Biography

Louis Calhern

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Tall, distinguished, aristocratic Louis Calhern seemed to be the poster boy for old-money, upper-crust urban society, but he was actually born Carl Vogt, to middle-class parents in New York City. His family moved to St. Louis when he was a child, and it was while playing football in high school there that he was spotted by a representative of a touring acting troupe and hired as an actor. He returned to New York to work in the theater, but his career was interrupted by military service in France in World War I. He returned to the stage after the war, and eventually broke into films. Although his regal bearing would seem to pigeonhole him in aristocratic parts in serious drama, he proved to be a very versatile actor, as much at home playing a comic foil to The Marx Brothers in Duck Soup (1933) as he was as Buffalo Bill to Betty Hutton's Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun (1950) or, most memorably, the lawyer involved with the criminal gang in The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Married four times, he was in Tokyo, Japan, filming The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956) when he suffered a fatal heart attack.
- IMDb mini biography by: frankfob2@yahoo.com

In 1950 he replaced Frank Morgan as Buffalo Bill, after he died of a heart attack while filming Annie Get Your Gun (1950). In 1956, Paul Ford replaced Calhern after he died of a heart attack while filming The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956).
He has appeared in seven films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Duck Soup (1933), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Notorious (1946), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Blackboard Jungle (1955) and High Society (1956).
Calhern joined the famed actors club, The Lambs, in NYC in 1922.
He has appeared in three films that have been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Heaven Can Wait (1943) and Julius Caesar (1953). The Life of Emile Zola won in the category.
Appeared as a character in Gore Vidal's 1974 novel "Myron," his sequel to Myra Breckinridge (1970), co-starring with Maria Montez and Bruce Cabot in the apocryphal movie "Siren of Babylon" that is being shot on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot in 1948 in the novel. In the "movie," Calhern "played" the role of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.