John Cullum Biography
John Cullum is an American actor and singer. John Cullum has appeared in many stage musicals and dramas, including Shenandoah (1975), On the Twentieth Century (1978), he won the winning the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical for each.
John Cullum earned his first Tony nomination as lead actor in a musical in 1966 for On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, in which he introduced the title song, and more recently received Tony nominations for Urinetown The Musical (2002) (best actor in a musical) and as best featured actor in a musical for the revival of 110 in the Shade (2007).
John Cullum portrayed tavern owner Holling Vincoeur on the television drama series Northern Exposure, earning an Emmy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor in a Drama. He was featured in fifteen episodes of the NBC television series ER as Mark Greene’s father.
John Cullum was the farmer in the landmark television drama The Day After. He has made multiple guest appearances on Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as an attorney, now judge, Barry Moredock, and appeared as Big Mike in several episodes of The Middle. As of December 2017, he is appearing as Senator Beau Carpenter on the CBS series, Madam Secretary.
John Cullum Age | John Cullum Height
John Cullum is an American actor and singer born on 2nd March 1930. John Cullum is 89 years old as of 2019. Cullum stands at 5 feet tall. Cullum weighs at an approximate weight of 67kg. Cullum has appeared on such television series as Northern Exposure, Law & Order: SVU, and ER.
John Cullum Family
John Cullum parents are John Cullum (father) Elizabeth Todd (mother). He was among his eight siblings. John Cullum for the last 50 years, he has been a working New York actor, winning two Tony Awards and starring in countless musicals and plays. And these days, he’s really working performing in two plays a night, six nights a week.
John Cullum Sibling
John Cullum siblings are James Cullum, Jasper Cullum, Sarah Cullum, Melba Cullum, Palmer Cullum, Madison Cullum among others who are not yet known. John Cullum has lent his voice to three Ken Burns documentaries, Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip, The West, and Unforgivable Blackness.
The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, and narrated audiobooks by a wide spectrum of authors including western writer Will James, humorist James Thurber, epic storyteller James Michener and the master of modern horror, Stephen King.
John Cullum Wife
John Cullum is married to Emily Frankel in 1959. They have one son, JD Cullum (John David Cullum), who is also an actor. John Cullum won the “Best Actor” Tony in 1975 for “Shenandoah”. Mr. Cullum has been a regular on several television series, including One Life to Live, The Edge of Night, Buck James (starring Dennis Weaver), Northern Exposure and To Have and To Hold, and hosted A&E’s anthology drama series Victorian Days.
John Cullum Education
John Cullum attended the University of Tennessee, where he was a member of a winning tennis team. He debuted on Broadway in 1960, appearing in the musical Camelot.
Mr. Cullum starred with Ron Holgate and Jonathan Hogan in the Keen Company production of Heroes while continuing to perform in August: Osage County. (See the Interviews page for a link to the National Public Radio story about how he did both shows simultaneously.)
John Cullum Actor
John Cullum made his Broadway debut as Sir Dinadan in Alan Jay Lerner’s and Frederick Loewe’s Camelot in 1960. John Cullum also understudied Richard Burton (King Arthur) and Roddy McDowall (Arthur’s son Mordred), going on four times when Burton became ill and succeeding McDowall.
John Cullum would go on to play Laertes opposite Burton’s 1964 Broadway performance as Hamlet (and in the film version of the production) and in Burton’s final Broadway appearance in Noël Coward’s Private Lives in 1983.
In 1965, he was called in to replace Louis Jourdan during the Boston tryout of the musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. It was his first starring role on Broadway, netting him a Theatre World Award and his first Tony Award nomination.
The original cast album received a Grammy Award (presented to lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Burton Lane). John Cullum portrayed Edward Rutledge of South Carolina in the Broadway musical 1776, providing a dramatic highlight with his performance of “Molasses to Rum,” a tirade against the hypocrisy of some Northerners over the slave trade (“They don’t keep slaves, but they are willing to be considered carriers of slaves to others. They’re willing for the shilling.”)
Cullum had been the third Rutledge on Broadway, but played the role the longest and repeated it for the 1972 film. He is well known for premiering the role of Charlie Anderson in the musical Shenandoah, which began at Goodspeed Opera House, Connecticut in 1974.
Cullum won the Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards when the show was produced on Broadway in 1975. John Cullum also played the role at Wolf Trap, Virginia, on June 1976, opened the national tour for 3 weeks in Fall 1977 in Chicago, and starred in the limited-run Broadway revival in 1989.
John Cullum followed Shenandoah by playing the maniacal Broadway producer Oscar Jaffee in the 1978 musical On the Twentieth Century, opposite Madeline Kahn and later Judy Kaye, earning his second Tony Award.
John Cullum received his fourth Tony nomination in 2002 for originating the role of evil moneygrubber corporate president Caldwell B. Cladwell in Urinetown The Musical. He earned his fifth Tony nomination in the 2007 revival of 110 in the Shade, playing H.C. Curry, father to Audra McDonald’s Lizzie.
