Walter Brennan spent forty years playing men older than he was, and the trick was never the dentures. It was the patience: the sidekick who has already read the last page and is content to wait for the hero to catch up.
Fi1m perspective
Watch him in Sergeant York (1941). Pastor Rosier Pile sells Alvin York his goods by day and preaches at him by night, and Brennan plays both jobs with the same amused patience, a man who knows how the boy turns out and sees no reason to hurry him. Gary Cooper is the long, slow centre of that film; Brennan is the one who seems to know what it is about before it does. We found ourselves waiting for him to come back into the shop. When the second hour turns into a sermon, he is still the most watchable thing in it, because he is the only preacher on screen who never raises his voice.
He came in as an extra and stuntman in 1925 and spent a decade as a face in the crowd. A contract with Samuel Goldwyn in 1935 changed that, and the run that followed was as good as any supporting actor has had: Swan Bostrom in Come and Get It (1936), the old horse-farm owner in Kentucky (1938), and Judge Roy Bean in The Westerner (1940), where he was the villain opposite Cooper and the reason people remember the picture. He was in his forties throughout and playing men of sixty and more. The reedy voice and the false teeth did some of the work. Stillness did the rest.
Howard Hawks understood him better than anyone, and they made six films together. Hawks liked to put him at the edge of the frame as the man who comments, grumbles and keeps the hero honest: Eddie beside Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not (1944), Nadine Groot on the trail with John Wayne in Red River (1948), Stumpy holding the jail in Rio Bravo (1959). Five films with Cooper, three with Wayne, three under William Wyler. He was never the lead and never seemed to want it, and in a Western that is a kind of freedom: the star has to be brave, and the old man is allowed to be funny.
The cost came later. Television found him in the fifties and gave him The Real McCoys (1957–1963), six years as the cranky, kindly grandpa, and after that the part came with him everywhere. The patience that had looked like wisdom opposite Cooper started to look like a habit, and by the sixties a Brennan performance was something you could predict from the poster. That is the honest criticism, and it is fair.
He knew it, and did not mind. "If you're not the star, you don't get the blame if it's a lousy picture," he said. "They always blame the star." The old man, he reckoned, was always great, and that was how he kept going. He was usually right, and it is the reason to look him up now: the pictures vary a good deal, and the old man rather less.
Biography
Walter Brennan was an American actor and singer. Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, he appeared in more than 200 films and several television series between the 1920s and the 1970s.
He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor three times, for Come and Get It (1936), Kentucky (1938) and The Westerner (1940). He received a further nomination for his performance as Pastor Rosier Pile in Sergeant York (1941).
Brennan is also known for roles in To Have and Have Not (1945), My Darling Clementine (1946), Red River (1948) and Rio Bravo (1959). On television he starred in the sitcom The Real McCoys (1957–1963).
