Bellamy was born in Chicago.[1] He was the son of Lilla Louise (née Smith), a native of Canada, and Charles Rexford Bellamy. He ran away from home when he was 15 and managed to gain employment in a road show. He toured with road shows before finally landing in New York City. He began acting on stage there and, by 1927, owned his own theater company. In 1931, he made his film debut and worked constantly throughout the decade both as a lead and as a capable supporting actor. He co-starred in five films with Fay Wray.[citation needed]
In the summer of 1961, Bellamy hosted nine original episodes of Frontier Justice.[3] In 1950, Bellamy became a member of The Lambs, an actors club located in New York.[4]
Bellamy appeared in Death Valley Days ("The Vintage Years", 1962) as Daniel Quint, a minister. In the story, a young woman whom Quint befriends on a stagecoach ride, Lorna Erickson (Merry Anders), sets him up to be robbed by her paramour (William Bryant).
Highly regarded within the industry, Bellamy served four terms as the president of Actors' Equity from 1952 to 1964. On film, Bellamy starred in The Professionals (1966) as an oil tycoon, and in Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968) as an evil physician. He turned to television during the 1970s.[3] He played many roles in numerous shows, sometimes as a series regular. In 1970, he played the lead role of Ethan Arcane in the series The Most Deadly Game. Bellamy portrayed Adlai Stevenson in the TV movie The Missiles of October (1974), a treatment of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was a member of the cast of the short-lived series Hunter in 1977.
An Emmy Award nomination for the mini-series The Winds of War (1983)—in which Bellamy reprised his Sunrise at Campobello role of Franklin D. Roosevelt—brought him back into the spotlight. This role was followed by his role as Randolph Duke, a conniving millionaire commodities trader in Trading Places (1983). The Eddie Murphy film Coming to America (1988) included a brief cameo by Bellamy and Don Ameche, reprising their roles as the Duke brothers.[3] Around this time, he again portrayed Franklin Roosevelt in War and Remembrance (1988), the sequel to The Winds of War.[3]
Among his later roles was an appearance as a once-brilliant but increasingly senile lawyer sadly skewered by Jimmy Smits' character on an episode of L.A. Law. Bellamy continued working regularly and gave his final performance in Pretty Woman (1990).
Personal life
Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Bellamy was seen socially with a select circle of friends known affectionately as the Irish Mafia, but they preferred the less sensational Boy's Club as its name. This group consisted of a group of Hollywood A-listers who were mainly of Irish descent (despite Bellamy having no Irish family connections). Others included James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Spencer Tracy, Lynne Overman, Frank Morgan and Frank McHugh.[5] Bellamy opened the Palm Springs Racquet Club in Palm Springs, California, with fellow actor Charles Farrell in 1934.[6][7]
Bellamy was married four times: first to Alice Delbridge (1927–1930), then to Catherine Willard (1931–1945). On the occasion of his marriage to organist Ethel Smith (1945–1947), Time magazine reported "Ralph Bellamy, 41, veteran stage (Tomorrow the World) and screen (Guest in the House) actor; and Ethel Smith, 32, thin, Tico-Tico-famed cinema electric organist (Bathing Beauty); he for the third time, she for the second; in Harrison, N.Y."[8] She was in fact age 42 at the time. Bellamy's fourth wife was Alice Murphy (1949–1991; his death).[9]
On November 29, 1991, Bellamy died from a lung ailment at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California. He was 87 years old.[1]
Awards and honors
In 1984, Bellamy was presented with a Life Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild, and in 1987, he received an Honorary Academy Award "for his unique artistry and his distinguished service to the profession of acting." Bellamy has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6542 Hollywood Boulevard. In 1992, a Golden Palm Star on the Walk of Stars was dedicated to him.[11]
In a 2007 episode of Boston Legal, footage of The Defender, a 1957 episode of Studio One, was used. The episode featured Bellamy and William Shatner as a father-and-son lawyer duo. This was used in the present day to explain the relationship between Shatner's Denny Crane character and his father in the show.
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