Victor Mature

Born: 29th January 1913, Louisville, Kentucky, USA. Died: 4th August 1999, Rancho Santa Fe, San Diego County, California, USA. American film, TV, stage actor and Hollywood celebrity of the 1940s - 1950s. Mature's style was unpretentious and workmanlike, which perhaps belied his skills in movies such as 'Kiss Of Death', 'My Darling Clementine' and 'Samson And Delilah'. His career waned in the '60s but was revived with a brief comeback in the self-mocking 'After The Fox' by Neil Simon, in which he played a 'Victor Mature-like' character. The game of golf was always of more interest to Mature than acting and he was often self-deprecatory of his work. When his profession was once used by a country club to reject his golf-membership application he commented "I'm not an actor - I've got sixty-four films to prove it". In 1968 Mature appeared in the film "Head", a The Monkees pastiche, as "Big Victor" the giant. Co-written by Jack Nicholson and written & directed by Bob Rafelson the film is a psychedelia of visual innuendo, double entendre and in-jokes of the period - in some respects a precursor of the humor of National Lampoon and "Airplane!". The film includes cameo appearances by [a266349], [a92623], Annette (7), Timothy Carey, Teri Garr and Carol Doda (Sally Silicone 'The Twin Peaks of San Francisco'), LA's first topless go-go dancer at The Condor. Mature died of leukemia, aged 68 and was interred in the family plot, St. Michael's Cemetery, Louisville.