Laird Cregar: A Hollywood Tragedy

by Gregory William Mank

Overview

In 1944, Laird Cregar played Jack the Ripper in The Lodger, giving one of the most haunting performances in Hollywood history. It was the climax of a strange celebrity that saw the young American actor—who stood 6' 3" and weighed more than 300 pounds—earn distinction as a portrayer of psychopaths and villains. Determined to break free of this typecasting, he desperately desired to become "a beautiful man," embarking on an extreme diet that killed him at 31. This first biography of Cregar tells the heartbreaking story of the brilliant but doomed actor. Appendices cover his film, theatre, and radio work. Many never before published photographs are included.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781476678993
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Publication date:	02/21/2019
Pages:	329
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Gregory William Mank has written and recorded many DVD and Blu-Ray audio commentaries, has won four Rondo Awards, and has written numerous books on classic horror films. He lives in Delta, Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments deleteix
Author’s Note deletexi
Introduction: The Ripper Incarnate
Part I: If You Try to Find Me, I Will Kill Myself
1 • Philadelphia
2 • The “Secret Heart” Thing
3 • A Grotesque
4 • Life in a Sedan
5 • Oscar Wilde
Part II: The Lion of the Hour
6 • Success
7 • The Rabbit with the Glass Teeth
8 • Gooseberry the Great
9 • ­He-Goat Lucifer
10 • The Saint Bernard
11 • I Wake Up Screaming with Laird Cregar
Part III: Betsey
12 • Seven Years Old in Hollywood
13 • The Man Who Shouldn’t Have Come to Dinner
14 • Quaking Like Jelly
15 • Riding the Cannon
16 • Swashbuckler
17 • The Hideaway and a Sad Farewell
Part IV: “We Want You Just As You Are, Mr. Cregar.”
18 • Who Was Who in the Zoo
19 • Three in 1943
20 • Horror
21 • “Don’t Let Him Catch Ya, Dearie!”
22 • “Gloomy Sunday”
23 • The Ripper in Person
Part V: “A Beautiful Man”
24 • Hangover Square’s First Draft, and the Debacle of Laura
25 • A Failed Romance, a Revised Script, Abbott and Costello Meet Laird Cregar, a Female Stalker, and the Tragedy of Henry VIII
26 • “The Bette Davis of the 20th Century–Fox Lot”
27 • Blowing Up
28 • Fox Infernos
29 • The Last Act
Part VI: Denouement
30 • What I Wanted for Christmas
31 • Legacy
32 • A Final Tribute
Filmography
Theater Credits
Radio Credits
Unrealized Film Projects
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Decades of research...the author brings Cregar back to vivid life in this culmination of an ‘almost lifelong’ fascination with the actor...as with most good Hollywood biographies, this one interweaves its subject’s life story with the story of the movie business itself...Mank finds joy as well as tragedy in Cregar’s attempt to live his dream...gives rich life to an unknown Hollywood story”—Booklist

From the Publisher

02/01/2018
Actor and freelance writer Mank (Women in Horror Films, 1940s) offers one of the first in-depth studies of Samuel Laird Cregar (1914–44), who, despite his girth, had an early, intense desire to be an actor. Relocating from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, Cregar scored a stage triumph playing Oscar Wilde, attracting Hollywood's attention. With roles ranging from frontier trappers to pirates, he yearned for more serious, even romantic parts. The recipient of constant and cruel jokes for weighing more than 300 pounds, he was once mocked at a party by his idol John Barrymore. Cregar was further handicapped by his not-so-secret homosexuality (although he also had unrequited infatuations with several actresses, notably Linda Darnell). He achieved a breakthrough playing a Jack the Ripper type character in The Lodger and psychopaths in I Wake Up Screaming and his last film, Hangover Square (1945). Tired of playing "the fat man you love to hate," Cregar went on an unsupervised crash-near-starvation diet, quickly dropping 100 pounds but also aggravating an abdominal condition, dying of a heart attack at age 31. VERDICT Despite some narrative detours and padding, this is a compelling, cautionary tale of an actor who held his own opposite luminaries such as Paul Muni and Tyrone Power, yearned for stability and acceptance, and achieved short-lived stardom at great cost.—Stephen Rees, formerly with Levittown Lib., PA

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