Freddie Steele

Freddie Steele

Fred Steele went from being World Middleweight Boxing champion in 1937 to having a movie career that put him into some of Hollywood's most inventive comedies for a decade. In a ring career lasting more than 15 years, Steele only lost two fights before becoming middleweight champion in 1936. Two years later, he relinquished the title and he had his last professional fight three years later. In that same year, 1941, he made his screen debut portraying himself in a picture called The Pittsburgh Kid. He did some small, uncredited roles in 1942, and then writer/director Preston Sturges saw the potential in Steele's muscular physique and strong, angular features and gave him serious acting parts in Hail the Conquering Hero and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. Those films elevated Steele to the front ranks of working character men, and he next turned up in William Wellman's The Story of G.I. Joe, and from there to the comedy Duffy's Tavern, adapted from the hit radio series, and Roy William Neill's film noir masterpiece Black Angel (1946). Steele closed out his acting career in 1948 with work in a quartet of notable films: Byron Haskin's violent gangster drama I Walk Alone, Henry Hathaway's suspense thriller Call Northside 777, Lewis Seiler's psychological chiller Whiplash, and Billy Wilder's comedy A Foreign Affair. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide