Hollywood Actors

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors

Gene Hackman
Gene Hackman.
Gene Hackman.

“‘Dependable’ was a good word to use about Gene Hackman as a supporting actor (and John Simon did, about his performance in “Downhill Racer”).   And then, by virtue of a role turned down by at least seven other actors and it’s accompanying Oscar, he became a star.   His acting, if anything, became more finely honed – but stardon brought his problems.   As Bart Mills wrote in London in ‘The Guardian’ : It’s not easy being a star who knows he has no right to be a star.   Gene Hackman never got near the honey pot till he was past 40.   He has about as muich sex appeal as your balding brother-in-law. He dreams fondly of retiring.   He’s aware that somebody somewhere made a big mistake..   The mistakes, as it happened, were all his”. – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years”. (1972).

Hackman was one of the giants of the U.S. screen from the late 1960’s into the 1990’s. He was born in 1930 in San Bernadino, California. He came to fame in a supporting role
in 1967 in “Bonnie & Clyde”. He won an Oscar in 1971 for “The French Connection” and another in 1990 for Clint Eastwood’s “The Unforgiven”. A great, great actor now sadly retired.

TCM overview:

One of the most versatile and well-respected actors in American cinema history, Gene Hackman enjoyed a productive career that spanned over six decades, encompassing exquisite performances on stage and in feature films. Once voted by his acting school classmates as the least likely to succeed, Hackman essayed some of filmdom’s most memorable characters, a few of which earned the gruff, but sensitive actor several Academy Award nominations. Beginning as a reliable character player on stage, Hackman emerged as an unlikely hero of the counterculture with a bombastic turn in Arthur Penn’s seminal “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967). Just a few years later, he secured himself an Oscar for Best Actor with his tough-guy performance as the unforgettable Popeye Doyle in “The French Connection” (1971). Hackman again delivered the goods in Francis Ford Coppola’s paranoid thriller, “The Conversation” (1974) and followed through as the comically maniacal Lex Luther in “Superman: The Movie” (1978). Though he entered a premature retirement brought on by his exhaustive work schedule, Hackman returned to the fore in Warren Beatty’s “Reds” (1981) and entered into what proved to be the busiest part of his career, which culminated in an Academy Award nomination for “Mississippi Burning” (1988) and a Best Supporting Actor win for “Unforgiven” (1992). After portraying a sleazy B-movie producer in “Get Shorty” (1995) and the rascally patriarch of a dysfunctional family in “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001), Hackman drifted off into an unofficial retirement that allowed him time to nurture his writing career while leaving behind a remarkable legacy.

Born on Jan. 30, 1930 in San Bernardino, CA, Hackman endured a nomadic childhood with his father, Eugene, and his mother, Lyda, before finally settling in Illinois, where he was raised by his maternal grandmother, Beatrice. Unchallenged by school, he dropped out at age 16 and lied about his age to enlist in the U.S. Marines. Trained as a radio operator, Hackman served in China where his radio background helped land him work as a disc jockey. While suffering from two broken legs following a 1950 motorcycle accident, Hackman decided to pursue a career in radio, moving to New York City after his discharge to study at the School of Radio Technique. Throughout the early part of the decade, he worked his way across America’s heartland, developing his resonant vocal abilities as a radio announcer at various stations. Fast approaching 30, Hackman decided to translate his radio experience into an acting career, enrolling at the famed Pasadena Playhouse, where he was dubbed by an instructor “least likely to succeed,” an honor he shared with fellow classmate Dustin Hoffman. Despite making his stage debut with a supporting role in “The Curious Miss Caraway” (1958), Hackman was asked to leave the Pasadena Playhouse.

With nowhere else to turn, Hackman moved back to New York City, where he struggled alongside Hoffman and Robert Duvall to try to succeed despite assurances of failure from his old classmates and instructors. He flourished under the tutelage of George Morrison, a former instructor at the Lee Strasberg Institute, who trained the aspiring performer in the famed ‘Method’ approach to acting. Meanwhile, Hackman made his stage debut in “Chaparral” (1958) and began finding employment in various small screen productions like the “U.S. Steel Hour” (ABC/CBS, 1953-1963) and the premiere episode of the courtroom drama, “The Defenders” (CBS, 1961-65). A few years after joining the improvisational troupe, The Premise, Hackman truly arrived as a stage actor with a supporting performance opposite Sandy Dennis in a Broadway production of “Any Wednesday” (1964). That same year, he had his first substantial film role, playing the romantic rival for an occupational therapist (Warren Beatty) who falls for a wealthy mental patient (Jean Seberg) in the downer psychological drama, “Lilith” (1964).

