ACTOR · BORN 1909 · DIED 1992
Dana Andrews
- Born
- 1 January 1909, Covington County, Mississippi, USA
- Died
- 17 December 1992
- Known for
- The Twilight Zone (1959), Laura (1944), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
25 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Sep 2026
All facts (25)
- #001
Dana Andrews trained as an opera singer, but was rarely allowed to use his fine singing voice in films — for example, in The North Star (1943). His only musical, State Fair (1945), had his voice dubbed because the studio did not know he was a trained singer. He later explained that he did not correct their mistake because he felt the singer who dubbed him probably needed the money.
- #002
Although Dana Andrews's career was thought to be slowing in the early 1960s, in 1965 he appeared in eight different productions, by far the most roles he took on in any single year of his career. All eight roles were in feature films, and in five of them he played officers.
- #003
Dana Andrews spent his final years in a nursing home in Los Alamitos, California, because of Alzheimer's disease. His longtime friend Burt Lancaster visited him when Lancaster suffered the crippling stroke from which he never recovered and which led to his death two years later.
- #004
In 1931, at the height of the Great Depression, Dana Andrews quit his job at an oil company in Texas and hitchhiked to Los Angeles hoping to enter show business.
- #005
In the late 1940s, at the peak of his popularity, Fox publicist Collins sent a telegram to the mayor of his Mississippi hometown suggesting the town officially change its name to Andrews in honor of its own son. The mayor wired back: "We will not change our name to Andrews. Have Andrews change his to Collins".
- #006
Dana Andrews was the older brother of Steve Forrest and had three other brothers as well, all of whom survived him at the time of his death.
- #007
After arriving in Los Angeles, and before his first job as an actor, Dana Andrews worked a variety of jobs, including school bus driver, gas station attendant, truck driver, ditch digger, fruit picker and stockroom worker at a store. He applied to every film studio and production company and was rejected. He also applied to the Pasadena Playhouse, known as the main training ground for young actors and actresses, but was initially rejected there too. After taking singing lessons he decided to give the Pasadena Playhouse a second chance and, to his great surprise, was accepted. His first role in Pasadena was a spear carrier in a William Shakespeare drama.
- #008
Dana Andrews met both his first and second wives at the Pasadena Playhouse.
- #009
Dana Andrews is mentioned in the opening song ("Science Fiction") of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).
- #010
Dana Andrews appeared in five films with Gene Tierney: Tobacco Road (1941), Belle Starr (1941), Laura (1944), The Iron Curtain (1948) and Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950).
- #011
Dana Andrews and his younger brother Steve Forrest appeared as guest stars in consecutive episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959): Andrews in "No Time Like the Past" (1963) and Forrest in "The Parallel" (1963).
- #012
Dana Andrews was important to the "disaster" genre, specializing in "airliners in peril". His character in Zero Hour! (1957) was a pilot named Ted Stryker — the same name Robert Hays used in Airplane! (1980), which spoofed Andrews's film. In The Crowded Sky (1960) he played a pilot who has to land a crippled plane. He later had a small but important role in Airport 1975 (1974).
- #013
After his last studio contract ended in 1952, Dana Andrews founded his own production company, Lawrence Productions.
- #014
Dana Andrews struggled with alcoholism and became an advocate for those battling addiction. He toured the country giving lectures for Alcoholics Anonymous and worked actively with the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. In 1972 he was one of the first actors to appear in a television public service announcement about the dangers of alcoholism.
- #015
Sealed Cargo (1951) was the only film Dana Andrews made together with his younger brother Steve Forrest.
- #016
Dana Andrews's first wife, Janet Murray, died of pneumonia in 1935. Their eldest son, David, became a pianist, organist, composer and radio announcer, and died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1964. Janet came from a fairly wealthy family in a small Iowa town and was buried there together with their second son, who died shortly after birth.
- #017
Dana Andrews's sons were David Andrews (1934-64) and Stephen Andrews (b. 1944). His daughters were Katharine Andrews (b. 1942) and Susan Andrews (b. 1948).
- #018
Dana Andrews was honored with a day of his film work during TCM's Summer Under the Stars on 22.08.2018.
- #019
During the first concept discussions between producer Gloria Monty and production designer Hub Braden about the set of Bright Promise (1969), the debate over the stage set's wall color centered on the series' star, Andrews, then 60 years old. The final set color, tone and solution had to have a pink tint to reflect light off the walls of the stage set. Light reflected from the rose-beige set wall color flattered every actor's facial makeup in camera views. The color solution was intended to make Andrews look younger on camera. Braden was later asked to take over Angela Lansbury's CBS TV series Murder, She Wrote (1984). To determine the painted color for any stage set, Braden used the same "Dana Andrews' rose-beige tinted wall color scheme" and the location set that made Lansbury (63 in 1988) look right in her role as "Jessica Fletcher."
- #020
In mid-summer 1969, Dana Andrews was hired for the lead role in NBC's daytime soap opera Bright Promise (1969). The story concerned how students at the fictional Bancroft College were trained to become the future's "bright promising" leaders. Writers/producers Doris Hursley and Frank Hursley developed the series, a co-production of Bing Crosby Productions and Paramount Television (under the name Fandor Productions), with the help of Cox Broadcasting. The Hursleys, who had previously created the iconic soap opera General Hospital (1963), also brought producer/director Gloria Monty onto the team. Andrews was to play college president Thomas Boswell, the main character around whom the other characters and the plot would revolve. The series premiered in 1969 and shared facilities with the popular series Days of Our Lives (1965) at the NBC studios in Burbank, CA, and Andrews, a trained opera singer, actually used his singing skills on the series (something he was rarely allowed to do in his film career). In 1971, after the series had aired for about a year, Andrews learned from reading the Los Angeles Times' entertainment section "Calendar" that the network had fired him from the series. His character was written out and two weeks later he was replaced by Anne Jeffreys. NBC also fired the series' producer, Dick Dunn, and replaced him with one of its own employees, Jerry Layton. The series itself was cancelled the following year and replaced by Return to Peyton Place (1972) — like Andrews, the cast and crew of that series learned they were out of work by reading the L.A. Times' Calendar section. Ironically, in 1974 Return to Peyton Place (1972) was also cancelled, and the cast and crew learned of it the same way, by reading it in the Times. The series was replaced by a game show.
- #021
In July 2022, Dana Andrews was honored as Turner Classic Movies' Star of the Month.
- #022
At the time of his death, Dana Andrews had three grandchildren.
- #023
The floor plan of Bright Promise (1969) was an extensive layout that included Bancroft University's interior corridors, classrooms and administrative offices. The "hub" of the set was the office of university president Tom Boswell (Andrews). Because the president's set was the center of the interior complex's floor plan footprint, the classroom corridors, office sets and classrooms required the entire Andrews set to be erected whenever needed. After Andrews left the series, the office set was never dressed again and was never used after he departed the NBC series.
- #024
Biography: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives." Volume 3, 1991-1993, pages 22-23. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001.
- #025
Dana Andrews appeared in five films selected by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry as "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Ball of Fire (1941), The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Laura (1944), A Walk in the Sun (1945) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).
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