Actors - Cecil Kellaway

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	Actors - Cecil Kellaway

Cecil Kellaway (born August 22, 1893, in Cape Town, South Africa) was a British actor.

With his jovial, twinkly-eyed looks, he resembled a full-grown leprechaun, so it's not surprising that he'd play such a role in the 1948 film “The Luck of the Irish” – and win an Oscar nomination in the bargain.

Before coming to Hollywood to play Mr Earnshaw in the 1939 filmisation of “Wuthering Heights”, Kellaway spent nearly two decades as an actor, writer and director of British and Australian films and stage plays. Even when he played a villainous part like the eternally drunken warlock in “I Married a Witch” (1942) or an unsympathetic role like the cold-blooded psychiatrist Mr Chumley in “Harvey” (1950), it was impossible for Kellaway to be completely dislikable.

He delivered a fine performance as Lana Turner's doomed husband in “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1946), although his character was considerably altered from that in James Cain's book. In 1967, Kellaway won a second Oscar nomination for his performance as the tippling priest in “Guess Who's Coming to Dinner”. His final film was “Getting Straight” in 1970.

Cecil Kellaway was the cousin of veteran British actor Edmund Gwenn. Ironically, Kellaway was originally offered the part of Santa Claus/ Kris Kringle in the 1947 film “Miracle on 34th Street”. He turned it down as he believed that Americans didn’t really go in for whimsy, and the part went to Edmund Gwenn instead, who of course won an Oscar for it. Kellaway did eventually play Santa Claus – in an episode of ‘Bewitched’.

His son Peter pioneered the clinical use of the electroencephalogram (EEG) to evaluate patients with possible neurological problems. Peter Kellaway actually testified against Jack Ruby about the man’s sanity based on his EEG findings when Ruby was standing trial for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Cecil Kellaway died on February 28, 1973, in Hollywood, California at the age of 79 and was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Filmography

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