Dana Andrews

Carver Dana Andrews was born on January 1, 1909, near Collins, Mississippi, the third of thirteen children of Charles Forrest Andrews, a Baptist minister, and his wife Annis. His younger siblings included fellow Hollywood actor Steve Forrest, born William Forrest Andrews in 1925. The family later relocated to Huntsville, Texas, where Andrews attended Sam Houston State University and studied business administration in Houston. In 1931, he traveled to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a singer, taking work at a gas station in Van Nuys while studying music at night. He was subsequently discovered performing in theater and signed to a contract by Samuel Goldwyn in 1938 after being spotted in the play Oh Evening Star. Goldwyn directed Andrews to build his experience at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he appeared in more than twenty productions before Goldwyn sold a portion of his contract to 20th Century Fox.

Andrews made his film debut in Lucky Cisco Kid in 1940 and accumulated supporting roles in Fox productions including Tobacco Road, directed by John Ford, and The Ox-Bow Incident, in which his performance as a lynching target drew praise from New York Times critic Bosley Crowther. His first leading role came in the war film Berlin Correspondent in 1942. He rose to major stardom playing obsessed detective Mark McPherson opposite Gene Tierney in the noir mystery Laura, produced at Fox and directed by Otto Preminger in 1944. That same year he co-starred with Jeanne Crain in the musical State Fair. His most celebrated performance came in William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives for Goldwyn in 1946, in which he played World War II veteran Fred Derry returning home. The film outgrossed Gone with the Wind upon its release in the United States and Britain and ranked thirty-seventh on AFI's Top 100 Years...100 Movies list in 2007. In 1947, Andrews was voted the twenty-third most popular actor in the United States.

Andrews continued working with Preminger on Fallen Angel and Daisy Kenyon, and with director Elia Kazan on Boomerang. His career was hampered in the early 1950s by alcoholism, which on two occasions nearly cost him his life behind the wheel. Despite a general decline in the prominence of his film roles, his work in two late-cycle film noirs for Fritz Lang in 1956, While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, earned critical regard, as did the horror film Curse of the Demon and the noir The Fearmakers, both made with director Jacques Tourneur. From 1952 to 1954, he was featured in the radio series I Was a Communist for the FBI. In 1952, he toured with his wife Mary Todd in The Glass Menagerie.

Andrews maintained a stage career alongside his screen work. He appeared on Broadway between 1958 and 1967, replacing Henry Fonda in the drama Two for the Seesaw in 1958. He also appeared on Broadway in The Captains and the Kings and starred in The Odd Couple. During the 1960s, he made numerous television appearances on programs including Playhouse 90, The Twilight Zone, Ben Casey, and General Electric Theatre, among others. Andrews continued acting in film and television into the 1980s, taking on character parts as his leading-man career receded. He died on December 17, 1992.