Walter Slezak

Award won Role or nomination

1. 1902 age 0

   Born

2. 1924 age 22

   CreditMichael

3. 1942 age 40

   CreditOnce Upon a Honeymoon

4. 1943 age 41

   CreditThis Land Is Mine

5. 1944 age 42

   CreditLifeboat

   CreditThe Princess and the Pirate

6. 1945 age 43

   CreditThe Spanish Main

7. 1947 age 45

   CreditBorn to Kill

   CreditSinbad the Sailor

8. 1948 age 46

   CreditThe Pirate

9. 1950 age 48

   CreditAbbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion

   CreditThe Inspector General

10. 1951 age 49

    CreditBedtime for Bonzo

    CreditPeople Will Talk

11. 1957 age 55

    CreditPinocchio

12. 1961 age 59

    CreditCome September

13. 1962 age 60

    CreditThe Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm

14. 1968 age 66

    CreditHeidi

15. 1983 age 80

    Died

• ESEdward Stevenson3 titles
• MMMike Mazurki3 titles
• GBGeorge Barnes3 titles
• MOMaureen O'Hara3 titles
• BHBen Hecht2 titles
• BFBess Flowers2 titles
• MLMarc Lawrence2 titles
• CGCary Grant2 titles
• CCCarroll Clark2 titles
• HHHarry Harvey2 titles

• 
  Photo:Franz Xaver SetzerPublic domain

• You have to work five or six years in the theatre—in hit shows—to make people sick and tired of you, but this you can accomplish in only a few weeks on television. It's a remarkable medium.

  Walter Slezak, CC BY-SA 4.0

• Spending money you don't have for things you don't need to impress people you don't like.

  Walter Slezak, CC BY-SA 4.0

• Walter Slezak says he's tired of arguing with his kids about borrowing the car. "The next time I want it," he says, "I'm just going to take it."

  Walter Slezak, CC BY-SA 4.0

• "Overwrite — put down everything that comes to your mind," I was told.<br />"Be explicit, elaborate. Judicious pruning will be done later. Don't be afraid to name names. Lawyers will tooth-comb the book before it gets into print and protect you from libel suits. Don't be afraid to shock people. Be daring. Be spicy. Tell all!"<br />I did. <br /> I followed everybody's advice. About seven hundred thirty pages were judiciously pruned in order to protect the innocent, to make it possible for the book to be sent through the U.S. mails, and to prevent me from spending the twilight years of my life in jail for criminal libel.<br /> What's left is here. <br /> PLEASE LIKE IT.

  Walter Slezak, CC BY-SA 4.0

• Biographies usually begin with the smack on the bottom and the first lusty cry of the subject. I deplore this literary custom, because it is impossible to remember anything about one's birth firsthand. It is bound to be hearsay, and embellished, gilded hearsay at that.

  Walter Slezak, CC BY-SA 4.0

• In that wonderful musical show Knickerbocker Holiday Maxwell Anderson defined the outstanding characteristics of an American as "one who refuses to take orders!" <br /> I think that I qualified for that, my chosen nationality, at an early age. As far back as I can remember, an expressly given order triggered instant defiance. My little mind started functioning like an IBM machine; signals flashed in my resistance center, lights flickered around my resentment glands, bell and buzzer alerted all the cunning of a five-year-old. <br /> Strategy and tactics went to work, not to rest till they had circumvented or defied that specific order. <br /> I don't know if that character trait was deplorable or laudable; I only know that I have never been able to lose it. And I am extremely grateful that I was too young to serve in the First World War and too old for the Second; I surely would have been court-martialed for insubordination, and expired in front of a firing squad. <br /> Even today, at

  Walter Slezak, CC BY-SA 4.0