Lloyd Nolan: An Actor's Life With Meaning

Lloyd Nolan could play any character in any genre and was believable to every role. He was not acting; he was just real. He was Inspector Briggs in The House on 92nd Street and The Street With No Name. He was Dr. Swain in Peyton Place and, even as a bad guy, he was Lt. De Garmot in Lady in the Lake. Nolan's off-screen life was just as remarkable. He was devoted to his autistic son Jay and, when young Jay died in an accident 2500 miles away, Lloyd channeled his grief into action. For the rest of his life, he did everything he could to better the lives of disabled people and their families, and such people are still benefitting from the resulting legislation today. This is the story of the two lives of Lloyd Nolan--his prolific on-screen life that is so familiar to moviegoers and television fans alike, and his off-screen life that has positively affected many throughout the country. His was a true Hollywood success story of a role model extraordinaire!

This very familiar face played in 156 roles in all types of media. A cop, doctor, soldier and as detective Michael Shayne. He usually stole the scenes he was in. After all, those B-mysteries usually have one thing going for them: the lead actor is usually the only known name and the only person who can act.

The son of a San Francisco shoe factory owner, American actor Lloyd Nolan made it clear early on that he had no intention of entering the family business. Nolan developed an interest in acting while in college. He flunked out of Stanford because he spent most of his time in amateur theatricals. He then entered Santa Clara College. He then landed a job on a freighter. When the ship sank due to a fire, he headed for Hollywood.

In 1927, he began studying at the Pasadena Playhouse, living on the inheritance left him by his father. Stock company work followed, and in 1933, Nolan scored a Broadway hit as vengeful small-town dentist Biff Grimes in One Sunday Afternoon (a role played in three film versions by Gary Cooper, James Cagney, and Dennis Morgan, respectively -- but never by Nolan). Nolan's first film was Stolen Harmony (1935); his breezy urban manner and Gaelic charm saved the actor from being confined to the bad guy parts he played so well, and by 1940 Nolan was, if not a star, certainly one of Hollywood's most versatile second-echelon leading men.

Film historian William K. Everson pointed out once that the secret to Nolan's success was his integrity -- the audience respected his characters, even when he was the most cold-blooded of villains. The closest Nolan got to film stardom was a series of B detective films made at 20th Century-Fox from 1940 to 1942, in which he played private eye Michael Shayne -- a "hard-boiled dick" character. He acted on radio, appeared on television, where he starred as detective Martin Kane in 1951; and later appeared in the Hugo Award-winning teleplay, “Soldier,” on The Outer Limits. Lloyd Nolan's last performance was as an aging soap opera star on an episode of the TV series, Murder She Wrote. He died  soon after filming completed.

Joel Blumberg

Lloyd Nolan: An Actor’s Life with Meaning was co-written by Joel Blumberg and Sandra Grabman. I read some of Grabman’s books and they are great. I know of Joel Blumberg only as the author of the liner notes for VCI’s Zane Grey Theater (Season One DVD set) and as the host of Silver Screen Audio. In recent years, Joel interviewed the Hollywood celebrities at the annual Mid Atlantic Nostalgia Convention. Sadly, Joel passed away from a heart attack about the time this book got published, and having read this biography and loved it, I can only hope that his unfinished bio on actor Dennis O’Keefe will get published.

I know this book review is more about the actor and not about the book, but to be honest, it’s the only book about Lloyd Nolan that I know of. More importantly, it’s flawless and well-written. The photos are not all gorgeous, but they are as good as they can be under the standard printer conditions and should not be taken against the publisher or the authors. And Joel was such a nice person that the subtitle speaks more of Joel than it does for Lloyd. My closing comment in the last paragraph should speak volumes about this book. 

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