Walter Andrew Brennan was an American actor and singer.
74 Facts About Walter Brennan
2.
Walter Brennan won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performances in Come and Get It, Kentucky, and The Westerner, making him one of only three male actors to win three Academy Awards, and the only male or female actor to win three awards in the supporting actor category.
3.
Walter Brennan was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, less than two miles from his family's home in Swampscott, Massachusetts.
4.
Walter Brennan's father was an engineer and inventor, and young Brennan studied engineering at Rindge Technical High School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
5.
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.
6.
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.
7.
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.
8.
Walter Brennan had a bigger role in Neck and Neck, directed by Richard Thorpe.
9.
Walter Brennan's parts tended to remain small, however: A House Divided for director William Wyler, Scratch-As-Catch-Can, and Texas Cyclone.
10.
Walter Brennan did another with John Wayne, Two-Fisted Law though the star was Tim McCoy.
11.
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.
12.
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.
13.
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.
14.
Walter Brennan had a brief uncredited role in Bride of Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster.
15.
Around this time Walter Brennan had what he later described as "the luckiest break in the world".
16.
Walter Brennan was taking part in a fight scene when an actor kicked him in the face and all his teeth were knocked out.
17.
Walter Brennan did another Three Stooges short, Restless Knights, and a short called Hunger Pains in.
18.
Walter Brennan was only an extra, but his part was expanded during filming and it resulted in Brennan's getting a contract with Goldwyn.
19.
Walter Brennan was reunited with Whale in Bride of Frankenstein, in which he had a brief speaking part and worked as a stuntman.
20.
Walter Brennan did a short, The Perfect Tribute and was in George Stevens' Alice Adams, but his scenes were deleted.
21.
Walter Brennan could be seen in We're in the Money and She Couldn't Take It.
22.
Walter Brennan finally moved up to significant roles with a decent part in Goldwyn's Barbary Coast, directed by Howard Hawks and an uncredited William Wyler.
23.
Walter Brennan followed it with small appearances in Metropolitan and Seven Keys to Baldpate.
24.
Walter Brennan had one of the leads in Three Godfathers playing one of the title outlaws.
25.
Walter Brennan had a small role in These Three with Wyler and a bigger one in Walter Wanger's The Moon's Our Home and Fury, directed by Fritz Lang.
26.
Walter Brennan's performance earned him the first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
27.
Walter Brennan followed it with support parts in Banjo on My Knee at Fox, She's Dangerous, and When Love is Young.
28.
Walter Brennan had his first lead role in Affairs of Cappy Ricks at Republic Pictures.
29.
Walter Brennan followed it with the co-starring part in Fox's Wild and Woolly, billed second after Jane Withers.
30.
Walter Brennan was in The Buccaneer, directed by Cecil B DeMille.
31.
Walter Brennan portrayed town drunk and accused murderer Muff Potter in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
32.
Walter Brennan won his second Best Supporting Oscar for Kentucky, a horse racing film from 20th Century Fox with Loretta Young.
33.
Walter Brennan supported Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle.
34.
Walter Brennan appeared in Melody of Youth, and Stanley and Livingstone at Fox.
35.
Walter Brennan was billed third in Northwest Passage after Spencer Tracy and Robert Young.
36.
Walter Brennan said he had been working constantly since Christmas 1937.
37.
Walter Brennan had one of his best ever roles in Goldwyn's The Westerner, playing the villainous Judge Roy Bean opposite Gary Cooper.
38.
Sergeant York, which earned Walter Brennan a fourth Oscar nomination, was an enormous hit.
39.
Walter Brennan could be seen in This Woman is Mine, as a sea captain.
40.
Walter Brennan was in Rise and Shine then played the reporter Sam Blake, who befriended and encouraged Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees.
41.
Walter Brennan was in Slightly Dangerous, The Last Will and Testament of Tom Smith, and Goldwyn's Russia-set war epic The North Star.
42.
Walter Brennan was top billed in a follow up to Kentucky and Maryland at Fox, Home in Indiana.
43.
Walter Brennan was particularly skilled in playing the sidekick of the protagonist or the "grumpy old man" in films such as To Have and Have Not, the Hawks-directed Humphrey Bogart film which introduced Lauren Bacall.
44.
Walter Brennan was a comic pirate in the Bob Hope film The Princess and the Pirate.
45.
Walter Brennan was teamed with John Wayne for the first time since both men obtained stardom in Dakota, directed by Joseph Kane.
46.
Walter Brennan supported Bette Davis in A Stolen Life and was in a musical at Fox, Centennial Summer, where he played a family paterfamilias.
47.
Walter Brennan returned to villainy as Old Man Clanton in My Darling Clementine, opposite Henry Fonda for director John Ford.
48.
Walter Brennan followed this with parts in Nobody Lives Forever at Warners, and a girl-and-dog story at Republic, Driftwood.
49.
Walter Brennan was billed second to Rod Cameron in Brimstone, directed by Kane, and he supported Gary Cooper in Task Force.
50.
Walter Brennan focused on Westerns: Singing Guns with Vaughn Monroe, A Ticket to Tomahawk, Curtain Call at Cactus Creek, The Showdown with Wild Bill Elliot, Surrender, Along the Great Divide, Best of the Badmen, and Return of the Texan.
51.
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.
52.
Walter Brennan had a good part in Bad Day at Black Rock at MGM.
53.
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.
54.
Walter Brennan was in "Americana" films such as Glory, Come Next Spring and in Batjac's Good-bye My Lady with 14-year-old Brandon deWilde with whom he recorded The Stories of Mark Twain that same year.
55.
Walter Brennan appeared in The Way to the Gold and was in a big hit playing Debbie Reynolds's grandfather in the romantic comedy Tammy and the Bachelor.
56.
Walter Brennan was given another lead role in God Is My Partner, a low budget movie that was a surprise hit.
57.
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.
58.
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, in support to John Wayne and Dean Martin.
59.
Walter Brennan joined with the series creator, Irving Pincus, to form Walter Brennan-Westgate Productions.
60.
Walter Brennan appeared as a villainous river pirate up against James Stewart in MGM's epic How the West Was Won.
61.
Walter Brennan had a support part in Those Calloways, his first film for the Disney Organisation, where he was again paired with Brandon deWilde.
62.
Walter Brennan was top billed in Disney's The Gnome-Mobile and did a pilot for a TV series Horatio Alger Jones that was not picked up.
63.
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.
64.
Walter Brennan joined the second season of the CBS sitcom To Rome with Love, with John Forsythe.
65.
Walter Brennan was announced for a Western, One Day in Eden but it does not appear to have been made.
66.
Walter Brennan started filming Herbie Rides Again for Disney but fell ill and had to be replaced.
67.
Walter Brennan built the Indian Lodge Motel, a movie theater, and a variety store in Joseph, and continued going there between film roles until his death.
68.
Walter Brennan spent his last years mostly in retirement at his ranch in Moorpark in Ventura County, California.
69.
Walter Brennan died of emphysema on September 21,1974 at the age of 80 in Oxnard, California.
70.
Walter Brennan's remains were interred at San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Los Angeles.
71.
In 1972, he endorsed far-right candidate John Schmitz, who much like Walter Brennan, was a member of the John Birch Society.
72.
Walter Brennan endorsed Ronald Reagan in the 1966 California gubernatorial election and in his reelection in 1970.
73.
Walter Brennan was the first actor to win three Academy Awards and remains the only person to have won Best Supporting Actor three times.
74.
Walter Brennan was popular with the Union of Film Extras, and since their numbers were overwhelming, he won every time he was nominated.