* Films in bold will air on TCM in April

The title of Victor McLaglen's first American film, The Beloved Brute (1924), seemed to set the tone for a career in which the burly actor regularly played boisterous, sometimes simple-minded men with a heart of gold. He delivered several exceptional portrayals of this type, especially in John Ford films including The Informer (1935), which earned McLaglen an Academy Award as Best Actor; and The Quiet Man (1952), which brought him a nomination as Best Supporting Actor.

Although often thought of as an Irishman because he played one so often (especially in the Ford films), McLaglen was born Victor Andrew de Bier Everleigh McLaglen in 1886 in Kent, England, and was of Scottish ancestry. The son of a Protestant clergyman and the eldest of eight brothers, he led a colorful early life, serving as soldier, farm laborer, professional prizefighter, circus performer and vaudevillian. He was in South Africa, where his father was Bishop of Claremont, when World War I began. After service with the Irish Fusiliers in the Middle East, he returned to England, took up boxing again and was spotted at London's National Sporting Club by producer J.B. Davidson, who offered him the leading role in the costume romance The Call of the Road (1920). After this and several other successful British silent films, McLaglen moved to the U.S. and settled into his Hollywood career.

After The Beloved Brute, he was in demand for such films as Fox's The Hunted Woman (1925) and MGM's The Unholy Three (1925), in which he was one of that trinity (as Hercules the Strongman) along with Lon Chaney and Harry Earles. His first film for Ford was the boxing drama The Fighting Heart (1925), but it was his performance in Ford's What Price Glory (1926) that made McLaglen a true star. He played rowdy Capt. Flagg to Edmund Lowe's combative Sgt. Quirt in this comedy about two Marines who are romantic rivals during World War I. The teaming captivated audiences, and the actors were reunited in several other films.

McLaglen remained busy in silents for the next several years, then made his talkie debut in Ford's The Black Watch (1929), starring opposite Myrna Loy in the WWI adventure. In 1931 he was leading man to Marlene Dietrich in Dishonored and Jeanette MacDonald in Annabelle's Affairs. Ford's The Lost Patrol (1934), considered one of McLaglen's best vehicles, casts him as a sergeant in charge of a WWI British cavalry regiment stranded in the Mesopotamian desert. He topped that with The Informer, earning his Oscar® as the tragic title character, a childlike rebel who informs on a friend during the "troubles" in Ireland of the 1920s. Cyril McLaglen, Victor's brother, had played the same role in another version of the Liam O'Flaherty novel filmed in England in 1929.

The starring roles continued for a time, with McLaglen playing alongside Mae West in Klondike Annie (1936) and Ronald Colman in Magnificent Brute (1936). In Sea Devils (1937), he was a tough Coast Guard officer in conflict with a young Guardsman (Preston Foster) who wants to marry his superior's daughter (Ida Lupino). In Gunga Din (1939), developed from the Kipling poem and directed by George Stevens, McLaglen stands out as one of three brawling British sergeants coping with a native revolt in colonial India; the others are Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Call Out the Marines (1942) reunited McLaglen and Lowe as a pair of Marines very much like Flagg and Quirt who fight over a cabaret singer (Binnie Barnes) while stationed in San Diego.

McLaglen gradually slipped into supporting roles, notably in Ford's Western trilogy Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950). Ford directed him again, beautifully, in The Quiet Man, in which he plays a bullying village squire whose beautiful sister (Maureen O'Hara) is courted by a visiting Irish/American (John Wayne). In his final film, Sea Fury (1958), made in England, McLaglen is in typical form as a blustery, hard-drinking captain with a redeeming zest for life.

McLaglen was married three times; his son, director Andrew V. McLaglen, was by his first wife, who died in 1942.

by Roger Fristoe