Jeff Chandler

Jeff Chandler
Chandler from the trailer for the film The Tattered Dress (1957)
Born	Ira Grossel (1918-12-15)December 15, 1918 Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Died	June 17, 1961(1961-06-17) (aged 42) Culver City, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Surgical complications
Resting place	Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery
Years active	1945–1961
Spouse	Marjorie Hoshelle ​ ​ (m. 1946⁠–⁠1954)​

Jeff Chandler (December 15, 1918 – June 17, 1961) was an American film actor and singer in the 1950s, best remembered for playing Cochise in Broken Arrow (1950), and for being one of Universal International's most popular male stars of the decade.

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 was raised by his mother after his parents separated when he was a child.

He attended Erasmus Hall High School, the alma mater of many stage and film personalities. His father was connected with the restaurant business and got his son a job as a restaurant cashier. He says he always wanted to act but courses for commercial art were cheaper so he studied art for a year and worked as a lay out artist for a mail order catalogue.

Chandler eventually saved up enough money to take a drama course at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art in New York. He worked briefly in radio, then got a job in a stock company on Long Island as an actor and stage manager. He worked for two years in stock companies all up, acting in a performance of The Trojan Horse with Gordon MacCrae and his wife.

Chandler formed his own company, the Shady Lane Playhouse, in Illinois in 1941. This toured the midwest with some success before the war came along.

Chandler served in World War II for four years, mostly in the Aleutians, finishing with the rank of lieutenant. His enlistment record for the Cavalry on November 18, 1941 gave his height as six foot four inches and his weight as 210 pounds.

Radio Actor

After being discharged from the military, Chandler moved to Los Angeles with $3,000 he had saved and soon found work as a radio actor. He appeared episodes of anthology drama series such as Escape and Academy Award Theater, and became well known for playing the lead in Michael Shayne and bashful biology teacher Phillip Boynton on Our Miss Brooks. In 1945 he was involved in a serious car accident on the way to a screen test which resulted in a large scar on his forehead.

Chandler had acted on radio in Rogue's Gallery with Dick Powell, who was impressed enough to give the actor his first film role, a one-line part as a gangster in Johnny O'Clock (1947).

His performance as Boynton in Our Miss Brooks brought him to the attention of executives at Universal, who were looking for someone to play an Israeli leader in Sword in the Desert (1948). Chandler was cast and impressed the studio so much he ended up being signed to Universal for a seven-year contract.

Jeff Chandler at Capernaum during a visit to Israel in 1959

Stardom

Chandler's first movie for Universal under his new contract was Abandoned (1949), then he was borrowed by 20th Century Fox to play Cochise in Broken Arrow (1950). This film was a considerable hit, earning Chandler an Oscar nomination and establishing him as a star. He later reprised the role as the legendary Apache chief 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.

Chandler's success in Broken Arrow led to him being cast as a variety of nationalities from different historical periods, such as an Arab chief in Flame of Araby (1951) and a Polynesian in Bird of Paradise (1951). He also played an embittered Union cavalryman in Two Flags West (1950). In 1952 exhibitors voted him the 22nd most popular star in the US and he signed a fresh contract with Universal.

20th Century-Fox where keen to use Chandler again and put forward roles in such films as The Day the Earth Stood Still, Lydia Bailey, Les Miserables and The Secret of Convict Lake. However Universal had an exclusive contract and they kept him working at the studio.

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. His agent was Doovid Barskin of The Barskin Agency in the late 50s.

In 1957 Chandler left Universal and signed a contract with United Artists. Having long desired to be an executive he formed his own company, Earlmar Productions, with agent Meyer Mishkin. Together they produced the film Drango (1957), which Chandler also directed for a few weeks.

Chandler was due to star in Operation Petticoat (1959) but fell ill and had to pull out. He later formed another production company, August, for whom he made The Plunderers, at Allied Artists.

Singing

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 separating in 1954. They reconciled but his wife applied for divorce again in 1957.

Both of Chandler's 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 Chandler was a cross dresser and she broke off the relationship. According to the Los Angeles Times, many friends and colleagues of Chandler's refuted Williams' claims. Jane Russell commented, "I've never heard of such a thing. Cross-dressing is the last thing I would expect of Jeff. He was a sweet guy, definitely all man."

His public support for Israel prompted the United Arab Republic to ban his films in Arab countries in 1960.

Death

Shortly after completing his role in Merrill's Marauders in 1961, Chandler injured his back while playing baseball with U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers who served as extras in the movie. He 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.

At the time he was romantically involved with British actress Barbara Shelley. 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.

Critical appraisal

Film historian David Shipman once wrote this analysis of Chandler:

Jeff Chandler looked as though he had been dreamed up by one of those artists who specialise in male physique studies, or, a mite further up the artistic scale, he might have been plucked bodily from some modern mural on a biblical subject. For that he had the requisite Jewishness (of which he was very proud) - and he was not quite real. Above all, he was impossibly handsome. He would never have been lost in a crowd, with that big, square, sculpted 20th-century face and his prematurely grey wavy hair. If the movies hadn't found him the advertising agencies would have done - and in fact, whenever you saw a still of him you looked at his wrist-watch or pipe before realising that he wasn't promoting something. In the coloured stills and on posters his studio always showed his hair as blue, heightening the unreality. His real name was Ira Grossel and his film-name was exactly right; his films were mainly dreams spun by idiots. It's hard to believe he really existed.

