NOAH BEERY SR.
January 17th, 1882 -- April 1st, 1946

Above: Noah Beery Sr., one of the first--and best--of the great serial villains. This portrait comes from a non-serial film called THE FROG, which was made in England in 1937 and was based on an Edgar Wallace novel.

Brother of one famous film actor (Wallace Beery) and father of another (Noah Beery Jr.), Noah Beery Sr. is not as well known to film historians as his more prominent kinfolk. However, Beery was a popular and prolific villain in many major silent films, including BEAU GESTE and THE MARK OF ZORRO, and, though he never got sound-era roles to equal his silent ones in terms of "respectability", his best-loved films--from the serial fan's point of view-- were undoubtedly made in the sound era. I allude of course to Noah's five serials. All of them were Western cliffhangers, in which Beery put his burly physique, jovial laugh, rich bass voice, and cheery smile to great use in portraying seemingly-friendly but secretly villainous characters, heavies who would smile and joke with the heroes to their face and plot their deaths behind their backs. It would not to be an overstatement to say that Noah's delightfully hypocritical villains were every bit as memorable and distinctive as his brother Wallace's equally flamboyant portrayal of the double-dealing Long John Silver in TREASURE ISLAND. And Noah played Long John Silver characters so often that he got even better at it, perhaps, than Wallace.

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of a policeman, Beery had a checkered career as a newsboy, circus concessionaire, and lemon-drop hawker before entering showbiz as, at first, a singer, than later a stage performer in local touring companies. He came to Hollywood (following his brother's success there) somewhere around 1916, and quickly became popular as a villain in silent films. For some reason (possibly Hollywood felt it didn't need two Beerys in its mega-star ranks), his popularity began to fall in the late twenties-early thirties as his brother's rose, and by 1932, he was appearing in his first serial, THE DEVIL HORSE, produced by Mascot Pictures. Beery played Canfield, a crooked horse-race promoter and secret leader of an outlaw gang. The hero of the cliffhanger was Harry Carey Sr., another screen legend of silent days, and the paring of the two alone was enough to make the cliffhanger memorable. The serial also benefited from a good supporting cast, including young Frankie Darro as a wild boy raised by horses after Canfield and his gang murders his parents. Years later, Beery's gang attempts to capture the leader of the wild boy's horse herd (Rex the Wonder Horse, playing the Devil Horse of the title) and wind up killing Carey's ranger brother. This prompts Carey to ally himself with Darro, and, after Carey has successfully made the wild boy understand him, the two of them destroy Beery's gang with the help of Rex and his herd. THE DEVIL HORSE is one of Mascot's better-liked serials, due to some fast action, the presence of Carey, and Beery's oily, crafty, dominating performance as the villainous Canfield.

Above: It looks like Frankie Darro and Rex, King of the Wild Horses, have lassoed Noah Beery Sr. in this scene from THE DEVIL HORSE (Mascot, 1932), Beery's first serial.

Unfortunately, Beery's second serial, another Mascot called FIGHTING WITH KIT CARSON, released in 1933, was not quite up to the level of his first. The great Western star Johnny Mack Brown, in his first serial, played Carson, who was trying to protect a shipment of gold from the Mystery Riders, a group of marauding badmen secretly headed by the apparently honest and upright citizen Cyrus Kraft (Beery). The serial had some action but came off as ultimately silly, due mainly to the fact that Beery's Riders sang (and not menacing songs either, but a bouncy little ditty) while riding on their raids. However, Beery, as Bela Lugosi would do later in PHANTOM CREEPS, made a rather mediocre serial memorable by delivering a larger-than-life, "over-the-top" performance, chortling, snarling, and swaggering self-confidently through the proceedings, and stealing the entire serial. Interestingly, Noah's son, Noah Beery Jr., played a major role in FIGHTING WITH KIT CARSON as a young Indian orphaned by Kraft's raiders; this was the first of two times that the junior and senior Beerys would appear together in a cliffhanger.

Above: Cyrus Kraft (Noah Beery Sr., right) and Nakomas (Noah Beery Jr.) talk things over in FIGHTING WITH KIT CARSON (Mascot, 1933); Beery Jr. is unaware that Beery Sr. is secretly the leader of the bad guys. That's Johnny Mack Brown shown in the left hand border.

