Victor Mature

Victor Mature was an American actor born on January 29, 1913, in Louisville, Kentucky, where he attended St. Xavier High School, the Kentucky Military Institute, and the Spencerian Business School. His father, Marcellus George Mature, was a cutler and knife sharpener who had emigrated from Pinzolo in the Italian-speaking region of the former County of Tyrol, while his mother, Clara P. Ackley, was Kentucky-born and of Swiss heritage. Before pursuing acting, Mature briefly worked selling candy and operating a restaurant. He later relocated to California, where he studied and performed at the Pasadena Community Playhouse for several years, living during that period in a tent in the backyard of a fellow student's mother. While appearing in a production of To Quito and Back, he was spotted by agent Charles R. Rogers, who represented producer Hal Roach, and Mature signed a seven-year contract with Roach in September 1939.

Roach gave Mature a small part in The Housekeeper's Daughter (1939) before casting him in his first leading role as a caveman in One Million B.C. (1940), a film that significantly raised his public profile. Roach subsequently placed him in the swashbuckler Captain Caution (1940) and loaned him to RKO for the Anna Neagle musical No, No, Nanette. RKO was sufficiently impressed to purchase an option on half of Mature's contract, securing his services for two films per year over three years.

Concerned that film audiences would typecast him in physical, non-verbal roles, Mature traveled to New York to pursue stage work. After initially signing to appear in Irwin Shaw's Retreat to Pleasure with the Group Theatre, he was instead cast in the Broadway musical Lady in the Dark, with a book by Moss Hart and songs by Ira Gershwin and Kurt Weill. Mature played Randy Curtis, a film-star boyfriend of magazine editor Liza Elliott, portrayed by Gertrude Lawrence. The production debuted on Broadway in January 1941 and was a major success, with the show also featuring Danny Kaye and Macdonald Carey. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times described Mature as "unobjectionably handsome and affable." The phrase used within the show to describe his character — "Beautiful Hunk of Man" — became a recurring descriptor for Mature throughout his career. He missed a portion of the run due to an emergency appendectomy but remained with the production until June 1941.

Upon leaving Lady in the Dark, Mature announced that 20th Century Fox had purchased half of his Hal Roach contract. Fox assigned him to a series of films, including the thriller I Wake Up Screaming alongside Betty Grable, The Shanghai Gesture for director Josef von Sternberg, the musical Song of the Islands with Grable, and My Gal Sal opposite Rita Hayworth. In November 1941, Fox bought out the remaining four years of Mature's Roach contract for $80,000, agreeing to pay him $1,500 per week. He also fulfilled commitments to RKO, appearing in the musical Seven Days' Leave with Lucille Ball and Footlight Serenade with Grable and John Payne, all of which performed well at the box office.

In July 1942, Mature attempted to enlist in the U.S. Navy but was rejected due to color blindness. He enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard the same day after passing a different eye test and was assigned to the USCGC Storis as part of the Greenland Patrol. His Coast Guard service prevented him from reprising his stage role when Paramount adapted Lady in the Dark for film. After fourteen months aboard the Storis, he was promoted to chief boatswain's mate. In 1944, he participated in war bond tours and appeared in the Coast Guard musical revue Tars and Spars, which opened in Miami in April 1944 and toured the country for approximately a year. In May 1945, he was reassigned to the troop transport USS Admiral H. T. Mayo, involved in moving troops to the Pacific Theater. He received an honorable discharge in November 1945.

Mature resumed his film career in December 1945 with a new two-year contract at Fox. Director John Ford cast him as Doc Holliday opposite Henry Fonda's Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (1946), a performance Fox production head Darryl Zanuck considered among Mature's finest. He went on to appear in Kiss of Death (1947), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Robe (1953), films that established him as one of Hollywood's prominent leading men during the 1940s and 1950s.