Joseph Calleia

Calleia excelled as the villain in Hollywood films, but he fought against typecasting and created a succession of darkly mysterious characters edged with humor in films such as Algiers (1938), Five Came Back (1939), Golden Boy (1939), The Glass Key (1942) and Gilda (1946). During World War II, Calleia led the Malta War Relief organization in the United States, and toured for the USO and the Hollywood Victory Committee. After the war, he continued to work steadily in motion pictures and television, and starred in the 1948 London stage premiere of Arthur Miller's Tony Award-winning play All My Sons. Calleia's performance in Orson Welles's 1958 film Touch of Evil is regarded as one of the best in his career.

• Name — Joseph Calleia • Birth Name — Joseph Alexander Caesar Herstall Vincent Calleja • Born — 4 August 1897 • Birthplace — Notabile, Crown Colony of Malta • Died — 31 October 1975 • Place of death — Sliema, Malta • Other Names — * Joseph Spurin • Joseph Spurin-Calleia • Joseph Spurin Calleja • Occupation — * Actor • singer • Years Active — 1918–1963 • Spouse — Eleanor Vassallo (married 1929–1967)

• Illustration — Calleia in the Broadway stage production Small Miracle (1934–1935) Joseph Alexander Caesar Herstall Vincent Calleja was born on August 4, 1897, in Notabile (now called Mdina), in the administrative area of Saqqajja, in the Crown Colony of Malta. His parents were Pasquale and Eleonore Calleja; his father was an architect. Calleia studied at St. Julian's and St. Aloysius Colleges. At age 12, he used the English pound given to him for Christmas to buy two dozen harmonicas, and organized a local band whose performances were soon netting £100 a week. Sent by his father to London to study engineering, Calleia employed his good tenor voice in music halls, performing ballads of the Scottish Highlands in traditional dress. He worked as Joseph Spurin, using his mother's maiden name due to his father's disapproval. In 1914 Calleia joined the British Transport Service. After cruising the world for two and a half years, his ship was torpedoed in the English Channel. Hospitalized for three months, Calleia was awarded a campaign medal and honorably discharged. He traveled to the United States in 1917. Unemployed, he sang for the Red Cross and armed services, and volunteered for the Tank Corps. Calleia began his stage career on Armistice Day. After World War I, he had only limited success in vaudeville. He earned his living stoking the furnace at a department store, and got a night job washing and repairing New York City streetcars. By day, he haunted theatrical booking offices. The Henry W. Savage agency sent Calleia to Denver, where he made his stage debut singing in the chorus of Jerome Kern's musical comedy Have a Heart. The following season, he had a bit part in Pietro (1920), an Otis Skinner vehicle that played six weeks on Broadway and 40 weeks on tour. Calleia supplemented his salary by working as assistant stage manager and repairing trunks at $3 each. Calleia's first speaking role on the stage was in The Broken Wing (1920), a Broadway comedy featuring George Abbott and Louis Wolheim. He understudied all of the parts and appeared as a Mexican peon who played the guitar and sang a song called "Adelai". Calleia composed the tune, and asked Abbott to write the lyrics; the song was published and eventually brought each of them royalties of as much as $2,000 a year. The Broken Wing was a hit, and after the play's New York run, Calleia and Thurston Hall were carried over in a London production. After four months, the show closed, and Calleia visited Malta, where he and his father reconciled. At his father's request he began using his real surname, and he was billed as Joseph Spurin-Calleia. On February 14, 1925, Calleia made his concert debut at Town Hall in New York City, accompanied by pianist Ferdinand Greenwald. "He proved to be the possessor of an agreeable high voice, which he used with much skill in Italian airs," wrote New York Times music critic Olin Downes, "including that of Rodolfo from Puccini's La Boheme and others from Verdi's Trovatore and Rigoletto." In recital at New York's Steinway Hall on February 21, 1926, Calleia "displayed a voice of pleasant and attractive timbre" in a program that included works by Scarlatti, Paisiello, Schumann, Gounod and Leoncavallo, as well as two of his own compositions. Calleia was cast as the Spanish ambassador in the Broadway production of Princess Flavia (1925), Sigmund Romberg's musical adaptation of The Prisoner of Zenda. While he was waiting for the elaborate production to be mounted, he sold pianos with such success that the store owner offered him a store of his own if he would stay.

