Victor John Mature (January 29, 1913 – August 4, 1999) was an American stage, film, and television actor who starred most notably in several movies during the 1950s, and was known for his dark hair and smile.
Bare chested and bare armed, Mature had a long career in Hollywood sporting loincloths, togas and leotards as the prehistoric hunter, Tumak, in the movie that made him a star in 1940, ‘One Million B.C.; as the Greek slave Demetrius, who became a fervent Christian in The Robe (1953) and who later demonstrated muscular Christianity in Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954); as the dashing lion-killer in The Egyptian (1954), and as the long-haired Samson who succumbed to the wiles of Hedy Lamarr in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949).
The word ”beefcake” may have been coined to define Mature’s broad shoulders, narrow waist, curly hair and sensual face crowned by dazzling white teeth.
In his first Broadway role he played the gorgeous movie star who wooed Gertrude Lawrence in the hit Broadway musical Lady in the Dark (1941). His costumes included pink circus tights topped by leopard-skin briefs, and he managed not to be an anti-climax even after being described as ”the most beautiful hunk of man you ever saw in your life” before his arrival onstage.
Mature told Life magazine in 1941, ”I can act, but what I’ve got that the others don’t have is this,” as he pointed to his body. The same article described him as ”proportioned like a frappe glass” with a 33-inch waist, 25-inch biceps, a 45-inch chest and standing 6 feet 2 inches tall.
But he took full advantage of his physique. He made 72 movies, married five times, earned $18 million, invested wisely and more or less retired at the age of 46 to play golf and eat.
Mature was born on Jan. 29, 1913, in Louisville, Kentucky. His father, born Marcello Gelindo Maturi in Pinzolo, Trentino, was Italian, and his mother was of Swiss-German and German descent. Mature was the only one of the three children of Marcellus and Clara Mature to survive.
Unstudious and rebellious, he was thrown out of four schools, including the Kentucky Military Institute. Leaving school at 15, he became a salesman with a wholesale candy house, and then went out on his own as a candy jobber. Four years later he packed his car with canned goods and candy and headed to Hollywood to become an actor.
Told to study acting at the Playhouse’s drama school, he polished cars, walked dogs and waxed floors to earn his tuition. He made his debut as an actor in Paths of Glory in 1936 and followed up with small roles in about 60 Playhouse productions before earning a leading role in Autumn Crocus. Along the way he married and divorced Frances Evans, a member of the acting company.
In the spring of 1939, the producer Hal Roach saw Mature as the lead in the Pasadena Playhouse production of Ben Hecht’s To Quito and Back and signed him to play Lefty in The Housekeeper’s Daughter.
After RKO bought half of his contract and cast him opposite Anna Neagle in No, No, Nanette (1940), he was off to New York.
When Lady in the Dark closed in June 1941, he married Martha Stephenson Kemp, the widow of the bandleader Hal Kemp. They separated six months later.
He was now a star, earning $1,200 a week at 20th Century Fox, which had bought his contract from Roach. After starring with Betty Grable in the murder-mystery I Wake Up Screaming, he wore a burnoose as the languid Dr. Omar in The Shanghai Gesture, which was directed by Josef von Sternberg. Then he enlisted in the Coast Guard and spent 14 months during World War II as a chief boatswain’s mate on convoy duty in the North Atlantic.
While making My Gal Sal, he fell in love with Rita Hayworth and planned to marry her after the war. When his ship docked, he heard on the radio that she had married Orson Welles instead.
Few of his movies were memorable. In endless early films, he played the wise guy – the slightly crooked promoter with too much brilliantine on his impossibly thick black hair.
He was back in ancient Rome appearing opposite Jean Simmons in Androcles and the Lion (1952), then he played an aging football star in Jacques Tourneur’s Easy Living (1949); a foreign-born racketeer in Gambling House (1950); the American promoter who discovered Australian swimming star Esther Williams in Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) and the Sioux warrior in Chief Crazy Horse (1955). As the years passed he appeared in movies with names like The Sharkfighters and Timbuktu, playing an assortment of intrepid adventurers, soldiers and heroic natives in various countries and historical eras, including in the film Hannibal (1960), in which he crossed the Alps with elephants.
He married for a third time in 1948 and was divorced in 1955. His fourth marriage, in 1959, to Adrienne Joy Urwick, also ended in divorce. In 1972, he married for the fifth and last time.
Mature had always been quick-witted with an excellent sense of timing, and he did not overstay his welcome in Hollywood. For most of his career he had earned $5,000 a week. After The Tartars (1962), an Italian spectacle graced by Welles as the leader of the barbarians, he turned his attention to playing 18 holes of golf six days a week.
During the next two decades he occasionally turned his back on golf for a spot of acting. In 1966 he went to Italy to do a wicked parody of himself and earn the movie’s loudest laughs as a matinee idol in Vittorio De Sica’s satirical farce, After the Fox.
In the 1968 movie Head he was the giant head, with the Monkees pop group appearing as dandruff in his hair. He got some of the best reviews of his career as the amiably vulgar Mafia big shot Carmine Ganucci in another farce Every Little Crook and Nanny, in 1972. His last performance was as Samson’s father in a 1980’s television remake of Samson and Delilah.
Mature died of leukaemia in 1999 at his Rancho Santa Fe, California, home, at the age of 86. He was buried in the family plot, marked by a replica of the Angel of Grief, at St. Michael’s Cemetery in his hometown of Louisville.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Mature has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6780 Hollywood Boulevard.

