Ralph Rexford Bellamy

 Ralph Rexford Bellamy (June 17, 1904 – November 29, 1991)

He was an actor whose career spanned 62 years on stage, screen and television. During his career, he played leading roles as well as supporting roles, garnering acclaim and awards, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for The Awful Truth (1937). His film career began with The Secret Six (1931) starring Wallace Beery and featuring Jean Harlow and Clark Gable. By the end of 1933, he had already appeared in 22 movies, most notably Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1932) and the second lead in the action film Picture Snatcher with James Cagney (1933). Bellamy kept up the pace through the decade, receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Awful Truth (1937) with Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, and played a similar part, that of a naive boyfriend competing with the sophisticated Grant character, in His Girl Friday (1940). He portrayed detective Ellery Queen in a few films during the 1940s, but as his film career did not progress, he returned to the stage, where he continued to perform throughout the 1950s.

Bellamy appeared in other movies during this time, including Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) with Maureen O'Hara and Lucille Ball, and the horror classic The Wolf Man (1941) with Lon Chaney, Jr. and Evelyn Ankers. Bellamy appeared on television in numerous roles over the following years. He was a regular panelist on the CBS television game show To Tell the Truth during its initial run. Bellamy starred as Willard Mitchell, along with Patricia Breslin and Paul Fix, in the 1961 episode "The Haven" of CBS's anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson. About this same time, he also appeared on the NBC anthology series, The Barbara Stanwyck Show. In December 1961, he portrayed the part of Judge Quince in the episode "Judgement at Hondo Seco" on CBS's Rawhide. On film, Bellamy also starred in the Western The Professionals (1966) as an oil tycoon married to Claudia Cardinale opposite adventurers Burt Lancaster and Lee Marvin, and Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968) as an evil physician, before turning to television during the 1970s. An Emmy Award nomination for the mini-series The Winds of War (1983) – in which Bellamy reprised his Sunrise at Campobello role of Franklin D. Roosevelt – brought him back into the spotlight. This was quickly followed by his role as Randolph Duke, a conniving billionaire commodities trader in Trading Places (1983) alongside Don Ameche. The 1988 Eddie Murphy film, Coming to America, included a brief cameo by Bellamy and Don Ameche, reprising their roles as the Duke brothers.

On November 29, 1991, Bellamy died from a lung ailment, at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California. He was 87 years old. Bellamy is buried at Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills