Harold Russell
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Russell in 1946
Born Harold John Russell
January 14, 1914
North Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada
Died January 29, 2002 (aged 88)
Needham, Massachusetts, U.S.
Spouse(s) Rita Russell-Nixon
(m. 1944; died 1978)
Betty Marshalsea
(m. 1981)
Children 2
Harold John Avery Russell[1][2] (January 14, 1914 – January 29, 2002) was a Canadian-born American World War II veteran who became one of only two non-professional actors to win an Academy Award for acting (the other being Haing S. Ngor). Russell also has the distinction of being the only performer to sell his Oscar award at auction.
Contents
1 Early life
2 The Best Years of Our Lives
3 Later years
4 Filmography
5 References
6 External links
Early life
Russell and Cathy O'Donnell in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Harold Russell was born in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada and moved to Massachusetts with his family in 1921,[3] after his father's death in 1920.[4]
At the time of the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, he was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, working at a food market. In his 1949 autobiography, Victory In My Hands, he wrote that he rushed to enlist in the United States Army because he considered himself a failure.[5]
On June 6, 1944, while he was an Army instructor teaching demolition work with the U.S. 13th Airborne Division at Camp Mackall, North Carolina, a defective fuse detonated TNT explosives he was handling.[6] He lost both hands and was given two hooks to serve as hands. After his recovery while attending Boston University, Russell was featured in Diary of a Sergeant, an Army film about rehabilitating war veterans.
The Best Years of Our Lives
When film director William Wyler saw the film on Russell, he cast him in The Best Years of Our Lives with Fredric March and Dana Andrews. Russell played the role of Homer Parrish, a United States Navy sailor who lost both hands during the war.
For his role as Parrish, Russell won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1947. Earlier in the ceremony, he was awarded an honorary Oscar for ''bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans through the medium of motion pictures.''[6] The special award had been created because the board of governors wanted to salute Russell, a non-professional actor, but assumed he had little chance for a competitive win.[7] It was the only time in Oscar history that the academy awarded two Oscars for the same performance.[8]
William Wyler, who directed the film, called it "the finest performance I have ever seen on the screen.'' But Russell earned under $10,000 for his performance and did not receive residual profits.[6]
