George Macready

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George Macready
Born	August 29, 1899 Providence, Rhode Island
Died	July 2, 1973 Los Angeles, California

George Macready (August 29, 1899 – July 2, 1973) was an American film actor with a distinctive scar (from an car accident) that helped him land roles as an aristocratic villain.

Macready was born in Providence, Rhode Island and graduated from Brown University. He was an art collector, and claimed to be a descendant of the 19th-century Shakespearean actor William Charles Macready. He established a profitable Los Angeles art gallery with his friend and fellow actor Vincent Price during the 1940s. He was a distinguished Broadway and Shakespearean actor before appearing in films. His films include A Kiss Before Dying (1956), Vera Cruz (1954), The Big Clock (1948), and perhaps most famously, Gilda (1946), in which he played the sexually ambivalent casino owner Ballin Mundson. He also made a one-scene appearance as Flavius in the opening scene of MGM's Julius Caesar, the critically acclaimed 1953 film version of Shakespeare's play.

However, some film aficionados consider his best role to be the fanatical French general from World War I in Stanley Kubrick's classic, Paths of Glory, who ordered his artillery to fire on his own troops when they failed to attempt a battlefield charge which would have been an impossible, suicide mission.

Later in his career, Macready appeared in many television programmes. He portrayed the character of Martin Peyton in the television series Peyton Place (1965-1968). Probably one of the most sympathetic characters he ever played was President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, in the 1970 Pearl Harbor film Tora! Tora! Tora!.

Macready died from emphysema in 1973.