Joel McCrea- Camarillo, CA
Posted by: 
calgriz
N 34° 12.991 W 119° 02.358
11S E 312139 N 3788043
Life-size bronze statue of film award winning actor/cowboy and a local resident, Joel McCrea. He was an important benefactor to Camarillo, CA charities and youth groups.
Waymark Code: WM84C4
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 01/25/2010
Views: 12
Joel McCrea, a tall, trim, ruggedly handsome actor who radiated a casual, amiable image in 80 movies, many of them westerns. The actor was a fervid outdoorsman who believed deeply in the work ethic, virtually never smoked or drank, and invariably listed his occupation as ''rancher'' and his hobby as ''acting.''
He began buying farmland with his first movie paychecks and became one of Hollywood's wealthiest ranchers, with large working spreads in Camarillo, northwest of Los Angeles, and in Shandon, farther north. Mr. McCrea and the actress Frances Dee celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary this year. They lived during their entire marriage in Thousand Oaks, Calif., and had three sons, Joel (Jody), David and Peter. Jody McCrea played young leading roles in films of the late 1950's and 60's and portrayed a deputy marshal to his father in a western television series, ''Wichita Town,'' broadcast in 1959 and 1960.
The family's frontier roots were deep. Joel McCrea's paternal grandfather, Maj. John McCrea, had been a stagecoach driver between San Bernardino and Los Angeles; his maternal grandfather, Albert Whipple, was lured to San Francisco by the 1849 gold rush. In 1985, the actor observed that all his ancestors had been frontiersmen. Noting that many of his roles were variations of them, he concluded, ''That's why my heart was in it.''