In 2003, Cullum co-starred with Northern Exposure castmate Barry Corbin in ‘Blackwater Elegy’, an award-winning short film written by Matthew Porter and co-directed by Porter and Joe O’Brien
Recent Broadway appearances include the title role of William Shakespeare’s seldom-performed Cymbeline, at Lincoln Center in 2007 and August: Osage County, by Tracy Letts for the week of September 16, 2008, and then since November 11, 2008.
In addition to enjoying a long stage career, he is well known to television audiences for his regular role as Holling Vincoeur on the quirky CBS series Northern Exposure, his extended appearances on the NBC medical drama ER as Mark Greene’s father, and on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as constitutional lawyer and later judge, Barry Moredock.
Cullum has also appeared as Lucky Strike executive Lee Garner, Sr. on AMC’s Mad Men. John Cullum appeared as Leap Day William, the embodiment of the fictional Leap Day national holiday, in the “Leap Day” episode of the sixth season of NBC’s 30 Rock.
John Cullum most recently appeared on Broadway in The Scottsboro Boys (2010), a musical by Kander and Ebb about a notorious miscarriage of justice in the American South in the 1930s. The Scottsboro Boys was directed by Susan Stroman. John Cullum was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2007.
In 2015 Cullum appeared and sang in the satirical B&W period movie-musical footage of Daddy’s Boy on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. The “forgotten footage” features comically incestuous lyrics set in an innocent context that apes classic 1930’s films. Cullum joined the cast of Waitress as Joe on October 12, 2017, replacing Larry Marshall.
John Cullum Movies
- All the Way Home (1963)
- Hamlet (1964)
- Hawaii (1966)
- They Call Me Trinity (1971)
- The Prodigal (1983)
- Marie (1985)
- Sweet Country (1986)
- The Secret Life of Algernon (1997)
- Ricochet River (1998)
- Held Up (1999)
- Inherit the Wind (1999)
- Blackwater Elegy (2003)
- The Notorious Bettie Page (2006)
- The Night Listener (2006)
- The Conspirator (2011)
- Kill Your Darlings (2013)
- Kilimanjaro (2013)
- Adult World (2013)
- Love Is Strange (2014)
- Christine (2016)
John Cullum Television Shows
- The Edge of Night (1966–67)
- One Life to Live (1969)
- Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1978)
- The Day After (1983)
- The Equalizer (1986)
- Buck James (1987)
- Quantum Leap – “To Catch A Falling Star” (1989)
- Northern Exposure (1990–95)
- Touched By An Angel – “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear” (1997) Mark Twain
- To Have and To Hold (1998)
- ER (1997–2000)
- Law & Order (2001)
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2003–present)
- Mad Men (2007)
- The Middle (2009–2018)
- 30 Rock (2012)
- Nurse Jackie (2013)
- Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015)
- Thanksgiving (2016)
- Madam Secretary (2017)
John Cullum Awards
- 1966 Theatre World Award
You Can See Forever1975 Drama Desk Award - 1975 Outer Critics Circle Award, Best Performances – Shenandoah
- 1975 Tony Award Best Actor in a Musical
- 1982 Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience for the one-man show Whistler
- 1998 Founders Day Medal, University of Tennessee
- 2004 Clarence Brown Theatre Company (University of Tennessee), Lifetime Achievement Award
- 2007 Inductee American Theatre Hall of Fame
Nominations
- 1966 Tony Award Best Actor in a Musical
- 1993 Emmy Award Best Supporting Actor in a Drama
2002 Outer Critics Circle Award Outstanding Actor in a Musical2002 Tony Award Best Actor in a Musical - 2005 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play
2007 Tony Award Best Featured Actor in a Musical - 2008 Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play
John Cullum Eye
John Cullum is ushered up to me. He is shorter than I expected, judging from his imposing masculine presence in Northern Exposure, and has two different colored eyes, one brown and one blue, which I find a bit disconcerting at first. (He wears a blue contact over the brown one when he acts.)
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John Cullum Dark Tower
John Cullum Roland Deschain and Eddie Dean in the general store in Stoneham in 1977. He helped Roland and Eddie in the shoot-out with Jack Andolini. After they escaped the store, Cullum took them back to his house where he told them of Stephen King, Turtleback Lane, and the “walk-ins”.
He lends them his old Ford Galaxie and is told to head to Vermont. Cullum eventually came back into the story, as he failed to leave for Vermont like he was told. He was called by Eddie when he and Roland needed help establishing the Tet Corporation.
Cullum was given Aunt Talitha’s Cross to use as a sigul to convince Moses Carver to join up. Cullum was shot in 1989, presumably by a member of the Sombra Corporation or North Central Positronics. He survived long enough to see the other members of the Ka-Tet of the Rose one more time and to pass the cross onto Carver.