Lew Ayres
2 credits on HibingeTV
American actor, born Lewis Ayres in 1908. He is best remembered for playing Paul Bäumer in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), a role that made him a star at 22. He later starred as Dr. Kildare in a popular series of MGM films in the late 1930s and 1940s. A conscientious objector during World War II, he served as a non-combatant medic and chaplain's aide, which briefly damaged his career. He continued acting in film and television into the 1990s.
Acted In
War, Drama
Based on Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel, the film follows a group of young German schoolboys who enlist in the army at the urging of their teacher and are ground down by the realities of trench warfare in World War I. Lewis Milestone directed with a documentary plainness that was unusual for its time, and the result is one of the first great anti-war films. Lew Ayres plays Paul Bäumer, the idealistic recruit whose patriotism is hollowed out by what he sees; Louis Wolheim is Katczinsky, the veteran who teaches the new men how to survive. The film won the Academy Awards for Outstanding Production and Best Director, the first picture to take both. Published in 1930, it entered the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2026.
War · Drama
All Quiet on the Western Front
1930 - as Paul Bäumer
Drama, Crime
A 1950 American film noir Western directed by John Sturges, starring Lew Ayres and Teresa Wright. Lin Vanner, an American oil company manager in Mexico, shoots a man he believes stole the payroll — then learns the suspect was likely innocent. Guilt-ridden, he seeks out the dead man's widow Ellen and her son at their remote ranch, concealing his role in her husband's death as an uneasy romance grows between them. An early credit for Sturges before his run of classic Westerns, the film is a compact psychological study of guilt and expiation. It entered the public domain and is also known by its reissue title, Tar Comes Back.
Drama · Crime · Western
The Capture
1950 - as Lin Vanner