George Brent

George Brent (1904- 1979) was an Irish-born actor who was mainly active in American cinema in the 1930s and 1940s. He was the favourite leading man of Bette Davis and they were onscreen paired eleven times in such classics as Jezebel (1938) and Dark Victory (1939).


British postcard by Art Photo, no. 113 / 37-I. Photo: Warner Bros. and Vitaphone Pictures.


British postcard in the Film Shots series by Film Weekly. Photo: Warner Bros. George Brent and Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933).


British postcard in the Film Weekly Series, London, no. 2.

An errand boy for the IRA

George Brent was born George Brendan Nolan in 1904 in Ballinasloe, a small village in County Roscommon, Ireland. He was the son of John J. Nolan and Mary (née McGuinness) Nolan. His father was a shopkeeper (according to some sources a British Army officer). In September 1915, George moved with his younger sister Kathleen to New York City. There, they joined their mother, who was living in the US after her separation from her husband. Again according to some sources, both his parents had died and he moved to his aunt in the US.

There are many discrepancies regarding Brent's year of birth, life, and activities during the 1919 to 1922 period. According to Dutch Wikipedia, he later returned to study at Dublin University. In 1921, at the time of the Irish War of Independence, Brent was part of the IRA. In his later life, he claimed to have been active only as an errand boy for Irish revolutionary, soldier and politician Michael Collins.

During this period he also became involved with the Abbey Theatre. He fled Ireland, travelled from England to Canada and returned to the United States in August 1921. He decided to become a professional actor. He made his Broadway debut in director Guthrie McClintic’s ‘The Dover Road’. He did numerous plays throughout the 1920s, including running several of his own stock companies.

He appeared in productions of ‘Abie's Irish Rose’ (on tour for two years), ‘Stella Dallas’, ‘Up in Mabel's Room’, ‘Elmer the Great’, ‘Seventh Heaven’, ‘White Cargo’ and ‘Lilac Time’. He acted in stock companies at Elitch Theatre, in Denver, Colorado (1929), as well as Rhode Island, Florida, and Massachusetts. In 1930, he appeared on Broadway in ‘Love, Honor, and Betray’, alongside Clark Gable.

George Brent took up residence in Hollywood sometime later to focus on a film career. He debuted for Fox Film Corporation with a supporting role in the musical drama Under Suspicion (A. F. Erickson, 1930), starring J. Harold Murray and Lois Moran. He continued in supporting roles for Fox in Once a Sinner (Guthrie McClintic, 1931) with Dorothy Mackaill and Joel McCrea, the Western Fair Warning (Alfred L. Werker, 1931) starring George O’Brien, and Charlie Chan Carries On (Hamilton MacFadden, 1931) with the first appearance of Warner Oland as Charlie Chan.


British postcard in the Film Shots series by Film Weekly. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) with George Brent, Bebe Daniels and Warren Baxter.


British postcard in the Film Shots series by Film Weekly. Photo: Paramount. Zita Johann and George Brent in Luxury Liner (Lothar Mendes, 1933).


British postcard in the Film Shots series by Film Weekly. Photo: First National Films. Ruth Chatterton, George Brent (right), Marjorie Gateson, Guy Kibbee and Frank McHugh in the American pre-code movie Lilly Turner (William Wellman, 1933).


British postcard. Photo: Warner Bros. George Brent as Terry Parker in Living on Velvet (Frank Borzage, 1935).

11 films with Bette Davis

George Brent's breakthrough followed after he signed a contract with Warner Brothers in 1931. He worked for the studio for 20 years and soon became a star. Warner Brothers recognised his potential as a handsome leading man for some of their more temperamental female stars. He played opposite Barbara Stanwyck in the drama So Big! (William A. Wellman, 1932), in which Bette Davis had a small role.

Another hot-tempered star was Ruth Chatterton who picked him to play opposite her in The Rich Are Always with Us (Alfred E. Green, 1932). This was the first of four films he made with the actress, who eventually became his second wife that year. Davis again had a supporting role. Paramount borrowed Brent for the leading-man role in Luxury Liner (Lothar Mendes, 1933).

Back at Warners, he was one of several studio names in the musical 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933), playing the lover of Bebe Daniels. 42nd Street was one of the most successful motion pictures of 1933, earning almost $1.5 million at the box office. At the 6th Academy Awards, the film was nominated for Best Picture. He returned to supporting female stars, like Barbara Stanwyck in Baby Face (Alfred E. Green, 1933). He was top-billed in the murder mystery From Headquarters (William Dieterle, 1933) with Margaret Lindsay. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer borrowed him to play Myrna Loy's leading man in the Spy film Stamboul Quest (Sam Wood, 1934). In September 1934, Chatterton filed for divorce.