My Darling Clementine (1946) is an American Western film directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda as Wyatt Earp during the period leading up to the gunfight at the OK Corral. It is regarded by many film critics as one of the best Westerns ever made.
In 1931, Stuart Lake published the first biography two years after Earp’s death. Lake retold the story in the 1946 book My Darling Clementine, for which Ford acquired the film rights. The two books have since been determined to be largely fictionalized stories about the Earp brothers and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral and their conflict with the outlaw Cowboys: Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury and his brother Frank McLaury. The gunfight was relatively unknown to the American public until Lake published the two books and after the movie was made.
Director John Ford said that when he was a prop boy in the early days of silent pictures, Earp would visit pals he knew from his Tombstone days on the sets. “I used to give him a chair and a cup of coffee, and he told me about the fight at the O.K. Corral. So in My Darling Clementine, we did it exactly the way it had been.” Ford did not want to make the movie, but his contract required him to make one more movie for 20th Century Fox.
According to Henry Fonda in 1976 Darryl F. Zanuck’s first choice for Doc Holliday was James but he was overruled by John Ford who didn’t believe Stewart could do the part. Vincent Price was considered for the role of Doc Holliday.

Samson and Delilah (1949) is an American romantic biblical drama film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille and released by Paramount.
It depicts the biblical story of Samson, a strongman whose secret lays in his uncut hair, and his love for Delilah, the woman who seduces him, discovers his secret, and then betrays him to the Philistines.
Praised upon release for its Technicolor cinematography, lead performances, costumes, sets, and innovative special effects, the film was a box-office success. It was the highest-grossing film of 1950. Of its five Award nominations, the film won two for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design.
Burt Lancaster was the original choice to play Samson, but he declined due to a bad back. Body builder Steve Reeves was also considered and DeMille lobbied long and hard to get the studio to pick up Reeves, but both DeMille and the studio wanted Reeves to tone down his physique, which Reeves, still young and new to the industry, ultimately refused to do. DeMille finally decided to cast Victor Mature as Samson after admiring his performance in the film Kiss of Death.
Samson and Delilah was enormously successful, taking in $11,000,000 at the box office, making it the top money – maker for 1950. At the time of its release, it was the third highest-grossing film ever, behind Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).

Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) is a Biblical drama film and a sequel to The Robe (1953). The picture was made by 20th Century Fox, directed by Delmer Daves and produced by Frank Ross.
The movie presents Victor Mature as Demetrius, a Christian slave made to fight in the Roman arena as gladiator, and Susan Hayward as Messalina, a reprobate who is the wife of Claudius, the uncle of the depraved emperor Caligula.
According to Jay Robinson (Caligula), the break in principal photography between The Robe and Demetrius and the Gladiators was only three weeks. This would account for The Robe’s opening shot of the gladiatorial arena; a scene lifted from its sequel.

Top 10 Films:

1: One Million B.C. (1940)
2: The Shanghai Gesture (1941)
3: My Darling Clementine (1946)
4: Kiss of Death (1947)
5: Samson and Delilah (1949)
6: Androcles and the Lion (1952)
7: The Robe (1953)
8: Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)
9: Violent Sunday (1955)
10: After the Fox (1966)

Interesting Facts About Victor Mature

1. Victor John Mature was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1913.
2. Victor Mature briefly sold candy and operated a restaurant before moving to California to study and act at the Pasadena Community Playhouse.
3. For three years Victor Mature lived in a tent in the backyard of Mrs Willigan, a mother of a fellow student, Catherine Lewis. It was during a performance at Pasadena Community Playhouse that Mature was discovered and signed to a movie contract by Hal Roach.
4. Victor Mature was a petty officer in the Coast Guard during World War II. He served on the troop transport ship Admiral Mayo. His service carried him to the North Atlantic, including Normandy, the Mediterranean, Caribbean and many islands in the South Pacific. He was on Okinawa when the A-bomb was dropped on Japan.
5. Victor Mature’s star on the Walk Of Fame is located at 6780 Hollywood Blvd.
7. Victor Mature was married five times…..and had one daughter.

Source: Aljean Harmetzaug, nytimes.com, flickchart.com, ultimatemovierankings.com and en.wikipedia.org