Biography
Noah Beery (January 17, 1882 - April 1, 1946) was an American actor. Born Noah Nicholas Beery in Kansas City, Missouri, he and his younger brother Wallace Beery both became Hollywood actors. Noah Beery worked in the theatre starting at the age of sixteen and by 1905 was performing on Broadway. After a dozen years on the stage, in 1915 he joined his brother in Hollywood to make motion pictures where he would become a respected character actor adept at playing the role of the villain.
Noah Beery worked during the silent film era but successfully made the transition to "talkies." Like his brother Wallace, he had an amazingly powerful and distinctive voice, and while he carved out a long and memorable career, he never approached his brother's eventual position in the screen pantheon (Wallace was the highest paid actor in the world in 1932, the year he won an Oscar). During a career that spanned three decades, Noah appeared in nearly two hundred films. In 1945 he returned to star in the Mike Todd Broadway production of "Up in Central Park."
Beery died in 1946 (on his brother Wallace's birthday) in Beverly Hills, California of a heart attack and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. His son, Noah Beery, Jr. (1913-1994), also became a successful character actor, most notably as the father of James Garner's character in the television series The Rockford Files (1974-1980). At the height of his career, Noah Beery began billing himself as "Noah Beery, Sr." in anticipation of his son's presence in films, but after his death, his son dropped the "Junior" from his own name and became "Noah Beery."
