Eddie Albert

Edward Albert Heimberger (April 22, 1906 – May 26, 2005) was an American actor. He is known for his roles on stage and screen and received nominations for two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards.

Albert made his acting debut with the film Brother Rat (1938). He went on to receive two Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nominations for his roles in Roman Holiday (1953) and The Heartbreak Kid (1972).

When he was one year old, his family moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota. Young Edward secured his first job as a newspaper boy when he was only six. During World War I, his German surname led to taunts as "the enemy" by his classmates. He studied at Central High School in Minneapolis and joined the drama club. His schoolmate Harriet Lake (later known as actress Ann Sothern) graduated in the same class. Finishing high school in 1926, he entered the University of Minnesota, where he majored in business. When he graduated, Albert embarked on a business career. However, the stock market crash in 1929 left him essentially unemployed. He then took odd jobs, working as a trapeze performer, an insurance salesman, and a nightclub singer. Albert stopped using his last name professionally because it invariably was mispronounced as "Hamburger".

Career 1933–1949: Early roles and military

He moved to New York City in 1933, where he co-hosted a radio show, The Honeymooners – Grace and Eddie Show, which ran for three years. At the show's end, he was offered a film contract by Warner Bros. In the 1930s, Albert performed in Broadway stage productions, including Brother Rat, which opened in 1936. He had lead roles in Room Service (1937–1938) and The Boys from Syracuse (1938–1939). In 1936, Albert had also become one of the earliest television actors, performing live in one of RCA's first television broadcasts in association with NBC, a promotion for their New York City radio stations. Albert landed the starring role in the 1938 Broadway musical The Boys from Syracuse, and met Burl Ives, who had a small role in the play. The two later briefly shared an apartment in the Beachwood Canyon community of Hollywood after Ives moved west the following year. Also in 1938, Albert made his feature-film debut in the Hollywood version of Brother Rat with Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman, reprising his Broadway role as cadet "Bing" Edwards. The next year, he starred in On Your Toes, adapted for the screen from the Broadway smash by Rodgers and Hart.

Battle of Tarawa Bronze Star On September 9, 1942, Albert enlisted in the United States Coast Guard and was discharged in 1943 to accept an appointment as a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve. He was awarded the Bronze Star with Combat "V" for his actions during the invasion of Tarawa in November 1943, when, as the coxswain of a U.S. Navy landing craft, he rescued 47 Marines who were stranded offshore (and supervised the rescue of 30 others), while under heavy enemy machine-gun fire. "...at the bloody Battle of Tarawa in the South Pacific, he found and rescued wounded soldiers who had been abandoned under heavy fire, transporting them to troop ships for treatment. Estimates credit him with pulling 70 men to safety."

Film work during war years During the war years, Albert returned to films, starring in ones such as The Great Mr. Nobody, Lady Bodyguard, and Ladies' Day, as well as reuniting with Reagan and Wyman for An Angel from Texas and co-starring with Humphrey Bogart in The Wagons Roll at Night. After the war, he resumed appearing in leading roles, including 1947's Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman, with Susan Hayward. From 1948 on, Albert guest-starred in nearly 90 television series. He made his guest-starring debut on an episode of The Ford Theatre Hour. This part led to other roles such as Chevrolet Tele-Theatre, Suspense, Lights Out, Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, Studio One, The Philco Television Playhouse, Your Show of Shows, Front Row Center, The Alcoa Hour, and in dramatic series The Eleventh Hour, The Reporter, and General Electric Theater.

1950–1969: Leading man roles

In his first TV series, Albert portrayed Larry Tucker on the situation comedy Leave It to Larry, which ran from October 14, 1952, until December 23, 1952, on CBS. Tucker was a married man who encountered his father-in-law at work and at home. Albert had his own daytime variety program, The Eddie Albert Show, on CBS television in 1953. Singer Ellen Hanley was a regular on the show. A review in Broadcasting magazine panned the program, writing "Mr. Albert, with the help of Miss Hanley, conducts an interview, talks a little, sings a little, and looks all-thumbs a lot." Beginning June 12, 1954, Albert was host of Saturday Night Revue, which replaced Your Show of Shows on NBC. The 9:00–10:30 pm (Eastern Time) program also featured Ben Blue and Alan Young and the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra.

