John Houseman

Highest Rated: 100% Lust for Life (1956)

Lowest Rated: 14% Wholly Moses! (1980)

Birthday: Sep 22, 1902

Birthplace: Bucharest, Romania

Before entering the entertainment industry, actor, producer, scriptwriter, playwright and stage director John Houseman, born Jacques Haussmann, first worked for his father's grain business after graduating from college, then began writing magazine pieces and translating plays from German and French. Living in New York, he was writing, directing, and producing plays by his early 30s; soon he had a stellar reputation on Broadway. In 1937, he and Orson Welles founded the Mercury Theater, at which he produced and directed radio specials and stage presentations; at the same time he was a teacher at Vassar. He produced Welles's never-completed first film, Too Much Johnson (1938). Houseman then went on to play a crucial role in the packaging of Welles's first completed film, the masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941): he developed the original story with Herman Mankiewicz, motivated Mankiewicz to complete the script, and worked as a script editor and general advisor for the film. Shortly afterwards, he and Welles had a falling out and Houseman became a vice president of David O. Selznick Productions, a post he quit in late 1941 (after Pearl Harbor) to become chief of the overseas radio division of the OWI. After returning to Hollywood he produced many fine films and commuted to New York to produce and direct Broadway plays and TV specials; in all, the films he produced were nominated for 20 Oscars and won seven. Later he became the artistic director of the touring repertory group the Acting Company, with which he toured successfully in the early '70s. He debuted onscreen at the age of 62 in Seven Days in May (1964), and then in the '70s and '80s played character roles in a number of films. As an actor he was best known as Kingsfield, the stern Harvard law professor, in the film The Paper Chase (1973), his second screen appearance, for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar; he reprised the role in the TV series of the same name. He authored two autobiographies, Run-Through (1972) and Front and Center (1979).

Highest Rated Movies

Filmography

Movies

		Credit
87%	The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!	Driving Instructor	—	1988
70%	Scrooged	Himself	—	1988
64%	Another Woman	Marion's Dad	—	1988
60%	Bright Lights, Big City	Mr. Vogel	—	1988
No Score Yet	Gore Vidal's 'Lincoln'	General Scott	—	1988
No Score Yet	Noble House	Actor	—	1988
No Score Yet	Noble House	Sir Geoffrey Allison	—	1988
No Score Yet	Merry Wives of Windsor	Actor	—	1983
No Score Yet	The Skin of Our Teeth	Network Newscaster	—	1983
No Score Yet	Rose For Emily	Actor	—	1983
No Score Yet	Murder by Phone	Dr. Stanley Markowitz	—	1982
37%	Ghost Story	Sears James	—	1981
No Score Yet	The Babysitter	Actor	—	1980
83%	My Bodyguard	Dobbs	—	1980
14%	Wholly Moses!	Archangel	—	1980
No Score Yet	A Christmas Without Snow	Ephraim Adams	—	1980
No Score Yet	Gideon's Trumpet	Executive Producer Chief Justice	—	1980
76%	The Fog	Machen	—	1980
56%	Old Boyfriends	Dr. Hoffman	—	1979
47%	The Cheap Detective	Jasper Blubber	—	1978
No Score Yet	American Short Story	Actor	—	1977
No Score Yet	Our Town	Professor Willard	—	1977
44%	St. Ives	Abner Procane	—	1976
No Score Yet	Beyond the Horizon	Actor	—	1976
No Score Yet	Six Characters in Search of an Author	The Director	—	1976
86%	Three Days of the Condor	Wabash	—	1975
66%	Rollerball	Bartholomew	—	1975
No Score Yet	Clarence Darrow	Director	—	1974
86%	The Paper Chase	Prof. Kingsfield	—	1973
64%	This Property Is Condemned	Producer	—	1966
91%	Seven Days in May	Adm. Barnswell	—	1964
No Score Yet	In the Cool of the Day	Producer	—	1963
40%	All Fall Down	Producer	—	1962
89%	Two Weeks in Another Town	Producer	—	1962
No Score Yet	Ill Met by Moonlight (Intelligence Service) (Night Ambush)	Actor	—	1958
100%	Lust for Life	Producer	—	1956
83%	The Cobweb	Producer	—	1955
69%	Moonfleet	Producer	—	1955
No Score Yet	Her Twelve Men (Miss Baker's Dozen)	Producer	—	1954
100%	Executive Suite	Producer	—	1954
95%	Julius Caesar	Producer	—	1953
96%	The Bad and the Beautiful	Producer	—	1953
No Score Yet	Holiday for Sinners	Producer	—	1952
94%	On Dangerous Ground	Producer	—	1952
No Score Yet	The Company She Keeps	Producer	—	1950
100%	They Live by Night	Producer	—	1948
100%	Letter From an Unknown Woman	Producer	—	1948
100%	The Blue Dahlia	Producer	—	1946
No Score Yet	The Unseen	Producer	—	1945
100%	Jane Eyre	Screenwriter	—	1944

TV

		Credit
No Score Yet	The Winds of War 1983	Aaron	1983
No Score Yet	The Bionic Woman 1976-1978	Dr. Franklin	1976
No Score Yet	Tales of the Unexpected 1979-1988	Host

QUOTES FROM John Houseman CHARACTERS

Kingsfield says: Nobody inhibits you from expressing yourself.

Kingsfield says: You come in here with a skull full of mush... and you leave thinking like a lawyer.

Kingsfield says: You teach yourselves the law... but I train your mind.

Kingsfield says: Through this method of questioning, answering... questioning, answering... we seek to develop in you the ability to analyze... that vast complex of facts that constitute... the relationships of members within a given society.