Victor John Mature (January 29, 1913 – August 4, 1999) was an American stage, film, and television actor who was a leading man in Hollywood during the 1940s and 1950s. His best known film roles include One Million B.C. (1940), My Darling Clementine (1946), Kiss of Death (1947), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Robe (1953). He also appeared in many musicals opposite such stars as Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable.
Victor Mature was born on January 29, 1913, in Louisville, Kentucky. His father, Marcello Gelindo Maturi (changing his name later to Marcellus George Mature), was a cutler and knife sharpener. He immigrated from Pinzolo, in the County of Tyrol in Austria-Hungary (present day Italy). His mother, Clara P. (Ackley), was born in Kentucky and was of Swiss heritage. An older brother, Marcellus Paul Mature, died of osteomyelitis in 1918 at age 11. His only sister, Isabelle, was born in 1906 and died that year.
Victor Mature attended St. Xavier High School in Louisville, Kentucky, the Kentucky Military Institutein Lyndon, Kentucky, and the Spencerian Business School. As a teenager, he sold butcher supplies for his father. Mature briefly sold candy and operated a restaurant before moving to Southern California.
Mature studied and acted in productions at the Pasadena Community Playhouse in Pasadena, California. For three years, he lived in a tent in the backyard of the mother of a fellow student. While acting in a production of To Quito and Back, Mature was spotted by Charles R. Rogers, an agent for the filmmaker Hal Roach. Rogers called Mature "...a rival to Clark Gable, Robert Taylor and Errol Flynn." Mature signed a seven-year contract with Roach in September 1939.
Roach then cast Mature in a small role in the United Artists (UA) film The Housekeeper's Daughter (1939). One reviewer called him "a handsome Tarzan type". Roach then gave Mature his first leading role, as a caveman in the UA film One Million B.C. (1940). It was highly publicized and raised Mature's profile; the columnist Hedda Hopper called him "a sort of miniature Johnny Weissmuller". Roach next cast Mature in another UA action film, Captain Caution (1940).
Because Roach only produced a handful of movies every year, he loaned out Mature's services to RKO Pictures. They cast him as a leading man with Anna Neagle in musical No, No, Nanette (1940), produced by Herbert Wilcox. RKO was so pleased with Mature's performance that they bought an option from Roach to take over half of Mature's contract. This move gave RKO the right to use Mature in two films a year over three years. Wilcox wanted to reunite Mature with Neagle in the RKO film Sunny (1941). Roach also announced that Mature would support Victor McLaglen in the UA film, Broadway Limited (1941). However, Mature was not cast in either film.
By late 1940, Mature was worried about the direction of his career. He later claimed that "nobody was going to believe I could do anything except grunt and groan." Mature decided to go to New York City to try the theatre. He signed to appear in Retreat to Pleasure, a play written by Irwin Shaw and staged by the Group Theatre. However, it never happened; Mature instead was signed for the Broadway musical Lady in the Dark. It was based on a book by Moss Hart, with songs composed by Ira Gershwin and Kurt Weill. Mature played "Randy Curtis", the film star boyfriend of magazine editor Liza Elliott, acted by Gertrude Lawrence. Mature later described his role:
First, this secretary came out saying 'What a beautiful hunk of man!' Then Danny Kaye topped that with a long, long introductory number. Finally, I made my entrance. John Barrymore told me I was the only person who could have followed up on all that.
Lady in the Dark debuted on Broadway in January 1941 and was a critical success. The theater critic Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times called Mature "unobjectionably handsome and affable". The description of Randy Curtis in the musical – "Beautiful Hunk of Man" – would be frequently used to describe Mature throughout his career. Mature missed some performances due to an emergency appendectomy, but played Curtis until the play closed in June 1941.
Mature returned to film work in 1941 in the UA film, The Shanghai Gesture, for producer Arnold Pressburger and director Josef von Sternberg.The Shanghai Gesture was a success. Under Mature's contract with Roach, he only received $450 a week for shooting Shanghai Gesture. In contrast, Roach received $3750 a week for Mature's services. Roach received $22,000 for Mature in Song of the Islands, but Mature received only $4,000. Roach then asked for a pay increase of $1,250 a week.
In November 1941, Fox bought out the four years remaining on Mature's contract with Roach for $80,000. Roach did not wanted to sell the Mature contract, but he needed the money. Under the Fox contract, Mature would be paid $1,500 a week. The contract also included six film commitments with RKO. "The studio [Fox] will have to make a success of me," Mature said. His first film under his new contract was to be Bowery Nightingale with Alice Faye, but it was not made. Fox instead teamed Mature and Grable in the thriller I Wake Up Screaming (1941). It was also a popular success.
Fox next announced that Mature would start in the musical, Highway to Hell, but it was postponed. Fox instead replaced John Payne with Mature to co-star with Grable in the musical, Song of the Islands (1942). Cesar Romero took the role on Highway to Hell. RKO wanted Mature for Passage to Bordeaux and von Sternberg wanted him for Lady Paname. Instead, Mature made another musical for Fox, supporting Rita Hayworth in My Gal Sal (1942).
"I wasn't pampered the way a Tyrone Power was," Mature recalled later of his time at Fox. "Zanuck would say, 'If you're not careful, I'll give you Mature for your next picture'." Fox talked of reuniting Hayworth and Mature in a war film, Ski Patrol. Instead, Mature was lent to RKO for a musical with Lucille Ball, Seven Days' Leave (1942). This was followed by Footlight Serenade with Grable and Payne. All of these films were very popular at the box office.
In July 1942, after the American entry into World War II, Mature attempted to enlist in the U.S. Navy, but was rejected for color blindness. He was able to enlist in the U.S. Coast Guard after taking a different eye test the same day. The Coast Guard assigned Mature to the USCGC Storis, an icebreaker on the Greenland Patrol. When Paramount created a film adaptation of Lady in the Dark in 1944, Mature was unable to reprise his stage role. After 14 months aboard the Storis, the Coast Guard promoted Mature to chief boatswain's mate.
In 1944, Mature participated in a series of war bond tours around the United States and acted in morale-boosting shows. He assisted Coast Guard recruiting efforts by acting in the musical revue Tars and Spars, which opened in Miami, Florida, in April 1944. The revue toured the United States for the next year. In May 1945, the Coast Guard reassigned Mature to the USS Admiral H. T. Mayo, a transport ship moving American troops from Europe to the Pacific Theater. After the end of World War II in September 1945, the Coast Guard honorably discharged Mature from service November 1945.
Back in California, Mature in December 1945 signed a new two-year contract with Fox. Fox assigned him to the musical Three Little Girls in Blue, then removed him to play detective "Philip Marlowe" in an adaptation of The High Window by Raymond Chandler. However, Mature withdrew from The High Window. Director John Ford then cast Mature as the gambler "Doc Holliday" in the Fox western My Darling Clementine, playing Doc Holliday, co-starring with Henry Fonda as Marshall Wyatt Earp. Fox production head Darryl Zanuck considered it to be one of Mature's finest performances. Speaking of Mature to Ford, Zanuck said:
Personally, I think the guy has been one of the most under-rated performers in Hollywood. The public is crazy about him and strangely enough every picture that he has been in has been a big box-office hit. Yet, the Romanoff round table has refused to take him seriously as an actor. A part like Doc Holiday will be sensational for him and I agree with you that the peculiar traits of his personality are ideal for a characterisation such as this.