Reed Hadley

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Birth name Reed Herring
Nationality USA
Birth 25 june 1911 at Petrolia (USA)
Death 11 december 1974 (at 63 years) at Los Angeles (USA)

Reed Hadley (June 25, 1911 – December 11, 1974) was an American movie, television and radio actor.

Reed Hadley was born Reed Herring in Petrolia in Clay County near Wichita Falls in northern Texas, to Bert Herring, an oil well driller, and his wife Minnie. Hadley had one sister, Bess Brenner. He was reared in Buffalo, New York and graduated from Bennett High School there. He was involved in the local Studio Arena Theater. Hadley and his wife, Helen, had one son, Dale. Before moving to Hollywood, he acted in Hamlet on stage in New York City.

Throughout his thirty-five-year career in film, Hadley was cast as both a villain and a hero of the law, in such movies as The Baron of Arizona (1950), The Half-Breed (1952), Highway Dragnet (1954) and Big House, USA (1955), and narrated a number of documentaries. He starred in two television series, Racket Squad (1950–1953) as Captain Braddock, and The Public Defender (1954–1955) as Bart Matthews, a fictional attorney for the indigent.

Hadley was the voice of cowboy hero Red Ryder on the radio show during the 1940s. In films, he starred as Zorro in the 1939 serial Zorro's Fighting Legion.

He is immortalized on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his television work, which included guest starring roles on such programs as the religion anthology series, Crossroads, and on Rory Calhoun's CBS western series, The Texan. In 1959, he played fictitious Sheriff Ben Tildy in "The Sheriff of Boot Hill", with Denver Pyle cast as Joe Lufton.

Hadley was the narrator of several Department of Defense films: "Operation Ivy", about the first hydrogen bomb test, Ivy Mike, "Military Participation on Tumbler/Snapper"; "Military Participation on Buster Jangle"; and "Operation Upshot-Knothole" all of which were produced by Lookout Mountain studios. The films were originally intended for internal military use, but have been "sanitized" and de-classified, and are now available to the public.

In 1945 he narrated “The Nazi Plan”, a documentary film using captured propaganda and newsreel footage to dramatize the Nazi’s rise to power and was used by the prosecution in the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.

Hadley also served as the narrator on various Hollywood films, including House on 92nd Street (1945), Boomerang (1947), and The Iron Curtain (1948).

He died at age 63 on December 11, 1974 of a heart attack.

Biography

Sous son véritable nom de Reed Herring, il joue au théâtre à Broadway (New York) en 1936, dans Hamlet de William Shakespeare. Il y personnifie le prince Fortinbras et l'officier Bernardo, aux côtés de John Gielgud (rôle-titre), Judith Anderson, Arthur Byron, John Emery, Lillian Gish et Malcolm Keen dans les rôles principaux.

Au cinéma, sous le pseudonyme de Reed Hadley, son premier film est Hollywood Stadium Mystery de David Howard (avec Neil Hamilton et Evelyn Venable), sorti en 1938. Le dernier est Brain of Blood d'Al Adamson (avec Grant Williams et Kent Taylor), sorti en 1971, trois ans avant sa mort brutale — en 1974 —, d'une crise cardiaque.

Dans l'intervalle, parmi sa centaine d'autres films américains (dont de nombreux westerns), mentionnons le serial Zorro et ses légionnaires de William Witney et John English (1939, avec Edmund Cobb et Carleton Young, lui-même interprétant Zorro), le western J'ai tué Jesse James, premier film de Samuel Fuller où il est Jesse James (1949, avec Preston Foster et John Ireland), le drame Le Pacte des tueurs d'Howard W. Koch (1955, avec Broderick Crawford et Ralph Meeker), ou encore son antépénultième film — policier — L'Affaire Al Capone de Roger Corman (1967, avec Jason Robards et George Segal), où il tient le rôle d'Hymie Weiss.

Pour la télévision, Reed Hadley est narrateur (déjà dans plusieurs films auparavant) du téléfilm de court métrage Men of Crisis: The Harvey Wallinger Story de Woody Allen (1971). Mais surtout, il collabore à dix-neuf séries dès 1951, dont Racket Squad (quatre-vingt-dix-huit épisodes, 1951-1953, rôle principal), The Public Defender (soixante-neuf épisodes, 1954-1955, rôle principal), Rawhide (un épisode, 1959) et Perry Mason (un épisode, 1964). La dernière est Les Arpents verts, avec un épisode diffusé en 1969.

Pour sa contribution au petit écran, une étoile lui est dédiée sur le Walk of Fame d'Hollywood Boulevard.