Saturdays with the Stars: Walter Brennan

Each month of 2022 we will be taking a look at one-time film actors who became foundational figures in the early days of television, stretching from the early 1950's into the mid-1960's.  Last month we talked about prolific character actor Ward Bond, who never really got his due until he joined the cast of NBC's Wagon Train at the end of his life.  This month, we're going to talk about another character actor, one who also eventually made his way to television, but spent much of the previous several decades working in various movie roles, assisting almost every star of the era.  Unlike Bond, though, this actor received his due from the industry...over and over and over.  This month's star is Walter Brennan.

Brennan was born the son of Irish immigrants in Massachusetts in 1894.  While he initially studied engineering, young Walter was always meant to act, and even as a teenage found himself doing vaudeville.  He eventually fought in World War I, and due to exposure to mustard gas he damaged his voice, which would result in his distinctive high-pitched tone that would help future generations always identify Brennan.

I say "identify" because few actors have ever been such chameleons as Walter Brennan.  I've seen many of Brennan's movies through the years (like Bond, he's basically unavoidable if you turn on TCM), and the only thing that's consistent about him is his voice.  His age, in particular, is eternally an enigma.  Though he was around forty when he started to appear in now-classics like The Invisible Man and The Bride of Frankenstein, Brennan's age is always a mystery to me onscreen.  He seems to at once be both 50 and 200.

Brennan is probably known today mostly for his unmatched three Oscar wins in five years (he'd get four nominations in total), but in his day he was a versatile actor, and was a big star in the late 1950's on the TV comedy The Real McCoys.  He even had a very late career as a successful music star, getting a Top 5 hit at the age of 67 singing the classic "Old Rivers."  This month we're going to take a look at Brennan's long film career, talking about why he became an icon at such a late age, and how he won those three Oscars in such rapid succession (I have seen two of those movies before...we'll get to the third this month).