President of the Screen Actors Guild from 1963-1965.The son of a Baptist minister (and one of 13 children), Andrews studied business administration at Sam Houston State Teachers College in Texas, but took a bookkeeping job with Gulf Oil in 1929 prior to graduating.... He drove a school bus, dug ditches, picked oranges, worked as a stock boy, and pumped gas while trying without luck to break into the movies. His employer at a Van Nuys gas station believed in him and agreed to invest in him, asking to be repaid if and when Andrews made it as an actor.... He played opposite future star Robert Preston in a play about composers Gilbert and Sullivan, and soon thereafter was offered a contract by Samuel Goldwyn. It was two years before Goldwyn and 20th Century-Fox (to whom Goldwyn had sold half of Andrews' contract) put him in a film, but the roles, though secondary, were mostly in top-quality pictures such as The Westerner (1940) and The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). A starring role in the hit Laura (1944), followed by one in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), made him a star, but no later film quite lived up to the quality of these.... Andrews took steps to curb his addiction and in his later years was an outspoken member of the National Council on Alcoholism who decried public refusal to face the problem.... Andrews reportedly suffered from Alzheimer's Syndrome in his last years and spent his final days in a nursing facility. (Mini Bio from IMDB.)
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