg and Sergeant Quirt, broadcast on the Blue Network (28 September 1941 – 25 January 1942, and on NBC 13 February 1942 – 3 April 1942).[38]
Toward the end of his career, McLaglen made several guest appearances on television, particularly in Western series such as Have Gun, Will Travel and Rawhide. The episodes in which McLaglen guest-starred were both directed by his son, Andrew, who later became a film director frequently directing John Wayne.[41]
In 1933, he founded the California Light Horse Regiment, which included a "riding parade club, a polo-playing group and a precision motorcycle contingent".[43] He described it in a press interview as promoting "Americanism". He said it was organized to fight communists and others "opposed to the American ideal", both inside and outside the country. McLaglen was attacked by some on the left as fascist, which he denied. He said he was a "patriot of the good old-fashioned American kind".[44]
Personal life
Fay Wray, Robert Warwick (left), and McLaglen in Not Exactly Gentlemen, also known as Three Rogues (1931)[45]
McLaglen was married three times. He first married Enid Lamont in 1919. The couple had two sons, Andrew, Walter, and one daughter, Sheila.[49]Andrew McLaglen was a television and film director who worked on several film projects with John Wayne. Andrew's children, Mary and Josh McLaglen, are both film producers and directors. Sheila's daughter, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, is a television director. Enid Lamont McLaglen died in 1942 as a result of a horse-riding accident.
His second marriage was to Suzanne M. Brueggeman. That marriage lasted from 1943 until 1948. His third and final marriage was to divorcée Margaret McNichols Pumphrey, a Seattle socialite he married in 1948.[50] They remained married until his death from congestive heart failure in 1959.[51]
^"GIANT ATHLETE". The Daily News. Vol. XXXIII, no. 12, 088 (THIRD ed.). Western Australia. 27 March 1914. p. 2. Retrieved 18 December 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
^"A PREDICTION VERIFIED". The Australasian. Vol. CVIII, no. 2, 805. Victoria, Australia. 3 January 1920. p. 19. Retrieved 18 December 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
^"BOXER-FILM PERFORMER". The Referee. No. 1810. New South Wales, Australia. 16 November 1921. p. 2. Retrieved 18 December 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
^"In the Limelight". Critic. Vol. XVII, no. 905. Tasmania, Australia. 27 January 1923. p. 3. Retrieved 18 December 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
^"BOXER AS STAR". The Newcastle Sun. No. 2142. New South Wales, Australia. 7 February 1925. p. 4. Retrieved 18 December 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
^Critchlow, Donald T. (2013). When Hollywood was right : how movie stars, studio moguls, and big business remade American politics (1 ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 35–36. ISBN978-0521199186.
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