Walter Pidgeon

Walter Davis Pidgeon (Saint John, September 23, 1897–Santa Monica, September 25, 1984) was a Canadian-born actor who spent most of his life in the United States and eventually became a naturalized American citizen.

Unhappy with banking, he moved to New York and presented himself as an actor at the office of E. E. Clive. After working in theater for a few years, he made his Broadway debut in 1925.

Pidgeon appeared in several silent films in the 1920s. He became a major star with the arrival of sound films, thanks to his singing ability. He starred in several early Technicolor musicals, including The Bride of the Regiment (1930), Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1930), Kiss Me Again (1930) and Viennese Nights (1930). He was quickly typecast in musicals, so when audiences began tiring of them in the late 1930s, his career started to falter. Shortly afterward, Pidgeon took supporting roles in films such as Saratoga and The Girl of the Golden West.

He didn't regain his popularity until he starred in How Green Was My Valley. He worked opposite Greer Garson in Blossoms in the Dust, Mrs. Miniver (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor), and its sequel, The Miniver Story. He was nominated again in 1944 for Madame Curie, once more alongside Garson.

Although he continued working in film, in movies such as Week-End at the Waldorf and Forbidden Planet, based on William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Pidgeon returned to Broadway theater in the mid-1950s, after a twenty-year absence, when he was cast in the musical Take Me Along opposite Jackie Gleason. He kept making films, playing Admiral Harriman Nelson in the 1961 film Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and in 1962, in the Walt Disney production Big Red, and in Otto Preminger's Advise and Consent. His role as Florenz Ziegfeld in Funny Girl (1965) was well received. He also played Casey, James Coburn's sidekick, in Harry in Your Pocket (1973). Pidgeon also appeared in various television programs, including Perry Mason, The FBI, and Marcus Welby, M.D. He fully retired in 1973.

Pidgeon served as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1952 to 1957. In that role, he tried to halt production of the film Salt of the Earth, which was made by a crew blacklisted during the McCarthy era.

Pidgeon has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6414 Hollywood Blvd.