Hollywood actor George Brent was born George Nolan in the midlands of Ireland around the start of the last century. He emigrated to Canada, where he acted in stock companies for two years. He moved to New York where he founding three stock companies of his own. His appearances on Broadway in the late 1920s were noticed in Hollywood. He was talented, but his good looks and reliability were as important in securing more than 100 screen credits, most of them in Warner Brothers productions between 1930 and 1953.
There is some confusion as to his actual place and date of birth. The most common version is that he was born George Brendan Nolan on March 15, 1899, in Raharabeg, Co Roscommon, on the opposite bank of the River Shannon from the town of Shannonbridge in County Offaly. This version is popularly accepted in Shannonbridge. An unverified account goes that during the Troubles he was active in the IRA. He fled because he was being sought by the British, although he claimed only to have been a courier for Michael Collins.
However another version* has it that he was born George Nolan on March 15, 1904, in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, son of John Nolan, shopkeeper, and Mary Nolan (née McGuinness). Orphaned in 1915, he moved briefly to New York, where he was cared for by an aunt, returning later to Dublin. He took up acting at the Abbey Theatre but, suspected by the British authorities of IRA involvement, he fled to Canada. Based on this version, he would have been 16 or 17 when he became the subject of British suspicions.
Never a powerful box-office draw, he was employed by Warner Bros to carry middle-ranking projects and provide support to A-list stars. Unambitious and without pretensions, he was happy making a living this way, leading to some reviewers describing his performances as having “all the animation of a penguin”.
His screen trade mark was the black, slicked hair and gentle mustacheod smile. He claimed that when he first appeared in the Broadway play Love, Honour and Obey, Clark Gable had no mustache. “He stole that damn mustache from me,” Brent said in later years. “And he stole a lot of girls, too….”
He provided competent but understated portrayals, making him an ideal foil for the domineering leading ladies, as in his performance opposite Greta Garbo in the 1934 adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil.
He was also a good foil for Merle Oberon, Olivia de Havilland, Joan Fontaine, Mary Astor, Barbara Stanwyck (four times), Ruth Chatterton (four times) and Bette Davis (11 times).
His best performances were in Jezebel (1938), for which Davis won an Oscar; Dark Victory (1939) with Davis, Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan; The Rains Came (1939), a disaster movie with Tyrone Power; and The Spiral Staircase (1945), a horror film set in England.
He never filmed in Ireland, but starred with James Cagney in a movie about an Irish-American regiment, The Fighting 69th (1940). His career entered a slide in the late 1940s when he appeared in inferior movies such as The Corpse Came C.O.D. (1947), a comedown for someone who had acted in 42nd Street (1933). When the movies dried up he starred in a TV series, Wire Service (1956-9), before retiring to run his horse-breeding ranch in California.
Brent’s final film was the 1978 Born Again story of Watergate figure Charles Colson, in which he had a cameo role as a judge.
Known as a womaniser in Hollywood, George Brent reputedly carried on a lengthy relationship with Bette Davis. He was married four times, three times to actresses: Ruth Chatterton (1932–1934), Constance Worth (1937) and Ann Sheridan (1942–1943). His final marriage to Janet Michaels, a former model and dress designer, lasted 27 years until her death in 1974. They had two children together, a son and a daughter.
George Brent died on May 26, 1979, in Solana Beach, California, at the age of 80 from emphysema.
*Royal Irish Academy’s Dictionary of Irish Biography. The same date of birth was given by the Los Angeles Times in 1979: Report.