Steve Cochran
Steve Cochran was an American film, television and stage actor. He attended the University of Wyoming. After a stint working as a cowpuncher, Cochran developed his acting skills in local theatre and gradually progressed to Broadway, film and television.
Biography
Early life
Cochran was born in Eureka, California, but grew up in Laramie, Wyoming, the son of a logger. While he appeared in high school plays, he spent more time delving into athletics, particularly basketball.After stints as a cowpuncher and railroad station hand, he studied at the University of Wyoming, where he also played basketball. Impulsively, he quit college in 1937 and decided to go straight to Hollywood to become a star.
Theatre
Working as a carpenter and department store detective during his early days, he gained experience appearing in summer stock and in the early 1940s was given the chance to work with the Shakespeare Festival in Carmel. There he played "Orsino" in "Twelfth Night", "Malcolm" in "Macbeth", "Horatio" in "Hamlet" and the ungainly title role of "Richard III".Cochran performed in plays for the Federal Theatre Project in Detroit. He was rejected for military service in World War II because of a heart murmur but directed and performed in plays at a variety of Army camps.
He was appearing with Constance Bennett in a touring production of Without Love in December 1943 when he was signed by Sam Goldwyn.
On Broadway, Cochran appeared in Hickory Stick.
Sam Goldwyn
brought Cochran to Hollywood in 1945. Goldwyn only made a few films a year, so he loaned Cochran to Columbia Pictures for Booked on Suspicion, a Boston Blackie movie.Goldwyn then put him in Wonder Man a Danny Kaye movie co-starring Virginia Mayo and Vera-Ellen in which Cochran played a gangster. Columbia then used him in another Boston Blackie film, Blackie's Rendezvous, wherein he played a villain, and in The Gay Senorita with Jinx Falkenburg.
Goldwyn then used Cochran in another Danny Kaye movie with Mayo and Vera-Ellen, The Kid from Brooklyn. After United Artists borrowed him to play a gangster in The Chase, Cochran appeared in the prestigious drama The Best Years of Our Lives, playing a man who has an affair with Virginia Mayo while her husband Dana Andrews was away at war. The movie was a huge critical and commercial success.
Cochran had a supporting role opposite Groucho Marx in Copacabana for United Artists. Goldwyn got him to play another gangster opposite Kaye and Mayo in A Song is Born, directed by Howard Hawks. He made his TV debut in "Dinner at Antoine's" for The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse and followed this with "Tin Can Skipper" for NBC Presents. He then returned to Broadway to support Mae West in a short-lived revival of her play Diamond Lil. This revived Hollywood's interest in him.
Warner Bros.
In 1949 Cochran went over to Warner Bros., playing Big Ed Somers, a power-hungry henchman to James Cagney’s psychotic mobster in White Heat opposite Virginia Mayo. Warner Bros. eventually took over Cochran's and Mayo's contracts from Goldwyn.Cochran supported Joan Crawford in The Damned Don't Cry, after which he was given his first lead role, in Highway 301, playing a gangster. He was a villain to Gary Cooper's hero in Dallas and played a Ku Klux Klan member in Storm Warning with Ginger Rogers and Doris Day.
Cochran was a villain in Canyon Pass, a western, and then was given the lead in Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison, which inspired Johnny Cash to write his song "Folsom Prison Blues".
Warners gave him another lead in Tomorrow Is Another Day, a film noir with Ruth Roman. He returned to supporting parts in Jim Thorpe – All-American with Burt Lancaster.
Warners starred him in The Tanks Are Coming and The Lion and the Horse. He co-starred with Cornel Wilde in Operation Secret and supported Virginia Mayo in She's Back on Broadway. In The Desert Song, Cochran played Gordon Macrae's rival for Kathryn Grayson. He then left Warners.
Post-Warners
Cochran starred in the low-budget action film Shark River for United Artists and was a villain to Rock Hudson in Back to God's Country at Universal.He returned to television appearing in episodes of Lux Video Theatre, and Studio One in Hollywood. Cochran then went to Germany to make Carnival Story for the King Brothers.
Back in Hollywood he costarred in Private Hell 36 with Ida Lupino for director Don Siegel. His TV roles included "Foreign Affair" for Robert Montgomery Presents; "The Role of a Lover" and "The Most Contagious Game" for Studio One; "Trip Around the Block" and "The Menace of Hasty Heights" for The Ford Television Theatre; "The After House", "Fear is the Hunter", and "Bait for the Tiger" for Climax!; and "The Seeds of Hate" for General Electric Theatre.
Republic Pictures hired him to play Ann Sheridan's love interest in Come Next Spring. Cochran then went to England to play the lead in The Weapon.
Cochran supported Van Johnson in MGM's Slander. He went to Italy to star in Il Grido for Michelangelo Antonioni alongside Alida Valli and Betsy Blair; filming took seven months.
On TV he did "Outlaw's Boots" for Schlitz Playhouse, "Debt of Gratitude" for Zane Grey Theater, and "Strictly Personal" for The Loretta Young Show.
Cochran had the lead in Quantrill's Raiders, an Allied Artists western, and I Mobster, a Roger Corman gangster film. Albert Zugsmith used him for the lead in The Beat Generation and The Big Operator.
