Broderick Crawford: Academy Award Winner Became Baby Boom Icon in TV Series "Highway Patrol"

Actor Broderick Crawford is best remembered for two roles, his Oscar-winning turn as Willie Stark in the original All the King's Men (1949), and as Chief Dan Matthews on the syndicated TV series Highway Patrol , which went on the air in 1955. He was also memorable as Judy Holliday's boisterous boyfriend in the movie version of Born Yesterday (1950).

Early Years

The future Academy Award-winner was born William Broderick Crawford on December 9, 1911 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Lester Crawford and Helen Broderick, two vaudeville performers. His mother eventually had a small movie career acting in comedies shot in Hollywood.

Her son, the large and burly Broderick Crawford, was no one's idea of a leading man due to his rough-and-tumble looks, but he broke through as an actor playing John Steinbeck's simple-minded giant Lenny in the Broadway adaptation of Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men. The role would be played by Lon Chaney Jr. in the classic 1939 movie version.

Hollywood

After his Broadway success, Broderick Crawford took Horace Greeley's advice to "Go West, Young Man" (a native of Amherst, New Hampshire, Greeley actually went South to make his fortune, down the Boston Post Road to New York City) and moved to Hollywood. Crawford made his cinema debut in the comedy Woman Chases Man (1937), in support to stars Joel McCrea and Miriam Hopkins.

When Oscar-winning producer-director Lewis Milestone was casting the movie version of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, he passed over Crawford and cast Lon Chaney Jr. as Lenny. Chaney gave a wonderful performance, and Crawford was in peril of being overlooked, as there were not many good roles for a man with his hulking bulk and gravelly voice.

After undertaking supporting roles (including a memorable turn as a big but kind-hearted lug in the 1942 comedy Larceny, Inc., the inspiration for Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks), Crawford served in the military during World War II. During World War II, he served as a radio announcer for the Armed Forces Network. After being demobilized, Crawford went back to Hollywood and work as a supporting player.

The Oscar

He had his breakthrough role in Robert Rossen's adaptation of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, All the King's Men, a fictionalized version of the Louisiana demagogue Huey Long, a former governor and U.S. Senator who was assassinated in 1935, at the height of his popularity. Crawford gave a masterful performance as Willie Stark, the faux Huey Long. In addition to the Oscar, he also won the New York Film Critics' Award as Best Actor.

Crawford beat out Kirk Douglas, John Wayne & Gregory Peck for the Best Actor Oscar, three superstars who became cinema legends.

All the King's Men was a hit, as was Born Yesterday. This time, it was Broderick Crawford who replaced the original Broadway star, in a role originated by the actor Paul Douglas. Despite the Oscar and his twin box office successes, Crawford was unable to keep up his career as a leading man/character lead due to his typecasting as a crude, boorish brute. The fact that he was a hard drinker and was occasionally belligerent on-set didn't help his career prospects.

"My trademarks are a hoarse, grating voice and the face of a retired pugilist," he was quoted as saying: "small narrowed eyes set in puffy features which look as though they might, years ago, have lost on points."

It limited him, while at the same time, guaranteed that he would be remembered.

TV Star

Five years after copping the Academy Award, TV producer Frederick W. Ziv hired Broderick Crawford to play the lead role in his syndicated police drama, Highway Patrol. The show ran for four seasons, and imprinted Crawford's character of Dan Matthews into a generation of Baby Boomers' minds in its first and subsequent runs in syndication on the boob tube.

His sign off, when using the radio in his patrol car - "10-4" - became a catch-phrase for the Baby Boom Generation. After being moribund in the early 1950s, Crawford's career was revived, and he generally eschewed making movies for TV. He worked steadily on the tube, while making an occasional movie, for the rest of his life. Typical work was a one-shot stint on Love: American Style. It paid the bills and kept him in the public eye.

Broderick Crawford continued to act almost up until his death in Rancho Mirage, California on April 26, 1986, He passed at the age of 74, after a series of strokes. Though he had a career that spanned 50 years, he never again got roles that brought out the true talent of the thespian under the gruff exterior.

Sources:

An earlier version of this biography appeared on the Internet Movie Database