Brian Donlevy

Highest Rated: 100% Cowboy (1958)

Lowest Rated: 40% Never So Few (1960)

Birthday: Feb 9, 1901

Birthplace: Not Available

The son of an Irish whiskey distiller, Brian Donlevy was 10 months old when his family moved to Wisconsin. At 15, Donlevy ran away from home, hoping to join General Pershing's purge against Mexico's Pancho Villa. His tenure below the border was brief, and within a few months he was enrolled in military school. While training to be a pilot at the U.S. Naval Academy, Donlevy developed an interest in amateur theatricals. He spent much of the early 1920s living by his wits in New York, scouting about for acting jobs and attempting to sell his poetry and other writings. He posed for at least one Arrow Collar ad and did bit and extra work in several New York-based films, then received his first break with a good supporting role in the 1924 Broadway hit What Price Glory?. Several more Broadway plays followed, then in 1935 Donlevy decided to try his luck in Hollywood. A frustrated Donlevy was prepared to head back to Manhattan when, at the last minute, he was cast as a villain in Sam Goldwyn's Barbary Coast. In 1936 he was signed to a 20th Century-Fox contract, alternating between "B"-picture heroes and "A"-picture heavies for the next few years. The most notable of his bad-guy roles from this period was the cruel but courageous Sgt. Markoff in Beau Geste (1939); reportedly, Donlevy deliberately behaved atrociously off-camera as well as on, so that his co-workers would come to genuinely despise his character. From 1940 through 1946, Donlevy was most closely associated with Paramount Pictures, delivering first-rate performances in such films as The Great McGinty (1940), Wake Island (1942), The Glass Key (1942) and The Virginian (1946). His own favorite role was that of the good-hearted, raffish con-artist in Universal's Nightmare (1942). In 1950, Donlevy took time off from films to star and co-produce the syndicated radio (and later TV) series Dangerous Assignment. He went on to introduce the character of Dr. Quatermass in two well-received British science fiction films, The Creeping Unknown (1955) and Enemy From Space (1957). Brian Donlevy left behind an impressive enough filmic legacy to put the lie to his own assessment of his talents: "I think I stink."

Highest Rated Movies

Filmography

Movies

		Credit
No Score Yet	The First Rebel	Callendar	—	2015
No Score Yet	Stalingrad (The City That Stopped Hitler: Heroic Stalingrad)	Actor	—	2013
No Score Yet	Pit Stop	Grant Willard	—	1969
No Score Yet	Hostile Guns	Willett	—	1967
No Score Yet	Five Golden Dragons	Dragon #3	—	1967
No Score Yet	Arizona Bushwhackers	Major Smith	—	1967
No Score Yet	Gammera The Invincible	Gen. Terry Arnold	—	1966
No Score Yet	The Fat Spy	George Wellington	—	1966
No Score Yet	How to Stuff a Wild Bikini	B.D. 'Big Deal' MacPherson	—	1965
No Score Yet	The Curse of the Fly	Henri Delambre	—	1965
No Score Yet	The Pigeon That Took Rome	Col. Sherman Harrington	—	1962
50%	The Errand Boy	Tom 'T.P.' Paramutual	—	1961
40%	Never So Few	Gen. Sloane	—	1960
100%	Cowboy	Doc Bender, Trailhand	—	1958
78%	Quatermass 2	Prof. Bernard Quatermass	—	1957
No Score Yet	A Cry in the Night	Capt. Ed Bates	—	1956
93%	The Quatermass Xperiment	Prof. Bernard Quatermass	—	1955
92%	The Big Combo	Joe McClure	—	1955
No Score Yet	Woman They Almost Lynched	Actor	—	1953
No Score Yet	Ride the Man Down	Marriner	—	1952
No Score Yet	Hoodlum Empire	Sen. William J. 'Bill' Stephens	—	1952
No Score Yet	Slaughter Trail	Capt. Dempster	—	1951
No Score Yet	Kansas Raiders	Col. William Clarke Quantrill	—	1950
No Score Yet	Shakedown	Nick Palmer	—	1950
60%	Impact	Walter Williams	—	1949
No Score Yet	Command Decision	Brigadier Gen. Clifton I. Garnet	—	1948
No Score Yet	A Southern Yankee	Curt Devlynn	—	1948
No Score Yet	Killer McCoy	Jim Caighn	—	1947
88%	Kiss of Death	Assistant D.A. Louis D'Angelo	—	1947
No Score Yet	Song of Scheherazade	Captain	—	1947
100%	Canyon Passage	George Camrose	—	1946
No Score Yet	The Virginian	Trampas	—	1946
No Score Yet	Our Hearts Were Growing Up	Tony Minnetti	—	1946
No Score Yet	Two Years Before the Mast	Richard Henry Dana	—	1946
86%	An American Romance	Steve Dangos	—	1944
88%	The Miracle of Morgan's Creek	Governor McGinty	—	1944
85%	Hangmen Also Die	Dr. Franticek Svoboda / Karel Vanek	—	1943
88%	The Glass Key	Paul Madvig	—	1942
86%	Wake Island	Maj. Caton	—	1942
No Score Yet	A Gentleman After Dark	Harry 'Heliotrope Harry'	—	1942
No Score Yet	The Great Man's Lady	Steely Edwards	—	1942
No Score Yet	Stand By for Action	Lieut. Cmdr. Martin J. Roberts	—	1942
No Score Yet	The Remarkable Andrew	Gen. Andrew Jackson	—	1942
No Score Yet	Birth of the Blues	Memphis	—	1941
100%	Hold Back the Dawn	On-the-Set Film Actor	—	1941
No Score Yet	Billy the Kid	Jim Sherwood	—	1941
No Score Yet	I Wanted Wings	Capt. Mercer	—	1941
100%	The Great McGinty	Dan McGinty	—	1940
No Score Yet	Brigham Young	Angus Duncan	—	1940
No Score Yet	When the Daltons Rode	Grat Dalton	—	1940
95%	Destry Rides Again	Kent	—	1939
No Score Yet	Allegheny Uprising	Callendar	—	1939
100%	Beau Geste	Sgt. Markoff	—	1939
No Score Yet	Union Pacific	Sid Campeau	—	1939
No Score Yet	Jesse James	Barshee	—	1939
No Score Yet	We're Going to Be Rich	Yankee Gordon	—	1938
No Score Yet	This Is My Affair	Batiste Duryea	—	1937
73%	In Old Chicago	Gil Warren	—	1937
No Score Yet	13 Hours by Air (Thirteen Hours by Air)	Dr. Evarts	—	1936
No Score Yet	Strike Me Pink	Vance	—	1936
No Score Yet	High Tension	Steve Reardon	—	1936
No Score Yet	Another Face	Broken Nose Dawson/Spencer Dutro III	—	1935
92%	Barbary Coast	Knuckles	—	1935
No Score Yet	Mary Burns, Fugitive	Spike	—	1935

TV

		Credit
No Score Yet	Perry Mason 1957-1966	Roger Brandon	1966
No Score Yet	Rawhide 1959-1965	Cattle Baron	1963 1959

QUOTES FROM Brian Donlevy CHARACTERS

No quotes approved yet.