Neville Brand

Lawrence Neville Brand was born on August 13, 1920, in Griswold, Iowa, and raised in Kewanee, Illinois. An American soldier and actor, he died on April 16, 1992. Brand built a career playing villainous and antagonistic characters in Westerns, crime dramas, and films noir, and earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Foreign Actor for his work in Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954).

Brand enlisted in the Illinois Army National Guard on October 23, 1939, as a private in Company F, 129th Infantry Regiment, and was enlisted in the United States Army as a corporal on March 5, 1941, training at Fort Carson. During World War II he served as a sergeant and platoon leader with B Company, 331st Infantry Regiment of the 83rd Infantry Division in the European theatre, seeing action in the Ardennes, Rhineland, and Central European campaigns. On April 7, 1945, he was shot in the upper right arm along the Weser River and nearly bled to death. His decorations included the Silver Star, the third-highest decoration for valor in the U.S. military, awarded for gallantry in combat when he charged a hunting lodge held by German machine gunners who had pinned down his unit. Additional honors included the Purple Heart, the Good Conduct Medal, the American Defense Service Medal, the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with three Battle Stars, one Overseas Service Bar, one Service Stripe, and the Combat Infantryman Badge. Brand was discharged in October 1945. Media reports occasionally described him as the fourth most-decorated American serviceman of the war, a claim Brand himself repeatedly denied.

Following his discharge, Brand appeared in a 1946 Army Signal Corps film alongside Charlton Heston, then settled in Greenwich Village and enrolled at the American Theatre Wing, working off-Broadway in productions including Jean-Paul Sartre's The Victors. He also studied at the Geller Drama School in Los Angeles on the G.I. Bill. His screen career began with uncredited appearances in Battleground (1949), Port of New York (1949), My Foolish Heart (1949), and Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), before his first credited role as a henchman in D.O.A. (1950). His imposing physique, craggy features, and gravelly voice made him a natural fit for gangsters, outlaws, and other tough-guy roles throughout his career.

Brand's film credits through the early 1950s included Halls of Montezuma (1951), Only the Valiant (1951), The Mob (1951), Red Mountain (1951), Kansas City Confidential (1952), The Turning Point (1952), and Stalag 17 (1953). He moved into leading roles with Man Crazy (1953) and then Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), in which he played the leader of a prison uprising. That performance earned him a BAFTA nomination for Best Foreign Actor at the 8th British Academy Film Awards, though he lost to Marlon Brando for On the Waterfront. Brand also holds the distinction of being the first actor to portray outlaw Butch Cassidy on screen, in The Three Outlaws, opposite Alan Hale Jr. as the Sundance Kid. He became widely recognized as a villain after killing the character played by Elvis Presley in Presley's debut film, Love Me Tender (1956).

On television, Brand earned a Sylvania Award in 1958 for his portrayal of Willie Stark in an adaptation of All the King's Men for Kraft Theatre, directed by Sidney Lumet. He twice portrayed Al Capone on The Untouchables, appearing in the pilot and in the double episode "The Big Train," with the role reprised again in The George Raft Story (1961). In 1964 he co-starred with George Takei in "The Encounter," an episode of The Twilight Zone in which he played a World War II veteran; CBS deemed the episode's exploration of U.S.-Japanese hostility too disturbing for syndication, and it was not seen again after its initial broadcast until its 1992 video release as part of the Treasures of the Twilight Zone collection. Brand received top billing in the television series Laredo (1965–67), which ran for 56 episodes.

Brand made his Broadway debut in 1962, appearing in Night Life. His film work continued through that decade and into the 1970s and beyond, with roles in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), Cahill U.S. Marshal (1973), Killdozer (1974), Eaten Alive (1976), directed by Tobe Hooper, and The Ninth Configuration (1980), written and directed by William Peter Blatty, in which Brand appeared as Major Marvin Groper. His television appearances spanned an extensive range of series including Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Rawhide, Kojak, Police Story, and Captains and the Kings, among many others.