George Macready made his Broadway debut in 1926 in a stage adaptation of The Scarlet Letter. Through 1958, he appeared in fifteen plays, both drama and comedy, including The Barretts of Wimpole Street, based on the family of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Macready’s penchant for acting was spurred in part by the director Richard Boleslawski. His Shakespearean stage credits include Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (1927), Malcolm in Macbeth (1928), and Paris in Romeo and Juliet (1934). On film, he played Marallus in the 1953 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. He also played Prince Ernst in the original stage version of Victoria Regina (1936), starring Helen Hayes. His first film was Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942), which also features Paul Muni. As Ballin Mundson in Gilda (1946), Macready was part of a deadly love triangle with the characters played by co-stars Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford. He would again play opposite Ford several years later in the post-war adventure The Green Glove (1952). Stanley Kubrick’s anti-war film, Paths of Glory (1957), provided George Macready with his other great role, self-serving French World War I General Paul Mireau, who is brought down by Kirk Douglas’s character, Colonel Dax. He had worked with Douglas previously in Detective Story (1951) and later he appeared with Douglas again in two more films: Vincente Minnelli’s Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) and John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May (1964).

George Macready made four guest appearances on Raymond Burr’s Perry Mason, including the role of murder victim Milo Girard in the 1958 episode, “The Case of the Purple Woman.” He also appeared regularly in such series as Dick Powell’s Four Star Playhouse, General Electric Theater, The Ford Television Theatre, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Adventures in Paradise, and The Islanders. He appeared in many western television series, including Bat Masterson, Bonanza, The Dakotas, Gunsmoke, Have Gun – Will Travel, The Rebel (once in the role of Confederate General Robert E. Lee), The Rifleman, Lancer, Riverboat, The Rough Riders, Chill Wills’s Frontier Circus, Rory Calhoun’s The Texan, and Steve McQueen’s Wanted: Dead or Alive. On December 5, 1961, he played a Colonel John Barrington in the episode “Handful of Fire” of NBC’s Laramie western series. The character’s prototype is presumably John Chivington of the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864 in Colorado. Barrington escapes while facing a court martial at Fort Laramie for his role in the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota in 1890. The episode reveals that series character Slim Sherman (John Smith) was present at Wounded Knee and hence testified against Barrington. Then his daughter, Madge, played by Karen Sharpe, takes Slim hostage. She has papers which she contends justify her father’s harsh policies against the Indians. Slim escapes but is trapped by Sioux in the area and must negotiate with the Indians to save the party from massacre.

On May 26, 1962, George Macready was cast as Cyrus Canfield, a vengeful father searching for his runaway teenaged daughter, Phoebe, played by Floy Dean, in the episode “Phoebe”, the series finale of NBC’s The Tall Man. In addition to westerns, Macready appeared on The Outer Limits, Boris Karloff’s Thriller, Get Smart with Don Adams and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. with Robert Vaughn. George Macready died of emphysema in 1973 and had his body donated to a medical school.