by Stephen Vagg
We remember once reading a list of the richest actors in Golden Era Hollywood – it included names you’d expect like Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Fred MacMurray and Frank Sinatra… but also, Stuart Whitman. And we thought “Huh? Stuart Whitman?” Because Whitman was never a big movie star, or even a little one, despite years of trying. But he made a lot of movies, many of them very good, and earned a fortune in the process (spoilers: not from acting).
Whitman was born in 1928, the son of a lawyer who moved into property development. Like many men of his generation, Whitman went into the army after high school, though he missed being shot at in Korea, serving in the engineering corps and doing a lot of boxing. But his heart wasn’t in the armed forces, so he decided to become an actor instead.
Most aspiring actors of the time (as now) find themselves doing minimum wage jobs like driving cabs or serving in restaurants. However, Whitman didn’t go that route. Instead, he put his army training to good use, bought a little bulldozer (he learned how to drive one in the services) and hired it (and himself) out to clear land on the days that he wasn’t acting. This was clever of him, helped by good timing – there was a property boom in 1950s Los Angeles as the city expanded eastwards; the bulldozing also helped Whitman keep in shape. The actor doubled down on his side hustle by figuring out places where it would be good to pick up some land himself and created another source of income by developing and re-selling – often, it must be admitted, in partnership with his father (nepotism comes in handy sooner or later).
Over time, Whitman built up a reported fortune of $80 million that encompassed houses, shopping centres and oil wells. Even if he did have help from his dad (and that can’t be overlooked), Whitman’s entrepreneurial flair offers a lesson for all aspiring creatives – i.e. you don’t have to do any old day job, sometimes you can find a way to use your skills for a day job that is not only flexible, but pays really, really well.
You wouldn’t blame Whitman for giving up on acting altogether, especially during the early days when jobs were hard to come by. His film debut came in When Worlds Collide (1951), but it was a tiny, tiny role – as was his next movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).
Whitman was briefly signed to Universal under a long term contract, but the parts remained small – movies like All I Desire (1953), The Man from the Alamo (1953), All American (1953), Seven Men from Now (1956).
Television was a little better, particularly episodes of shows such as Highway Patrol, but what really sustained Whitman financially through the 1950s was his real estate work. “Because of it, I’ve never worked as an extra,” he declared in 1958. “I’ve never accepted a part that I wouldn’t have thought advanced my career. I’ve never taken an acting job, in movies or TV, which paid less than $250 a week.”
As the 1950s went on, Whitman’s roles started to get bigger in Bs such as Hell Bound (1957), and Johnny Trouble (1957) as well as “B plus/A minus” efforts like Darby’s Rangers (1958) and China Doll (1958).
Then came his big break – being signed to long term contract at 20th Century Fox, then under head of production Buddy Adler and president Spyros Skouros. Adler and Skouros were on a big star-building program at the time – in part, one surmises, to develop their own legacy at the studio, independent of the legendary Daryl. F Zanuck (who’d just gone off to be an independent producer). Among the others contracted to Fox around this time included Gary Crosby, Fabian, May Britt, Bradford Dillman, Suzy Parker, Lee Remick, Dolores Michaels, Ray Stricklyn, Hope Lange, Don Murray, Christine Carere, Diane Varsi, Barry Coe, Jill St John, Frances Nuyen, and Stuart Whitman.
For the first time, Whitman had a major Hollywood studio interested in him. After appearing in These Thousand Hills (1958) he had a flashy role in Ten North Frederick (1959) as the f-boi love interest of Gary Cooper’s daughter (Diane Varsi). MGM used him on The Decks Ran Red (1958) then Fox really put him to work, giving Whitman key roles in The Sound and the Fury (1959), a dreadful, over-acted attempt to repeat the success of The Long Hot Summer; Hound Dog Man (1959), a sweet Southern tale, where Whitman was billed below Fabian but actually played the lead role, as a ne’er do well; The Story of Ruth (1960) a Biblical epic as Boaz, a part turned down by Stephen Boyd; Murder Inc (1960), a gangster film; The Mark (1961) as a child molester (well, someone who has tendencies), a part turned down by Richard Burton; The Fiercest Heart (1961), a South African adventure tale; Francis of Assisi (1961) another religious epic; and The Comancheros (1961) a Western with John Wayne.
These were all prestigious, big-budget movies with Whitman being given genuinely decent roles. His work in all these films was consistently professional and accomplished – he was Oscar nominated for The Mark. Unfortunately for him (and Fox), all the films were commercial disappointments, except for The Comancheros, which had John Wayne. If Whitman was always strong value, it was also clear that he lacked the individuality of the truly great stars – for instance, early claims from Hedda Hopper that Whitman was a natural successor to Clark Gable probably did more harm than good (as they did for another “new Gable”, Richard Egan).
However, Whitman was still a good actor, and remained in steady demand – and it’s a tribute to his professionalism and appeal that Fox kept him on, even in the executive turmoil resulting from Adler’s death in 1960, which saw Skouros’ fired and Daryl Zanuck’s return to the studio several years later. After all, virile leading men who could act weren’t super common in this era – look at, say, the disastrous miscasting of Red Buttons in Fox’s Five Weeks in a Balloon (1963).
For outside studios, Whitman made Convicts 4 (1962), The Day and the Hour (1963), and Signpost to Murder (1964); Paramount flew him out to South Africa at the last minute to replace George Peppard, who’d walked off the set of Sands of the Kalahari (1965) – Whitman had one of his best parts, battling baboons and shagging Susannah York in the sand dunes, but the public did not flock.
For Fox, Whitman was one of many names in The Longest Day (1962), and played lead roles in Shock Treatment (1964), some mental illness-sploitation with Whitman faking illness to go undercover, and Rio Conchos (1964), a Western with Jim Brown. Then Whitman had a huge hit, the biggest of his career (if you discount The Longest Day) with Fox’s Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965) – a really fun, lovely movie; it is admittedly a little odd to see Whitman in it (original choice Dick Van Dyke would have been more at home) but he’s fine.
One would think the huge success of Magnificent Men might revive Whitman’s career, but he never topped it again. The winds of New Hollywood were starting to blow and Whitman gradually felt himself out in the cold. He was in Norman Mailer’s An American Dream (1966), then was given an expensive television series, Cimarron Strip (1968), but neither hit the public’s fancy.
Thus, Whitman started making European films, Ric Dalton style: The Last Escape (1970), The Invincible Six (1970), Captain Apache (1971). After that, his career, also like Dalton’s, drifted into a combination of exploitation, television, and Eurotrash, some of it admittedly quite interesting, eg the killer rabbit epic Night of the Lepus (1972), Laurence Harvey’s cannibal opus Welcome to Arrow Beach (1973), the Hammer cop film Shatter (1974), Jonathan Demme’s New World heist flick Crazy Mama (1975), the ripped from the headlines Guyana: Crime of the Century (1980) as Jim Jones.
Whitman kept busy acting until around 2000, after which he retired; he died in 2020, which is an excellent innings. During that time, he also chalked up a few marriages and impressive romances (Natalie Wood, Kim Novak), as well as kids and grandkids.
There is something immensely likeable about Stuart Whitman’s career – that’s an odd thing to say, but we can’t think of a better word to describe someone who simply liked acting so much that they kept doing it even when making decent money in real estate. If most of his Fox films underperformed at the box office, they had long lives and some of them are excellent (Hound Dog Man, The Comancheros, Those Magnificent Men). A life and career well lived.
