Henry Hull
Encyclopedia
Henry Watterson Hull was an American character actor
Character actor
A character actor is one who predominantly plays unusual or eccentric characters. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a character actor as "an actor who specializes in character parts", defining character part in turn as "an acting role displaying pronounced or unusual characteristics or...

 with a unique voice, most noted for playing the lead in Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...

's Werewolf of London
Werewolf of London
Werewolf of London is a 1935 Horror/werewolf movie starring Henry Hull and produced by Universal Pictures. Jack Pierce's eerie werewolf make-up was simpler than his version six years later for Lon Chaney, Jr., in The Wolf Man but, according to film historians, remains strikingly effective as worn...

(1935).

Life and career

Hull was born in Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

. His parents were William Madison Hull and Elinor Bond Vaughn.

Early in his career, Hull appeared frequently on Broadway; he created the role of Jeeter Lester in the long-running play Tobacco Road
Tobacco Road (play)
Tobacco Road is a play by Jack Kirkland first performed in 1933, based on the novel of the same name by Erskine Caldwell. The play ran on Broadway for a total of 3,182 performances, becoming the longest-running play in history at the time...

(1933), based on the novel by Erskine Caldwell.

Hull appeared in 74 films between 1917 and 1966, often playing supporting characters like the uncle of Tyrone Power
Tyrone Power
Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. , usually credited as Tyrone Power and known sometimes as Ty Power, was an American film and stage actor who appeared in dozens of films from the 1930s to the 1950s, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads such as in The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan,...

's love interest Nancy Kelly
Nancy Kelly
Nancy Kelly was an American actress, who was a movie leading lady in the 1930s, making 36 movies between 1926 and 1977, including portraying Tyrone Power's love interest in the classic Jesse James , which also featured Henry Fonda, and playing opposite Spencer Tracy in Stanley and Livingstone...

 in Jesse James
Jesse James (1939 film)
Jesse James is a western movie directed by Henry King and starring Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda, Nancy Kelly, and Randolph Scott. Written by Nunnally Johnson, the film is loosely based on the life of the notorious outlaw for which the film derives its name...

(1939). He appeared as Charles Rittenhouse, a wealthy industrialist in Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...

's Lifeboat
Lifeboat (film)
Lifeboat is an American war film directed by Alfred Hitchcock from a story written by John Steinbeck. The film stars Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson, John Hodiak, Henry Hull, Heather Angel, Hume Cronyn and Canada Lee, and is set entirely on a lifeboat.The film is...

(1944). Two other notable roles were as Abel Magwitch
Abel Magwitch
Abel Magwitch is a fictional character from Charles Dickens’ 1861 novel Great Expectations.-Synopsis:Charles Dickens setted his character Abel Magwitch to meet a man called Compeyson at the Epsom Races. Compeyson, Dickens wrote, had been brought up in a boarding school and was a good-looking and...

 in the 1934
1934 in film
-Events:*January 26 - Samuel Goldwyn purchases the film rights to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the L. Frank Baum estate for $40,000.*February 19 - Bob Hope marries Dolores Reade...

 version of Great Expectations
Great Expectations (1934 film)
Great Expectations is a 1934 adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel of the same name. Filmed with mostly American actors, it was the first sound version of the novel and was produced in Hollywood by Universal Studios and directed by Stuart Walker. It stars Phillips Holmes as Pip, Jane Wyatt as...

and in the last film of veteran director Tod Browning
Tod Browning
Tod Browning was an American motion picture actor, director and screenwriter.Browning's career spanned the silent and talkie eras...

, Miracles for Sale
Miracles for Sale
Miracles for Sale is a 1939 mystery film directed by Tod Browning and starring Robert Young and Florence Rice. It was Browning's final film as a director. The film is based on a locked-room mystery novel by well-known mystery writer Clayton Rawson, Death from a Top Hat, which was the first to...

(1939
1939 in film
The year 1939 in motion pictures can be justified as being called the most outstanding one ever, when it comes to the high quality and high attendance at the large set of the best films that premiered in the year .- Events :Motion picture historians and film often rate...