In 1926, Calleia landed his first prominent stage role, in George Abbott and Philip Dunning's smash hit Broadway. He played a shuffling, coin-jingling waiter in the melodrama that New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson later called a "noisy, bustling cyclorama of backstage life [that] remains a landmark in the American theater." Calleia also acted as the company's stage manager and, working for producer Jed Harris, he supervised some 10 duplicate productions of Broadway in the U.S. and abroad. A succession of acclaimed performances in successful Broadway plays followed, including as a shiftless newspaper reporter in The Front Page (1928), a convicted murderer in The Last Mile (1930), and the sinister chauffeur in Grand Hotel (1930). Calleia became a star with Small Miracle (1934), a Broadway production described by The New Yorker as "a very satisfactory melodrama with Joseph Spurin-Calleia as the pleasantest murderer you ever saw." • Illustration — Public Hero No. 1 trailer (1935) • Illustration — Calleia received the 1938 National Board of Review Award for his performance as Inspector Slimane in Algiers (1938). "What an actor—Joseph Calleia", said Orson Welles, who directed and performed with Calleia in Touch of Evil (1958): I fell in love with him as a ten-year-old boy. I saw him in a play in New York... a very well-staged melodrama which was an enormous hit for about a year—it was made as a movie later with somebody else. He had the leading role, and I never forgot him. And through the years I'd seen him in movies—little things. And I could never forget that performance of his. He's always played very stereotyped parts in pictures but is one of the best actors I've ever known. I have such respect for him. You play next to him and you just feel the thing that you do with a big actor—this dynamo going on. Naming the theatre's villain of the year for 1934, nationally syndicated columnist Paul Harrison of the Newspaper Enterprise Association selected "Joseph Spurin-Calleia, whose gangster role in Small Miracle provided one of the finest of all performances on Broadway."

Calleia had his first real role as a villain in Small Miracle, and his success in the play was responsible for his move to Hollywood. Calleia's contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer permitted him a hiatus of six months a year, to continue his stage work. He was not new to motion pictures—he had made three feature films on the East Coast —but when MGM put Calleia under contract, they promoted his first film, Public Hero No. 1 (1935), as his screen debut. Calleia's portrayal of the gunman was listed by The New York Times film critic Andre Sennwald as one of the year's 10 best male performances. Calleia excelled as the bad guy in films, but he wanted to create characters with some sympathy. "I'd like to get away from straight villain roles," he said in a 1936 interview. "But I have no wish to be a hero. I enjoy roles where I get slapped around a bit. It's far more stimulating to play a character that isn't all one thing—not all bad and not all good." He created a series of darkly mysterious characters edged with humor in films including Algiers (1938), Five Came Back (1939), Golden Boy (1939), The Glass Key (1942) and Gilda (1946). In June 1935, Calleia was announced to star as Joaquin Murrieta in I Am Joaquin (later titled Robin Hood of El Dorado), a film for which he had written the screenplay. MGM replaced him with Warner Baxter, ostensibly because Calleia was too old, although Baxter was six years older. Calleia did star in Man of the People (1937), a political drama about a young lawyer fighting corporate racketeers. Calleia continued to battle typecasting, turning down well-paying villainous roles to develop more complex characters. His performance as Police Inspector Slimane in Walter Wanger's Algiers (1938) was recognized by the National Board of Review. Working with director John Farrow at RKO Pictures in 1939, he created a fine character study as the condemned anarchist in Five Came Back, and a heroic priest in Full Confession. Calleia was announced to star as Father Damien in an RKO picture to be written and directed by Farrow, but the project was not realized. • Illustration — Calleia as Pete Menzies in Orson Welles's Touch of Evil (1958), considered to be one of the best performances of his career Calleia became a naturalized American citizen in November 1941. During World War II, Calleia led the Malta War Relief organization in the United States. The house where he was born was destroyed in 1942; his family took refuge underground in ancient catacombs during the near-constant aerial bombing of Malta by the Axis powers that lasted for more than two years. Under the auspices of the Motion Picture Division of USO Camp Shows, he made personal appearances at American military facilities in 1943. He also accepted an invitation from the Hollywood Victory Committee to make a tour of military camps in North Africa, particularly because the tentative itinerary included Malta. On the 20000 mi trip, Calleia and his small troupe entertained service personnel in Natal, Dakar, along the coast to Casablanca and across to Tunis, then went to Malta, which Calleia had not visited since 1922. They gave two shows per day and visited all of the hospitals at each stop; and they presented six shows in Malta as part of the exchange program between American and British entertainment units. In addition to working steadily in motion pictures for another 20 years, Calleia also starred in the 1948 London stage premiere of Arthur Miller's Tony Award-winning play All My Sons, receiving unanimous critical acclaim. His performance in Touch of Evil (1958)—as Pete Menzies, longtime partner of corrupt Police Captain Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles)—is regarded as one of the best of his career. "It is not rare in Welles's films for one actor to break away from the overall gesture of the film to embody a distilled human truth," wrote Welles biographer Simon Callow. "In Touch of Evil there are two actors who do this—Dietrich and Joseph Calleia, playing Quinlan's deceived colleague, Menzies. Calleia's haunted features figure more and more prominently on screen as the truth about Quinlan increasingly dawns on him, along with the knowledge that he must betray him.... Calleia's abundant inner life casts a growing spell over the film as it comes to its climax, bringing to vividly personal life Welles's sempiternal subject: betrayal."