The 1950s also had a return to Broadway for Albert, including roles in Miss Liberty (1949–1950) and The Seven Year Itch (1952–1955). In 1959, Albert was cast as businessman Dan Simpson in the episode "The Unwilling" of the series Riverboat. In the story, Dan Simpson attempts to open a general store in the American West despite a raid from pirates on the Mississippi River, who stole from him $20,000 in merchandise. Debra Paget is cast in this episode as Lela Russell; Russell Johnson is Darius, and John M. Picard is uncredited as a river pirate. He guest-starred on various series, including ABC's The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom, and the Westinghouse Studio One series (CBS, 1953–54), playing Winston Smith in the first TV adaptation of 1984, by William Templeton.

In the 1950s, Albert appeared in film roles such as that of Lucille Ball's fiancé in The Fuller Brush Girl (1950), Bill Gorton in The Sun Also Rises (1957), and a traveling salesman in Carrie (1952). He was nominated for his first Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor with Roman Holiday (1953). In Oklahoma! (1955), he played a womanizing Persian peddler, and in Who's Got the Action? (1962), he portrayed a lawyer helping his partner (Dean Martin) cope with a gambling addiction. In Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), he played a psychiatrist with an enthusiasm for farming. He appeared in several military roles, including The Longest Day (1962), about the Normandy invasion. The film Attack (1956) provided Albert with a dark role as a cowardly, psychotic Army captain whose behavior threatens the safety of his company. In a similar vein, he played a psychotic United States Army Air Force colonel in Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), with Gregory Peck. Albert acted in the 1956 special Our Mr. Sun opposite Dr. Frank Baxter directed by Frank Capra.

In 1960, Albert replaced Robert Preston in the lead role of Professor Harold Hill, in the Broadway production of The Music Man. Albert also performed in regional theater. He created the title role of Marc Blitzstein's Reuben, Reuben in 1955 in Boston. He performed at The Muny Theater in St. Louis, Missouri, reprising the Harold Hill role in The Music Man in 1966 and playing Alfred P. Doolittle in My Fair Lady in 1968. In 1962, Albert appeared as Cal Kroeger on the TV Western The Virginian in the episode titled "Impasse". In 1964, Albert guest-starred in "Cry of Silence", an episode of the science-fiction television series The Outer Limits. Albert played Andy Thorne, who along with his wife Karen (played by June Havoc), had decided to leave the city and buy a farm (a recurring theme in Albert's career). They find themselves lost and in the middle of a deserted valley, where they come under attack by a series of tumbleweeds, frogs, and rocks.

Also in 1964, he guest-starred as a government agent in the pilot episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea titled "Eleven Days to Zero". Albert appeared as Taylor Dickson, a western photographer in season seven, episode 11 as “The Photographer” in Rawhide, alongside Clint Eastwood (Rowdy Yates) aired December 11, 1964.

Albert was cast as Charlie O'Rourke in the 1964 episode "Visions of Sugar Plums" of the NBC education drama series, Mr. Novak, starring James Franciscus. Bobby Diamond, formerly of the Fury series, also appeared in this episode.

In 1965, Albert was approached by producer Paul Henning to star in a sitcom for CBS titled Green Acres. His character, Oliver Wendell Douglas, was a lawyer who left the city to enjoy a simple life as a gentleman farmer. Co-starring on the show was Eva Gabor as his wife Lisa. The show was an immediate hit, achieving fifth place in the ratings in its first season. The series lasted six seasons with 170 episodes.

In 1968, Albert was a guest on The Carol Burnett Show episode six. He played Harvey Korman's boss in an episode of "Carol and Sis", and sang.

1970–1995: Established actor After a four-year absence from the small screen, and upon reaching age 69 in 1975, Albert signed a new contract with Universal Television, and starred in the popular 1970s series Switch for CBS as a retired police officer, Frank McBride, who goes to work as a private detective with a former criminal he had once jailed. In its first season, Switch was a hit. By late 1976, the show had become a more serious and traditional crime drama. At the end of its third season in 1978, ratings began to drop, and the show was cancelled after 70 episodes. In 1965, the year that Green Acres premiered, Albert served as host/narrator for the telecast of a German-American made-for-television film version of The Nutcracker, which was rerun several times. The host sequences and the narration were especially filmed for English-language telecasts of this short film (it was only an hour in length, and cut much from the Tchaikovsky ballet). In 1968, he voiced Myles Standish in the Rankin/Bass animated TV special The Mouse on the Mayflower.

In 1971, Albert guest-starred in a season-one Columbo episode titled "Dead Weight" as a highly decorated retired US Marine Corps major general, and combat war hero from the Korean War, who murders his adjutant to cover up an illegal contracting conspiracy scheme. In 1972, Albert resumed his film career and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as an overprotective father in The Heartbreak Kid (1972), and delivered a memorable performance as an evil prison warden in 1974's The Longest Yard. In a lighter vein, Albert portrayed the gruff though soft-hearted Jason O'Day in the successful Disney film Escape to Witch Mountain in 1975.

