Everything about Laird Cregar totally explained
Laird Cregar (born Samuel Laird Cregar,
28 July 1913,
Philadelphia,
PA –
9 December 1944,
Los Angeles,
CA) was an
American actor.
Laird Cregar was the youngest of six sons of Edward Matthews Cregar, a
cricketer and member of a team called the Gentlemen of
Philadelphia. They toured internationally in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Laird Cregar's mother was the former Elizabeth Smith.
Laird Cregar was educated at
Winchester Academy in
England, spending his summers as a page boy and bit player with the
Stratford-on-Avon theatrical troupe. Upon completing his schooling, Cregar won a scholarship at California's
Pasadena Playhouse, supporting himself as a nightclub bouncer when funds ran out. So broke that at times he'd to sleep in his car, Cregar forced
Hollywood to pay attention to him by staging his own one-man show, in which he portrayed
Oscar Wilde. While never officially "out of the closet" it's widely believed that Cregar, like Wilde, was
gay.
After a few minor film roles, the 27-year-old Cregar was signed to a
20th Century-Fox contract; among his first major roles was the middle-aged Francis Chesney in
Charley's Aunt (
1941), the first of several showcases for the actor's delightful comic flair. With his sinister portrayal of the
psychopathic detective in
I Wake Up Screaming (1941), he followed that up with the successful
screwball comedy Rings on Her Fingers (1942) playing a con artist opposite
Gene Tierney. Cregar became one of filmdom's top "heavies"--both figuratively and literally. Seldom weighing less than 300 pounds throughout his adult life, Cregar came to a tragic end because of his obsession to become a slim "beautiful man".
After top-billing in
The Lodger (
1944), who may or may not be
Jack the Ripper, the increasingly sensitive Cregar was growing tired of being thought of as merely a hulking villain. When assigned the role of demented pianist George Bone in
Hangover Square (
1945), Cregar decided to give the character a romantic veneer, and to that end, lost one hundred pounds in a
crash diet which included prescribed amphetamines. The strain on his system resulted in severe abdominal problems; a few days after undergoing stomach surgery, the 31-year-old Cregar died of a
heart attack.
Filmography
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