Steve Cochran biography
(b. May 25, 1917, Eureka, Calif.; d. June 15, 1965.)
You know you've swung from one extreme to the other when, in the course of three years, you go from making love to Mae West in a Broadway revival of "Diamond Lil" to beating up Doris Day on-screen in 'Storm Warning' (1951).
The burly, dark, good-looking Cochran usually played heavies on film, but he handled occasional sympathetic parts with equal aplomb. A one-time cowpuncher, he developed his acting skills in local theater, eventually went to Broadway, and broke into film by menacing Danny Kaye in 1945's 'Wonder Man' and 1946's 'The Kid From Brooklyn'.
That same year, he also appeared in 'The Best Years of Our Lives' followed by Copacabana (1947), 'A Song Is Born' (1948), 'White Heat' (1949), 'The Damned Don't Cry' (1950), 'Jim Thorpe, All American' (1951), 'Operation Secret' (1952), 'She's Back on Broadway', 'The Desert Song' (both 1953), 'Private Hell 36', 'Carnival Story '(both 1954), and 'Come Next Spring' (1956, excellent as a peripatetic farmer in a much-underrated movie).
The next year, he went to Italy to star as an emotionally troubled man in Antonioni's 'Il Grido', a partially successful film. Returning to the U.S. and less arty fare, he appeared in 'I, Mobster' (1958), 'The Beat Generation' (1959), 'Deadly Companions' (1961), 'Of Love and Desire' (1963), and 'Mozambique' (1965).
Just before his death, Cochran wrote, produced, directed, and starred in 'Tell Me in the Sunlight' which after two years received a token release in 1967.
From 1949 to 1952, he was signed to Warner Brothers, then started up his own production company. In 1965 he sailed off in his yacht to Guatemala to look for suitable filming locations, but died of a lung infection before reaching land.
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