House Jameson

House Baker Jameson (December 17, 1902 – April 23, 1971) was an American actor born in Austin, Texas, whose career spanned Broadway, radio, and early television across several decades. He was named for Edward M. House, a political figure who was a friend of his family. After his father died, Jameson was raised by an aunt who took him to see a performance of The Shepherd King when he was five years old, an experience he later credited as the moment he knew he wanted to act. He graduated from Columbia University.

Jameson's Broadway career extended from 1925 to 1966 and included productions such as In Time to Come, Never Too Late, The Great Indoors, Don't Drink the Water, and the drama The Patriots. His first appearance on a New York stage came in 1924, when he was cast as a spear carrier in the Theatre Guild production of Saint Joan. That same year he appeared in the Grand Street Follies in a role satirizing Will Rogers, a part he was given because of his Texas background. He later acknowledged that he had little experience with a lariat and spent a night practicing rope spinning with a clothesline to prepare. In 1925, Jameson co-starred in the original Garrick Gaieties, a musical revue by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, performing in a burlesque of They Knew What They Wanted in which he played Tony and impersonated actor Richard Bennett. Later that year he toured for twelve months in a Julia Arthur production of Saint Joan, taking the role of Gilles De Rais.

Following the tour, Jameson spent nearly a year in Chicago before joining the Toronto Theatre Guild in 1927 and 1928, where productions included A Kiss for Cinderella, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, Diplomacy, What Every Woman Knows, Bunty Pulls the Strings, and Quality Street. Several of those productions starred his wife, Edith Taliaferro, an established stage actress, with Jameson appearing in supporting roles. For the 1928 to 1929 season he was a member of Minneapolis' Bainbridge Players, where he and Taliaferro appeared together in productions including The Garden of Eden, Her Cardboard Lover, Lulu Belle, and Behold the Bridegroom, among others. In 1930, the two toured Australia together for more than six months, with Taliaferro as the headliner.

Jameson entered radio in the early 1930s as an announcer at WEVD, a position that grew out of a letter he had written to staff announcer Roland Bradley expressing his admiration. Bradley's eventual departure from the station led to Jameson being named chief announcer and dramatic director in 1934. He became known for leading roles in two prominent programs: Renfrew of the Mounted, in which he played Inspector Douglas Renfrew, a Canadian Mountie, from 1936 to 1940, and Crime Doctor, where he took over the lead role of Dr. Benjamin Ordway from Everett Sloane in 1944, remaining with the program through 1947. The popularity of Renfrew was demonstrated when a single offer of a photograph of Jameson in costume generated 17,000 requests.

The role most closely associated with Jameson was that of father Sam Aldrich in the radio comedy The Aldrich Family, which he played from 1939 to 1953. In 1968, Jameson described the experience as the happiest of his acting career, noting that there were never personality conflicts among the cast and crediting the leadership of star Ezra Stone. He and Stone developed a real father-and-son relationship that continued after the show ended. In 1943, Variety listed Jameson among the top earners in radio, with annual income of $50,000 or more. He estimated that over the course of his radio career he had performed in thousands of programs, including appearances on Suspense, Grand Central Station, The Jack Benny Show, Cavalcade of America, X Minus One, Portia Faces Life, and many others.

Writer Norman Corwin held Jameson in particularly high regard, describing him as a reliable performer of modesty and dignity. Jameson appeared in numerous Corwin productions as both actor and narrator, among them The Plot to Overthrow Christmas, in which he played Santa Claus, and They Fly Through the Air, in which he was the sole performer. Corwin wrote several scripts specifically with Jameson in mind, and in a 1969 letter told Jameson that if Corwin was the father of his breakthrough plays, Jameson was the godfather. Jameson's voice was characterized as a magnificently mellow instrument, and he was noted for his command of language cadences and a gift for irony.

Jameson stated that he moved away from stage work in favor of radio partly because the lighter rehearsal and performance schedule allowed him to spend more time with his wife at their farm in Connecticut.