Carradine's mother then married "a Philadelphia paper manufacturer named Peck, who thought the way to bring up someone else's boy was to beat him every day just on general principle.

[5] Carradine lived with his maternal uncle, Peter Richmond, in New York City for a while, working in the film archives of the public library.

"[6] David Carradine said, "My dad told me that he saw a production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice when he was 11 years old and decided right then what he wanted to do with his life".

In 1927, he took a job escorting a shipment of bananas from Dallas, Texas to Los Angeles,[5] where he eventually picked up some theater work under the name of Peter Richmond, in homage to his uncle.

Carradine said, "the great Cecil B. DeMille saw an apparition – me – pass him by, reciting the gravedigger's lines from 'Hamlet', and he instructed me to report to him the following day.

On April 11, 1934, Wilfred Talbot Smith and Regina Kahl of Ordo Templi Orientis held a "Crowley Night on Winona Blvd" at Agape Lodge.

Martin Starr recounts that "It included a program of recitation of (Aleister) Crowley's poetry, rituals and sacred texts...One surprising name was among the participants: the stage and motion picture actor John Carradine...who read the Crowley poem, "O Madonna of the Golden Eyes.

In total, he made 11 pictures with Ford, including his first important role, as Preacher Casy in The Grapes of Wrath (1940).

His Broadway roles included Ferdinand in a 1946 production of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, the Ragpicker in a 13-month run of Jean Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot, Lycus in a 15-month run of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and DeLacey in the expensive one-night flop Frankenstein in 1981.

He appeared in dozens of low-budget horror films from the 1940s onwards, to finance a touring classical theater company.

His first performance on the "small screen" was on the DuMont Television Network in 1947, when he played Ebenezer Scrooge in a broadcast presentation of A Christmas Carol.

His final role on television was in 1986 as Professor Alex Stottel on a revival of the classic series The Twilight Zone, in an episode segment titled "Still Life.

"[14] Some examples of other television series on which he appeared include My Friend Flicka, Johnny Ringo (as The Rain Man), and Place the Face, NBC's Cimarron City as the foreboding Jared Tucker in the episode "Child of Fear" and on William Bendix's Overland Trail in the 1960 episode "The Reckoning," on Harrigan and Son starring Pat O'Brien in the episode "A Matter of Dignity," Maverick in "Red Dog" starring Roger Moore and Lee Van Cleef, Sugarfoot, The Rebel, and The Legend of Jesse James, on the syndicated adventure series Rescue 8 with actor Jim Davis and in two episodes of the western TV series Bonanza ("Springtime" and "Dead Wrong").

He appeared as well in both of Irwin Allen's classic 1960s science-fiction television series Lost in Space and Land of the Giants.

In 1985, Carradine won a Daytime Emmy Award for his performance as an eccentric man who lives by the railroad tracks in the Young People's Special Umbrella Jack.

He was known as the "Bard of the Boulevard" due to his idiosyncratic habit of strolling Hollywood streets while reciting Shakespearean soliloquies, something he always denied.

John had planned a large family, but according to the autobiography of his son David, after Ardanelle had had a series of miscarriages, Carradine discovered that she had repeated "coat hanger" abortions, without his knowledge, which rendered her unable to carry a baby to full term.

[16][17][18] After the couple engaged in a series of court battles involving child custody and alimony, which at one point landed Carradine in jail,[17] David joined his father in New York City.

[19] In 1945, immediately following his divorce from Ardanelle, Carradine married Sonia Sorel (May 18, 1921 – September 24, 2004), who had appeared with him in the 1944 film Bluebeard.

Their divorce in 1957[20] was followed by an acrimonious custody battle, which resulted in their sons being placed in a home for abused children as wards of the court.

[22] Robert Carradine said that he was raised primarily by his stepmother, his father's third wife, Doris (Rich) Grimshaw, and believed her to be his mother until he was introduced to Sonia Sorel at a Christmas party when he was 14 years old.

[25] She was a one-time studio typist who typed the script to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and who played a few roles in film and television.

[4] Semi-retired by the late 1980s, Carradine suffered from painful and crippling rheumatoid arthritis in the years before he died from heart and kidney failure [28] at the Fatebenefratelli Hospital [it] in Milan, Italy on November 27, 1988, at the age of 82.

According to David Carradine, his father had just finished a film (Buried Alive) in South Africa and was about to begin a European tour.

David's television series Kung Fu featured his father John and half-brother Robert in the episode "Dark Angel".

David, Keith, and Robert appeared together in a humorous cameo on The Fall Guy, on an episode titled "October the 31st", in which their father co-starred.