Douglas Walton

There were other high profile films into the 1940s, including Northwest Passage (1940) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), but by the late decade, he was simply credited as ‘Fop’ in the epic flop, Forever Amber (1947) or as in the remainder of his films given no credit at all.

By 1939, half way through his career of almost 60 films, he decided to take his first (and only) Broadway role, for the original comedy, “Billy Draws a Horse”. Unfortunately, the play folded after only a week and a half in late-December.

Probably Walton’s best role of the period was Lord Darnley in Mary of Scotland (1936) in which he gives an over-the-top, playing-to-the-hilt rendition of the effeminate noble weakling who by default weds Katharine Hepburn as the vivacious Mary Stuart. Director John Ford was noted for pushing his actors, and he must have been satisfied with Walton and his impressive registering everything in the human emotional range from Darnley’s fawning and jealous snits to the fear and terror of his impending doom. Into the late 30s the parts were more conventional secondary characters.

One of the real gems in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) is the opening scene with Elsa Lanchester as Mary Shelley along with Walton as husband, Percy, and American character actor Gavin Gordon as Lord Byron. In one of the old Universal sound stages with a huge fireplace and an even more huge picture window looking out on a stormy night, the histrionics of these 3 make the film, if nothing else did – but Bride as a sequel, lends enough to campiness to make it work wonderfully.

Walton continued his run of high profile film outings that same year, with the much-anticipated Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) starring Clark Gable. As the jealous and priggish midshipman, Stewart, he lends the right characterisation to make the part his own.

An early example being his young Albert de Mondego in The Count of Monte Cristo (1934), in which he registers a fine dramatic range. A year later, another opportunity presented itself.

Ford called on him again, for 2 films; his western remake of The Lost Patrol (1934), Bad Lands (1939), and his reading of Eugene O’Neill’s The Long Voyage Home (1940).

Born in Ontario, Canada, Douglas – like other Canadian actors before and since – made his way to Chicago, then New York. Being of slight frame with a boyish face with a tuft of blond hair completing that latter effect, Walton looked the part of ineffectual, effeminate, snobbish sophisticates, whining cowards, and other assorted types which were in-demand during Hollywood’s heyday of the 1930s and 1940s. film noir. Not interested in stage, Douglas made his way to Hollywood, where casting directors were availing themselves of his type. From just small character roles, he began to receive lines to speak – to accent the parts. Walton’s soft tenor voice lent well to the ‘weakling’ roles, but he could talk in a deeper voice for dramatic moments.