). He also appeared in the Werewolf of London
Werewolf of London
Werewolf of London is a 1935 Horror/werewolf movie starring Henry Hull and produced by Universal Pictures. Jack Pierce's eerie werewolf make-up was simpler than his version six years later for Lon Chaney, Jr., in The Wolf Man but, according to film historians, remains strikingly effective as worn...

in 1935.

In 1955, Hull appeared as a college professor forced to retire at sixty-five in an episode of CBS's sitcom, Meet Mr. McNutley
Meet Mr. McNutley
Meet Mr. McNutley is an American situation comedy which aired on CBS Television from 1953–1955, with Ray Milland in the role of fastidious Professor Ray McNutley, the head of the English Department at the fictitious Lynnhaven College for girls...

, later renamed The Ray Milland Show. He also guest starred on CBS's Appointment with Adventure
Appointment with Adventure
Appointment with Adventure is a half-hour adventure/dramatic anthology television series broadcast live on CBS from 1955-1956. The program has no host. It aired at 10 p.m...

and John Payne
John Payne (actor)
John Payne was an American film actor who is mainly remembered as a singer in 20th Century Fox musical films, and for his leading roles in Miracle on 34th Street and the NBC western television series The Restless Gun.-Background:Payne was born in Roanoke, Virginia...

's NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...

 series, The Restless Gun
The Restless Gun
The Restless Gun is a western television series that appeared on NBC between 1957 and 1959, with John Payne in the role of Vint Bonner, a wandering cowboy in the era after the American Civil War. A skilled gunfighter, Bonner is an idealistic person who prefers peaceful resolutions of conflict...

. In 1960, Hull appeared on Bonanza
Bonanza
Bonanza is an American western television series that both ran on and was a production of NBC from September 12, 1959 to January 16, 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 430 episodes, it ranks as the second longest running western series and still continues to air in syndication. It centers on the...

,
portraying a scout for General John Charles Fremont (who in real life was the grandfather of Hull's wife). In 1961, Hull played an elderly man befriended by a young outlaw
Outlaw
In historical legal systems, an outlaw is declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, this takes the burden of active prosecution of a criminal from the authorities. Instead, the criminal is withdrawn all legal protection, so that anyone is legally empowered to persecute...

, portrayed by James Coburn
James Coburn
James Harrison Coburn III was an American film and television actor. Coburn appeared in nearly 70 films and made over 100 television appearances during his 45-year career, and played a wide range of roles and won an Academy Award for his supporting role as Glen Whitehouse in Affliction.A capable,...

, in NBC's The Outlaws
The Outlaws (1960 TV series)
Outlaws is an NBC Western television series, starring Barton MacLane as U.S. marshal Frank Caine, who operated in a lawless section of Oklahoma Territory about Stillwater. The program aired 50 one-hour episodes from September 29, 1960, to May 10, 1962. The first season was shot in black-and-white,...

.

Hull's last film was The Chase
The Chase (1966 film)
The Chase is a 1966 American drama film directed by Arthur Penn, about a series of events set into motion by a prison break. Since one of the two escapees is Charlie "Bubber" Reeves , the escape causes a stir in a nearby town where Bubber is a well-known figure.The film deals with themes of racism...

(1966) with Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...

 and Robert Redford
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...

.

Family

Hull was married to Juliet Van Wyck Fremont (1886–1971) from 1913 until her death in 1971. She was a granddaughter of Civil War general and explorer John C. Frémont
John C. Frémont
John Charles Frémont , was an American military officer, explorer, and the first candidate of the anti-slavery Republican Party for the office of President of the United States. During the 1840s, that era's penny press accorded Frémont the sobriquet The Pathfinder...

 and Jessie Ann Benton
Jessie Benton Frémont
Jessie Ann Benton Frémont was an American writer and political activist.Notably remembered for being the daughter of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton and the wife of military officer, explorer and politician, John C. Frémont, she wrote many stories that were printed in popular magazines of the...

