John Houseman (born Jacques Haussmann; September 22, 1902 – October 31, 1988) was a British-American actor and producer of theatre, film, and television.

[citation needed] In 1934, Houseman was looking to cast Panic, a play he was producing based on a drama by Archibald MacLeish concerning a Wall Street financier whose world crumbles about him when consumed by the crash of 1929.

Welles consented and, after preliminary conversations, agreed to leave the play he was in after a single night to take the lead in Houseman's production.

Although the play opened to indifferent notices and ran for a mere three performances, it nevertheless led to the forging of a theatrical team, a fruitful but stormy partnership in which Houseman said Welles "was the teacher, I, the apprentice."

Houseman describes the experience in one of his memoirs: Within a year of its formation, the Federal Theatre had more than fifteen thousand men and women on its payroll at an average wage of approximately twenty dollars a week.

During the four years of its existence its productions played to more than thirty million people in more than two hundred theatres as well as portable stages, school auditoriums and public parks the country over.

After 10 months with the Negro Theater Project, however, Houseman felt he was faced with the dilemma of risking his future: ... on a partnership with a 20-year-old boy in whose talent I had unquestioning faith but with whom I must increasingly play the combined and tricky roles of producer, censor, adviser, impresario, father, older brother and bosom friend.

[citation needed] That same year, 1937, after detaching themselves from the Federal Theatre Project, Houseman and Welles did The Cradle Will Rock as an independent production on Broadway.

Houseman wrote of their collaboration at this time: On the broad wings of the Federal eagle, we had risen to success and fame beyond ourselves as America's youngest, cleverest, most creative and audacious producers to whom none of the ordinary rules of the theater applied.

Houseman called the decision to use modern dress "an essential element in Orson's conception of the play as a political melodrama with clear contemporary parallels."

To Houseman's horror, Treasure Island was abandoned in favor of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with Welles playing the infamous vampire.

[citation needed] The Mercury Theatre on the Air featured an impressive array of talents, including Agnes Moorehead, Bernard Herrmann, and George Coulouris.

The Mercury Theatre on the Air subsequently became famous for its notorious 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, which had put much of the country in a panic.

When RKO threatened to eliminate the payment of salaries by December 31 if no progress had been made, Welles announced that he would pay his cast out of his own pocket.

The conception and the structure were his, all the dramatic Hearstian mythology and the journalistic and political wisdom he had been carrying around with him for years and which he now poured into the only serious job he ever did in a lifetime of film writing.

In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Houseman quit his job and became the head of the overseas radio division of the Office of War Information (OWI), working for the Voice of America whilst also managing its operations in New York City.

Houseman's stint at MGM began with Holiday for Sinners (1952); then he had a huge success with The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), directed by Vincente Minnelli.

"[22] Houseman continued to be involved in theatre, producing The School for Wives (1971), The Three Sisters (1973), The Beggar's Opera (1973), Scapin (1973), Next Time I'll Sing to You (1974), The Robber Bridegroom (1975), Edward II (1975), and The Time of Your Life (1975) He directed The Country Girl (1972), Don Juan in Hell (1973), Measure for Measure (1973), and Clarence Darrow (1974) (with Henry Fonda).

Houseman first became widely known to the public for his Golden Globe and Academy Award-winning role as Professor Charles Kingsfield in the film The Paper Chase (1973).

Houseman played Energy Corporation Executive Bartholomew in the film Rollerball (1975), and was in the thrillers Three Days of the Condor (1975) and St Ives (1976).

Houseman appeared on TV in Fear on Trial (1975), The Adams Chronicles (1976), Truman at Potsdam (1976), Hazard's People (1976) and Six Characters in Search of an Author (1976).

Houseman was reunited with The Paper Chase co-star Lindsay Wagner in 1976's "Kill Oscar", a three-part joint episode of the popular science fiction series The Bionic Woman and The Six Million Dollar Man; he played the scientific genius Dr. Franklin.

He continued appearing on TV in Captains and the Kings (1976), The Displaced Person (1977), a version of Our Town (1977), Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977), The Best of Families (1977), Aspen, The Last Convertible (1978), The French Atlantic Affair (1978) and The Associates (1980).

He acted in The Babysitter (1980), A Christmas Without Snow (1980), Ghost Story (1981), Mork & Mindy, Murder by Phone (1982) (second billed), Marco Polo (1982), and American Playhouse (1982).

Having played a Harvard Law School professor in the film The Paper Chase (1973), he reprised the role in a television series of the same name, which ran from 1978 to 1979 and 1983 to 1986.

In the 1980s Houseman became more widely known for his role as grandfather Edward Stratton II in Silver Spoons, which starred Rick Schroder, and for his commercials for brokerage firm Smith Barney, which featured the catchphrase, "They make money the old fashioned way... they earn it."

He played Jewish author Aaron Jastrow (loosely based on the real life figure of Bernard Berenson) in the highly acclaimed 1983 miniseries The Winds of War (receiving a fourth Golden Globe nomination).

Between and sometimes during engagements, he contributed articles and book reviews to national publications, and wrote three volumes of memoirs, which are a chronicle of an era as well as a testimony to his phenomenal powers of recall: Run Through (1972), Front and Center (1979) and Final Dress (1983).

She was a stage actress when they married and he was a successful grain dealer until the 1929 Stock Market crash, at which point he became destitute and she encouraged him to pursue a new career in the theater.

Houseman was played by actor Jonathan Rigby in the Doctor Who audio drama Invaders from Mars set around the War of the Worlds broadcast.