Bruce Bennett Video | Olympic Competition Highlights

Bruce Bennett (May 19, 1906 – February 24, 2007) was an American actor and Olympic silver medalist shot putter. During the 1930s, he went by his real name, Herman Brix (having dropped the first name "Harold"), and he lived to be a hundred years old. Born as Harold Herman Brix in Tacoma, Washington, he was the fourth born in a family of five children of an immigrant couple from Germany. His eldest brother, and their father's favored son, Hermann, died before Harold's birth and he was given his middle name in this child's memory. To please his father, by high school he had discontinued... MORE

Bruce Bennett (May 19, 1906 – February 24, 2007) was an American actor and Olympic silver medalist shot putter. During the 1930s, he went by his real name, Herman Brix (having dropped the first name "Harold"), and he lived to be a hundred years old. Born as Harold Herman Brix in Tacoma, Washington, he was the fourth born in a family of five children of an immigrant couple from Germany. His eldest brother, and their father's favored son, Hermann, died before Harold's birth and he was given his middle name in this child's memory. To please his father, by high school he had discontinued using his own first name, Harold, in favor of his middle name, Herman. His father was a lumber man who owned a couple of different logging camps. His first career was as an athlete. At University of Washington, where he majored in economics, he played football (tackle) in the 1926 Rose Bowl and was a track-and-field star. Two years later he won the silver medal for shot-putting in the 1928 Olympic Games, and held the indoor and outdoor records for shot-putting. He moved to Los Angeles in 1929 after being invited to compete for the Los Angeles Athletic Club and befriended actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr., LESS