Lew Ayres

American actor Lew Ayres (1908-1996) became famous for his leading role as Paul Bäumer in the classic film All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). This was followed by a distinguished film and television career spanning some 65 years. Ayres was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in Johnny Belinda (1948).


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1339. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5347/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer. Greta Garbo and Lew Ayres in The Kiss (Jacques Feyder, 1929). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.


Dutch postcard by Croeze-Bosman-Universal, no. 66. Lew Ayres and Louis Wolheim in All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930), based on the novel 'Im Westen nichts Neues by Erich Maria Remarque.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. P 301. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Lew Ayres and Laraine Day in The Secret of Dr. Kildare (Harold S. Bucquet, 1939).

Failing to make the leap to top Hollywood stardom

Lewis 'Lew' Frederick Ayres III was born in 1908 in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Irma and Louis Ayres. His parents were musicians and they divorced when he was four years old. He was therefore brought up for several years by his grandmother Anna, a piano teacher. As a child, he wanted to be a doctor, but his grandmother discovered his musical talent. He played the banjo and saxophone as well as the guitar.

In 1923 he moved with his mother, step-father William Gilmore and half-brother and half-sister to San Diego, where he also attended high school. He interrupted high school for a short time to work as a musician. Later, after graduating, he studied medicine at the University of Arizona in 1926. He played banjo and guitar in the university's jazz band along the way.

Lew dropped out of medical school and went on to play in jazz bands in Californian nightclubs. He recorded one of the earliest Vitaphone movie shorts called Carnival Night in Paris (?, 1927). In the Coconut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles, Ayres was discovered by Hollywood agent Ivan Kahn dancing with actress Lili Damita.

After two minor roles, he first generated attention with his third film, the silent drama The Kiss (Jacques Feyder, 1929). He played a naive youth who gives Greta Garbo's character a kiss, causing complications. His fourth film, the anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930) made him world famous. He played the leading role of the German soldier Paul Bäumer. The film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's novel 'Im Westen nichts Neues' won the Oscar for best film of the year.

In Germany, the film met with bitter protest from right-wing associations and National Socialists, mainly because of its pacifist stance in the German Reich. Joseph Goebbels called for a boycott of the film and other films by the makers. Ayres, however, received much praise from the US press for his performance. In the following years, however, the boyish-looking actor failed to make the leap to top Hollywood stardom.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4828/1, 1929-1930. Photo: DPC.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 523. Greta Garbo and Lew Ayres in The Kiss (Jacques Feyder, 1929).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5347/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Greta Garbo and Lew Ayres in The Kiss (Jacques Feyder, 1929).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5516/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Greta Garbo and Lew Ayres in The Kiss (Jacques Feyder, 1929).

A good-natured, helpful and caring doctor

In the 1930s, Lew Ayres was confined to naive, somewhat spoiled young men from good homes in the vast majority of his roles. His more significant roles included an aspiring gangster in the crime film The Doorway to Hell (Archie Mayo, 1930) alongside James Cagney and a prizefighter in Iron Man (Tod Browning, 1931) who is abandoned by his lover, played by Jean Harlow.

In 1938 he again attracted attention when he played a tragicomic role in the screwball comedy Holiday (George Cukor, 1938). He played Katharine Hepburn's brother who suffers from his domineering father and drowns this in alcohol.

In the same year, Ayres got the role of Dr. Kildare in the B-movie Young Dr. Kildare (Harold S. Bucquet, 1938) at MGM. The film was such a success that Ayres portrayed the good-natured and helpful doctor in eight sequels until 1942. He also voiced Dr Kildare in a popular radio series in the 1940s.

During the Second World War, Ayres refused to go to war for the USA because he had become a pacifist, especially through his work on All Quiet on the Western Front. Public criticism arose of "the country's most famous conscientious objector" and MGM even released him from his contract because of it. His reputation was only restored when the public learned that he had worked as a medic for the US Army Medical Corps in New Guinea and the Philippines. Among other things, he was present at the evacuation in the Battle of Leyte.

