Ralph Bellamy

American actor Ralph Bellamy (1904 -1991) was best known for his work in screwball comedies and dramatic stage productions. He never became a major star, but he made a career out of playing second leads in major productions before developing into a character actor.


British postcard, no. 169. Photo: Universal Films.


British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. P322. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Ralph Bellamy and Brenda Joyce in Public Deb No. 1 (Gregory Ratoff, 1940).

A master of sophisticated comedy

Ralph Rexford Bellamy was born in 1904 in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka. Ralph was the son of Lilla Louise (Smith) and Charles Rexford Bellamy.

He began his involvement with theatre as a teen. He attended New Trier High School in Winnetka and was president of the Drama Club there. Ralph ran away from home at age 17 to join a travelling band of Shakespearean players. In 1922, he formed his own troupe of actors, the North Shore Players, in the Chicago area.

Later, he performed in repertory, in touring companies, and in multiple roles with his repertory troupe, the Ralph Bellamy Players (1926–1929), which he formed in Des Moines, Iowa. He appeared in two unsuccessful Broadway plays in 1929 and 1930, but this was enough to secure him a film contract in 1930. Overall, he spent nine years in repertory and touring companies, playing over 400 roles, including an average of two or three in each play.

Bellamy’s first film role was as a gangster in the crime picture The Secret 6 (George W. Hill, 1931) starring Wallace Beery. In dozens of films over the coming years, he became a master of sophisticated comedy, often cast as a sympathetic yet naive character who loses the girl to the leading man. Typical films from this period included Hands Across the Table (Mitchell Leisen, 1935), in which he lost Carole Lombard to Fred MacMurray.

Bellamy drew particular praise for The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937), in which he appeared as an oil baron whom Irene Dunne toys with before returning to Cary Grant. For his performance, Bellamy received his first and only Academy Award nomination. After losing Ginger Rogers to Fred Astaire in Carefree (Mark Sandrich, 1938), he again was bested by Grant in His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940) with Rosalind Russell. Bellamy also starred as the wealthy detective in four Ellery Queen mystery movies. He also appeared in the Horror films The Wolf Man (George Waggner, 1941) with Lon Chaney Jr. and The Ghost of Frankenstein (Erle C. Kenton, 1942) with Chaney and Bela Lugosi.


British postcard in the Film Weekly Series, London.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 683.

A brilliant, emotionally charged portrayal of Franklin D. Roosevelt

By the 1940s, Ralph Bellamy had come to favour acting on Broadway and in 1943 secured his stage reputation as an antifascist professor in 'Tomorrow the World'. He also had a successful run (1945–1947) as the star of the comedy 'State of the Union'. He achieved his greatest acclaim on Broadway with his dramatic, emotionally charged portrayal of Franklin D. Roosevelt as he battled polio in Dore Schary's play 'Sunrise at Campobello' (1958), for which he won a Tony Award.

He reprised his brilliant portrayal of Roosevelt in the film version Sunrise at Campobello (Vincent J. Donehue, 1960) with Greer Garson as Eleanor Roosevelt and again in 1983 for the television miniseries The Winds of War (Dan Curtis, 1983). He also appeared in numerous anthology television shows during the 1950s.

Bellamy later played the satanic doctor in the Horror classic Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), and he won a new generation of fans with his performance as one of the wealthy Duke brothers, the other being Don Ameche, in Trading Places (John Landis, 1983), starring Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd.

His last performance was in Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall, 1990) starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. Bellamy made more than 100 films during his career, and he also served as president of Actors’ Equity (1952–1964) and was a founder and board member of the Screen Actors Guild. He wrote an autobiography, 'When the Smoke Hit the Fan' (1979), and received an honorary Academy Award in 1987 for the body of his film work.

Ralph Bellamy died in 1991 in Santa Monica, California. He was 87 years old. He was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) in Los Angeles, California. Bellamy was married four times: first to Alice Delbridge (1927–1930), then to Catherine Willard (1931–1945), and to organist Ethel Smith (1945–1947). Bellamy's fourth wife was Alice Murphy (1949–1991; his death). The actor had two children: Lynn Bellamy and Willard Bellamy.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 683a. Photo: Radio.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 683b. Photo: R.K.O. Radio.

Sources: Jon Hopwood (IMDb), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia and IMDb.