When it came time to cast the role of Buck, the older brother of outlaw Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty), in the seminal counterculture crime drama “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), Beatty remembered Hackman from “Lilith” and offered him the role. Bringing a Brandoesque spin to the role, Hackman turned what could have been just a murderous rube into a character infused with a righteous innocence, which helped earn the actor who was once voted least likely to succeed his first Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor. He was excellent as the driven Olympic coach in the documentary-like “Downhill Racer” (1969) and picked up a second Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod as he mined the autobiographical parallels of a son who cannot communicate with his dad in “I Never Sang for My Father” (1970). The following year brought him a once-in-a-lifetime role, playing the tough, uncompromising New York City narcotics cop Popeye Doyle in “The French Connection” (1971). While the film was perhaps best remembered for a brilliantly staged car chase with Doyle going after a runaway subway, Hackman managed not to be overshadowed, skillfully crafting a warts-and-all portrait of a vulgar sadist. Accolades rained on Hackman, who capped a banner year with an Academy Award for Best Actor.

Now firmly established as a leading man, Hackman began to undertake a series of roles that further demonstrated his range and versatility. He proved effective as a crusading preacher and de facto leader of a group of survivors of a sea disaster in the enjoyably cheesy adventure yarn, “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972), and effectively partnered with Al Pacino in the buddy road movie “Scarecrow” (1973). Meanwhile, director Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Conversation” (1974) offered one of the richest characterizations of his long career, in which he played a surveillance expert whose personal involvement in one of his cases leads to a plunge into paranoia and suspicion. Hackman next delivered a short, but well-remembered cameo role as a blind hermit who fumbles his efforts to provide aid and comfort to the misunderstood monster (Peter Doyle) in Mel Brooks’ horror spoof, “Young Frankenstein” (1974), starring Gene Wilder and Teri Garr. For the first time, audiences were able to see Hackman’s sharp comic abilities, which to that point were woefully unexplored. Following starring roles in the Western “Zandy’s Bride” (1974) and the noir crime drama “Night Moves” (1975), Hackman reprised Popeye Doyle, who tracks down the escaped Frog One (Fernando Rey) to Marseilles, in the mediocre, but still well-acted sequel, “The French Connection II” (1975).

By the mid- to late-1970s, Hackman’s career went into a bit of a slide, following starring turns in such underwhelming movies like “March or Die” (1977) and “The Domino Principle” (1977). By the time he was showcasing his high camp villain Lex Luthor in “Superman” (1978), Hackman had prematurely announced his retirement after nearly non-stop work that had left him physically and emotionally drained. Spending his time painting in a West Los Angeles apartment, Hackman was eventually pulled back into the game by old friend Warren Beatty, who convinced the actor to play magazine editor Peter Van Wherry in the epic historical drama “Reds” (1981). While he was miscast opposite Barbra Streisand in the triangular romantic comedy “All Night Long” (1981), he was right at home in the action-adventure “Uncommon Valor” (1983) and the gripping political thriller “Under Fire” (1983). Hackman brought depth and conviction to his performance as a straying husband undergoing a mid-life crisis in “Twice in a Lifetime” (1985), perhaps in part inspired by his 1982 divorce from first wife, Faye Maltese. Re-energized after his self-imposed exile, Hackman went on to etch several memorable characterizations in the 1980s, including a small-town high school basketball coach in “Hoosiers” (1986) and a cold-hearted Secretary of Defense in the thriller “No Way Out” (1987).

