Ralph Bellamy

Ralph Bellamy was born in Chicago in 1904 and built a durable Hollywood career on a very specific comic function: the decent, dull, entirely sincere rival who loses the girl to the more charming leading man. He played that role opposite Grant twice, in two of the defining screwball comedies of the era, and the type became so associated with him that "a Ralph Bellamy part" entered industry shorthand for the amiable also-ran. In Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth (1937), Bellamy played Oklahoma oilman Dan Leeson, the wholesome suitor competing with Grant's Jerry Warriner for Irene Dunne's affections; three years later, in Howard Hawks's His Girl Friday (1940), he played Bruce Baldwin, the insurance man courting Rosalind Russell's Hildy Johnson against Grant's fast-talking Walter Burns. That film contains one of the most quoted throwaway lines in Grant's career: describing Bellamy's character, Grant's Walter Burns says he looks "like that fellow in the movies — you know, Ralph Bellamy" — a joke made possible only because Bellamy himself was standing a few feet away playing the part. Bellamy's career extended well beyond these roles. He played Franklin D. Roosevelt on stage and screen in Sunrise at Campobello (1960), served four terms as president of Actors' Equity, and continued working into old age, appearing in Trading Places (1983) and Pretty Woman (1990) as elderly men of quiet authority. He received an Honorary Academy Award in 1987 "for his unique artistry and his distinguished service to the profession," a recognition of a career built as much on generosity to scene partners as on any single performance. He died in 1991.