Ralph Rexford Bellamy (June 17, 1904 – November 29, 1991)[1] was an American actor whose career spanned 65 years on stage, film, and television.

[citation needed] His film career began with The Secret Six (1931), starring Wallace Beery and featuring Jean Harlow and Clark Gable.

By the end of 1933, he had already appeared in 22 movies, including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm[2] (1932) and the second lead in the action film Picture Snatcher with James Cagney (1933).

In the story, a young woman whom Quint befriends on a stagecoach ride, Lorna Erickson (Merry Anders), sets him up to be robbed by her paramour (William Bryant).

On film, Bellamy starred in The Professionals (1966) as an oil tycoon, and in Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968) as an evil physician.

An Emmy Award nomination for the mini-series The Winds of War (1983)—in which Bellamy reprised his Sunrise at Campobello role of Franklin D. Roosevelt—brought him back into the spotlight.

The Eddie Murphy film Coming to America (1988) included a brief cameo by Bellamy and Don Ameche, reprising their roles as the Duke brothers.

[3] Among his later roles was an appearance as a once-brilliant but increasingly senile lawyer sadly skewered by Jimmy Smits' character on an episode of L.A. Law.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Bellamy was seen socially with a select circle of friends known affectionately as the Irish Mafia, but they preferred the less sensational Boy's Club as its name.

[9] On November 29, 1991, Bellamy died from a lung ailment at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California.