, the daughter of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton. The couple had three children, Henry Jr., Shelley (1919–2005, named after Henry's late brother) and Joan. When his wife died in 1971 Hull went to England to spend his last years with his daughter. He died in Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

 at his daughter's residence on March 8, 1977.

Hull had at least two brothers who were involved in the theater. Shelley Hull was a popular leading man, in fact more popular than Henry, and would have become a well known actor had he not died in 1919 during the Spanish Influenza epidemic. Shelley was married to Josephine Sherwood
Josephine Hull
Josephine Hull was an Academy Award winning American actress who also was a director of plays. She had a successful 50-year career on stage while taking some of her better known roles to film...

 who later became a well known movie character actress under her late husband's surname Hull. Hull's other brother Howard Hull was also an actor and is the lesser known but oldest of the three brothers. He was married until his death in 1937 to stage star Margaret Anglin
Margaret Anglin
Mary Margaret Anglin was a Canadian-born Broadway actress, director and producer whom Encyclopædia Britannica calls "one of the most brilliant actresses of her day."...

.

Partial filmography

  • One Exciting Night
    One Exciting Night
    One Exciting Night is a 1922 American Gothic silent Mystery film directed by D. W. Griffith.The plot revolves around the murder of a bootlegger and the attempts of the cast to uncover the true murderer...

    (1922)
  • Midnight
    Midnight (1934 film)
    Midnight is a 1934 film noir directed by Chester Erskine and starring Sidney Fox, O.P. Heggie, Henry Hull, Margaret Wycherly, and Humphrey Bogart. The film was re-released as Call It Murder after Bogart became a movie star. His credit was enlarged to a guest star status although Bogart was...

    (1934)
  • Great Expectations
    Great Expectations (1934 film)
    Great Expectations is a 1934 adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel of the same name. Filmed with mostly American actors, it was the first sound version of the novel and was produced in Hollywood by Universal Studios and directed by Stuart Walker. It stars Phillips Holmes as Pip, Jane Wyatt as...

    (1934)
  • Werewolf of London
    Werewolf of London
    Werewolf of London is a 1935 Horror/werewolf movie starring Henry Hull and produced by Universal Pictures. Jack Pierce's eerie werewolf make-up was simpler than his version six years later for Lon Chaney, Jr., in The Wolf Man but, according to film historians, remains strikingly effective as worn...

    (1935)
  • Paradise for Three
    Paradise for Three
    Paradise for Three, titled Romance for Three in the United Kingdom, is a 1938 romantic comedy film starring Frank Morgan as a wealthy industrialist who decides to find out about his German workers by temporarily living among them incognito...

    (1938)
  • Yellow Jack
    Yellow jack
    The yellow jack, Carangoides bartholomaei , is a species of offshore marine fish in the jack family, Carangidae. It is one of only two representatives of its genus present in the Atlantic Ocean, inhabiting waters off the east coast of the Americas from Massachusetts in the north to Brazil in the...

    (1938)
  • Three Comrades
    Three Comrades (film)
    Three Comrades 1938 is a drama film directed by Frank Borzage and produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz for MGM. The screenplay is by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edward E. Paramore Jr., and was adapted from the novel Three Comrades by Erich Maria Remarque...

    (1938)
  • Boys Town (1938)
  • The Great Waltz
    The Great Waltz (film)
    The Great Waltz is a 1938 American biographical film based very loosely on the life of Johann Strauss II. It starred Luise Rainer, Fernand Gravet and Miliza Korjus. Rainer received top billing at the producer's insistence, but her role is comparatively minor as Strauss' wife, Poldi Volgelhuber...

    (1938)
  • Jesse James (1939)
  • The Spirit of Culver
    The Spirit of Culver
    The Spirit of Culver is a 1939 drama starring Jackie Cooper and Freddie Bartholomew. Directed by Joseph Santley and written by Whitney Bolton and Nathanael West, the film is a remake of 1932's Tom Brown of Culver.-Plot:...

