John Ireland

John Benjamin Ireland was born on January 30, 1914, in Vancouver, British Columbia, and died on March 21, 1992. Raised in New York City from an early age, he left formal schooling after the seventh grade and took on various jobs to support his family, including performing underwater stunts at a carnival, working as a barker, and wrestling a dead octopus in a water carnival. He had once competed as a swimmer alongside Johnny Weissmuller. His mother, Gracie Ferguson, a Scottish piano teacher, remarried an Irish vaudevillian named Michael Noone, with whom she had three children: a daughter, Kathryn; a son, Thomas, who became the actor-comedian Tommy Noonan; and another son, Michael. Ireland never knew his natural father and was uncertain of the origin of his surname.

His path into acting began when he wandered into the Davenport Free Theater in Manhattan, believing it offered free performances, and instead received free training. He slept in a dressing room and earned a dollar a day working backstage while rehearsing. In 1941 he made his Broadway debut in a production of Macbeth featuring Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson. His Broadway career extended through 1955 and included appearances in the melodrama Deadfall, The Rats of Norway, the comedy A Highland Fling, the drama Doctors Disagree, and A Life, among other productions.

Ireland signed with 20th Century Fox and made his screen debut as Private Windy in Lewis Milestone's 1945 war film A Walk in the Sun. A string of Fox productions followed, including Wake Up and Dream, Behind Green Lights, and It Shouldn't Happen to a Dog, the latter two featuring Carole Landis. He played Billy Clanton in John Ford's My Darling Clementine in 1946. After departing Fox, he took his first screen lead in Railroaded! in 1947, directed by Anthony Mann for Eagle-Lion, and later appeared in Mann's noir Raw Deal in 1948. That same year, Howard Hawks cast him as the gunslinger Cherry Valance in Red River, though Ireland's role was reduced after a falling-out with Hawks. He also appeared as an army captain in the Ingrid Bergman production Joan of Arc in 1948.

In April 1948, Ireland signed a contract with Columbia Pictures at $500 per week, rising to $1,500 per week. His most acclaimed performance came in Robert Rossen's All the King's Men in 1949, in which he played Jack Burden, a newspaper reporter who shifts from devotee to cynical denouncer of the demagogue Willie Stark, portrayed by Broderick Crawford. The role earned Ireland an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, making him the first actor born in British Columbia to receive an Oscar nomination. His relationship with Columbia grew contentious; the studio suspended him in December 1949 after he walked off the set of One Way Out following a single scene. He sued the studio, and the two parties parted ways in February 1950 after Ireland agreed to pay Columbia 25 percent of his earnings for five years.

Throughout the early 1950s, Ireland appeared in a series of lower-budget productions, including The Return of Jesse James, The Basketball Fix, The Scarf, Little Big Horn, and The Bushwackers. He appeared opposite his then-wife Joanne Dru in Vengeance Valley in 1951. He co-directed Hannah Lee in 1953, also starring alongside Dru, marking his directorial debut alongside Lee Garmes. He subsequently co-directed The Fast and the Furious in 1954 with Edward Sampson, an early Roger Corman production whose title was later licensed for a 2001 film with an entirely unrelated story. During the McCarthy era, Ireland successfully sued two television producers for breach of contract and slander, alleging they had withdrawn promised roles due to his perceived political undesirability; he received an undisclosed but substantial cash settlement.

Ireland traveled to England to make The Good Die Young in 1954 and appeared in Queen Bee in 1955 supporting Joan Crawford. He secured a supporting role as Johnny Ringo in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1957 and played a key role as the gladiator Crixus in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus in 1960, alongside Kirk Douglas. From 1960 to 1962, he starred in the British television series The Cheaters, playing John Hunter, an insurance claims investigator who tracked down fraud cases. In 1960, Ireland received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in recognition of his contributions to the television industry.

His later film work included 55 Days at Peking in 1963, The Fall of the Roman Empire in 1964, The Adventurers in 1970, and Farewell, My Lovely in 1975. In the late 1960s and 1970s, he worked extensively in Italian cinema, appearing in the Spaghetti Western Run, Man, Run in 1968, the giallo One on Top of the Other in 1969, and the war drama Salon Kitty in 1976.