Looking for Mabel Normand

John Hodiak is beside Mabel Normand at Calvery, interred in Block 303, Crypt D-1, of the main mausoleum but I didn’t remember who he was. A few weeks ago I was in the mausoleum with a friends visiting Mabel and was asked who he was and had to answer that I didn’t know.  Well one of the things you should know about me is I like to know stuff. 

So John Hodiak was an actor that was married to Anne Baxter and the father of the actress, Katrina Hodiak.  Back in the late 1940s and 1950s he played in a number of War Movies and Westerns on the big screen but also early TV and was even the radio voice of Li’l Abner.  In August 1998 Classic Images published an article called “The Hero from Hamtramck” #278, pg 22-29).

Do you want to know more about the man beside Mabel? 

John Hodiak (April 16, 1914 – October 19, 1955 was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in Hamtramck (near Detroit). He did his stint in the auto factory and came to Hollywood after another stint in the Army. In 1942 MGM signed him and let him keep his real name.  His big brake came when Alfred Hitchcock at 20^th Century Fox barrowed him for the fabulous Tallulah Bankhead film Lifeboat (1944). Production was done almost entirely in studio, using a range of specialized water sets and props to allow Hitchcock to achieve the camera angles he wanted while employing rear-projected seascapes shot off the coast of Florida. John took his shirt off and became a movie star. 

And in 1946, he was that good bad guy in The Harvey Girls (1946) no wonder Judy Gardland, character fell for him.  He was more then just a pretty face as he also played the part of Lieutenant Maryk in The Caine Mutiny Court Martial on Broadway for over 2 years to critical acclaim.  He returned to Hollywood and played Major Ward Thomas in On The Threshold of Space and a lot of Television and Radio. His Hollywood Star is at 6101 Hollywood Blvd.

John only married once in July 1946, his wife was actress Anne Baxter; their daughter is the actress, Katrina Hodiak born July 7, 1951.  He was only forty-one when he had a heart attack while getting ready to go to the studio to complete On The Threshold of Space, enough of the film was finished so that it was released after this death in 1956. 

Did you know that Anne Baxter was the granddaughter of Frank Lloyd Wright? Her mother was Catherine Dorothy Wright.  Anne had one of those 7 year contracts at 20^th Century – Fox when just 17 years old (1940) and worked in a number of films that I hold dear to my heart, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) The Razor’s Edge (1946) and All About Eve (1950) but for me she will always be Queen Nefretiri in The Ten Commandments (1956) ‘Oh, Moses, Moses! Why of all men did I fall in love with the prince of fools? Why must you deny me and yourself?’ 

John and Anne met while working on Sunday Dinner Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944) which is still available it was one of those heart warming/feel good films of that period about an old seaman and his family, which resides on a Florida houseboat. His daughter, played by the lovely Anne applies to invite a serviceman for Sunday Dinner, just before the boy will be shipped out. G I, played by John accepts their hospitality. Hodiak immediately falls in love with Baxter.

But in real life they didn’t live happily ever after, Anne and John were divorced in 1953.  After John death, Anne remarried in 1960 to the fashion designer Randolph Galt and that union produced 2 more daughters, Melissa Galt, an interior designer in Georgia and Maginel Galt, a Roman Catholic num in Rome. 

Rest well John, I am pleased that Mabel is near you.