James Warren (actor)


James Warren was an American film actor and artist. After a film career in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s, mainly in Westerns, he moved to Hawaii and painted local subjects.

Early life

Born James Pringle Wittlig in Marietta, Ohio, he was the son of Walter Wittlig, a watchmaker, and Florence Ione Pringle. He had two brothers, Laurence and David. The Wittligs had emigrated from Langenthal, Switzerland in the 1860s.
However, James did not follow in the family watchmaking tradition. His first love was art, which took him to the Pratt Art Institute of New York where he became a watercolorist and an illustrator for various magazines.

Film career

Warren was seen by an MGM talent scout, who offered him a contract. Changing his name to James Warren, he, his wife Felice, and their six-week-old son moved to Hollywood, where over the course of several years he appeared in more than 30 movies. When his MGM contract expired, he moved to RKO Radio Pictures.
His first picture at RKO, filmed in the spring of 1945, was Ding Dong Williams, a backstage musical with a Hollywood theme. He played a slow-witted movie cowboy alongside a palomino horse, Star Dust. RKO had been making Zane Grey westerns with Robert Mitchum in the leading roles, and with Mitchum now advancing to dramatic features, RKO producer Herman Schlom remembered how well James Warren photographed in western gear. James Warren took over RKO's Zane Grey series, starring in three films: Wanderer of the Wasteland, Sunset Pass, and Code of the West.
Warren's tenure as RKO's cowboy star was brief; the studio's resident star Tim Holt returned from military service and resumed his starring series. Warren returned to character roles. In 1952, he co-starred with Gloria Swanson in the comedy film Three for Bedroom "C".

Art career

During all his time in Hollywood, Warren had never lost his passion for painting. He produced several one-man shows throughout the US and found a patron in Vincent Price. At one of these shows, Katharine Hepburn purchased seven of Warren's large watercolor paintings which she kept in her private collection.
In 1968, an art commission from Ford Motor Company took him to Hawaii. There, he quickly settled into island life and became a highly respected member of the art community. He maintained an art gallery in Honolulu, as well as Maui. Warren specialized in whimsical interpretations of the Hawaiian tutus as well as paintings of Maui onions. Warren was a well-respected member of the Lahaina Art Society. He was usually a willing and gracious participant in all art shows. He continued his one-man shows well into his later life, only stopping in his seventies.
Warren died in 2001, aged 88, in Kihei, Hawaii, leaving four children and several grandchildren.