Victor Mature (29 January 1913 – 4 August 1999) was an American film actor.
Mature was born in Louisville, Kentucky to a Tyrolean Italian-speaking father, Marcellino Gelindo Maturi, a cutler, and a Swiss-American mother, Clara Maturi.
Discovered while on stage at the Pasadena Community Playhouse, his first leading role was as a fur-clad caveman in One Million B.C. (1940), after which he joined 20th Century Fox to star opposite actresses such as Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth. However, with the US entry into World War II, Mature entered military service. Rejected by the Navy for color blindness, he enlisted in the Coast Guard, reaching the rank of chief boatswain's mate by the war's end.
Victor Mature in the trailer for Million Dollar Mermaid (1952)
After the war, Mature was cast by John Ford in My Darling Clementine, playing Doc Holliday opposite Henry Fonda's Wyatt Earp. For the next decade, Mature settled into playing hard-boiled characters in a range of genres such as Westerns and Biblical films, such as The Robe (with Richard Burton and Jean Simmons) and its popular sequel, Demetrius and the Gladiators (with Susan Hayward). Both films deal with the fate of the robe worn by Jesus before the crucifixion. Mature also starred with Hedy Lamarr in Cecil B. DeMille's Bible epic, Samson and Delilah (1949) and as Horemheb in The Egyptian (1954) with Jean Simmons and Gene Tierney. He reportedly stated he was successful in Biblical epics because he could "make with the holy look".
After five years of retirement in 1966 he was lured back into acting by the opportunity to parody himself in After the Fox, co-written by Neil Simon. In a similar vein in 1968 he played a giant, The Big Victor, in Head, a potpourri movie starring The Monkees. The character poked fun at both his screen image and, reportedly, RCA Victor who distributed Colgems Records, the Monkees's label. Mature enjoyed the script while admitting it made no sense to him, stating "All I know is it makes me laugh."
Mature was famously modest about his acting skill. Once, after being rejected for membership in a country club because he was an actor, he cracked, "I'm not an actor—and I've got 67 films to prove it!" (Another account has him saying either "...and I've got a scrapbook of reviews to prove it!" or "Have you seen any of my films?") He has been quoted as commenting on his acting career: "Actually, I am a golfer. That is my real occupation. I never was an actor. Ask anybody, particularly the critics."
Victor Mature died of leukemia in 1999, at his Rancho Santa Fe, California home, at the age of 86. After his death his body was brought back to his hometown of Louisville and was buried in his family's burial plot at St. Michael's Cemetery, 1300 Ellison Avenue.
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