An obituary of Chandler stated that:

Known for his careful attention to detail in making pictures, Chandler was often described as introverted. But colleagues who worked with him closely said he had an easy, light-hearted approach on the set that helped ease some of the strain of production.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1947	Johnny O'Clock	Turk	Uncredited (film debut)
1947	The Invisible Wall	Al Conway, henchman
1947	Roses Are Red	Knuckles
1949	Mr. Belvedere Goes to College	Police Officer #66	Uncredited
1949	Sword in the Desert	Kurta	Led to Chandler signing a long-term contract with Universal
1949	Abandoned	Chief MacRae	Alternative title: Abandoned Woman
1950	Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion	Narrator	Uncredited
1950	Broken Arrow	Cochise	Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor
1950	Deported	Vic Smith
1950	The Desert Hawk	Opening Off-Screen Narrator	Uncredited
1950	Two Flags West	Major Henry Kenniston
1951	Double Crossbones	Narrator	Uncredited
1951	Bird of Paradise	Tenga
1951	Smuggler's Island	Steve Kent
1951	Iron Man	Coke Mason
1951	Flame of Araby	Tamerlane	Alternative title: Flame of the Desert
1952	The Battle at Apache Pass	Cochise
1952	Red Ball Express	Lt. Chick Campbell
1952	Son of Ali Baba	Opening Narrator	Uncredited
1952	Yankee Buccaneer	Cmdr. David Porter
1952	Because of You	Steve Kimberly
1953	Girls in the Night	Off-Screen Narrator at Finish	Uncredited Alternative title: Life After Dark
1953	The Great Sioux Uprising	Jonathan Westgate
1953	East of Sumatra	Duke Mullane
1953	War Arrow	Major Howell Brady
1954	Taza, Son of Cochise	Cochise	Uncredited
1954	Yankee Pasha	Jason Starbuck
1954	Sign of the Pagan	Marcian
1955	Foxfire	Jonathan Dartland
1955	Female on the Beach	Drummond Hall
1955	The Spoilers	Roy Glennister
1956	The Toy Tiger	Rick Todd
1956	Away All Boats	Captain Jebediah S. Hawks
1956	Pillars of the Sky	First Sergeant Emmett Bell	Alternative title: The Tomahawk and the Cross
1957	The Tattered Dress	James Gordon Blane
1957	Jeanne Eagels	Sal Satori
1957	Drango	Major Clint Drango	Also produced
1957	Man in the Shadow	Ben Sadler	Alternative titles: Pay the Devil Seeds of Wrath
1958	The Lady Takes a Flyer	Mike Dandridge	Alternative titles: A Game Called Love Lion in the Sky Wild and Wonderful
1958	Raw Wind in Eden	Mark Moore/Scott Moorehouse
1959	A Stranger in My Arms	Major Pike Yarnell	Alternative title: And Ride a Tiger
1959	Thunder in the Sun	Lon Bennett
1959	Ten Seconds to Hell	Karl Wirtz	Alternative title: The Phoenix
1959	The Jayhawkers!	Luke Darcy
1960	A Story of David	King David	Alternative title: A Story of David: The Hunted
1960	The Plunderers	Sam Christy	Also producer
1961	Return to Peyton Place	Lewis Jackman
1962	Merrill's Marauders	Brig. Gen. Frank D. Merrill

Unfilmed Projects

Chandler was announced for the following projects which were not made:

• The Last Count (1949)
• Vermillion O'Toole (1952)
• Young Moses (1954)
• The Islander (1957) with Esther Williams
• Lincoln McEever (1957) - for his own production company

Award nominations

Year	Award	Category	Title of work	Result
1951	Academy Awards	Best Actor in a Supporting Role	Broken Arrow	Nominated
1958	Laurel Awards	Top Male Star	-	14th Place
1959	Laurel Awards	Top Male Star	-	15th Place

Box office rankings

For a number of years, film exhibitors voted Chandler among the top stars at the box office.

• 1952 - 22nd (USA)
• 1955 - 7th (UK)

Select radio Credits

Regular role

• Michael Shayne 1948-49
• Our Miss Brooks 1948-55
• Frontier Town 1952-53

Guest appearances

• "Young Mr Lincoln" - Academy Award Theatre (July 10, 1946)
• "Photo Finish" - Suspense (July 1946)
• "With Cradle and Clock" - Cavalcade of America (February 2, 1946)
• "Gregory Hood, Suspect" - Casebook of Gregory Hood (September 30, 1946)
• "Blood On Sun" - Academy Award Theatre (October 16, 1946)
• "The Black Curtain" - Suspense (January 3, 1948)
• "Snake Doctor" - Escape (February 8, 1948)
• "Blond Mink", 'Leopard's Spots', 'Social Error', 'Palm Beach Santa Claus' - Damon Runyan Theatre (1949)
• "Steel River Prison Break" - Suspense (September 3, 1951)
• "The Woodsman" - The Woodsman (July 20, 1952)
• "My True Love's Heir" - Suspense (October 19, 1953)
• "A Good Neighbor" - Suspense (March 31, 1957)

Discography

• "I Should Care"
• "More Than Anyone"

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 at IMDb
• Jeff Chandler at the TCM Movie Database
• Jeff Chandler as Cochise in Broken Arrow (1951 radio version)

• Lasting Tribute to Jeff Chandler