Born 1910 as LeRoy Melvin Radabaugh in Long Beach, California, American actor Richard Cromwell can be seen in King of Jazz (1930), along with the film’s star, Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. His career was at its pinnacle with his work in Jezebel (1938) with Bette Davis and Henry Fonda and again with Fonda in John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln (1939).
Cromwell’s fame was perhaps first assured in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), sharing top billing with Gary Cooper and Franchot Tone. That film was the first major effort directed by Henry Hathaway and it was based upon the popular novel by Francis Yeats-Brown. The Lives of a Bengal Lancer earned Paramount Studios a nomination for Best Picture in 1935, though Mutiny on the Bounty instead took the top award at the Academy Awards that year.
Leslie Halliwell in The Filmgoer’s Companion, summed up Cromwell’s enduring appeal when he described him as “a leading man, gentle hero of early sound films.”
Cromwell became ill and died in 1960 in Hollywood of liver cancer, at the age of 50. Take a look at these vintage photos to see portraits of a young hand handsome Richard Cromwell in the 1930s and ’40s.
The gaydar is beeping again.
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