Calleia retired in 1963 to Sliema, Malta. His wife, Eleanor Vassallo Calleia, whom he had married in 1929, died there in 1967. Calleia died on October 31, 1975, aged 78, in St. Julian's.

• Date — Title — Role — Notes • 1919 — Have a Heart — Chorus member — Joins touring company in Denver • January 19 – March 1, 1920 — Pietro — Miguel — Criterion Theatre, New York • 1920 — Pietro — Miguel — Also assistant stage manager 40-week national tour • November 29, 1920 – April 1, 1921 — The — Basilio — 48th Street Theatre, New York • August 15 – November 18, 1922 — The — Basilio — Duke of York's Theatre, London • April 9 – June 1, 1923 — Zander the Great — Juan — Empire Theatre, New York • November 2, 1925 – March 13, 1926 — Princess Flavia — Senor Poncho, Wurfner — Century Theatre and (from February 1) Shubert Theatre, New York • September 16, 1926 – February 11, 1928 — Broadway — Joe — Broadhurst Theatre, New York Also stage manager; also in charge of some ten duplicate productions of the play in the U.S. and abroad • August 14, 1928 – April 13, 1929 — The — Kruger, Journal of Commerce — Times Square Theater, New York • February 13 – October 1, 1930 — The — Tom D'Amoro — Sam H. Harris Theatre, New York • November 13, 1930 – December 5, 1931 — Grand Hotel — Chauffeur — Also general stage manager National Theatre, New York • September 14 – December 3, 1932 — Clear All Wires — — — Stage manager Times Square Theatre, New York • December 23, 1932 – February 1, 1933 — Honeymoon — Nicola — Little Theatre, New York • October 17 – December 30, 1933 — Ten Minute Alibi — Hunter — Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York • July 9, 1934 — The — Westport Country Playhouse, Westport, Connecticut • September 26, 1934 – January 5, 1935 — Small Miracle — Tony Mako — John Golden Theatre and (from November 11) 48th Street Theatre, New York • February 7 – 1935 — Small Miracle — Tony Mako — El Capitan Theatre, Los Angeles, produced by Henry Duffy with original cast members Robert Middlemass and Joseph King • May 11 – September 18, 1948 — All My Sons — Joe Keller — Lyric Theatre and (from June 15) Globe Theatre, London, with Margalo Gillmore • January 1955 — All My Sons — Joe Keller — Alley Theatre, Houston

