Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#93836
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
George Irving works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
George Irving appears in 9 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without George. Bringing Up Baby is the clearest case: a film rated 7.2 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, quiet performance, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for war, drama, thriller. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, Howard Hawks and others, George Irving 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.
Bringing Up Baby (1938) as Mr. Peabody · A Night at the Opera (1935) as Committeeman (uncredited) · Sergeant York (1941) as Harrison (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #93836 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
9
1931–1943
Career length
12 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.2
Bringing Up Baby
Average Nutevio score
6.7
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.5
Bringing Up Baby
Most frequent director
Howard Hawks
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Howard Hawks
Most common genre
Drama
5 titles
Average runtime
1h 38m
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
6.4
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
1930s
6.8 average MV
The 1930s are where the work and the material meet. Bringing Up Baby, A Night at the Opera, Manhattan Melodrama — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1930s
6.8
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1930s
7.1
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. Bringing Up Baby, A Night at the Opera, Manhattan Melodrama.
Most productive era
1930s
6 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 | 6.63 films | 6.82 films |
| Thriller | — | 6.61 film |
| Comedy | 7.03 films | — |
| Crime | 6.61 film | — |
| Romance | 6.84 films | — |
| Horror | 6.71 film | 6.01 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1931Dishonored
Where our catalogue meets this career.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1938Bringing Up Baby
7.2 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
1943Son of Dracula
The current state of the argument, as Colonel Caldwell.
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.
9 of 9 films
as Mr. Peabody
Directed by Howard Hawks
as Committeeman (uncredited)
Directed by Sam Wood
as Harrison (uncredited)
Directed by Howard Hawks
as Jim's Campaign Manager (uncredited)
Directed by W.S. Van Dyke
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Mr. Peabody
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Performance score7.1
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Mr. Peabody gives George Irving a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Committeeman (uncredited)
A Night at the Opera (1935)
Performance score7.0
A Night at the Opera asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Committeeman (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Harrison (uncredited)
Sergeant York (1941)
Performance score6.8
Sergeant York asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Harrison (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Neeval
Hangmen Also Die! (1943)
Performance score6.6
Hangmen Also Die! asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Neeval 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 Mr. Peabody
Start here. Bringing Up Baby is the clearest statement of what George Irving does — accessible, 102 minutes, and rated 7.2 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.
Manhattan Melodrama (1934)
Keeps the romance register of Bringing Up Baby but asks for a colder reading of it.
A Night at the Opera (1935)
A deliberate change of key after Manhattan Melodrama — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Sergeant York (1941)
A deliberate change of key after A Night at the Opera — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Hangmen Also Die! (1943)
Keeps the war register of Sergeant York but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Howard Hawks
Director
2 films together
Notably Bringing Up Baby
Josef von Sternberg
Director
1 film together
Notably Dishonored
Erle C. Kenton
Director
1 film together
Notably Island of Lost Souls
Lloyd Bacon
Director
1 film together
Notably 42nd Street
W.S. Van Dyke
Director
1 film together
Notably Manhattan Melodrama
Sam Wood
Director
1 film together
Notably A Night at the Opera
Robert Siodmak
Director
1 film together
Notably Son of Dracula
Fritz Lang
Director
1 film together
Notably Hangmen Also Die!
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Howard Hawks
Director
2 films together · 7.1 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Bringing Up BabySam Wood
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Night at the OperaLloyd Bacon
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
42nd StreetErle C. Kenton
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Island of Lost SoulsFritz Lang
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Hangmen Also Die!W.S. Van Dyke
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Manhattan MelodramaJosef von Sternberg
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DishonoredRobert Siodmak
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Son of DraculaSix 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
Sergeant York
as Harrison (uncredited)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
42nd Street
as Hotel Doctor (uncredited)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Bringing Up Baby
as Mr. Peabody
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Sergeant York
as Harrison (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Bringing Up Baby
as Mr. Peabody
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 Irving 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.
Drama Legend
Awarded
5 catalogue titles in drama, 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
Bringing Up Baby
as Mr. Peabody
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Island of Lost Souls
as Consul
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
42nd Street
as Hotel Doctor (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Hangmen Also Die!
as Neeval
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Bringing Up Baby
as Mr. Peabody
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Sergeant York
as Harrison (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
42nd Street
as Hotel Doctor (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Son of Dracula
as Colonel Caldwell
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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