John Houseman

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John Houseman (September 22, 1902—October 31, 1988) was an American actor and film producer.

Biography

Personal life

Houseman was born Jacques Haussmann in Bucharest, the son of a British mother of Welsh and Irish descent and an Alsatian-born Jewish father who ran a grain business. He was educated in England at Clifton College before emigrating to the United States in 1925, where he took the stage name of John Houseman. He became a citizen of the U.S. in 1943. Houseman died of spinal cancer in 1988 at his home in Malibu, California. He was 86 years old.

Career

Along with Orson Welles, Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, best remembered for their 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. Houseman produced more than two dozen films, including the 1946 film noir, The Blue Dahlia. He first became widely known to the public, however, for his Golden Globe and Academy Award-winning role as Professor Charles Kingsfield in the 1973 film The Paper Chase, a role which he reprised in the television series of the same name.

He was the Executive Producer of CBS' landmark Seven Lively Arts series. Houseman also played Energy Corporation Executive Bartholomew in the 1975 film Rollerball and parodied Sydney Greenstreet in the 1978 Neil Simon film, The Cheap Detective.

In the 1980s, Houseman was also known for his role as grandfather Edward Stratton II in Silver Spoons, which starred Rick Schroder, and for his commercials for brokerage Smith Barney, which featured the catchphrase, "They make money the old fashioned way...they earn it." He also made a guest appearance in John Carpenter's 1980 movie The Fog as Mr. Machen. He played the Jewish professor Aaron Jastrow in the 1983 miniseries The Winds of War.

Houseman taught acting at The Juilliard School where his first graduating class included Kevin Kline and Patti LuPone. Unwilling to see his first class immediately disbanded by the testing world of stage and screen, he formed them into a touring repertory company appropriately named the Group 1 Acting Company. They later shortened their name simply to The Acting Company and are still touring the country today.

In 1988, he appeared in The Naked Gun and Scrooged, which were released after his death.

In February, 2008 filming began on the movie Me and Orson Welles. The film tells the story of Houseman's relationship with Orson Welles when running The Mercury Theatre in New York in the late 1930's. The film is using The Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man to replicate The Mercury.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Other notes
1938	Too Much Johnson	Duelist
1964	Seven Days in May	Vice-Adm. Farley C. Barnswell	uncredited
1973	The Paper Chase	Charles W. Kingsfield Jr.	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; Golden Globe
1975	Three Days of the Condor	Wabash
1975	Rollerball	Bartholomew
1976	St. Ives	Abner Procane
1978	The Cheap Detective	Jasper Blubber
1979	Old Boyfriends	Doctor Hoffman
1980	The Fog	Mr. Machen
	My Bodyguard	Mr. Dobbs
	Wholly Moses!	The Archangel
1981	Ghost Story	Sears James
1982	Rose for Emily	Narrator
1982	Murder by Phone	Stanley Markowitz
1988	The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!	Driving Instructor	uncredited
	Another Woman	Marion's Father
	Bright Lights, Big City	Mr. Vogel
	Scrooged	Himself

References

External links

John Houseman at the Internet Movie Database

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Last updated on Wednesday March 12, 2008 at 13:04:14 PDT (GMT -0700)
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