John Halliday

John Halliday (September 14, 1880 – October 17, 1947) was an American actor of stage and screen, born in Brooklyn, New York, who built a career playing suave aristocrats and sophisticated leading men. As an infant, he relocated with his family to Europe, where he remained until the age of 18. He served with the British Army during the Boer War in South Africa from 1901 to 1902. Before turning to acting, Halliday worked as a civil and mining engineer, and in 1905 he moved to Nevada, where he extracted a substantial sum in gold before losing it in the stock market in Sacramento.

Following that financial setback, Halliday joined a stock theater company led by Nat Goodwin, which marked his entry into professional acting. He subsequently toured internationally as leading man with a troupe headed by T. Daniel Frawley. His Broadway debut came in 1912 with Cecil Raleigh and Henry Hamilton's The Whip, launching a stage career that extended through 1936. Among his notable Broadway appearances were W. Somerset Maugham's The Circle in 1921, Vincent Lawrence's Sour Grapes in 1926, Louis Verneuil's Jealousy in 1928, S. N. Behrman's Rain from Heaven in 1934, The Spider, and Tovarich.

Halliday was also a prominent film actor. He appeared in the drama Millie and is perhaps best remembered on screen for portraying Seth Lord, the father of Tracy Lord played by Katharine Hepburn, in the 1940 film adaptation of Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story. His final screen role came in Lydia in 1941.

In his personal life, Halliday's first wife, Camille Personi, filed a lawsuit in 1912 against May Buckley for alienation of affections. He married actress Eva Lang in 1917; the two divorced in 1928. The following year, he wed actress Eleanor Griffith in Greenwich, Connecticut. Halliday died of a heart ailment on October 17, 1947, in Honolulu, Hawaii, at the age of 67.