BRENNAN, WALTER

(1894–1974)

Although he has three Academy Awards for best supporting actor, Walter Brennan is frequently remembered for the kindly, eccentric, backwards, and usually comic characters he played in over 100 films, many Westerns, from the 1930s to the 1960s. His first credited role was in Tearin’into Trouble (1927) with Wally Wales.

Two events early in life helped determine that Brennan’s acting roles would often be comic, character roles. In World War I he experienced a gas attack that permanently affected his vocal chords. Thus, even at a relatively early age Brennan had the voice of an old man. Additionally, in 1932, Brennan lost his front teeth in a stuntman accident.Thereafter he often played roles in which he could remove his false teeth. One of his best scenes occurs in Howard Hawks’s Red River (1948) when old Groot (Brennan) loses his teeth in a card game. Thereafter he can only have his teeth back at mealtimes. Brennan was the first actor to accumulate three Academy Awards (and one more nomination). His Oscar for a Western was for his role as Judge Roy Bean in William Wyler’s The Westerner (1940), opposite Gary Cooper. Neither in this film nor in My Darling Clementine (1946) did Brennan play his usual character role of an elderly country bumpkin. In fact, few John Ford villains are as ferocious as Brennan’s role as Old Man Clanton in My Darling Clementine. For Anthony Mann, Brennan played Jimmy Stewart’s partner in a cattle drive and a gold mining enterprise in A Far Country (1954). His character’s death midway through the picture is a formative moment for change in Stewart’s character. Brennan worked in six films for Howard Hawks, including Rio Bravo (1959), where he played Stumpy, the cranky old jail keeper. After Rio Bravo, Brennan devoted most of his time to television Westerns, starring in such popular shows as The Real McCoys and The Guns of Will Sonnett.