James Whitmore

By The Week Staff

last updated 8 January 2015

The gruff character actor who specialized in ordinary guys

James Whitmore

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James Whitmore called acting a “daunting” profession. “I never thought I was good,” he once said. “I’ve touched the hem of the garment a few times but never grabbed it full-hand.” Yet over a six-decade career, Whitmore was one of the most celebrated character actors in show business. With his husky build, gruff voice, and resemblance to Spencer Tracy, he usually played down-to-earth, plainspoken types, but did equally well in more exotic parts.

Such roles contrasted with Whitmore’s refined upbringing, said Variety. A graduate of the Choate School in Connecticut, he attended Yale, where “he played for the football team coached by future President Gerald R. Ford.” But after suffering several knee injuries, “he turned his attention to drama on the advice of a girlfriend.” After serving as a Marine in World War II, Whitmore studied at the prestigious American Theater Wing and the Actors Studio and almost immediately found success. He won a Tony in his Broadway debut, as a wiseguy sergeant in Command Decision (1947), and landed a supporting-actor Oscar nomination for another sergeant role—a tobacco-chewing, combat-weary grunt in the 1949 drama Battleground.

“He followed with memorable performances in scores of films, refusing to be typed,” said the Associated Press. Whitmore played a Los Angeles cop battling giant ants in Them! (1955), a misanthropic orangutan in Planet of the Apes (1968), and an aging convict in The Shawshank Redemption (1994). “His favorite film was Black Like Me (1964), a true story about a white reporter who used medication to blacken his skin to experience life as an African-American in the South.” Whitmore also made numerous TV appearances on such popular series as Gunsmoke and The Twilight Zone and briefly had his own show, The Law and Mr. Jones. An Emmy winner for The Practice in 2000, he was also well known as a pitchman for Miracle-Gro garden products.

“As he aged, Whitmore’s rough-hewn features became more pronounced, accentuated by the bushy gray eyebrows that virtually became his trademark,” said The New York Times. Using these tools, he effortlessly transformed himself into several historical characters, including Oliver Wendell Holmes in a touring version of The Magnificent Yankee, Ulysses S. Grant in the TV movie Shadow of a Soldier (1960), and Adm. William F. “Bull” Halsey in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). He shunned mimickry, though, explaining, “I can’t do it.’”

He also won plaudits for a trio of one-man shows about outsize Americans, said the Los Angeles Times. His first, Will Rogers’ USA (1974), featured him as “the gum-chewing, lariat-twirling humorist.” The next year, he played President Harry Truman in Give ’Em Hell, Harry!, which became a film and earned its star a second Oscar nomination. Whitmore also played Theodore Roosevelt in Bully (1977). His favorite character of the three was Rogers. “He was wise with a sense of humor, and that’s an unbeatable combination,” he said. Whitmore played Rogers on and off for 30 years, the last time at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., in 2000. “His costume is now housed in the Smithsonian Institution.”