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Filmography
1925
Lorraine of the Lions (uncredited)
1927
Blake of Scotland Yard uncredited)
1928
Alias the Deacon
1929
Smilin’ Guns
The Long Long Trail
One Hysterical Night
1930
King of Jazz
See America Thirst
1931
Scratch-As-Catch-Can
Grief Street
1932
Texas Cyclone
Law and Order
Two-Fisted Law
Horse Feathers (uncredited)
Manhattan Tower (uncredited)
1933
Sensation Hunters
My Woman (uncredited)
1934
The Invisible Man (uncredited)
The Life of Vergie Winters (uncredited)
Woman Haters (uncredited)
Riptide (uncredited)
You Can’t Buy Everything (uncredited)
1935
Biography of a Bachelor Girl (uncredited)
Helldorado (uncredited)
Northern Frontier
The Mystery of Edwin Drood (uncredited)
Law Beyond the Range
Restless Knights (uncredited)
The Wedding Night
West Point of the Air (uncredited)
Bride of Frankenstein (uncredited)
Party Wire (uncredited)
Spring Tonic (uncredited)
Lady Tubbs (uncredited)
Man on the Flying Trapeze
Welcome Home (uncredited)
Alice Adams (scenes deleted)
We’re in the Money (uncredited)
She Couldn’t Take It (uncredited)
Metropolitan (uncredited)
Seven Keys to Baldpate
1936
Three Godfathers
These Three
The Moon’s Our Home
Come and Get It
Banjo on My Knee
1937
She’s Dangerous
When Love Is Young
Affairs of Cappy Ricks
Wild and Woolly
1938
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
The Texans
Mother Carey’s Chickens
1939
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
They Shall Have Music
Stanley and Livingstone
Joe and Ethel Turp Call on the President
1940
Maryland
Nice Girl?
1941
This Woman Is Mine
Swamp Water
Rise and Shine
1942
Stand by for Action
1943
Hangmen Also Die
Slightly Dangerous
The North Star
1944
Home in Indiana
The Princess and the Pirate
1945
Dakota
1946
Centennial Summer
Nobody Lives Forever
1947
Driftwood
1948
Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!
Blood on the Moon
1949
The Green Promise
Brimstone
Task Force
1950
Singing Guns
A Ticket to Tomahawk
Curtain Call at Cactus Creek
The Showdown
Surrender
1951
Along the Great Divide
Best of the Badmen
The Wild Blue Yonder
1952
Return of the Texan
Lure of the Wilderness
1953
Sea of Lost Ships
1954
Drums Across the River
The Far Country
Four Guns to the Border
1955
At Gunpoint
1956
Glory
Come Next Spring
The Proud Ones
Good-bye, My Lady
1957
Tammy and the Bachelor
The Way to the Gold
God Is My Partner
1959
1962
Shoot Out at Big Sag
1965
Those Calloways
1966
The Oscar
1967
The Gnome-Mobile
Who’s Minding the Mint?
1968
The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band
1969
Support Your Local Sheriff!
The Over-the-Hill Gang
1970
The Over-the-Hill Gang Rides Again
1972
Home for the Holidays
Awards
Walter Brennan was the first actor to win three Academy Awards and remains the only person to have won Best Supporting Actor three times.
- Come and Get It (1936)
- Kentucky (1938)
- The Westerner (1940)
He was also nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for Sergeant York (1941)
Walter Brennan: Learn more about him, review his filmography and more
Walter Brennan was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, less than two miles from his family’s home in Swampscott, Massachusetts. He was the second of three children born to Margaret Elizabeth (née Flanagan) and William John Brennan. His father was an engineer and inventor, and young Brennan also studied engineering at Rindge Technical High School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
While in school, Brennan became interested in acting. He began to perform in vaudeville at the age of 15. While working as a bank clerk, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as a private with the 101st Field Artillery Regiment in France during World War I. After the war, he moved to Guatemala and grew pineapples before returning to the U.S. and settling in Los Angeles. During the early 1920s, he made a fortune in the real estate market, but lost most of his money during the 1925 real estate slump.
Finding himself penniless, Brennan began taking parts as an extra in films in 1925 and then bit parts in as many films as he could, including Texas Cyclone and Two Fisted Law with another newcomer to Hollywood, John Wayne. Brennan also had bit parts in The Invisible Man (1933), Girl Missing (1933), the Three Stooges short Woman Haters (1934), and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), in which he had a brief speaking part and also worked as a stuntman. In the 1930s, he began appearing in higher-quality films and received more substantial roles as his talent was recognized. This culminated with his receiving the first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Swan Bostrom in the period film Come and Get It (1936). Two years later, he portrayed town drunk and accused murderer Muff Potter in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.
Throughout his career, Brennan was frequently called upon to play characters considerably older than he was. The loss of many teeth in a 1932 accident, rapidly thinning hair, thin build, and unusual vocal intonations all made him seem older than he really was. He used these features to great effect. In many of his film roles, Brennan wore dentures; in Northwest Passage – a film set in the late 18th century – he wore a dental prosthesis which made him appear to have rotting and broken teeth. Brennan played the top-billed lead in Swamp Water (1941), the first American film by the director Jean Renoir, a drama also featuring Walter Huston and starring Dana Andrews.
In Sergeant York (1941), he played a sympathetic preacher and dry-goods store owner who advised the title character, played by