"That is Harrold With Two R's!"

Former Beacon Resident Makes Good in Hollywood: MGM Director Harrold A. Weinberger

Standing between movie superstars Clark Cable and Joan Crawford, Harrold Weinberger (wearing the false mustache in the movie still shown) plays the character of a prison guard about to arrest Gable in a scene from the 1940 movie Strange Cargo Weinberger, whose official titles at Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Studios was “Assistant Director” and "Production Manager," also filled in as a bit player at MGM whenever he was needed. The former Beacon boy, who went to the Fishkill Landing grammar school (later South Avenue School) and attended Beacon High School, had made the March 21, 1940 issue of the Beacon News as a headliner in a Local-Boy-Makes-Good story. The occasion was the newly released movie Northwest Passage starring Spencer Tracy—a movie for which Harrold Weinberger was assigned as the assistant director. Part of his film duties on Northwest Passage was to round up and look after over 400 Indians to play in the picture filmed on location in Idaho. According to the newspaper, his work on this movie “was Mr. Weinberger’s greatest contribution to the moving picture industry.”

Young Harrold lived on Beekman Street while growing up in Beacon, the stepson of Beacon merchant Max Glick and his mother Betty Glick. After his MGM years, Weinberger became an assistant director in television, working on such popular programs as “Sky King,” “Gomer Pyle” and "That Girl."

But Harrold's real life experiences read as exciting as any Hollywood movie script. At sixteen, after an argument with his stepfather, he left home in Beacon for good and joined the Canadian Navy, lying about his age to get in. Found to be underage, he was discharged from the navy only to join the Canadian Army (again underage) to fight and to be gassed in battle in France in World War I. And during World War II, at the height of his Hollywood career, he joined the Marines as a combat photographer. At the battle of Iwo Jima, while filming the GIs on the attack, he was wounded by shrapnel. For his heroism in that battle Harrold was awarded the Bronze Star. After duty in the Korean War--his third major war in less than four decades--he retired from the Marines with the rank of Major. Dubbed the "oldest living Marine" by the Los Angeles newspapers, he began his interviews in a booming voice: "That is Harrold with two Rs." Harrold Weinberger died in 1997, at the age of 97.