Trivia of Hurd Hatfield

Trivia of Hurd Hatfield (7 December 1917 - 26 December 1998)

*William Rukard Hurd Hatfield was born in New York City, and at the age of 19 won a scholarship to study in England at the Michael Chekhov Theatre and Drama School in Devon. When the company toured the US in 1939, he played Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, Gloucester in King Lear and Kirolov in The Possessed, based on the Dostoevsky novel. While performing in Los Angeles, Hatfield spotted by the talent seeker and gained a contract with MGM.

*His Hollywood film debut in Dragon Seed (1944), an American war drama film about Japan's WWII-era actions in China.He co-starred with Katharine Hepburn. Hatfield portrayed as Chinese peasants, some more convincingly than others.He received widespread acclaim for his dark good looks as much as for his acting ability.

*Hatfield eventually came to resent his having initially come to the public's attention playing the title role in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). He believed that the film was ahead of its time and that its undertones of narcissism and bisexuality typecast him and stymied his hopes for a successful career as a mainstream leading man.

He commented, "The film didn't make me popular in Hollywood.It was too odd, too avant-garde, too ahead of its time. The decadence, the hints of bisexuality and so on, made me a leper! Nobody knew I had a sense of humour, and people wouldn't even have lunch with me."

*Hatfield play role as the indolent Georges Lanlaire in The Diary Of A Chambermaid (1946) opposite Paulette Goddard who play as the chambermaid name Celestine.Hatfield complained that Goddard was wrong in the part because of her "brassy American accent". While his own American accent was slight, and his voice mellifluous, which he used to effect in a number of classic plays on stage, and in some of his better film roles.

*Like Dorian Gray, Hurd Hatfield maintained a good, relatively youthful appearance well into his seventies. He credited this to the fact that he neither drank nor smoked and exercised regularly.

*Became lifelong friends with actress Angela Lansbury when they were making The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) together.He appeared three times on her successful television series Murder, She Wrote (1984) and she convinced him to buy property close to hers in Ireland.

*Hatfield never married. His long-time close friend and colleague Maggie Williams was heir of both Ballinterry House and his collection. She maintained the historic Irish country home exactly as it was at the time of Hatfield's death. The house was sold in late 2006, and the entire contents of the Hurd Hatfield Collection were sold at an auction on the premises by Country House Antique & Fine Art Auction in March 2007.