Bellamy, Ralph

The Oxford Companion to American Theatre | 2004 | 700+ words | Copyright

Bellamy, Ralph (1904–91), actor. The Chicago‐born leading man made his debut in a 1922 production of The Shepherd of the Hills on the Chautauqua Circuit and after many seasons in stock first appeared on Broadway in Town Boy (1929). A long career followed in films before he returned to New York to create the role of Michael Frame, who helps reeducate a young Nazi, in Tomorrow the World (1943). He next scored major successes as presidential candidate Grant Matthews in State of the Union (1945) and as the dedicated but harsh Detective McLeod in Detective Story (1949). Bellamy's last appearance was generally regarded as his finest: Franklin Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello (1958). Louis Kronenberger called Bellamy's Tony Award–winning performance an “extraordinarily effective impersonation of Roosevelt—in his coping with wheelchairs and crutches and braces, in his conversion of the humiliating into the heroic—there was no trace of either virtuosity or tear‐jerking vaudevillism; there was a sense of characterization and indeed of character.”

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Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Bellamy, Ralph." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 28 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Bellamy, Ralph." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. (May 28, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-BellamyRalph.html

Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Bellamy, Ralph." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-BellamyRalph.html

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