Beery took a hiatus from serials for a while after FIGHTING WITH KIT CARSON, appearing in films of various importance (including many of Paramount's hour-long Zane Grey features) until his next cliffhanger, ZORRO RIDES AGAIN (Republic, 1937). Republic had been formed out of a merger of Mascot and two other studios, and ZORRO RIDES AGAIN, one of their earlier outings, was historic in that it was the first time William Witney and John English, their best serial directors (and the best serial directors of all time) worked together. Beery once again played the head villain--this time a railroad tycoon named J.A. Marsden, out to take over a rival railroad company thru violence and terror but thwarted by James Vega (John Carroll), a modern day descendant of the original Zorro. Beery was high-paid and prominently billed, but all his scenes in the serial were filmed in a day, as his character never left his office and left all the active villainy to his lieutenant, Richard Alexander. ZORRO RIDES AGAIN was a great serial and an auspicious debut to Witney and English's directorial career, but it was a sad waste of Noah's talent; in view of his great performances for Mascot, Republic could have given him more to do.

Above: J.A. Marsden (Noah Beery Sr.) issues orders to his henchmen in his campaign to destroy the California-Yucatan railroad in ZORRO RIDES AGAIN (Republic, 1937).

Fortunately, Republic rectified their error three years later and gave Noah a much meatier part in their all-time classic cliffhanger ADVENTURES OF RED RYDER (Republic, 1940). Beery, as crooked saloon owner Ace Hanlon, joined with villainous banker Calvin Drake (Harry Worth) to inaugurate a reign of terror that would give them control of ranch land needed for a railroad right-of-way. Beery and Worth's scheme was smashed by two-fisted cowpoke Red Ryder (Don Barry), who, in order to avenge the murder of his father at the hands of the duo's henchmen, brought their schemes down. Beery, though taking second place as a villain to Worth, was given a real chance to shine and got a large amount of much-deserved screen time till the final chapter, when he was murdered by his erstwhile partner Drake.

Above: Poor Noah! After working so well with Harry Worth (right) in their attempt to grab up range land, he is nevertheless shot dead by Worth when he fails to kill Don Barry in THE ADVENTURES OF RED RYDER (Republic, 1940).

Beery's final serial was a Universal outing, OVERLAND MAIL (Universal, 1942). Once again, he was an outwardly friendly but actually treacherous frontier businessman, Frank Chadwick, who was attempting to bankrupt a stageline run by Tom Gilbert (Tom Chatterton) so he could grab Gilbert's government mail contract for himself. Beery employs renegade Indian Charles Stevens and outlaw Harry Cording to raid Chatterton's stages, but government investigator Lon Chaney Jr. and his pals Don Terry and Noah Beery Jr. (in his second serial with his dad) come to the rescue of Gilbert and his daughter (Helen Parrish). OVERLAND MAIL was a classic, high-quality Universal Western serial, and provided a great final serial for Beery; indeed, the part of Chadwick was a sort of composite of all his previous villains, and was perhaps his most memorable serial characterization of all.

Above: Lon Chaney Jr. (far left) gets the drop on Harry Cording while Noah Beery Sr. looks on with amusement in this still from OVERLAND MAIL (Universal, 1942).

Noah continued to act in small-to-medium parts for the next four years. He died of a heart attack on his brother's birthday in 1946, just as he and Wallace were preparing to act in a radio play of BARNACLE BILL. Both movies and serials lost a great actor that day.

I doubt if there was any other serial villain (except for Roy Barcroft) that fans "loved to hate" more than Noah Beery Sr. He was so jolly, and so obviously relished his despicable villainy, that, though you always were glad when the heroes won, you often half-wished that Beery's character had been able to elude them or even succeed in his plans for once. He tried hard, but was always rewarded with failure. Oh, well--at least he had fun playing the game--and boy, did we have fun watching him. He was the dirtiest, nastiest, sneakiest bad guy in the West--and we loved him for it.

Above: A nice portrait of Noah from his silent acting days.