Remember the phrase…“What a revoltin’ development this is…!” It came from William Bendix, who played Chester A. Riley, on the 50’s era television sitcom, “The Life of Riley.” Bendix was born 109 years ago today. He was an actor who typically played rough, blue-collar characters. He is best remembered in movies for the title role in The Babe Ruth Story. He received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for Wake Island (1942). But it was has role as the clumsily earnest aircraft plant worker, Chester A. Riley, in radio and televisions The Life of Riley that he is best remembered. Bendix, named “William” after his paternal grandfather, was born in Manhattan. As a youth in the early 1920s, Bendix was a batboy for the New York Yankees and said he saw Babe Ruth hit more than a hundred home runs at Yankee Stadium. In 1927, he married Theresa Stefanotti. Bendix worked as a grocer until the Great Depression. Bendix began his acting career at age 30, by way of the New Jersey Federal Theater Project, and made his film debut in 1942. He played in supporting roles in dozens of Hollywood films, usually as a warm-hearted Marine, gangster or detective. He started with appearances in film noir films including a performance in The Glass Key (1942), which also featured Brian Donlevy, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. He soon gained more attention after appearing in Alfred Hitchcocks Lifeboat (1944) as Gus, a wounded and dying American sailor. Bendixs other well-known movie roles include his portrayal of baseball player Babe Ruth in The Babe Ruth Story (1948) and Sir Sagramore opposite Bing Crosby in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court (1949), in which he took part in the trio, Busy Doing Nothing.” He also played Nick the bartender in the 1948 film version of William Saroyans The Time of Your Life starring James Cagney. Bendix had appeared in the stage version, but in the role of Officer Krupp (a role played on film by Broderick Crawford). In 1946, he was cast in The Blue Dahlia, for the second time alongside Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. In 1949, Bendix starred in a film adaptation of his radio program The Life of Riley. It was Bendixs appearance in The McGuerins of Brooklyn, playing a rugged blue-collar man, that led to his most famous role. Producer and creator Irving Brecher saw Bendix as the perfect personification of Chester A. Riley, giving a second chance to a show whose audition failed when the sponsor spurned Groucho Marx for the lead. With Bendix stumbling, bumbling and skating almost perpetually on thin ice, stretching the patience of his otherwise loving wife and children, The Life of Riley was a radio hit from 1944 through 1951, and Bendix brought an adaptation of the film version to Lux Radio Theater. Bendix wasnt able to play the role on television at first — a contracted film commitment prevented it. The role went to Jackie Gleason and the show aired a single season beginning in October, 1949. Despite winning an Emmy award, the show ended, in part because Gleason wasnt entirely acceptable as Riley when Bendix was so identified with it on radio. But Bendix was available for a new television version in 1953, and this time the show clicked. The second television version of The Life of Riley ran from 1953 to 1958 — long enough for Riley to become a grandfather. Bendix died in Los Angeles in 1964, the result of a chronic stomach ailment which brought on malnutrition and ultimately lobar pneumonia. He was 58 years old. Here is a segment of the “Life of Riley” with William Bendix.
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 07:30:35 +0000
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