Brent was top billed in Housewife (Alfred E. Green, 1934) with Bette Davis as his costar. MGM used him for the Greta Garbo vehicle The Painted Veil (Richard Boleslawski, 1934). The following year he made two films with Davis, where she was top-billed: the comedy Front Page Woman (Michael Curtiz, 1935) and the crime drama Special Agent (William Keighley, 1935). They were again reunited in the comedy The Golden Arrow (Alfred E. Green, 1936). Warners then put Brent in his first male-orientated movie: Submarine D-1 (Lloyd Bacon, 1937) with Pat O'Brien and Wayne Morris. In November 1937 George Brent became an American citizen.

In 1938, he appeared with Bette Davis in Jezebel (William Wyler, 1938) - only he was the second male lead, with Henry Fonda playing Davis' main love interest. Just after his divorce from his third wife, Constance Worth, Brent made Dark Victory (Edmund Goulding, 1939) with Davis who was also divorced. The two found comfort with each other and embarked on an affair that continued throughout filming and for a year – and three films – after. Goulding shot the film in sequence, and the arc of Judith's relationship with Dr. Steele mirrored Davis' relationship with Brent. Davis was later to say that she wanted to marry Brent but thought that it wouldn't work out. Still, "Of the men I didn't marry, the dearest was George Brent. Dark Victory was a huge success and so was The Old Maid (Edmund Goulding, 1939) where Davis and Miriam Hopkins fought over Brent. Brent also supported Davis in The Great Lie (Edmund Goulding, 1941) and In This Our Life (John Huston, Raoul Walsh, 1942). Brent and Davis appeared in 11 films together.


British Real Photograph postcard. Photo: First National Films.


Spanish postcard, no. 1113. Lucille Ball and George Brent in Lover Come Back (William A. Seiter, 1946).


British postcard by Picturegoer, London, no. W 517. Photo: Universal International.

Against type as a maniacal murderer

George Brent was an accomplished pilot who had tried and, because of age, failed to enlist in the armed services. In 1942, he temporarily retired from films to teach flying as a civilian flight instructor with the Civilian Pilot Training Program. He later became a pilot in the US Coast Guard for the duration of the war. His final film for Warner Bros. My Reputation (Curtis Bernhardt, 1946) was his fifth and last film with Barbara Stanwyck, filmed from November 1943 to January 1944, but released in 1946.

Brent acted on the radio during this period. While he returned to his acting career after WWII, George Brent never recaptured his former popularity. However, during the immediate post-war period, he remained a star of big-budget films. RKO used him as Hedy Lamarr's leading man in Experiment Perilous (Jacques Tourneur, 1944). For Hal Wallis, he did The Affairs of Susan (William A. Seiter, 1945) with Joan Fontaine and he appeared in Tomorrow Is Forever (Irvin Pichel, 1946) at International with Claudette Colbert and Orson Welles.

He returned to RKO for The Spiral Staircase (Robert Siodmak, 1946), starring Dorothy McGuire as a mute young woman in an early-20th century Vermont town who is stalked and terrorized in a rural mansion by a serial killer targeting women with disabilities. Brent played against type the maniacal murderer. The psychological Horror film was a huge success. At Universal he was teamed with Lucille Ball in the romantic comedy Lover Come Back (William A. Seiter, 1946). In the late 1940s, Brent appeared in numerous B-movies and the budgets of his films continued to shrink. After two films for Monogram. he retired in 1953.

He made a few more guest roles in TV series and returned to the big screen once for a supporting role in Born Again (Irving Rapper, 1978). The film depicts the involvement of President Richard Nixon's special counsel, Charles Colson (Dean Jones), in the Watergate scandal, his subsequent conversion to Christianity and his prison term. Brent retired from acting to concentrate on breeding race horses. During his heyday, Brent was known in Hollywood as a notorious womaniser. Besides a long-term relationship with Davis, five of his marriages are known, he married Helen Louise Campbell (1925-1927), Ruth Chatterton (1932-1934), Constance Worth (1937) and Ann Sheridan (1942-1943). In 1947, he married model and fashion designer Janet Michaels, with whom he had two children. They remained married until she died in 1974. After a long period of illness, George Brent died of pulmonary emphysema in 1979 in Solana Beach, California. He was 75.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 295. Photo: Warner Bros.


Spanish leaflet by Cifesa Produccion. Image: Warner Bros. Spanish poster for the American film Dark Victory (Edmund Goulding, 1939), starring Bette Davis and George Brent. The film alternated with the Italian film Quattro passi fra le nuvole (Alessandro Blasetti, 1942) at the Madrid-based Cine Victoria, which opened in 1940. The film was the eighth of eleven films in which Davis and Brent were paired.


Belgian postcard by Nieuwe Merksemsche Chocolaterie S.P.R.L., Merksem (Antwerp). Photo: Republic Pictures.

Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.