Final Curtain for Actor and a Beloved Friend

“Another full house, Henry.” So said a speaker at the memorial service for Henry Brandon last Sunday at the Masquers Club in North Hollywood. And so it was. S.R.O.

I worked with Henry Brandon in a melodrama called “The Drunkard,” which ran for 27 years at the Theatre Mart in Los Angeles. Henry was 21 then, had attended Stanford and Occidental, and played the villain in the show. He was a tall, long-legged, green-eyed young man, a superb actor and a steadfast friend.

Henry had been with “The Drunkard” for 2 1/2 years when he began to get motion picture work. He left the theater, but not the cast. We were close; proud of the show; crazy for our director, Galt Bell, and delighted with our success. From a standing start, we had suddenly become quite grand. Our theater was the place to go and to entertain out-of-town guests.

Henry died in his sleep the other evening. The memorial was what it should have been, a number of actors who had known Henry and treasured his friendship.

One of these was Don Porter, a distinguished actor in theater and television, who reminisced about sharing an apartment with Henry and Blackie O’Neal, father of Patrick O’Neal. I lived with the gentlemen for about a month one time when I was 18 and between apartments. They were delighted to have me because I could make meat loaf out of a small amount of ground meat and boxes of breakfast flakes. Henry said to me, “Zan, come the revolution, you’ll be perfectly safe in spite of your Tory background. No one would harm anyone who can make meat loaf like this.”

I was as safe when I was asleep on the studio couch in the dining room after doing the show as I was during the day when I was a student at Mount St. Mary’s College. Don, Henry and Blackie were upstairs and the stairs creaked, so if one of them had stepped on the second step, the other two would have sprung from their beds to dissuade him.

Henry was totally protective of me. He drove off a tall, rich, Texas boy who drove a Packard convertible by telling him, “Leave her alone. She’s off-limits.” Henry did nothing for my social life.

Henry Brandon appeared in dozens of motion pictures, but his love was the theater. He was an actor’s actor, as someone said at the memorial.

Notably, he played Jason opposite Dame Judith Anderson in “Medea.” No one could stride on wearing the shin plates, breastplate, and regalia of an ancient warrior and take stage like Henry.

When I was living with the gentlemen, I had a date with a dull boy with lots of money to go to a party his parents were having. I stuffed a napkin with pate, smoked oysters and all manner of tasties that weren’t included in our meat loaf menus.

When my date drove up in front of the flat, there was a light in Henry’s front bedroom. I said, “Mother always waits up for me.” The boy saw me to the door and when I opened it, Henry called in a rusty voice, “Did you have a good time, Dear?”

I never saw the boy again. I just said he was rich, I didn’t say he was stupid. Henry, Don and Blackie loved the treats.

Henry was an actor and a gentleman, a superb cook and a good friend.