Eugene Pallette

The Voice That Emerged from the Silent Era

Eugene Pallette weighed more than two hundred pounds and sounded as if he had a handful of gravel in his throat.

Before becoming the go-to supporting player, this actor, born in Kansas in 1889, tried to be a conventional star. He appeared in more than a hundred silent films, including D.W. Griffith's epic Intolerance in 1916. Back then, his build was slim, and his face fit perfectly within the beauty standards of the era.

But the arrival of sound and a dramatic weight gain changed his professional fate. What would have been the end of the career for others became a gold mine for him. His deep, gravelly voice became his best working tool and his personal trademark.

And the gamble paid off.

The Man Who Swallowed a Toad

During the 1930s, Pallette specialized in playing wealthy fathers, irritable authority figures, or supporting characters with a huge heart. His role as Friar Tuck in The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938 is the one the general public remembers most. There he shared the screen with Errol Flynn and proved he could handle a sword with ease despite his size.

The actor earned astronomical fees for just a few days of filming. In 1941 he appeared in The Lady Eve under the direction of Preston Sturges. In that film he played a beer tycoon who walked down the stairs ringing a bell to call for breakfast while his family ignored him.

He was a method actor without knowing it.

His presence guaranteed solid performances in any Warner or Paramount production. Between 1930 and 1945, he worked on nearly ninety feature films. He didn't need to be the lead, because his mere appearance on screen automatically drew the attention of audiences and critics alike.

The Oregon Bunker

By the mid-1940s, his behavior had become difficult and somewhat paranoid. During the filming of In the Meantime, Darling in 1944, he had serious clashes with director Otto Preminger over political matters. Pallette was convinced that a nuclear war or an invasion on American soil was imminent.

So he abruptly decided to leave Hollywood behind. He bought a 1,400-hectare ranch in Oregon and built a massive bunker stocked with canned food and supplies to survive for years. He spent much of his fortune preparing for an apocalypse that never came.

The industry turned its back on him because of his gruff personality.

He returned to Los Angeles shortly before his death due to health complications he could not treat at his isolated retreat. He died on September 3, 1954, at the age of 65 from throat cancer. His body was cremated, and his ashes rest in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn under a simple headstone that makes no mention of his film career.