Albert appeared in such 1980s films as How to Beat the High Cost of Living (1980), Yesterday (1981), Take This Job and Shove It (1981), Rooster (1982 television film), and Yes, Giorgio (1982), and as the US president in Dreamscape (1984). His final film role was a cameo in The Big Picture (1989). He also appeared in many all-star television miniseries, including Evening in Byzantium (1978), The Word (1978), Peter and Paul (1981), Goliath Awaits (1981), and War and Remembrance (1988). In 1982, Albert sang the character role of the elderly Emperor Altoum in the San Francisco Opera staging of Puccini's Turandot. In the mid-1980s, Albert was reunited with longtime friend and co-star of the Brother Rat and An Angel from Texas films, Jane Wyman, in a recurring role as the villainous Carlton Travis in the popular 1980s series Falcon Crest. He also guest-starred on an episode of the 1980s television series Highway to Heaven, as well as Murder, She Wrote, and in 1990, he reunited with Eva Gabor for a Return to Green Acres. In 1993, he guest-starred for several episodes on the daytime soap opera General Hospital as Jack Boland, and he made a guest appearance on the Golden Girls spin-off The Golden Palace the same year.

Hollywood blacklist Eddie Albert's wife, Mexican actress Margo, was well known in Hollywood for her left-wing political leanings, but she was not a member of the Communist Party. In 1950, Margo and Albert's names were both published in "Red Channels", an anti-Communist pamphlet that sought to expose purported Communist influence within the entertainment industry. This was part of a larger trend of blacklisting motion-picture professionals with known or suspected Communist leanings, unless they testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee to disavow any Communist affiliations.

Albert later spoke of this period: "Everyone was so full of fear. Many people couldn't support their families, or worse, their lives were ruined and they had to go out and do menial jobs. Some even killed themselves." While Albert's career survived the blacklist, his wife, Margo, had extreme difficulty finding work. Edward Jr. died at age 55, one year after his father. He had been suffering from lung cancer for 18 months.

Activism and interests Albert was active in social and environmental causes, especially from the 1970s onward. In 1970, Albert participated in the creation of Earth Day and spoke at one of its events in that year. He joined Albert Schweitzer in a documentary about African malnutrition. and fought agricultural and industrial pollution, particularly DDT. while supporting eco-farming and tree planting. Albert was also a director of the U.S. Council on Refugees.

Beginning in the 1940s, Eddie Albert Productions produced films for various U.S. corporations, as well as documentaries such as Human Beginnings (a for-its-time controversial sex-education film) and Human Growth.

In 1971 he starred in an industrial film sponsored and promoted by a major logging and forest products concern called Weyerhaeuser Company. which emphasized the Pacific Northwest. Shot partly amid old growth timber and narrated solely by Albert, the film documented industrial methods of handling such trees for market. It also shows re-planted clear cuts and emphasized "the need for advanced lumber production in response to rapidly increasing population," according to the Texas Archive of the Moving Image.

Illness and death

Albert was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1995. His son put aside his acting career to care for his father. Albert exercised regularly until shortly before his death. Eddie Albert died of pneumonia on May 26, 2005, at the age of 99 in his home in Pacific Palisades, California. He is interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, next to his late wife and near his Green Acres co-star Eva Gabor. For contributions to the television industry, Eddie Albert was honored on February 8, 1960, with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6441 Hollywood Boulevard.

