Walter Pidgeon

Pidgeon served in the Canadian military during World War I before building a substantial career in vaudeville, radio and eventually film, becoming one of MGM's most reliable leading men through the studio's golden era.

A two-time Oscar nominee, he brought Shakespearean gravity to Dr. Morbius, the scientist whose id has been quietly building a monster he refuses to acknowledge. Already an established leading man from decades of MGM prestige pictures, he lent unusual dramatic seriousness to a relatively modest genre production.

The film's Tempest-derived plot benefited considerably from his weighty, theatrical delivery, lending the science fiction premise a gravity it might otherwise have lacked.