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Walter Brennan: Performances
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At the beginning of the 40's came the height of Walter Brennan's career and he showed some of his best performances. To these performances belong surely "Northwest Passage" (40), "The Westerner" (40), for which he got his third Oscar, "Meet John Doe" (41), "Sergeant York" (41) - for which he was nominated for the Oscar for the fourth time, "Hangmen Also Die" (43), "To Have and Have Not" (44), "My Darling Clementine" (46) and "Red River" (48).
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Brennan worked only in high-profile movies from then on, including The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, Stanley and Livingston, and Goldwyn's They Shall Have Music, all in 1939. In 1940, he rejoined Cooper in The Westerner, playing the part of the notoriously corrupt Judge Roy Bean; giving a beautifully understated performance that made the character seem sympathetic and tragic as much as dangerous and reprehensible, he won his third Best Supporting Actor award (in what was really a lead performance). There was no looking back now, as Brennan joined the front rank of leading character actors, except that, unlike most of them, he could convincingly play a vast range of roles. His ethnic portrayals... gradually tapered off as Brennan took on parts geared specifically for him. In Frank Capra's Meet John Doe and Howard Hawks' Sergeant York (both 1941), he played clear-thinking, key supporting players to leading men portrayed by Cooper, while in Jean Renoir's Swamp Water (released that same year), he played another virtual leading role as a haunted man driven by demons that almost push him to murder. He played only in major movies from that point on, and always in important roles -- Hawks used him again in To Have and Have Not and Red River, in the latter even working in a great plot gag involving Brennan's false teeth.
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One of the best-known and best-loved character actors, Brennan won the first of his three Academy Awards (1938, 1940) for his role as a Swedish lumberjack in this screen version of the Edna Ferber novel of the same name. He plays a sympathetic woodsman who marries a dance-hall singer (Frances Farmer, in her best performance) after his friend (played by Edward Arnold) leaves her to concentrate on his career. Although the novel describes the character as “a giant Swede” with great physical strength, the scrawny Brennan was cast by director Howard Hawks, who had given him his first significant part the year before in Barbary Coast. Ironically, Brennan remained on the set longer than Hawks, who late in the production was replaced by William Wyler after producer Sam Goldwyn became unhappy with the changes Hawks made to the story.
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It was in the rustic drama Come and Get It (1936), starring Frances Farmer and Edward Arnold, that Brennan won his first Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor, playing a Swede. Two years later, he won a second Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in Kentucky (1938).
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