Joel McCrea Biography

Joel Albert McCray was born November 5, 1905 in Pasadena, California. His father, Thomas McCray, was an executive with the Los Angeles Gas and Electric Company. Joel would deliver newspapers to the homes of Cecil B. DeMille and others in the early film industry. He was ten when he was an extra in D. W. Griffith's film, Intolerance. He continued to act and work in theater through

high school and college. He attended Hollywood High School with several future stars such as Catherine DeMille, Jack Turner, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. At 6'2.5", McCray had an impressive and good-looking appearance on screen. He would have several uncredited roles before having a significant part in the 1929 film The Jazz Age with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. By 1930, he had second

in the Silver Horde and in the Will Rogers film, Lightenin. He had second billing in several more films with female leads before taking the lead role himself in 1932's movie, The Most Dangerous Game. In the 1933 film, The Silver Cord, he would meet his future wife, Francis D.

She stated that once married, she wanted to give up on acting, but McCray convinced her otherwise, convinced her otherwise, saying he didn't want her to blame him if she missed her work. She would eventually stop acting in 1954 with the birth of their third child, Peter McCray.

McCray was well-liked by many actors including Will Rogers, Randolph Scott, and Catherine Hepburn, as well as publisher William Randolph Hearst. Hepburn placed McCray's acting skill on par with Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart, although Although McCray himself was very modest about his own ability.

McCray was the first person to play Dr. Kildare in 1937's In Turns Can't Take Money. He was in Gregory Lekova's Primrose Path in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent, both in 1940. Sullivan's travel in 1941 and the more the merrier 1943.