Victor John Mature (January 29, 1913 – August 4, 1999) was an American stage, film, and television actor who was a leading man in Hollywood during the 1940s and 1950s. His best known film roles include One Million B.C. (1940), My Darling Clementine (1946), Kiss of Death (1947), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Robe (1953). He also appeared in many musicals opposite such stars as Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable.
Early life
Mature was born in Louisville, Kentucky. His father, Marcello Gelindo Maturi, later Marcellus George Mature, was a cutler and knife sharpener from Pinzolo, in the Italian part of the former County of Tyrol (now Trentino in Italy, but at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). His mother, Clara P. (Ackley), was Kentucky-born and of Swiss heritage. An older brother, Marcellus Paul Mature, died of osteomyelitis in 1918 at age 11. His only sister, Isabelle, was born and died in 1906. Victor attended St. Xavier High School in Louisville, Kentucky, the Kentucky Military Institute, and the Spencerian Business School. He briefly sold candy and operated a restaurant before moving to California.
Career
Pasadena Playhouse
Mature studied and acted at the Pasadena Community Playhouse. For three years, he lived in a tent in the back yard of Mrs Willigan, the mother of a fellow student, Catherine Lewis. He was spotted by Charles R. Rogers, an agent for Hal Roach, while acting in a production of To Quito and Back. Rogers called him "a rival to Clark Gable, Robert Taylor and Errol Flynn." Mature signed a seven-year contract with Roach in September 1939.
Hal Roach
Roach cast Mature in a small role in The Housekeeper's Daughter (1939), for which one reviewer called him "a handsome Tarzan type". Roach then gave Mature his first leading role, as a fur-clad caveman in One Million B.C. (1940). The film was highly publicized and it raised Mature's profile; Hedda Hopper called him "a sort of miniature Johnny Weissmuller". Roach next put him in a swashbuckler set during the War of 1812, Captain Caution (1940).
As Hal Roach only made a handful of movies every year, he loaned out Mature's services to RKO, who used him as a leading man in the Anna Neagle–Herbert Wilcox musical, No, No, Nanette. The studio people were so pleased with his performance that they bought an option to take over half of Mature's contract with Hal Roach, enabling them to draw on his services for two films a year over three years. Wilcox wanted to reunite Mature with Neagle in Sunny. Roach announced Mature would support Victor McLaglen in Broadway Limited, but Mature was not cast in the final film.
Lady in the Dark
Mature was worried about the direction of his career at this stage, claiming "nobody was going to believe I could do anything except grunt and groan," so he went to New York City to try the theatre. He signed to appear in a play with the Group Theatre, Retreat to Pleasure by Irwin Shaw. Shortly afterward it was announced he would appear instead in the musical Lady in the Dark with a book by Moss Hart and songs from Ira Gershwin and Kurt Weill; Mature played Randy Curtis, a film star boyfriend of the show's protagonist, magazine editor Liza Elliott (Gertrude Lawrence). Mature later described his role:
First, this secretary came out saying 'What a beautiful hunk of man!' Then Danny Kaye topped that with a long, long introductory number. Finally, I made my entrance. John Barrymore told me I was the only person who could have followed up on all that.
The musical debuted on Broadway in January 1941 and was a smash hit, making a star of Danny Kaye and Macdonald Carey and causing fresh appreciation for Mature's talents. His performance was well received, Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times calling him "unobjectionably handsome and affable". The description of Randy Curtis in the musical – "Beautiful Hunk of Man" – would be frequently used to describe Mature throughout his career. Mature missed some of the run due to an emergency appendectomy, but played the role until June.
20th Century Fox
When Mature left Lady in the Dark, he announced that 20th Century Fox had bought out half of Mature's contract with Hal Roach. His first film under the contract was to be Bowery Nightingale with Alice Faye. He was going to follow this with The Shanghai Gesture for Arnold Pressburger and Josef von Sternberg at United Artists.