Brian Aherne Dancing With His Wife Eleanor Labrot 1948
While standing next to Brian Aherne at a party one day, Gary Cooper said quietly out of the side of his mouth, “How tall are you?”
“Six foot two and a half,” Aherne answered.
“Me too,” said Cooper. “Never admit to six foot three!”
A few years later at a party in Washington D.C., General George C. Marshall asked the identical question in the identical way.
“I used Gary’s line to reply six two and a half, never admit to six foot three,” Aherne said. And the General replied, “Me too!”
The point is actors make a living pretending to be something they are not. So if you don’t admit to being six three you are not, according to Aherne who thought six feet even was the perfect height.
The caption from the photograph above is:
Inside Hollywood by Nat Dallinger
For the week ending April 29, 1948
Brian Aherne is the six foot two screen leading man pictured dancing at Club Mocambo, in Hollywood, with his wife the former Eleanor Labrot, whom he married in 1945, soon after his divorce from Joan Fontaine. Brian can boast of a distinguished career, both in England where he was born on May 2 and made his acting debut when he was 12, and in this country. Before settling down to motion pictures exclusively, the actor alternated between stage and screen. photo: Nat Dallinger (King Features Syndicate)
Few people remember Brian Aherne today. But Aherne (1902-1986) had a long career on stage and screen, both movie and television.
Aherne was nominated for an Academy Award in 1940 for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Juarez.
Aherne’s 1969 autobiography A Proper Job (Houghton Mifflin) is not easy to find but contains such candid sentiments such as, “I was nominated for an Academy Award for (playing) Maximilian von Hapsburg, but beaten out by Thomas MItchell in Stagecoach. Frankly, I think I should have won it, but there you have it.”
For the record, Brian Aherne was actually six foot three and a half and Dallinger has his date wrong in the caption.
Aherne was married to Eleanor Labrot on January 27, 1946. They remained together for 40 years until Aherne’s death on February 10, 1946.
