J. Carrol Naish specialised in dialects, but his sympathetic supporting performances give us more to value than the impersonations. We rate the warmth; the ethnic stereotypes built into many of his parts need considerably more caution.
Fi1m perspective
In A Medal for Benny (1945), J. Carrol Naish plays the Mexican father Charley Martini with a warmth that makes the dialect seem secondary. That is the Naish we value: an actor giving a supporting character enough ordinary feeling to matter. His specialism was impersonating nationalities, frequently in crime films, war films and Westerns. The skill deserves recognition, but so does the limitation of roles that ask an accent to tell us what sort of person we are watching.
He had already played the pirate Cahusac in Captain Blood (1935) when Sahara (1943) gave him Giuseppe, an Italian prisoner of war. The sympathy Naish finds in Giuseppe gives the performance its value. He also worked in horror, playing Daniel, assistant to Boris Karloff's mad doctor, in House of Frankenstein (1944). These parts help explain his usefulness to filmmakers, though the repeated casting as ethnic types could leave him with little room to surprise us once the voice had established who he was supposed to be.
In Rio Grande (1950), John Ford cast him as Lt. Gen. Philip Sheridan, a rare Irish character for an actor of Irish descent. We warmed to the romance because Maureen O'Hara's stubborn pride gives John Wayne something worth contending with. The film's leisurely pace suits that relationship; its military reverence is less persuasive. Naish's Sheridan belongs to the military side of the picture, which interests us less than the couple's encounters. We recommend the film, but would not pretend his supporting part is its chief attraction.
The television role in The New Adventures of Charlie Chan (1957) continued the problem of typecasting. That is the caveat when exploring Naish's work: technical skill cannot make an ethnic stereotype less reductive, however thoroughly an actor commits to it. Try A Medal for Benny for a fuller look at the sympathetic actor behind the dialects.
Biography
J. Carrol Naish was an American character actor. Born Joseph Patrick Carrol Naish in New York City on 21 January 1896, he began performing in vaudeville as a child and later appeared on stage in New York and Paris. He arrived in California in 1926 and made his film debut that year, going on to appear in more than 200 films.
Naish specialised in dialect roles portraying characters of many nationalities. He received Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor for Sahara (1943) and A Medal for Benny (1945), winning the Golden Globe Award for the latter. Other notable film roles include Captain Blood (1935), Beau Geste (1939), Rio Grande (1950) and House of Frankenstein (1944). He also starred in the radio series Life with Luigi (1948–1953) and appeared in television series such as Get Smart and Batman.
Naish was married to actress Gladys Heaney from 1929 until his death from emphysema on 24 January 1973 in La Jolla, California. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
