1. Walter Andrew Brennan was an American actor and singer.
75 Facts About Walter Brennan
1. 2.
Walter Brennan won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Come and Get It, Kentucky and The Westerner, making him one of only seven actors to win more than two Academy Awards, and the only male or female actor to win three awards in the supporting actor category.
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Walter Brennan was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, on July 25 1894, less than two miles from his family's home in Swampscott.
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Walter Brennan's father was an engineer and inventor, and young Brennan studied engineering at Rindge Technical High School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Walter Brennan was in Watch Your Wife, The Ice Flood, Spangles, The Collegians, Flashing Oars, Sensation Seekers, Tearin' Into Trouble, The Ridin' Rowdy, Alias the Deacon, Blake of Scotland Yard, Hot Heels, Painting the Town and The Ballyhoo Buster.
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Walter Brennan had minor roles in The Racket from Howard Hughes, The Michigan Kid, Silks and Saddles, The Cohens and the Kellys in Atlantic City and Smilin' Guns and The Lariat Kid with Gibson.
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Walter Brennan was in His Lucky Day, Frank Capra's Flight, One Hysterical Night, The Last Performance, The Long Long Trail with Gibson and The Shannons of Broadway.
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Walter Brennan had a bigger role in Neck and Neck, directed by Richard Thorpe.
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Walter Brennan's parts tended to remain small, however: A House Divided for director William Wyler, Scratch-As-Catch-Can, and Texas Cyclone.
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Walter Brennan did another with John Wayne, Two-Fisted Law though the star was Tim McCoy.
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Walter Brennan was in Sensation Hunters for Charles Vidor, Man of Action with McCoy, Parachute Jumper, Goldie Gets Along, Girl Missing, Rustlers' Roundup with Mix, The Cohens and Kellys in Trouble for director George Stevens, Lucky Dog and The Big Cage.
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Walter Brennan was in the Three Stooges short Woman Haters, then did Half a Sinner, The Life of Vergie Winters, Murder on the Runaway Train, Whom the Gods Destroy, Gentlemen of Polish, Death on the Diamond, Great Expectations, Luck of the Game, Tailspin Tommy, There's Always Tomorrow and Cheating Cheaters.
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Walter Brennan was back with McCoy for The Prescott Kid and could be seen in The Painted Veil, Biography of a Bachelor Girl, Helldorado, Brick-a-Brac an Edgar Kennedy short, Northern Frontier, The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Law Beyond the Range with McCoy.
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Walter Brennan had a brief uncredited role in Bride of Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster.
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Walter Brennan appeared in another Three Stooges short, Restless Knights, and a short titled Hunger Pains in 1935.
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Walter Brennan was only an extra, but his part was expanded during filming and it resulted in Brennan's getting a contract with Goldwyn.
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Walter Brennan was reunited with Whale in Bride of Frankenstein, in which he had a brief speaking part and worked as a stuntman.
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Walter Brennan did a short, The Perfect Tribute and was in George Stevens' Alice Adams, but his scenes were deleted.
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Walter Brennan could be seen in We're in the Money and She Couldn't Take It.
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Walter Brennan finally earned significant roles with a decent part in Goldwyn's Barbary Coast, directed by Howard Hawks and an uncredited William Wyler.
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Walter Brennan followed with small appearances in Metropolitan and Seven Keys to Baldpate.
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Walter Brennan had one of the leads in Three Godfathers playing one of the title outlaws.
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Walter Brennan had a small role in These Three with Wyler and a larger one in Walter Wanger's The Moon's Our Home and Fury, directed by Fritz Lang.
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Walter Brennan's performance earned him the first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
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Walter Brennan followed it with support parts in Banjo on My Knee at Fox, She's Dangerous, and When Love is Young.
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Walter Brennan had his first lead role in Affairs of Cappy Ricks at Republic Pictures.
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Walter Brennan followed it with the co-starring part in Fox's Wild and Woolly, billed second after Jane Withers.
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Walter Brennan was in The Buccaneer, directed by Cecil B DeMille.
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Walter Brennan portrayed town drunk and accused murderer Muff Potter in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
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Walter Brennan won his second Best Supporting Oscar for Kentucky, a horse racing film from 20th Century Fox with Loretta Young.
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Walter Brennan supported Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle.
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Walter Brennan appeared in Melody of Youth, and Stanley and Livingstone at Fox.
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Walter Brennan was billed third in Northwest Passage after Spencer Tracy and Robert Young.
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Walter Brennan said he had been working constantly since Christmas 1937.
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Walter Brennan had one of his best roles in Goldwyn's The Westerner, playing the villainous Judge Roy Bean opposite Gary Cooper.
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Walter Brennan could be seen in This Woman is Mine as a sea captain.
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Walter Brennan played the top-billed lead in Swamp Water, the first American film by director Jean Renoir.
