Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#189476
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
George Cleveland is the performer our scores keep defending against the popular vote — a career of films that get better the further you stand from their release week.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
George Cleveland appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without George. All That Money Can Buy is the clearest case: a film rated 6.6 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, comedy, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with René Clair, Ray Enright, William Dieterle and others, George Cleveland helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
All That Money Can Buy (1941) as Cy Bibber · It Happened Tomorrow (1944) as Mr. Gordon · The Spoilers (1942) as Banty
Career snapshot
Ranked #189476 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1934–1944
Career length
10 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.6
All That Money Can Buy
Average Nutevio score
6.1
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.0
All That Money Can Buy
Most frequent director
Robert N. Bradbury
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Robert N. Bradbury
Most common genre
Western
3 titles
Average runtime
1h 39m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.2
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1940s
6.3 average MV
The 1940s are where the work and the material meet. It Happened Tomorrow, The Spoilers, All That Money Can Buy — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1940s
6.3
Across 4 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1940s
6.2
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1930s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Flash Gordon, Blue Steel, The Star Packer.
Most productive era
1940s
4 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1930s | 1940s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.42 films |
| Action | 5.93 films | — |
| Comedy | — | 6.51 film |
| Romance | — | 6.51 film |
| Horror | — | 5.71 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1934Blue Steel
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Hank - Innkeeper.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
6.6 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
The current state of the argument, as Mr. Gordon.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
7 of 7 films
as Mr. Gordon
Directed by René Clair
as Banty
Directed by Ray Enright
as Mr. Howley
Directed by William Nigh
as Professor Hensley
Directed by Ray Taylor
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Cy Bibber
All That Money Can Buy (1941)
Performance score6.6
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Cy Bibber gives George Cleveland a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Mr. Gordon
It Happened Tomorrow (1944)
Performance score6.5
It Happened Tomorrow asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mr. Gordon is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Banty
The Spoilers (1942)
Performance score6.5
The Spoilers asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Banty is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Mr. Howley
The Ape (1940)
Performance score6.5
The Ape asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Mr. Howley is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Cy Bibber
Start here. All That Money Can Buy is the clearest statement of what George Cleveland does — accessible, 107 minutes, and rated 6.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet George at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Flash Gordon (1936)
A deliberate change of key after All That Money Can Buy — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Ape (1940)
Keeps the science fiction register of Flash Gordon but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Spoilers (1942)
A deliberate change of key after The Ape — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
It Happened Tomorrow (1944)
A deliberate change of key after The Spoilers — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Robert N. Bradbury
Director
2 films together
Notably Blue Steel
Ray Taylor
Director
1 film together
Notably Flash Gordon
William Nigh
Director
1 film together
Notably The Ape
William Dieterle
Director
1 film together
Notably All That Money Can Buy
Ray Enright
Director
1 film together
Notably The Spoilers
René Clair
Director
1 film together
Notably It Happened Tomorrow
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Robert N. Bradbury
Director
2 films together · 5.7 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Blue SteelWilliam Dieterle
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
All That Money Can BuyRené Clair
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
It Happened TomorrowRay Enright
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The SpoilersRay Taylor
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Flash GordonWilliam Nigh
Director
1 film together · 5.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The ApeSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
All That Money Can Buy
as Cy Bibber
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
All That Money Can Buy
as Cy Bibber
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
All That Money Can Buy
as Cy Bibber
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Flash Gordon
as Professor Hensley
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
All That Money Can Buy
as Cy Bibber
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. George Cleveland has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Western Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in western, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
All That Money Can Buy
as Cy Bibber
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
The Ape
as Mr. Howley
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
All That Money Can Buy
as Cy Bibber
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Ape
as Mr. Howley
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Flash Gordon
as Professor Hensley
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Blue Steel
as Hank - Innkeeper
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Spoilers
as Banty
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Star Packer
as Jake
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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David Krumholtz
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Have your say
Community
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Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
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Reference
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