John Garfield was born in New York in 1913, and is now remembered for his portrayals of brooding rebels and antiheroes, utilizing method acting techniques. Growing up in a poor NY neighborhood, his involvement with fighting and street gangs landed him in reform school in his early teens. He later attended the American Laboratory School, under a debate scholarship, where he first studied acting.
After making his Broadway Debut in 1933, he joined the Group Theatre, where he was trained in method acting. His success with the Group Theatre earned him a Warner Bros contract, and he strarred in his first film, Four Daughters.
Throughout the early 1940s, Garfield appeared in several successful films, including Saturday’s Children (1940), Castle on the Hudson (1940), The Sea Wolf (1941), and Tortilla Flat (1942).
A minor heart attack kept Garfield from service in WWII. As a result, he continued his career entertaining troops and starring in war films at the time.
Garfield's status as a cult hero came from his 1940's classics, mainly his film noir roles.
For his role in Force of Evil, directed by Abe Polonsky in 1948, he took on the persona of a corrupt attorney, and he was eventually targeted by the House Committee on Un-American activities, as a result of the movie's symbolic condemnation of the American business community. Amidst this turmoil, he filmed his final movie He Ran All the Way, before dying of a heart attack at 39, the attack attributed to stress from his being targeted during the Red Scare.
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