Walter Brennan was one of the most dangerous actors who ever lived.

One of the most dangerous weapons is not a gun or a knife but a skilled actor when audiences believe their character as real

Walter Brennan reportedly danced a jig and screamed at the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

From his biography-During the 1960s Brennan was convinced that the anti-war and civil rights movements were being run by overseas Communists – and said as much in interviews. He told reporters that he believed the civil rights movement, in particular, the riots in places like Watts and Newark and demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, were the result of perfectly content “Negroes” being stirred up by a handful of “troublemakers” with an anti-American agenda.

Those on the set of his last series, “The Guns of Will Sonnett” (1967) – in which he played the surprisingly complex role of an ex-army scout trying to undo the damage caused by his being a mostly absentee father – said that he cackled with delight upon learning of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, and several crew members recalled how he actually danced a spontaneous jig when he heard of King’s murder.

Walter Brennan: King of the Hollywood Racists; Spokesperson of The John Birch Society and Made an Album of Hate of ‘Negroes and Civil Rights

Walter Brennan misused his fake image as a kindly countrified hillbilly (he was from Massachusetts and was an old school yankee) to sell his racist, John Birch Society ideals – anti-civil rights, bigotry, hatred- to unsuspecting fans in the 1960’s, it was bone chilling

H is racist beliefs were hidden behind his cuddly , avuncular character that people adored.

Brennan was a financially astute, graduate engineer who was so far right -he had a deep belief that John Wayne was a communist.

Below are tracks from an album that Brennan made at a John Birch convention in 1965, acting and talking like Grandpa Amos (in real life he had a New England accent) telling the Birchers how the “Negro” led by Congressman Adam Clayton Powell used civil rights to push a communist overthrow of our country. Insane? yes but nefarious using his character to sell his brand of evil.

Brennan is remembered for his great acting career where was oft imitated for his starring role as curmudgeonly but warm hearted Grandpa Amos McCoy on television’s The Real McCoys.

Brennan was a great actor. He was anything but a countrified hillbilly he portrayed in The Real McCoys that he became associated with

Walter Andrew Brennan(July 25, 1894 – September 21, 1974) was an American actor who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1936, 1938, and 1940, making him one of only three male actors to win three Academy Awards.

Brennan was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, less than two miles from his family’s home in Swampscott, Massachusetts

His father was an engineer and inventor, and young Brennan also studied engineering at Rindge College in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Brennan had little use for reprobates. He refused to have anything to do with Ward Bond, for instance, because of Bond’s alcoholism and general loutish behavior, and he turned down the part of Jeeter Lester in “Tobacco Road” (1941) because of the character’s shiftlessness.

As Brennan grew more successful, he became nearly as famous for his political conservativism as for his acting, eventually embodying the baroque paranoia of a character in “Dr. Strangelove.” A member of the John Birch Society, Brennan had a bunker on his Los Angeles estate fully outfitted with firearms and survival supplies, awaiting the Russian invasion.

He had a deep-seated suspicion that John Wayne might be a communist, and he implored his daughter not to give his grandchildren Beatles records lest they be infected by decadent modernity. In his later years, he was known to canvass co-workers about their voting habits, and if they did anything so radical as vote for a Democrat, he would bewail his country’s impending misfortune

Below are clips from an album that Brennan recorded that was written by Vick Knight in the early 1960’s for Key Records. It spends two full sides tearing down the LBJ administration and its ‘terribly destructive’ policies carried over from the Kennedy years.

This from WFMU Beware of the blog:

https://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2012/11/hes-your-uncle-not-your-dad-by-walter-brennan.html

I got quite a shock when I first bought this and heard Mr. Good-Time Ol’ Farmer Guy using his normal voice for a change and ripping savagely into anything remotely resembling liberal government policies. The stark cover also struck me as quite attractive as well.

Here is part of the LP called “He’s Your Uncle, Not Your Dad!” So buckle up and hear a side of Mr. Brennan that you may not have heard

Side One pt. 1 pt. 2 pt. 3 pt.4