Dan duryea actor biography examples

  • The man who may have abused more women on film than perhaps any actor in cinema history was, in real life, a scoutmaster in his two sons' local troop.
  • Dan Duryea was a veteran character actor whose sneering, cold-blooded villainy set the style for Hollywood bad guys of the 1940s.
  • Duryea was cast in the film after scoring a success in the role on Broadway.

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    Classic Hollywood films have their fair share of heroes as well as villains. In the case of actor Dan Duryea, villainous roles were the usual way that movie-going audiences got to know his work. While typified as a more sinister on-screen character, Duryea’s screen image was quite different from the way he conducted his life off-screen.

    Thanks to Mike Peros and the University Press of Mississippi, Duryea’s life is well examined in this biography. Part of the publisher’s Hollywood Legends Series, Dan Duryea: Heel with a Heart takes readers through Duryea’s life and career, thoughtfully portraying Duryea’s professional output and personal achievements.

    To fans of film noir, Duryea’s name may evoke images from noir films such as Scarlet Street (1945), Criss Cross (1949), or The Woman in the Window (1944), to name a few. In these films, Duryea’s characters reflect the pessimistic tone of noir, featuring him as a conniving or brutal

  • dan duryea actor biography examples

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    By Mike Peros

    Dan Duryea is one those actors who is unforgettably identifiable. I can still recall the first time I saw him on the TV screen as a kid who loved westerns. I had no idea who the actor’s name was but to this day I’ve never forgotten his character’s name, Whitey Kincade. It was an Audie Murphy western titled Ride Clear of Diablo. Duryea was of course the bad guy opposite Audie’s good guy but Duryea’s outlaw was so damned likable I was rooting for him at the fadeout. From that moment forward, I knew that I was going to be a life long fan of the actor who played a heel who did indeed have a heart as Whitey Kincade, Dan Duryea.

    To this day actors are still being typecast though I don’t believe it’s as noticeable as it was during the studio era and Dan Duryea is a prime example of an actor who never escaped the indelible impression he made on movie goers as a despicable character in his film debut, The Little Foxes. Duryea was

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    Cinema Station

    Character Actors: Dan Duryea | May 4, 2010

    Dan Duryea

    When we were kids going to the movies we always identified with the villains. Always favored them. They seemed to live lives that were carefree and wild. They could do anything they liked right up to about ten or five minutes before the end of the film. Then they would be caught, beat up, put in prison or killed. But before that they always had one hell of a time being bad.

    Heroes were dull to us. Heroes had morals; heroes had to live by the rules. Villains didn’t give a damn about the rules. As far as they were concerned rules could kiss their behinds. Rules were for ordinary people like grocers, postmen, bankers and clerks. Boring people like the people we knew. People like our mothers and fathers, teachers and neighbors. Next to them villains led exciting and thrilling lives. We wanted those kinds of lives and didn’t mind if we had to pay for it at the end. Because after all the end would only las