Thanks, Eve Golden, for making me aware of Gordon Westcott (Myrthus Hansen Hickman, 1903-1935) about a year ago. Oh, I’d seen plenty of his movies, but I’d not noted the name. Essentially, he was a mustachioed matinee idol type in the vein of Barrymore, Fairbanks, Douglas, and Warren William, though he never achieved their star status.
Westcott was a Utah Mormon who’d studied architecture at the University of Chicago. While there he became lightweight boxing champ and discovered that he liked being gazed at. Acting with stock companies took him as far as Broadway, where he appeared in four short-lived plays: The Great Necker (1928), The House of Fear (1929), Room 349 (1930), and Paging Danger (1931). He was also in over three dozen movies. While he was merely a crowd extra in the first several, his good looks nabbed him decent supporting roles within a couple of years. Some of his better known ones include He Learned About Women (1933) with Stuart Erwin, Footlight Parade (1933) with Jimmy Cagney, Go Into Your Dance (1935) with Al Jolson and Ruby Keeler, and three Joe E. Brown comedies: The Circus Clown (1934), 6 Day Bike Rider (1934), and Bright Lights (1935).
Westcott’s young life and career were cruelly cut short when he fell off his horse and cracked his head while playing polo. Ironically, his final film was This is the Life (1935). He was only 31.
For more on show business history please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.