Louis Calhern gives officials and schemers a polished credibility that makes him useful to thrillers and the Marx Brothers alike. We rate him most highly when his good manners offer no guarantee of good faith.
Fi1m perspective
Ambassador Trentino in Duck Soup (1933) has the polished air of a man accustomed to being taken seriously. Louis Calhern makes that expectation plausible, which gives the Marx Brothers something worth disrupting. We value him most in roles like this, where respectability can accommodate a good deal of scheming. He supplies the dignity without requiring us to admire the man.
He had been a Broadway leading man before returning to films as a character actor in 1931. Duck Soup puts that air of consequence to particularly good use, with Leo McCarey's brisk direction keeping the comedy moving. We laughed at the affront to official dignity: Groucho Marx's rudeness is funnier with Calhern's scheming diplomat there to receive it. Some of the broader bullying wears thin, but Calhern's usefulness as a comic foil is clear.
Alfred Hitchcock uses his authority more soberly in Notorious (1946), casting him as Paul Prescott, head of the US Secret Service. It is an apt job for an actor whose polished manner can make power look ordinary. Ingrid Bergman gives the cruel romance its suffering, and we would not mistake Calhern's contribution for the film's emotional centre. He makes the official credible, which is enough for the part.
Calhern joined MGM in 1948, and substantial supporting work followed in the 1950s. In John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950), he plays the villainous lawyer Alonzo D. Emmerich, a particularly apt use of that cultivated respectability. The Magnificent Yankee (1950) gives him Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a role he had already played on stage. Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Julius Caesar (1953) casts him in the title role. These parts need someone who can seem important without spending the scene establishing it.
The polish was not equally useful everywhere. In Diplomaniacs (1933) and Up in Arms (1944), he can seem puzzled and less at ease in the broad comedy. Those films are worth remembering before calling him equally assured at everything. Begin with Duck Soup, then turn to Notorious before deciding that his proper place was opposite a comedian.
Biography
Louis Calhern was an American stage and screen actor. Born Carl Henry Vogt, he began his career in the theatre before appearing in silent films in the early 1920s, including The Blot (1921). He left motion pictures in 1923 but returned to the screen after the advent of sound, becoming primarily a character actor in films while continuing to play leading roles on stage.
Calhern reached the height of his film career in the 1950s as a Metro-Goldwyn-Morgan contract player. His notable screen roles include Ambassador Trentino in Duck Soup (1933), Paul Prescott in Notorious (1946), Alonzo D. Emmerich in The Asphalt Jungle (1950), Colonel Buffalo Bill Cody in Annie Get Your Gun (1950), and the title role in Julius Caesar (1953). For his performance as Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Magnificent Yankee (1950), he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. He died of a heart attack in 1956 while in Japan.
