Bruce Bennett (May 19, 1906 – February 24, 2007) was a remarkable American actor whose long career had two distinct and successful phases: first as a brawny action hero in the 1930s under his real name, Herman Brix, and later as a respected character actor in some of the greatest films of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Before acting, Brix was a world-class athlete, winning a silver medal for the shot put in the 1928 Olympic Games. He was famously cast as the lead in MGM’s Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) but had to withdraw due to an injury, allowing Johnny Weissmuller to take the iconic role. However, Brix later starred as a more faithful version of the character in the 1935 serial The New Adventures of Tarzan, where he was praised for portraying Tarzan as the intelligent and articulate English lord from the original novels.
In the 1940s, he changed his name to Bruce Bennett and embarked on a new career as a character actor for Warner Bros. He delivered his most acclaimed and memorable performances during this period, playing the kind-hearted husband of Joan Crawford in the classic film noir Mildred Pierce (1945) and the desperate, doomed prospector who is eventually killed by Humphrey Bogart in the Oscar-winning masterpiece The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
