Jeff Chandler - Biography

Jeff Chandler (December 15, 1918 – June 17, 1961) was an American film actor and singer in the 1950s.

Early life

Chandler was born Ira Grossel to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, the only child of Anna (née Shapiro) and Phillip Grossel. He attended Erasmus Hall High School, the alma mater of many stage and film personalities. Later, he took a drama course at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art in New York. He worked in radio briefly and spent two years in stock companies. He served in World War II, mostly in the Aleutians. His enlistment record for the Cavalry on November 18, 1941 gave his height as six foot four inches and his weight as 210 pounds. After being discharged from the military, he was a busy radio actor both in drama (such as episodes of Escape, Academy Award Theater, The Whistler, and the radio detective series Michael Shayne) and comedy (playing bashful biology teacher Phillip Boynton on Our Miss Brooks). His first film appearance was in Johnny O'Clock (1947).

Career

In the 1950s, Chandler became a star in western and action movies. His first important role was in Sword In the Desert (1948), as an Israeli freedom fighter. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Cochise in Broken Arrow (1950). The first of three screen appearances as the legendary Apache chief, he repeated the role in The Battle at Apache Pass (1952) and in a cameo in Taza, Son of Cochise (1954). He was the first actor nominated for an Academy Award for portraying an American Indian. His agent was Doovid Barskin of The Barskin Agency in the late 50's.

During the latter part of the decade and into the early 1960s, Chandler became a top leading man. His sex appeal, prematurely gray hair, and ruggedly handsome tanned features put him into drama and costume movies. Among the movies of this period are Female on the Beach (1955), Foxfire (1955), Away All Boats (1956), Toy Tiger (1956), Drango (1957), The Tattered Dress (1957), Man in the Shadow (1957), A Stranger in My Arms (1959), The Jayhawkers! (1959), Thunder in the Sun (1959), and Return to Peyton Place (1961).

His leading ladies included June Allyson, Joan Crawford, Rhonda Fleming, Maureen O'Hara, Kim Novak, Jane Russell, Esther Williams, and his Brooklyn friend Susan Hayward.

Chandler had a concurrent career as a singer and recording artist, releasing several albums and playing nightclubs. In 1955 he became only the second star to play at the Riviera, after Liberace was the featured headliner. In her autobiography Hold the Roses (2002), Rose Marie wrote that “Jeff Chandler was a great guy, but he was no singer. He put together an act and we opened at the Riviera. He came with a conductor, piano player, light man, press agent, and manager. None of it helped”. And “Everybody raved about Jeff’s singing, but let’s face it: He really didn’t sing very well. He definitely had guts to open in Vegas”. He left to work on a movie after three and a half weeks.

Personal life

Chandler married actress Marjorie Hoshelle (1918–1989) in 1946. The couple had two daughters, Jamie Tucker (1947–2003) and Dana Grossel (1949–2002), before divorcing in 1954. Both his daughters died of cancer, as did his mother, maternal aunt, uncle and grandfather.

When his friend Sammy Davis, Jr. lost an eye in an accident and was in danger of losing the other, Chandler offered to give Davis one of his own eyes. Chandler himself had nearly lost an eye and had been visibly scarred in an auto accident years earlier.

He was romantically linked with Esther Williams, who claimed in her 1999 autobiography that she broke off the relationship when she discovered that Chandler was a cross-dresser.

His former lover Esther Williams, in her tell-all 1999 biography, put Chandler back in the headlines after asserting that he was a cross-dresser. She told him, "Jeff, you're too big for polka dots." Esther later admitted privately that this had no basis in fact. .

Death

Shortly after completing his role in Merrill's Marauders in 1961, he injured his back while playing baseball with U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers who served as extras in the movie. Chandler entered a Culver City hospital and had surgery for a spinal disc herniation, on May 13, 1961. There were severe complications; an artery was damaged and Chandler hemorrhaged. In a seven-and-a-half-hour emergency operation over-and-above the original surgery, he was given 55 pints of blood. Another operation followed, date unknown, where he received an additional 20 pints of blood. He died on June 17, 1961. His death was deemed malpractice and resulted in a large lawsuit and settlement for his children.

Tony Curtis and Gerald Mohr were among the pallbearers at Chandler's funeral. He was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery, in Culver City, California.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Chandler has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1770 Vine Street.

Filmography

Award nominations

Further reading

• Hoffmann, Henryk. "A" Western Filmmakers. McFarland & Co., 2000.
• Kirk, Marilyn. 'Jeff Chandler.' 1st Books Library/AuthorHouse, 2003.
• Marie, Rose. Hold the Roses. University Press of Kentucky, 2002.
• Wells, Jeff. Jeff Chandler: Film, Record, Radio, Television and Theater Performances. McFarland & Co., 2005.
• Williams, Esther. The Million Dollar Mermaid. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000.

External links

• Jeff Chandler as Cochise in Broken Arrow (1951 radio version)
• Lasting Tribute to Jeff Chandler