Dana Andrews - Personal Life

Personal Life

Andrews married Janet Murray on New Year's Eve, 1932. Their son David, born in 1933, was a musician and composer who died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1964. Janet died in 1935 of pneumonia, not long after giving birth to a second child. On November 17, 1939, he married actress Mary Todd. They had three children, Katharine (born in 1942), Stephen (born in 1944), and Susan (born in 1948). Dana MacDuff, a film producer and the son of Andrews' friend Tyler MacDuff, is named for Dana Andrews. For 20 years the Andrews family lived in Toluca Lake. After his children were grown, Andrews lived out his later years with his wife Mary in the Studio City home bought from Jacques Tourneur (the director of Canyon Passage and Night of the Demon, in which Andrews had appeared).

Andrews eventually brought his alcoholism under control. In 1972, he appeared in a television public service advertisement on the subject. In the early 1980s, after former movie star Ronald Reagan had become president, Andrews told a magazine interviewer that Reagan's disciplined attitude toward alcohol (which Andrews had witnessed first-hand) was a big factor in his success.

In the last years of his life, Andrews suffered from Alzheimer's disease. In 1992, at the age of 83, he died of congestive heart failure and pneumonia.