
Acting
Raymond Massey
Born 1896-08-30 · Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Raymond Hart Massey (August 30, 1896 – July 29, 1983) was a Canadian actor known for his commanding stage-trained voice. For his lead role in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), Massey was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He reprised his role as Lincoln on TV and in How the West Was Won (1962). Among his other well-known roles were Dr Gillespie in the NBC TV series Dr Kildare (1961–1966), John Brown in Santa Fe Trail (1940), Seven Angry Men (1955), Abraham Farlan in A Matter of Life and Death (1946), and Jonathan Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace (1944).
Acting credits
7.5A kingdom's ascending heir, marked for assassination, switches identities with a lookalike, who takes his place at the coronation. When the real king is kidnapped, his followers try to find him, while the stand-in falls in love with the king's intended bride, the beautiful Princess Flavia.
The Prisoner of Zenda
1937
7.5In the Salinas Valley in and around World War I, Cal Trask feels he must compete against overwhelming odds with his brother for the love of their father. Cal is frustrated at every turn, from his reaction to the war, how to get ahead in business and in life, and how to relate to his estranged mother.
East of Eden
1955
7.0The epic tale of the development of the American West from the 1830s through the Civil War to the end of the century, as seen through the eyes of one pioneer family.
How the West Was Won
1962
6.6A bandit kidnaps a Marshal who has seen a map showing a gold vein on Indian lands, but other groups are looking for it too, while the Apache try to keep the secret location undisturbed.
Mackenna's Gold
1969
6.0Flubs and bloopers that occurred on the set of some of the major Warner Bros. pictures of 1942.
Breakdowns of 1942
1942
7.8A British wartime aviator who cheats death must argue for his life before a celestial court, hoping to prolong his fledgling romance with an American girl.
A Matter of Life and Death
1946
6.7In a remote region of Wales, five travelers beset by a relentless storm find shelter in an old mansion.
The Old Dark House
1932
7.0In the early days of World War II, a German U-boat is sunk in Canada's Hudson Bay. Hoping to evade capture, a small band of German soldiers led by commanding officer Lieutenant Hirth attempts to cross the border into the United States, which has not yet entered the war and is officially neutral. Along the way, the German soldiers encounter brave men such as a French-Canadian fur trapper, Johnnie, a leader of a Hutterite farming community, Peter, an author, Philip and a soldier, Andy Brock.
49th Parallel
1941
7.6Mortimer Brewster, a newspaper drama critic, playwright, and author known for his diatribes against marriage, suddenly falls in love and gets married; but when he makes a quick trip home to tell his two maiden aunts, he finds out his aunts' hobby - killing lonely old men and burying them in the cellar!
Arsenic and Old Lace
1944
5.8The dramatic story of US Marines in training, in combat, and in love, during World War II. The story centers on a major who guides the raw recruits from their training to combat.
Battle Cry
1955
5.8As a penalty for fighting fellow classmates days before graduating from West Point, J.E.B. Stuart, George Armstrong Custer and four friends are assigned to the 2nd Cavalry, stationed at Fort Leavenworth. While there they aid in the capture and execution of the abolitionist, John Brown following the Battle of Harper's Ferry.
Santa Fe Trail
1940
6.8An uncompromising, visionary architect struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism despite personal, professional and economic pressures to conform to popular standards.
The Fountainhead
1949
7.4A seductive woman gets an innocent professor mixed up in murder.
The Woman in the Window
1944
6.5The story of a century: a decades-long second World War leaves plague and anarchy, then a rational state rebuilds civilization and attempts space travel.
Things to Come
1936
6.5After the Civil War, Confederate soldier Blayde Hollister travels to Dallas to avenge the savage murder of his family. Discovering his enemy is now an esteemed citizen, Hollister plots to expose the outlaw and his syndicate.
Dallas
1950
6.4The Florida Keys in 1840, where the implacable hurricanes of the Caribbean scream, where the salvagers of Key West, like the intrepid and beautiful Loxi Claiborne and her crew, reap, aboard frail schooners, the harvest of the wild wind, facing the shark teeth of the reefs to rescue the sailors and the cargo from the shipwrecks caused by the scavengers of the sea.
Reap the Wild Wind
1942
6.9After being found wandering the streets of Los Angeles, a severely catatonic woman tells a doctor the complex story of how she wound up there.
Possessed
1947
7.1Merchant Marine sailors Joe Rossi (Humphrey Bogart) and Steve Jarvis (Raymond Massey) are charged with getting a supply vessel to Russian allies as part of a sea convoy. When the group of ships comes under attack from a German U-boat, Rossi and Jarvis navigate through dangerous waters to evade Nazi naval forces. Though their mission across the Atlantic is extremely treacherous, they are motivated by the opportunity to strike back at the Germans, who sank one of their earlier ships.
Action in the North Atlantic
1943
5.7Fighting men in World War II learn the value of courage and quickness at the risk of losing their lives.
The Naked and the Dead
1958
6.2An assortment of diverse characters gather at the Hotel Berlin in World War II Germany as the Third Reich falls.
Hotel Berlin
1945
6.2Mine owner William Sharon keeps having his gold shipments held up by a gang of bandits. Sharon hires banker Charles Crocker, who happens to have connections in the Central Pacific Railroad, to build a spur line from Virginia City to Carson City, so that the gold can be shipped by railroad. Silent Jeff Kincaid is the railroad engineer. However there is opposition to the railroad, chiefly from another mine owner, Big Jack Davis.
Carson City
1952
5.8King David enters into an adulterous affair with the beautiful Bathsheba, which has tragic consequences for his family and Israel.
David and Bathsheba
1951
6.4Former World War II flying ace Matt Brennan takes a position as a test pilot for a commercial aircraft corporation and bumps into his old girlfriend, Jo Holloway, who now works as a receptionist for the company.
Chain Lightning
1950
6.8Shiek Yousseff, poses as a friend of the French while secretly plotting to overthrow them. Apposing Yousseff are the Riffs, whose secret leader, The Red Shadow, is Paul Bonnard, a professor who is studying the desert, and whose attacks on the supply trains intended for Yousseff keep the Riff villages in food. Foreign Legion General Birabeau arrives to conduct an investigation, accompanied by his daughter, Margot. Birabeau hires Bonnard to tutor her, and she is attracted to a Legionaire captain, Claud Fontaine. While the general, Bonnard and Fontaine pay a visit to Yousseff, an American newspaper man, Benji Kidd, discovers a secret way in and out of Yousseff's palace, with the aid of Azuri, a dancing girl in love with Bonnard. The latter is forced to resume his role as the Riffs leader, and kidnap Margot until he can convince her of Yousseff's treachery. But Yousseff's men attack the Riff camp and take Margot prisoner.
The Desert Song
1953