John Arthur Kennedy was a stage actor by the mid '30s, and was discovered by actor James Cagney, who cast him as his brother in Anatole Litvak's City for Conquest in 1940. His other notable '40s films include Raoul Walsh's High Sierra, They Died with Their Boots On, and Desperate Journey, Howard Hawks' Air Force, Elia Kazan's Boomerang, and Ted Tetzlaff's The Window. For Mark Robson's Champion, Kennedy received an Academy Award nomination for "Best Supporting Actor." He was also nominated in the '50s for Robson's Trial and Peyton Place and Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running; for Robson's Bright Victory, Kennedy was nominated for "Best Actor." His other notable films of the '50s and '60s include the Tennessee Williams adaptation The Glass Menagerie, Anthony Mann's Bend of the River and The Man from Laramie, Fritz Lang's Rancho Notorious, Nicholas Ray's The Lusty Men, William Wyler's The Desperate Hours, Richard Brooks' Elmer Gantry, Richard Fleischer's Barabbas and Fantastic Voyage, David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn, and Samuel Fuller's Shark! In the '70s Kennedy appeared mostly in European-made crime films and thrillers, including Albero de Martino's L'Anticristo (aka The Tempter). Ill health kept him out of films for most of the '80s, but Kennedy acted in his final American-made films, Signs of Life and Grandpa.