The Golden Age’s most underrated actor, according to Katharine Hepburn: “He could do everything”
Growing up in the male-dominated world of Hollywood during its Golden Era, the four-time Oscar winner, Katharine Hepburn, was forced to toughen up, which often resulted in her clashing with anyone who got on her bad side.
With a reputation for being mean, she famously slapped Peter O’Toole while they were making The Lion in Winter, butted heads with Ginger Rogers while making Stage Door and got into a fight with Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Suddenly Last Summer, although that was later revealed to be an elaborate prank.
It’s not like she didn’t have her favourites, though, as she loved working with Spencer Tracy, which is no surprise when you remember that the two were lovers in real-life. Cary Grant was another co-star she adored, as was John Wayne. When it came to the best of the best, however, there was only room for one name at the top, and it’s not who you might expect.
In the book Kate Remembered by A Scott Berg, the screen icon admitted that she was a big fan of Joel McCrea. Hepburn couldn’t believe that the handsome idol was only using acting as a method of maintaining his ranch. In her words, he could hang with the very best of them.
“He could do everything,” she gushed, “Look at him in that Hitchcock thing [Foreign Correspondent] and then in The Most Dangerous Game…and all those comedies: the George Stevens picture [The More the Merrier] and the Preston Sturges pictures [Sullivan’s Travels and The Palm Beach Story]. And he looked great on a horse.”
Born in South Pasadena, California, in 1905, a young McCrea got his first taste of stardom on his boyhood paper route, which included the great Cecile B DeMille. He landed a role in the classic adventure-horror The Most Dangerous Game opposite Fay Wray, made at the same time as Wray’s biggest hit, King Kong, and even used some of the same sets. His biggest accolade was easily playing an American journalist in Europe on the eve of war in Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent, and while he might have only gotten the part because Gary Cooper said no, it still counts.
Despite his obvious talent and the admiration of one of the all-time greats, McCrea never quite cracked the upper echelons. While three of his films were nominated for ‘Best Picture’ at the Oscars, he was never shown the same courtesy by the Academy.
Towards the tail end of his career, he appeared exclusively in westerns and ended up retiring in 1976, before passing away 14 years later at the age of 84. According to Hepburn, the reason why McCrea wasn’t more appreciated in his time was that he wasn’t backed by a major studio.
“That was so important in those early days,” she reiterated, “With the big studios grooming big stars, you needed that kind of push. That’s what [Clark] Gable had and [Joan] Crawford. They weren’t great actors, but they were great personalities, and the big studios got completely behind them.”