    (1939)
  • Stanley and Livingstone
    Stanley and Livingstone
    Stanley and Livingstone is a movie about reporter Sir Henry M. Stanley's quest for Dr. David Livingstone, a missionary presumed lost in Africa. Spencer Tracy played Stanley, Sir Cedric Hardwicke portrayed Livingstone, and other cast members included Nancy Kelly, Walter Brennan, Charles Coburn,...

    (1939)
  • Miracles for Sale
    Miracles for Sale
    Miracles for Sale is a 1939 mystery film directed by Tod Browning and starring Robert Young and Florence Rice. It was Browning's final film as a director. The film is based on a locked-room mystery novel by well-known mystery writer Clayton Rawson, Death from a Top Hat, which was the first to...

    (1939)
  • Babes in Arms
    Babes in Arms
    Babes in Arms is a 1937 musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart and book by Rodgers and Hart. It concerns a teen-age boy who puts on a show with his friends to avoid being sent to a work farm.- Production history:...

    (1939)
  • Bad Little Angel
    Bad Little Angel
    Bad Little Angel is a 1939 drama film starring Virginia Weidler as a little orphan who runs away from the orphanage. While spending her days on the streets, she meets a tough boy, who she befriends...

    (1939)
  • My Son, My Son!
    My Son, My Son!
    My Son, My Son! is a 1940 drama film based on a novel by the same name written by Howard Spring and directed by Charles Vidor. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Art Direction by John DuCasse Schulze.-Cast:* Madeleine Carroll - Livia Vaynol...

    (1940)
  • The Return of Frank James
    The Return of Frank James
    The Return of Frank James is a 1940 western film directed by Fritz Lang and starring Henry Fonda and Gene Tierney. It is a sequel to Henry King's 1939 film Jesse James. Written by Sam Hellman, the film loosely follows the life of Frank James following the death of his outlaw brother, Jesse James at...

    (1940)
  • High Sierra (1941)
  • Lifeboat
    Lifeboat (film)
    Lifeboat is an American war film directed by Alfred Hitchcock from a story written by John Steinbeck. The film stars Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson, John Hodiak, Henry Hull, Heather Angel, Hume Cronyn and Canada Lee, and is set entirely on a lifeboat.The film is...

    (1944)
  • Objective, Burma!
    Objective, Burma!
    Objective, Burma! is an Oscar-nominated 1945 war film which was loosely based on the six month raid by Merrill's Marauders in the Burma Campaign during the Second World War...

    (1945)
  • Deep Valley
    Deep Valley
    Deep Valley is a 1947 drama film starring Ida Lupino and Dane Clark. A young woman lives unhappily with her embittered parents in an isolated rural home until an escaped convict changes her dreary existence...

    (1947)
  • Mourning Becomes Electra
    Mourning Becomes Electra (film)
    Mourning Becomes Electra is a 1947 American film by Dudley Nichols adapted from the 1931 Eugene O'Neill play of the same title. The film stars Rosalind Russell, Michael Redgrave, Raymond Massey, Katina Paxinou, Leo Genn and Kirk Douglas....

    (1947)
  • Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!
    Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!
    Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! is a 1948 comedy film which is known for being one of Marilyn Monroe's earliest films ....

    (1948)
  • Fighter Squadron
    Fighter Squadron
    Fighter Squadron is a 1948 Technicolor war film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Edmond O'Brien as a maverick World War II fighter pilot.-Plot:...

    (1948)
  • Portrait of Jennie
    Portrait of Jennie
    Portrait of Jennie is a 1948 fantasy film based on the novella by Robert Nathan. The film was directed by William Dieterle and produced by David O. Selznick. It stars Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten.-Plot:...

    (1948)
  • Colorado Territory
    Colorado Territory (film)
    Colorado Territory is a 1949 western film, a remake of the 1941 High Sierra. Both films were directed by Raoul Walsh. It was the first film premiered at a drive-in theater...

    (1949)
  • The Fountainhead
    The Fountainhead (film)
    The Fountainhead is a 1949 American film directed by King Vidor, based on the best-selling book of the same name by Ayn Rand, who wrote the screenplay adaptation....