Later career
After 1959, Cochran worked mostly in television, guest-starring in series such as Bonanza, The Untouchables, Route 66, Bus Stop, Stoney Burke, The Naked City, Shirley Temple's Storybook, The Dick Powell Theatre, The Virginian, Route 66, Death Valley Days, Mr. Broadway, Burke's Law and The Twilight Zone.He had the lead in the TV movie The Renegade and was in Sam Peckinpah's debut feature, The Deadly Companions. They had first worked together when Peckinpah was dialogue director on the film noir Private Hell 36.
Cochran was Merle Oberon's co star in Of Love and Desire, shot in Mexico. He had the lead in Mozambique for Harry Alan Towers.
Producer
In 1953 Cochran formed his own production company, Robert Alexander Productions. His production company attempted to make some television series and other films such as The Tom Mix Story, Hope is the Last Thing to Die about the Mexican War, and Klondike Lou. They were never produced, however, with the exception of Fremont the Trailblazer, a television pilot in which he played John C. Frémont. He did, however, write, produce, direct and star in Tell Me in the Sunlight.Personal life
Cochran was a notorious womanizer and attracted tabloid attention for his tumultuous private life, which included well-documented affairs with numerous starlets and actresses. Mamie Van Doren later wrote about their sex life in graphic detail in her tell-all autobiography Playing the Field: My Story. He was also married and divorced three times, to actress Fay McKenzie, Florence Lockwood and Jonna Jensen. He and Lockwood had one daughter, Xandra, through whom he is the grandfather of film and television producer Alex Johns, who was a co-executive producer for more than seventy episodes of the animated television series Futurama. In the 2002 documentary The Importance of Being Morrissey, Steven Morrissey claims that his parents named him after Steve Cochran.Cochran was in trouble with the police a number of times in his life, including a reported assault and a charge of reckless driving in 1953.
Recognition
Cochran has a star at 1750 Hollywood Boulevard in the Motion Pictures section of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was dedicated February 8, 1960.Death
On June 15, 1965, at the age of 48, Cochran died on his yacht off the coast of Guatemala, reportedly owing to an acute lung infection. His body, along with three Mexican females aged 14, 19 and 25, remained aboard for 10 days since the girls did not know how to operate the boat. It drifted to shore in Port Champerico, Guatemala, and was found by authorities.There were various rumors of foul play and poisoning, but reportedly no evidence was found.
Filmography
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
| 1945 | Boston Blackie Booked on Suspicion | Jack Higgins | Alternative title: Booked on Suspicion |
| 1945 | Wonder Man | Ten Grand Jackson | |
| 1945 | Boston Blackie's Rendezvous | Jimmy Cook | Alternative title: Blackie's Rendezvous |
| 1945 | The Gay Senorita | Tomas Obrion aka Tim O'Brien | |
| 1946 | The Kid from Brooklyn | Speed McFarlane | |
| 1946 | The Chase | Eddie Roman | |
| 1946 | The Best Years of Our Lives | Cliff | Alternative titles: Glory for Me and Home Again |
| 1947 | Copacabana | Steve Hunt | |
| 1948 | A Song Is Born | Tony Crow | Alternative title: That's Life |
| 1949 | White Heat | Big Ed Somers | |
| 1950 | The Damned Don't Cry | Nick Prenta | |
| 1950 | Highway 301 | George Legenza | |
| 1950 | Dallas | Bryant Marlow | |
| 1951 | Storm Warning | Hank Rice | |
| 1951 | Raton Pass | Cy Van Cleave | Alternative title: Canyon Pass |
| 1951 | Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison | Chuck Daniels | |
| 1951 | Tomorrow Is Another Day | Bill Clark / Mike Lewis | |
| 1951 | Jim Thorpe – All-American | Peter Allendine | Alternative title: Man of Bronze |
| 1951 | The Tanks Are Coming | Francis Aloysius 'Sully' Sullivan | |
| 1952 | The Lion and the Horse | Ben Kirby | |
| 1952 | Operation Secret | Marcel Brevoort | |
| 1953 | She's Back on Broadway | Rick Sommers | |
| 1953 | The Desert Song | Captain Claude Fontaine | |
| 1953 | Shark River | Dan Webley | |
| 1953 | Back to God's Country | Paul Blake | |
| 1954 | Carnival Story | Joe Hammond | |
| 1954 | Private Hell 36 | Cal Bruner | |
| 1956 | Come Next Spring | Matt Ballot | |
| 1956 | The Weapon | Mark Andrews | |
| 1957 | Slander | H.R. Manley | |
| 1957 | Il Grido | Aldo | |
| 1958 | Quantrill's Raiders | Capt. Alan Wescott | |
| 1959 | I Mobster | Joe Sante | |
| 1959 | The Beat Generation | Dave Culloran | |
| 1959 | The Big Operator | Bill Gibson | Alternative title: Anatomy of the Syndicate |
| 1961 | The Deadly Companions | Billy Keplinger | |
| 1963 | Of Love and Desire | Steve Corey | |
| 1965 | Mozambique | Brad Webster | |
| 1967 | Tell Me in the Sunlight | Dave | Filmed in 1965; released posthumously |