After the war, Ayres resumed his film career, including a starring role alongside Olivia de Havilland in Robert Siodmak's thriller The Black Mirror (1946). In 1948, Ayres scored personal success alongside Jane Wyman in the drama Johnny Belinda (Jean Negulesco, 1948). The role of a sympathetic, caring doctor who looks after a deaf-mute woman earned him his only Oscar nomination in the Best Actor in a Leading Role category.


Dutch postcard by Croeze-Bosman-Universal, no. 65. Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim and Owen Davis jr. in All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930), based on the novel 'Im Westen nichts Neues by Erich Maria Remarque.


British postcard by Film Weekly. Photo: Fox. Lilian Harvey, Lew Ayres and Sid Silvers in My Weakness (David Butler, 1933).


British postcard by Film Weekly. Photo: Fox. Lilian Harvey and Lew Ayres in the musical romance My Weakness (David Butler, 1933). The other woman could be Susan Fleming, Irene Bentley, or Irene Ware.


British postcard by Film Weekly. Photo: Fox. Lilian Harvey, Henry Travers and Lew Ayres in My Weakness (David Butler, 1933).

Buried next to Frank Zappa

In the 1950s, Lew Ayres took on mostly guest roles on television but offers for him dwindled overall. His career took off again in the 1970s and 1980s. He took supporting roles in films such as the Science-Fiction film Battle for the Planet of the Apes (J. Lee Thompson, 1973), the Horror film Damien – Omen II (Don Taylor, 1978) with William Holden, and the Italian remake Don Camillo (Terence Hill, 1983) with Terence Hill as small-town priest Don Camillo.

The now greying Ayres played mostly understanding and friendly authority figures such as presidents, doctors and professors. He also appeared on television in series such as Little House on the Prairie (1982), Fame (1984) and The A-Team (1986). In the Columbo episode Devilish Intelligence (1974), he played a scientist of integrity who is murdered when he tries to uncover a scandal.

For a guest role opposite David Carradine in an episode of the TV series Kung Fu, The Vanishing Image (Barry Crane, 1974), he was nominated for an Emmy. In 1994, Ayres retired from the screen for good after over 150 film and television appearances with his appearance in the television film Hart to Hart: Secrets of the Hart (Peter Roger Hunt, 1994) starring Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers.

Ayres directed the historical war drama Hearts in Bondage (Lew Ayres, 1936), starring Mae Clarke and David Manners, for Republic. Hearts in Bondage is notable as a rare example of a Hollywood film to depict the naval battles of the American Civil War. It remained his only directorial effort on a feature film. He later made two more documentaries: Altars of the East (1955) and Altars of the World (1976), both of which were devoted to the theme of religion. Altars of the World, his 150-minute documentary on the different religions of the world, won critical acclaim and the 1977 Golden Globe in the Best Documentary category.

Lew Ayres was married three times: first to actress Lola Lane between 1931 and 1933 and to Ginger Rogers from 1934 to 1940. In the late 1940s, he began a relationship with actress Jane Wyman, who left her then-husband Ronald Reagan for him. Wyman and Ayres broke up again after only a short time. He had one son, Justin Ayres, by his last marriage to Diana Hall, which lasted from 1964 until his death. The actor was very interested in philosophy and religion, lectured on these subjects and wrote numerous essays. He received an honorary doctorate from Oakland University in 1979 for his philosophical activities. Lew Ayres passed away in Los Angeles in 1996, two days after his 88th birthday. He died in his sleep after being in a coma for several days. Lew Ayres was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood next to Frank Zappa.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 454.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 454a.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. W.575. Photo: Warner.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 870. Photo: Fox.



German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 1397/1, 1937-1938. Photo: Paramount.

Sources: Bruce Cameron (IMDb), Wikipedia (German and English), and IMDb.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

The American anti-war-epic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) was based on the novel Im Westen nichts neues by Erich Maria Remarque. It is a realistic and harrowing account of warfare in World War I. The film starred Lew Ayres and Louis Wolheim, was directed by Lewis Milestone and produced by Universal. It was the first film to win Oscars for both Best Film and Best Director.


Lew Ayres and Louis Wolheim. Dutch postcard by Croeze-Bosman-Universal, no. 66. Photo: publicity still for All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930). Croeze-Bosman was a Dutch film distribution company, founded in 1926 as a continuation of the Dutch American Film co., a subsidiary of Universal.


Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim and Owen Davis Jr. Dutch postcard by Croeze-Bosman-Universal, no. 65. Photo: publicity still for All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930).

The hellish and pointless mess that was WWI

All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930) is based on the acclaimed novel by Erich Maria Remarque. The film is unusual for a Hollywood war film because it is told from the viewpoint of the German soldiers fighting in World War I. The film portrays the transformations the young German soldier Paul (Lewis Ayres) suffers during the World War I: the innocence before the war and the promise of everlasting glory, the shock with reality and the realisation of his own mortality and of the hypocrisy of war and finally the return to the world away from the trenches, a world that didn't stop to wait for him.

The novel's title in German is Im Westen Nichts Neues, Nothing New in the West. Erich Maria Remarque draw the title from German newspaper articles. The articles would rave about glorious victories on the Eastern Front but dismiss the horrors playing out on the Western Front in a nothing-to-see-here-folks manner by the simple phrase, "nothing new in the west". Director Lewis Milestone filmed the novel only eleven years after the war ended. His film contains a power only possible by those who've lived through the era.

The film begins in a classroom. Outside, martial music is blaring and the professor inside the room is lecturing Paul and the other boys about their duty to the Fatherland and encouraging them all to as a group in the German army at the outbreak of WWI. The film captures the enthusiasm and naivete of the boys - as they imagine glory awaiting them after they enlist. Even in boot camp, the mood is light and the new recruits are excited about seeing their first action. This perfectly sets the stage for the actual war - the hellish and pointless mess that was WWI. The rest of the film is brutally honest and harsh and shows how the students die off one-by-one and the remaining students become more and more jaded and emotionally dead due to the fighting.

A highlight is the scene where Paul (Lew Ayres) mortally wounds a French soldier and then weeps bitterly as he fights to save his life while trapped in a shell crater with the body. The film is also remembered for the sequence with the butterfly at the end. Paul is back on the front lines. He sees a butterfly just beyond his trench. Paul smiles and reaches out towards the butterfly, but becoming too exposed, he is shot and killed by an enemy sniper. The iconic final shot with the hand and the butterfly was filmed during the editing process. All the actors had left so it is actually Lewis Milestone's hand we see in the final shot.

Universal Pictures produced the film for the then considerable sum of $1.25 million. It was also the first sound film of director Lewis Milestone. The fact that production began only a few months after the 1929 stock-market crash puts into perspective the enormous gamble taken by the studio in making this film. A special camera crane, built under the specifications of Pál Fejös for his film Broadway (1929), was brought to this film's location in Irvine and used for the battle scenes. The crane had its own concrete ramp, installed several months before at the location, allowed cameraman Arthur Edeson to film the extended tracking shots.

Lew Ayres plays Paul quite understated but very believable. His character is well-chosen as the focal point of most of the film. The liveliest of the soldiers is the resourceful Sergeant 'Kat'. Louis Wolheim earned some of the best notices of his career playing the Sergeant. He was set to star in Lewis Milestone's next film The Front Page (1931) when he unexpectedly died of stomach cancer in 1931. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) was the second most popular film at the U.S. box office for 1930. Universal won it's first Best Picture Oscar for the film and it was the first ever film to win Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director.

In Germany, Nazi brownshirts under the command of Joseph Goebbels stormed screenings of All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930), releasing white mice or stink bombs into the theatres. The wounds of defeat in the First World War still ran deep. This led to the film ultimately being banned by the Nazi party. The film was banned in Germany by Nazi Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick on the grounds that it ignominiously represented Germans as cowards. It wouldn't receive proper screenings in Germany until 1956, though it did play to packed houses in 1930 in neighbouring Switzerland, France and the Netherlands with special trains and buses being laid on to transport Germans to screenings. The film was also banned in fascist Italy until 1956. Ironically, in Poland, that country's censorship board proscribed the film on account of it's being 'pro-German'.


Owen Davis Jr. Dutch postcard by Croeze-Bosman-Universal, no. 64. Photo: publicity still for All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930). Owen Davis Jr. played Peter in the film.


Louis Wolheim. Dutch postcard by Croeze-Bosman-Universal, no. 67. Photo: publicity still for All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930).

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.