    (1949)
  • The Great Gatsby
    The Great Gatsby (1949 film)
    The Great Gatsby is a 1949 film made by Paramount Pictures. It was directed by Elliott Nugent and produced by Richard Maibaum, from a screenplay by Richard Maibaum and Cyril Hume based on the novel of the same title by F. Scott Fitzgerald and the play by Owen Davis. The music score was by Robert...

    (1949)
  • Song of Surrender
    Song of Surrender
    Song of Surrender is a 1949 drama film directed by Mitchell Leisen. It stars Wanda Hendrix and Claude Rains.It is the latest-released Paramount film to end up with EMKA, Ltd., after MCA purchased the pre-December 1949 Paramount Pictures sound feature film library...

    (1949)
  • The Great Dan Patch
    The Great Dan Patch
    The Great Dan Patch is a 1949 American film directed by Joseph M. Newman about the trotting horse Dan Patch. The film is also known as Ride a Reckless Mile .- Cast :*Dennis O'Keefe as David Palmer...

    (1949)
  • Inferno
    Inferno (1953 film)
    Inferno is a 1953 American film noir drama/thriller directed by Roy Ward Baker, shot in Technicolor and shown in 3-D Dimension and stereophonic sound on prints for the few theaters equipped for that sound system in 1953.-Plot:...

    (1953)
  • Thunder Over the Plains
    Thunder Over the Plains
    Thunder Over The Plains is a 1953 western film directed by André de Toth and starring Randolph Scott and Lex Barker. This was the first film that Lex Barker appeared in after completing a series of 5 Tarzan films...

    (1953)
  • Man with the Gun
    Man with the Gun
    Man with the Gun is a 1955 Western film starring Robert Mitchum. The film was released in the United Kingdom as The Trouble Shooter and is also sometimes entitled Deadly Peacemaker. The supporting cast includes Jan Sterling, Henry Hull, Barbara Lawrence, Leo Gordon, and Claude Akins...

    (1955)
  • The Buckskin Lady
    The Buckskin Lady
    -Cast:*Patricia Medina as Angela Medley*Richard Denning as Dr. Bruce Merritt*Gerald Mohr as Slinger*Henry Hull as Dr. James Goldsboro Medley*Hank Worden as Lon*Robin Short as Nevada*Richard Reeves as Potter*Dorothy Adams as Mrs...

    (1957)
  • The Proud Rebel
    The Proud Rebel
    The Proud Rebel is a 1958 American film directed by Michael Curtiz with a screenplay by Lillie Hayward that is based on a story by James Edward Grant. The movie is about a former confederate soldier who is falsely accused of starting a brawl in a small town. A local woman comes to his aid, but she...

    (1958)
  • The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw
    The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw
    The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw is a 1958 British western comedy film directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Kenneth More and Jayne Mansfield.-Synopsis:...

    (1958)
  • The Buccaneer
    The Buccaneer (1958 film)
    The Buccaneer is a 1958 War film, made by Paramount Pictures like the 1938 version and shot in Technicolor and VistaVision. It takes place during the War of 1812, and tells a heavily fictionalized version of how the pirate Jean Lafitte helped in the Battle of New Orleans and how he had to choose...

    (1958)
  • Master of the World
    Master of the World (1961 film)
    Master of the World is a 1961 science fiction film based upon the Jules Verne novels Robur the Conqueror and Master of the World. The movie stars Vincent Price, Charles Bronson, and Henry Hull, was written by Richard Matheson, and directed by William Witney.The film was an attempt by American...

    (1961)
  • The Chase
    The Chase (1966 film)
    The Chase is a 1966 American drama film directed by Arthur Penn, about a series of events set into motion by a prison break. Since one of the two escapees is Charlie "Bubber" Reeves , the escape causes a stir in a nearby town where Bubber is a well-known figure.The film deals with themes of racism...

    (1966)
  • "Thomas And Friends" (1984 - 1995) Percy (voice)Though how Hull, who died in 1977, was able to do voice work from beyond the grave for nearly a decade is beyond comprehension . . .


External links

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