John Arthur Kennedy

 John Arthur Kennedy (February 17, 1914 – January 5, 1990)

Kennedy was a stage and film actor known for his versatility in supporting film roles. He won the 1949 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for Miller's Death of a Salesman. He also won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for the 1955 film Trial, and was a five-time Academy Award nominee. During World War II, Kennedy served from 1943 to 1945 in the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) making aviation training films, both as a narrator and an actor. Many of those films serve as historical records of how aviators were trained and flight equipment was operated. Kennedy appeared in many notable films from the early 1940s through mid-1960s, including High Sierra, Champion, They Died with Their Boots On, The Glass Menagerie, The Desperate Hours, Trial, Peyton Place, Some Came Running, Elmer Gantry, The Man from Laramie, Barabbas, Lawrence of Arabia, Nevada Smith and Fantastic Voyage. Of Kennedy's film work, he is perhaps best-remembered for his collaborations with director Anthony Mann and co-star James Stewart on Bend of the River (1952) and The Man from Laramie (1955), in both of which he played sympathetic villains. With the death of his wife in 1975, failing eyesight, alcoholism, and thyroid cancer, Kennedy was reported as having lost interest in filmmaking.

After Covert Action (1978), his next films were The Humanoid (1979) and Signs of Life (1989). Kennedy, Claude Rains and Robert Duvall share the record of four losing nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, although Duvall won for Best Actor in 1983. Kennedy died in 1990 in Branford, Connecticut of a brain tumor. He is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery, near his home at Lequille, Nova Scotia, Canada; his wife Mary is also buried there.