James Cardwell

JAMES CARDWELL, born and raised in Camden, appeared in 26 movies, beginning in 1944. According to the Internet Movie Database, he was born Albert Paine Cardwell on November 21, 1920; his New Jersey birth certificate and the State of California Death Index report his birthday as November 21, 1921. His parents were Raymond and Bessie McCarroll Cardwell. He was named after his grandfather, Albert Paine Cardwell, an editor for a Philadelphia-based publishing company. His father, a World War I veteran, worked at a gas station when the census was taken in April of 1930. The family then lived in East Camden, at 3510 Westfield Avenue. His widowed grandmother and his uncle Norman Stanley Caldwell lived around the corner at 241 North 36th Street. Soon after the Westfield Acres projects opened in 1938, both Caldwell households relocated there.

Caldwell were living at 364 North Dudley Street Apartment 411, when the 1940 Camden City Directory was compiled. By 1947 both households had moved to apartments at the Westfield Acres homes on Westfield Avenue, his parents to 3163 Westfield Avenue, his uncle to 3161 Westfield Avenue.

Albert “Al” Cardwell graduated from the Alfred Cramer Junior High School at 28th and Mickle Streets in East Camden, and went on to Woodrow Wilson High School on Federal Street, graduating in February of 1940. He became interested in acting at an early age, and as a sophomore played Basil, the male lead in the school play A Painting for the Duchess, staged December 17, 1938 to a sold out house. One of his co-stars in the play, Fisher Weinhold, was killed in a plane crash while serving in the Army Air Corps in January of 1943.

Al Cardwell remained interested in theater and was recognized in his high school yearbook as “Did the Most for the School” and, with Maureen Wallace, as “Class Actor.” He chaired his class finance committee, which included Robert Hearn, who was killed in action during the World War that America was soon to be involved in. Other members of his graduating class included Robert Stanton and Rocco Piligno.

According to the 1940 Camden City Directory, Albert Caldwell worked as a clerk at the Iron Rock Golf Course in Pennsauken and as a laborer at the RCA Victor plant in Camden. He also took part in several theatrical productions, with the Camden Drama Guild and the Merchantville Playcrafters, and with the Hedgerow Theater Group, in Moylan PA.

He progressed to the shipping department at RCA, and in June of 1942 married a co-worker, Esther Borton, of Watsontown, in Clementon Township. In 1943, while appearing with the Hedgerow Theater group, he was “discovered” by Hollywood talent scouts, and brought to Hollywood. By the time the 1943 City Directory was compiled, he had left Camden for California. His wife, however, did not like Hollywood, and the couple divorced. Esther Borton Caldwell returned to New Jersey.

As James Cardwell, he made his debut in the 1944 war movie, The Sullivans. His next appearance was as the male lead in Sweet and Low-Down, which featured Benny Goodman and his band. Both were nominated for Oscars. After appearing in two B-movie mysteries, one being the Charlie Chan vehicle The Shanghai Cobra, James Cardwell returned to major films in A Walk in the Sun.

On November 26, 1945 James Cardwell appeared on the LUX Radio Theater program, which originated out of Hollywood CA, in the hour-long production of Salty O’Rourke, a long shot race track story with predictable plot. Also appearing on the air with James Cardwell were Alan Ladd, Marjorie Reynolds, William Demarest, Charles Seel, Edward Marr, Melville Ruick, Griff Barnett, Leora Thatcher, Robert Cole, Jack Carrington, Herb Lytton, Jack Bruskoff, Robert Quarry, Joseph Agnello, Frank Gerstle, Virginia Agnello, and Katherine Connors.

After A Walk in the Sun James Cardwell appeared in 20 films. Some were major productions, like the Humphrey Bogart vehicle Tokyo Joe, others less so. He made several Westerns, including roles with Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and Rex Allen. He appeared in the film noir classic, He Walked by Night, which spawned the long-running television show Dragnet, and the Christmas classic It Happened on 5th Avenue, which was nominated for an Oscar, as was Canyon Passage, which received an Oscar nomination for Hoagy Carmichael’s song Ole Buttermilk Sky. James Cardwell also was in Daughter of the Jungle, which has become somewhat of a camp classic. In 1950 James Cardwell appeared in Arizona Cowboy.

The theatrical pressbook for the movie The Shadow: The Missing Lady states that James Cardwell was attending UCLA at night, taking pre-med courses.

In 1950 James Cardwell went to Hawaii with comedian Joe E. Brown, and then toured Australia with Brown. He next joined a comedy-acrobatic act, the Coleano Troupe, and toured the U.S., Australia, and the United Kingdom. In 1953 he returned to the United States.

James Cardwell tried to break into television in New York with no success. He returned to Hollywood, and landed some small parts in the television show City Detective. He had a brief role in Them!, a monster movie which was released in 1954.

Determined that he was, in his own words, “going to be an actor or nothing,” James Cardwell appears to have grown despondent about the lack of progress in his career. Behind in his Screen Actors Guild dues and apparently in his rent, on January 31, 1954 James Cardwell committed suicide in Hollywood, California. He was brought home to Camden, and rests in Harleigh Cemetery.

The Cultural Olympics

On December 9, Albert Cardwell read three of Shakespeare’s sonnets in the non-original poetry department of the Cultural Olympics held at the University of Pennsylvania. Albert Cardwell had been chosen from seventy contestants, who had tried out in a preliminary contest on November 7. Only four schools were finally represented in the non-original poetry contest: Simon Gratz, Woodbury High, Frankford High, and Woodrow Wilson High.

Virginia Daniels also read “Annabelle Lee” in the preliminary contest.

As this issue goes to press, we learn that Albert Cardwell has received an award of merit, which will be granted at special program on May 25.

This article was published in the Woodrow Wilson High School “Orange and Black” Yearbook, February 1940 edition.