Hume Cronin is a Canadian character actor who acted brilliantly and wrote wonderful scripts. His family hoped that he would follow in the family footsteps and connect his life with politics, but Hume became interested in theater and cinema.
Childhood
Hume Blake Cronin was born on July 18, 1911 in London, Ontario, Canada. He was one of five children in the family of Hume Cronin, Sr., a businessman and member of the Canadian House of Commons, and Francis Amelia (nee Labatt), heiress of the brewery of the same name. His paternal grandfather, Benjamin Cronin, was a priest of the Church of England, as well as the first bishop of the Diocese of Huron, who founded the college of the same name, which eventually grew into the University of Western Ontario.
His family hoped that he would follow in the family footsteps and connect his life with politics or jurisprudence, but after graduating from Hume College, Cronin became interested in theater and entered the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on a course with Max Reinhardt.
Actor's youth
As a drama student at McGill University, the slender, elegant Cronin achieved success in many forms of art. And by the way, he was a member of Canada's Olympic Boxing Team in 1930.
While still a student, he appeared on the stages of Canadian theaters and ten years later was already on the Broadway stage, where he not only performed, but also wrote and directed.
Career
In 1934, Cronin made his Broadway debut, achieving great success in a short time.
The actor has created a wide range of characters over the 1940s. A career in Hollywood began with a small but bright role in the film by Alfred Hitchcock. In 1943, Hume Cronin first appeared on the big screen in Alfred Hitchcock's detective story "The Shadow of Doubt." A year later, he again starred with Hitchcock as a radio operator in Lifeboat, and also worked on the script for his films The Rope (1948) and Under the Sign of Capricorn (1949).
Hume Cronin's most notable role was in the movie The Seventh Cross. In 1944, he and his wife Jessica Tandy starred in this film, for the role in which Cronin was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. It is also worth noting The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946, and the role of the sadistic warden in Force Brutality, 1947. In 1950, Hume Cronin quit his job in Hollywood and returned to the stage, where he often played alongside his wife Jessica Tandy on the soon-to-be-televised radio series Marriage.
In 1964, Hume Cronin won the Tony Award for his role as Polonius in the production of Hamlet, starring Richard Burton. In the eighties, the couple appeared together in the films Cocoon, Cocoon: The Return and Batteries Not Supplied. In one thousand nine hundred and eighty-eight, the actor was awarded the Order of Canada. In 1990, Hume Cronin was awarded the United States National Medal for the Arts.
Selected filmography
Took part in more than eighty-two films since one thousand nine hundred and forty-two. The first painting is "Shadow of Doubt". The last film is "12 Angry Men" (one thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven).
- "Shadow of Doubt" (1943).
- The Phantom of the Opera (1943).
- "Lifeboat" (1944).
- Siegfeld's Folly (1946).
- The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).
- Brute Force (1947).
- "What Will People Say" (1951).
- "Cleopatra" (1963).
- The Parallax Conspiracy (1974).
- "All this rubbish" (1981).
- "The World According to Garp" (1982).
- Brewster's Millions (1985).
- "Cocoon" (1985).
- "Batteries not included" (1987).
- Cocoon: The Return (1988).
- "Christmas on the Next Street" (1991) (TV film).
- "The Pelican Case" (1993).
- "Marvin's Room" (1996).
- "12 Angry Men" (1997) (TV film).
Awards
- Emmy 1990 Best Actor in a Miniseries (in Friends Forever)
- Emmy 1992 Best Actor in a Miniseries (in Walking Broadway)
- Emmy 1994 Best Supporting Actor in a Miniseries (in Dance with the White Dog)
- Tony 1964 - Best Actor in a Play (in Hamlet)
- Tony 1994 - Life Achievement
Personal life
In 1942, six years after his divorce from his first wife Emily Woodruff, with whom he lived from 1934 to 1936, Hume Cronin married actress Jessica Tandy, with whom he later appeared in many films in film and television. They had two children: Tandy and Christopher. In one thousand nine hundred and ninety, Jessica was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, but despite this, she continued to actively act in subsequent years. On September 11, one thousand nine hundred and ninety-four, Jessica Tandy passed away. Two years later, Hume Cronin remarried, to the British writer Susan Cooper. Hume Cronin was active on social media and had a personal website. Cronin also published his autobiography "The Terrible Liar" in 1992.
Hume Cronin died of prostate cancer on June 15, 2003 at the age of 91 in Fairfield, Connecticut, USA.
