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September 17, 1928– I ran into Roddy McDowall twice. The first time was at the 50th Anniversary of MGM Ball at the Beverley Wilshire Hotel in 1973, which I had successfully crashed. He was there as Elizabeth Taylor’s date, or Taylor as his beard. He could not have been more gracious & warm. He was better looking in person than I had ever found him to be in films. The second time was at a coke fueled all-boy party at the home of a famous producer in the Hollywood Hills. He couldn’t have been more gracious & friendly, & from his films I would never have guessed that McDowell was profoundly “gifted”.
McDowall was thought to be one of the nicest people in show biz ever. He was also known as an especially good friend who was known for being able to keep a confidence.
After winning an acting prize in a school play, little Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall was able to secure film work in England beginning at age 10 with Scruffy (1938). He appeared in 16 movies before his family was evacuated to the USA during the Battle Of Britain in 1940.
McDowall’s arrived in Hollywood just as 20th Century Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck was looking to create ” the new Freddie Bartholomew.” McDowall screen-tested for the main juvenile role in Fox’s How Green Was My Valley (1941). He was cast in the role & received terrific reviews & a long contract. McDowall was cast with the then unknown Elizabeth Taylor in her first film, Lassie Come Home (1943). Taylor & McDowall became lifelong, very close friends. Taylor’s casting in this film was an absolute fluke. The director simply wanted any young girl who could do an English accent.
McDowall’s first adult role was as Malcolm in Orson Welles‘ 1948 film version of Shakespeare’s Scottish Play. But for the most part, McDowall left films in the 1950s, preferring TV & stage work. Among his Broadway credits were No Time For Sergeants (1955), Compulsion (1957), working with fellow former child star Dean Stockwell, & Lerner & Loewe‘s musical Camelot, as Mordred, a role I played in summer stock a decade later.
McDowall won a 1960 Tony Award for his work in a short run of the play The Fighting Cock, by odd coincidence a chapter title in my memoir Jockstraps & Vicodin. He spent almost all of 1962 portraying Octavius in the mammoth film production of Cleopatra with longtime pal, guess who?
An accomplished & original photographer, McDowall’s photos of Taylor & other celebrities were frequently published in the leading magazines of his era. He was, briefly, the photographic editor of Harper’s Bazaar & published the first of several collections of his rather extraordinary photographs, Double Exposure (1966).
McDowall went ape shit for his acting gigs between 1968 & 1975, in elaborate simian makeup as Cornelius in the Planet Of The Apes films & the TV series. He kept working & did the occasional film role or stage play into the 1990s. McDowall served on the executive boards of the Screen Actors Guild & Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
McDowall was a lifelong film collector & historian. In 1974, around the time I met him briefly, the FBI raided his home & seized his collection of films & TV series during an investigation of film piracy & copyright infringement. His collection consisted of nearly 200 16mm prints & more than 1,000 video cassettes. McDowall had purchased Errol Flynn‘s home movies & the prints of his own directorial debut Tam-Lin (1970) starring Ava Gardner, transferring them all to tape for archival storage. McDowall was open about those who dealt with him: Rock Hudson, Dick Martin & Mel Tormé were just a few of the celebrities who gave support in his film reproductions. No charges were brought against McDowall, but he was shaken by the experience.
McDowall’s passion was film preservation & he worked diligently with the National Film Preservation Board. In August, 1998, he was elected president of the Academy Foundation. He had a devotion to the great female stars of the past, whom he idolized. McDowall enjoyed unlikely friendships with some of the most elusive women stars of the silver screen, including Jean Arthur, Great Garbo & Lillian Gish.
McDowall was one of the most loved stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, noted for his kindness, generosity & loyalty. McDowall’s announcement that he was suffering from terminal cancer a few weeks before he died, rocked the film community & many of his friends came to say good-bye to the gravely ill McDowall at his home in Studio City. Shortly before his cancer diagnosis, he had provided the voice-over for Disney/Pixar’s animated feature A Bug’s Life (1998). A few days before McDowall’s final curtain call in 1999, the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences named its photographic archive after him.
McDowall graduated from University High School in Santa Monica. Christopher Isherwood wrote in a volume of his memoir that Tom Maddox had told him, that he was having an affair with the McDowall, then 17 years old.
Tab Hunter mentions McDowall in his terrific memoir Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making Of A Movie Star (2005):
“While making shakes at the Rexall drugstore at Hollywood & Highland, I met my first bona fide movie star. It was the night of the big 1948 Christmas parade. Dick Clayton brought along Roddy McDowall. Roddy was only 20, but he’d been in pictures his whole life. We hit it off, gabbing & laughing…”
Hunter & McDowall had posed shirtless for a Photoplay Magazine spread titled Calling All Girls!.
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Farley Granger writes about McDowall in his very fun & readable memoir Include Me Out (2008). Granger knew McDowell prior to his joining the Navy at 18 years old. Granger:
“It was 1953. I found an apartment on the Upper East Side in Manhattan… My old pals Roddy McDowall & Monty Clift lived on the same block”.
McDowall & Clift were very close & lived together for a period, & along with Taylor they were often seen out & about as a trio. During this time he also had a short, but intense, affair with Marlon Brando.
Eddie Fisher, in his autobiography Been There, Done That (1999), mentions McDowall & his decades of hatred towards him. Fisher had first met Elizabeth Taylor at a party that Merv Griffin & McDowall had in an apartment they were sharing in one of my favorite NY structures, The Dakota Apartments. Fisher:
“She spent most of the evening in a corner with her close friend Montgomery Clift. She was recently divorced from her first husband Nicky Hilton. But Roddy wouldn’t let me near her.”
Lauren Bacall, in her memoir By Myself (1978):
“He was someone I always looked forward to being with, loved seeing, loved hearing from.”
McDowall was with Bette Davis during the last part of her life, taking care of her & watching out for her best interests. When Julie Andrews asked McDowall why he didn’t write a book about his life, he said:
“I have too many friends. I know too much, I couldn’t.”
McDowall has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6632 Hollywood Boulevard & there is an honorary rose garden on the grounds of the Motion Picture & Television Fund with a statue of him in costume & makeup from the Planet Of The Apes.
McDowall:
“My whole life I’ve been trying to prove I’m not just yesterday.”
Interesting that in his over 260 film & TV roles, none of the characters were gay, but nearly all were gay-coded.
I think that I would really have loved to have been pals with McDowall. True friends are to be treasured.
The post #BornThisDay: Actor, Roddy McDowall appeared first on World of Wonder.
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Travis Wall
Amy Roloff