Acting credits Film + Film appearances of Eddie Albert Year Title Role Notes 1938 Brother Rat "Bing" Edwards Film debut 1939 On Your Toes Phil Dolan Jr. 1939 Four Wives Dr. Clinton Forrest Jr. 1940 Brother Rat and a Baby "Bing" Edwards 1940 An Angel from Texas Peter Coleman 1940 My Love Came Back Dusty Rhodes 1940 A Dispatch from Reuter's Max Wagner 1941 Four Mothers Clinton Forrest Jr. 1941 The Great Mr. Nobody Robert "Dreamy" Smith 1941 The Wagons Roll at Night Matt Varney 1941 Thieves Fall Out Eddie Barnes 1941 Out of the Fog George Watkins 1942 Treat 'Em Rough Bill Kingsford / The Panama Kid 1942 Eagle Squadron Leckie 1943 Lady Bodyguard Terry Moore 1943 Ladies' Day Wacky Waters 1943 Bombardier Tom Hughes 1946 Strange Voyage Chris Thompson 1946 Rendezvous with Annie Cpl. Jeffrey Dolan 1947 The Perfect Marriage Gil Cummins 1947 Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman Steve Nelson 1947 Hit Parade of 1947 Kip Walker 1947 Time Out of Mind Jake Bullard 1947 Unconquered Barker Scenes deleted 1948 The Dude Goes West Daniel Bone 1948 You Gotta Stay Happy Bullets Baker 1948 Every Girl Should Be Married Harry Proctor/"Old" Joe Cameo; uncredited 1950 The Fuller Brush Girl Humphrey Briggs 1951 You're in the Navy Now Lt. Bill Baron 1951 Meet Me After the Show Chris Leeds 1952 Actors and Sin Orlando Higgens 1952 Carrie Charles Drouet 1953 Roman Holiday Irving Radovich 1955 The Girl Rush Elliot Atterbury 1955 Oklahoma! Ali Hakim 1955 I'll Cry Tomorrow Burt McGuire 1956 Attack! Capt. Erskine Cooney 1956 The Teahouse of the August Moon Capt. McLean 1957 The Sun Also Rises Bill Gorton 1957 The Joker Is Wild Austin Mack 1958 Orders to Kill Major MacMahon 1958 The Gun Runners Hanagan 1958 The Roots of Heaven Abe Fields 1959 Beloved Infidel Bob Carter 1961 Madison Avenue Harvey Holt Ames 1961 The Young Doctors Dr. Charles Dornberger 1962 The Two Little Bears Harry Davis 1962 The Longest Day Col. Thompson 1962 Who's Got the Action? Clint Morgan 1963 Miracle of the White Stallions Rider Otto 1963 Captain Newman, M.D. Col. Norval Algate Bliss 1965 The Party's Over Ben 1966 7 Women Charles Pether 1972 The Heartbreak Kid Mr. Corcoran1973 The BorrowersPod Clock 1974 McQ Kosterman 1974 The Take Chief Berrigan 1974 The Longest Yard Warden Hazen 1975 Escape to Witch Mountain Jason O'Day 1975 The Devil's Rain Dr. Sam Richards 1975 Whiffs Colonel Lockyer 1975 Hustle Leo Sellers 1976 Birch Interval Pa Strawacher 1976 Moving Violation Alex Warren 1979 The Concorde... Airport '79 Eli Sands 1979 Border Cop Moffat 1980 How to Beat the High Co$t of Living Max 1980 Foolin' Around Daggett 1981 Yesterday Bart Kramer 1981 Take This Job and Shove It Samuel Ellison 1982 Yes, Giorgio Henry Pollack 1984 The Act Harry Kruger 1984 Dreamscape The President 1985 Stitches Dean Bradley 1985 Head Office Pete Helmes 1987 Turnaround Theo 1989 The Big Picture M.C. Cameo 1989 Brenda Starr Police Chief Maloney 1994 Death Valley Memories Narrator Documentary 1994 Headless! Sheriff George Short film

Television

Theater + Theatre credits Year Title Role Venue Ref.1936 O Evening Star Ben Martin Empire Theatre, Broadway 1936 Brother Rat Bing Edwards Biltmore Theatre, Broadway 1937 Room Service Leo Davis Cort Theatre, Broadway 1938 The Boys from Syracuse Antipholus of Syracuse Alvin Theatre, Broadway 1949 Miss Liberty Horace Miller Imperial Theatre, Broadway 1952 The Seven Year Itch Richard Sherman (replacement) Fulton Theatre, Broadway 1957 The Music Man Harold Hill (replacement) Majestic Theatre, Broadway 1958 Say, Darling Jack Darling (replacement) ANTA Theatre, Broadway 1976 No Hard Feelings George Bartlett Martin Beck Theatre, Broadway 1983 You Can't Take It With You Martin Vanderhof (replacement) Plymouth Theatre, Broadway

Awards and nominations Year Association Category Project Result Ref.1953 Academy Awards Best Supporting Actor Roman Holiday 1954 BAFTA Award Best Foreign Actor 1956 Golden Globe Awards Best Supporting Actor The Teahouse of the August Moon 1972 Academy Awards Best Supporting Actor The Heartbreak Kid 1972 National Society of Film Critics Best Supporting Actor 1972 New York Film Critics Circle Best Supporting Actor 1974 Golden Globe Awards Best Supporting Actor The Longest Yard