• Illustration — Algiers (1938) • Illustration — The Gorilla (1939) • Illustration — Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book (1942) • Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1931 — My Sin — Juan • 1931 — His Woman — Agent • 1932 — The — Stephen Arnaud • 1935 — Public Hero#1 — Sonny • 1936 — Riffraff — Nick • 1936 — Exclusive Story — Ace • 1936 — Tough Guy — Joe • 1936 — Robin Hood of El Dorado — — — Screenwriter • 1936 — His Brother's Wife — Fish-Eye • 1936 — Sworn Enemy — Joe • 1936 — Sinner Take All — Frank • 1936 — After the Thin Man — "Dancer" • 1937 — Man of the People — Jack • 1937 — The — Portuguese Ben • 1938 — Algiers — Inspector — National Board of Review Award • 1938 — Marie Antoinette — Drouet • 1939 — Juarez — Alejandro • 1939 — The — Stranger • 1939 — Five Came Back — Vasquez • 1939 — Golden Boy — Eddie • 1939 — Full Confession — Father • 1940 — My Little Chickadee — Jeff • 1940 — Wyoming — John • 1941 — The — Deacon • 1941 — Sundown — Pallini • 1942 — Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book — Buldeo • 1942 — The — Nick • 1943 — For Whom the Bell Tolls — El • 1943 — The — Antonio • 1944 — The — Captain • 1946 — Deadline at Dawn — Val • 1946 — Gilda — Det. Maurice Obregon • 1947 — The — Enrico • 1947 — Lured — Dr. • 1948 — The — Mike • 1948 — Four Faces West — Monte • 1948 — Noose — Sugiani — U.S. title The Silk Noose • 1950 — Captain Carey, U.S.A. — Dr. • 1950 — The — Miguel • 1950 — Branded — Mateo • 1950 — Vendetta — Guido • 1951 — Valentino — Luigi • 1951 — Pulitzer Prize Playhouse — Don — Episode: "Night Over Taos" • 1951 — The — Lt. • 1952 — When in Rome — Aggiunto • 1952 — Yankee Buccaneer — Count Domingo • 1952 — The — Juan • 1953 — The — Papa • 1955 — Underwater! — Rico • 1955 — The — Capt. Pablo • 1955 — The — The • 1956 — Hot Blood — Papa Theodore • 1956 — Serenade — Maestro • 1957 — Wild Is the Wind — Alberto • 1958 — Touch of Evil — Pete • 1958 — The — Chief • 1958 — Have Gun – Will Travel — Sheriff Sam — Episode: "The Manhunter" • 1959 — Zorro — Padre — Episode:"The Sergeant Sees Red" • 1959 — Cry Tough — Papa • 1960 — The — Juan • 1963 — Johnny Cool — Tourist • 1963 — Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre — Cagewa — Episode:"A Killing at Sundial"

• Date — Title — Role — Notes • March 2, 1939 — Kraft Music Hall — Guest star — Calleia sings "Adelai", the popular song he and George Abbott wrote for Broadway's The Broken Wing (1920–21) • February 25, 1940 — The Screen Guild Theater — Hal Wilson — "Blind Alley" with Edward G. Robinson • November 12, 1943 — Stage Door Canteen — Guest star • February 18, 1944 — Stage Door Canteen — Guest star • November 24, 1944 — Stage Door Canteen — Guest star • November 7, 1948 — Theatre Guild on the Air — "Criminal Code" with Pat O'Brien

The following is established of the heading itself.

The following works and productions are recorded by name or by count. It is also recorded that joseph Calleia is recorded with the occupation actor. Recorded with the occupation singer. Institutional cataloguing adds that joseph Calleia is recorded with the occupation screenwriter. Recorded with the occupation stage actor. Recorded with the occupation television actor. It is also recorded that joseph Calleia is recorded as a citizen of United States. Institutional cataloguing adds that joseph Calleia is recorded with the gender male. Born on 4 August 1897. It is also recorded that joseph Calleia died on 31 October 1975.