Ralph Rexford Bellamy was born on June 17, 1904, in Chicago, Ill. Bellamy formed his own troupe of actors, the North Shore Players, in the Chicago area in 1922 and later performed in repertory, in touring companies, and in multiple roles with his repertory troupe, the Ralph Bellamy Players (1926–29). In 1930 he secured a film contract and over the coming years was perennially cast as a bumbling, naive leading man who usually lost the girl to Cary Grant, notably in such lighthearted romances as The Awful Truth (1937), for which he was nominated for an Academy award as best supporting actor, and His Girl Friday (1940). For 12 years he was president of Actors' Equity, and he was a founder and board member of the Screen Actors Guild.

Although Bellamy had more than 100 film credits, including Spitfire (1934), Boy Meets Girl (1938), Dive Bomber (1941), The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955), Rosemary's Baby (1968), and Trading Places (1983), and numerous dramatic leads on television programs, by the 1940s he favored performing on Broadway. In 1943 he secured his stage reputation with a performance as an anti-Fascist professor in Tomorrow the World. Bellamy won a Tony award for his role in Sunrise at Campobello in 1958. He reprised his brilliant portrayal of Roosevelt in the 1960 film version and again in 1983 for the television miniseries The Winds of War.

The tall, craggy-faced actor with a resonant voice published his autobiography, When the Smoke Hit the Fan, in 1979. He received an honorary Academy award in 1987 for the body of his work and appeared in his last film, Pretty Woman, in 1990. Bellamy died on Nov. 29, 1991, in Los Angeles, Calif.