What a Character: Cecil Kellaway

Cecil Kellaway is among a handful of older character actors active during Hollywood's heyday who brought to the screen a delectable combination of warmth, kindliness and good cheer that I call "old guy charm." Other members of this twinkly-eyed pack of golden boys include the likes of sweet and snuggly S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall, shyly unassuming Henry Travers, rascally Charles Ruggles and spry ol' Harry Davenport.

Kellaway, who seemed to personify the very essence of "classic Irishman" on the screen - he was Oscar-nominated for his role as a leprechaun in The Luck of the Irish (1948) and for his portrayal of Monsignor Ryan in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) - was born in Capetown, South Africa in 1890 and schooled in both his native country and in England. Though he studied and briefly practiced engineering, young Cecil was drawn to the footlights. After leaving his profession to go on the stage he toured through Asia, other parts of Africa and Europe before returning home and gaining recognition as a comedian. Then he was off to Australia in 1921 and there, over the next 16 years, the actor built his reputation in the theater.

Cecil Kellaway as Horace (a leprechaun) with Tyrone Power, The Luck of the Irish

 

Katharine Hepburn with Cecil Kellaway as Monsignor Ryan in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner 

Following appearances in a few Australian films of the late '30s, Kellaway was offered a contract by RKO Pictures. His first credited Hollywood movie would be a crime film, Everybody's Doing It (1938), starring Preston Foster. He made a total of 10 unremarkable movies in 1938, but was luckier the following year: his first two films of 1939, Gunga Din for RKO and Wuthering Heights for Goldwyn, were hits that became enduring classics. Cecil Kellaway would perform in more than 75 Hollywood films, classics ranging from The Letter (1940), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Portrait of Jennie (1948) and Harvey (1950) to The Shaggy Dog (1959) and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). He also worked in television during its gilded age, appearing in live dramas and on such series as Perry Mason ("The Case of the Glittering Goldfish"), Rawhide, The Twilight Zone ("Elegy"), Burke's Law and That Girl. Kellaway's years as an actor spanned more than five decades and he even managed to find time to appear on Broadway late in his career.

He was cherubic-looking, with what seemed a barely suppressed chuckle in his voice - no wonder that his screen roles were usually genial and often lovable. He is so charming as Dr. Chumley in Harvey that it would have surprised no one (including Elwood P. Dowd) if the towering rabbit had taken up with him permanently.

Cecil Kellaway as Dr. Chumley and James Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey

Kellaway's Nick Smith in The Postman Always Rings Twice is a most amiable and hospitable fellow.  But it's hard to imagine that Nick's decades-younger wife, Cora (knockout-in-white Lana Turner), could have been so desperate and unable to make her way beyond a remote stretch of California highway that her only option was to marry him. And so it's no wonder at all that she wanted to be rid of Nick when brooding young drifter Frank Chambers (John Garfield) arrived at their seaside burger joint and she finally warmed (heated?) up to him. But to murder bighearted, unsuspecting (if loopy) Nick/Cecil...how could they?!?

Frank and Cora confirm their reservations at the Hotel Hades in The Postman Always Rings Twice

Much less grim circumstances await Harry Wilson, the Lloyd's of London insurance investigator Kellaway portrayed in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, a mid-'60s biddie-horror genre picture in which he co-starred with Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead and Mary Astor. Cast to type, Kellaway's soft-spoken Wilson is but a bystander - albeit a mystery-solving bystander - to the mayhem that takes place inside a crumbling Louisiana mansion.

 Who killed John Mayhew? Mary Astor and Cecil Kellaway in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte

It's reported that Cecil Kellaway was Fox's original choice to play Kris Kringle in a holiday movie that went on to become a yuletide classic, Miracle on 34th Street (1947). But he balked and refused the role, remarking to one of his sons, "Americans don't go for whimsy." The Santa Claus role ultimately went to his cousin, Edmund Gwenn, who also possessed a good amount of "old guy charm"...

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This is my entry in the "What a Character" blogathon hosted by Paula of Paula's Cinema Club, Kellee of Outspoken and Freckled, and Aurora of Once Upon a Screen. Please check out their sites to learn more.