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Walter Brennan appeared in Rise and Shine and then played reporter Sam Blake in Pride of the Yankees.
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Walter Brennan appeared in Slightly Dangerous, The Last Will and Testament of Tom Smith and Goldwyn's Russian war epic The North Star.
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Walter Brennan was top-billed in a follow-up to Kentucky and Maryland at Fox, Home in Indiana.
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Walter Brennan was particularly skilled in playing the sidekick of the protagonist or the "grumpy old man" in films such as Hawks' To Have and Have Not.
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Walter Brennan was a comic pirate in the Bob Hope film The Princess and the Pirate.
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Walter Brennan was teamed with John Wayne for the first time since both men had obtained stardom in Dakota, directed by Joseph Kane.
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Walter Brennan supported Bette Davis in A Stolen Life and appeared in the Fox musical Centennial Summer.
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Walter Brennan returned as a villain as Old Man Clanton in John Ford's My Darling Clementine, opposite Henry Fonda.
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Walter Brennan followed this with parts in Nobody Lives Forever at Warner Bros.
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Walter Brennan was billed second to Rod Cameron in Brimstone, and he supported Gary Cooper in Task Force.
48.
Walter Brennan focused on Westerns: Singing Guns, A Ticket to Tomahawk, Curtain Call at Cactus Creek, The Showdown, Surrender, Along the Great Divide, Best of the Badmen and Return of the Texan.
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Walter Brennan appeared in the war films The Wild Blue Yonder and Lure of the Wilderness, a remake of Swamp Water in which he reprised his role, although with less screen time than in the original film.
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Walter Brennan was in Sea of Lost Ships with John Derek, Drums Across the River with Audie Murphy, The Far Country with James Stewart and Four Guns to the Border with Rory Calhoun.
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Walter Brennan appeared in Bad Day at Black Rock for MGM.
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Walter Brennan began to work on television, guest-starring on episodes of Screen Directors Playhouse, Lux Video Theatre, Schlitz Playhouse, Ethel Barrymore Theater, Cavalcade of America and The Ford Television Theatre.
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Walter Brennan appeared in films such as Glory, Come Next Spring and Batjac's Good-bye My Lady with 14-year-old Brandon deWilde, with whom he recorded The Stories of Mark Twain that same year.
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Walter Brennan appeared in The Way to the Gold and played Debbie Reynolds' grandfather in the romantic comedy Tammy and the Bachelor.
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Walter Brennan was given another lead role in God Is My Partner, a low-budget film that became a surprise hit.
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Walter Brennan had resisted overtures to star in a regular TV series but relented for The Real McCoys, a sitcom about a poor West Virginia family that relocated to a farm in Southern California.
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Walter Brennan has appeared in films and other TV shows during the series' run such as Colgate Theatre and another Howard Hawks picture, Rio Bravo, supporting John Wayne and Dean Martin.
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Walter Brennan joined with series creator Irving Pincus to form Walter Brennan-Westgate Productions.
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Walter Brennan appeared as a villainous river pirate in MGM's epic How the West Was Won.
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Walter Brennan had a support part in Those Calloways, his first Disney film, again paired with Brandon deWilde.
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Walter Brennan was top-billed in Disney's The Gnome-Mobile and made a pilot for the TV series Horatio Alger Jones, which did not become a series.
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Walter Brennan received top billing over Pat O'Brien in the TV movie The Over-the-Hill Gang and Fred Astaire in The Over-the-Hill Gang Rides Again.
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Walter Brennan joined the second season of the CBS sitcom To Rome with Love with John Forsythe.
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Walter Brennan was announced for a Western that was not made, One Day in Eden.
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Walter Brennan started filming Herbie Rides Again for Disney but fell ill and was replaced.
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Walter Brennan built the Indian Lodge Motel, a movie theater, and a variety store in Joseph, and continued retreating to the ranch between film roles until his death.
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Walter Brennan spent his last years mostly in retirement at his ranch in Moorpark in Ventura County, California.
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Walter Brennan died of emphysema on September 21,1974, at the age of 80 in Oxnard, California.
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In 1972, Walter Brennan endorsed far-right candidate John Schmitz, who like Walter Brennan, was a member of the John Birch Society.
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Walter Brennan served as finance chairman and narrated advertisements in support of Schmitz's campaign.
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Walter Brennan endorsed Ronald Reagan in the 1966 California gubernatorial election and in his reelection in 1970.
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Walter Brennan was one of the greatest character actors in motion picture history.
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Walter Brennan was the first actor to win three Academy Awards and remains the only person to have won the Best Supporting Actor award three times.
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However, he remained somewhat embarrassed about how he had won the awards; in the early years of the Academy Awards, extras could vote, and Walter Brennan was popular with the extras' union.
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Walter Brennan played more than 230 film and television roles during a career that spanned nearly five decades.