John Houseman (September 22, 1902—October 31, 1988) was an Oscar-winning 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.[1][2][3][4] 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.[5] Houseman died of spinal cancer in 1988 at his home in Malibu, California.
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.
During the Second World War, Houseman worked for the Voice of America, managing its operations in New York.[6]
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 became more widely known for his role as grandfather Edward Stratton II in Silver Spoons, which starred Rick Schroder, and for his commercials for brokerage firm Smith Barney, which featured the catchphrase, "They make money the old fashioned way...they earn it." Another was Puritan brand cooking oil, with "less saturated fat than the leading oil", featuring the famous 'tomato test'. 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 1930s. The film is using The Gaiety Theatre on the Isle of Man to replicate The Mercury.
Filmography
References
External links
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