Following a reprisal of Lex Luther in the unnecessary “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace” (1987), Hackman delivered a searing performance as a good ole boy FBI agent investigating the murders of civil rights workers in the 1960s-era drama, “Mississippi Burning” (1988), for which he picked up another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. As he entered the 1990s, Hackman remained exceptionally busy, churning out a wide variety of roles. After playing a practical-minded cop who teams up with a partner (Dan Aykroyd) suffering from multiple personality disorder in the miserable “Loose Cannons” (1990), he was a lawyer who enters the courtroom opposite his attorney daughter (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) in Michael Apted’s “Class Action” (1991). Though surgery in 1990 for heart problems provoked another hiatus, Hackman roared back with another fascinating role, playing sadistic, but smiling sheriff Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood’s revisionist Western “Unforgiven” (1992). Infusing the effective lawman with a streak of decency, the actor sketched a character that was profoundly ambiguous; one that could be either heroic or villainous. Critics and audiences embraced the film and Hackman’s character and he earned not only stellar reviews but numerous prizes, all of which was capped by a second Oscar, this time as the year’s Best Supporting Actor.

Healthy and in-demand, Hackman embarked on another round of seemingly non-stop roles. While Sydney Pollack cast him as the burnt-out lawyer and mentor to Tom Cruise who is powerless to help his protégé in “The Firm” (1993), the actor displayed a sudden fondness for Westerns. He was a sympathetic general in “Geronimo: An American Legend” (1993), the moral compass of “Wyatt Earp” (1994) as the family’s patriarch, and in an almost-spoof of Little Bill, played a gunslinger in the loopy “The Quick and the Dead” (1995). Loosening up a bit, Hackman displayed his assured comedic gifts as a schlock horror filmmaker who runs afoul of a Mafia boss (Dennis Farina) tracking down a loan collector (John Travolta) who embarks on a movie career in “Get Shorty” (1995). After a turn as a conservative politician who plays straight man – on more than one level – to Robin Williams and Nathan Lane in “The Birdcage” (1996), Hackman began to display a darker side, playing a sinister surgeon in “Extreme Measures” (1996) and a racist killer on death row in “The Chamber” (1996). He excelled in his next two performances, playing a U.S. President embroiled in a murder investigation in “Absolute Power” (1997) and a renegade NSA agent in the thriller “Enemy of the State” (1998), a role that was an overt nod to his performance in “The Conversation.”

Having done all he could do in Hollywood, Hackman entered the world of publishing with his first novel, Wake of the Perdido Star (1999), which he co-wrote with author Daniel Lenihan. While 1999 marked the first year he failed to appear in a single feature film, Hackman returned the following year with a turn in “The Replacements” (2000), playing the NFL coach of a rag-tag group of players filling in for a striking team. Later he was featured in “Under Suspicion,” Stephen Hopkins’ nervy reworking of the French film “Garde a vu” (1982), playing a wealthy attorney suspected of rape and murder. After an uncredited cameo in “The Mexican” (2001), he had a charming role as a billionaire reeled in by mother-daughter beauties (Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt) in the unremarkable con-women comedy “Heartbreakers” (2001). Next he headed the impressive cast of David Mamet’s low-key thriller, “Heist” (2001), with a note-perfect and effortless performance that was tinged with both bravado and vulnerability as an almost untouchable veteran master thief. Hackman followed up with a role as a steely admiral who risks his career when he puts people over politics in an effort to save a maverick navigator (Owen Wilson) shot down in Bosnia in “Behind Enemy Lines” (2001).

Though he was a steady presence on the big screen, Hackman’s career began to show signs of slowing down. While at the time most were unaware, the veteran actor was on his way to retirement. He did, however, have one more great performance in him, which he delivered in Wes Anderson’s droll family dramedy, “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001), in which he played the titular patriarch of a dysfunctional family of geniuses (Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow and Luke Wilson). Anderson admitted to creating the funny, but ultimately endearing role for Hackman, though the actor had vocally opposed such endeavors in the past. Any objections were quickly silenced when the actor won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. After receiving a special Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes ceremony in 2003, Hackman was next seen on screen in “Runaway Jury” (2003), playing Rankin Fitch, a high-priced and morally bankrupt jury consultant who stops at nothing to control the outcome of a crucial trail verdict. For the first time in his career, Hackman played opposite his friend and fellow actor voted least likely to succeed, Dustin Hoffman.

In the political satire “Welcome to Mooseport” (2004), Hackman played a former U.S. president who runs for mayor of a small Maine town against a local hardware store owner and plumber (Ray Romano). Not his best work by any stretch, “Mooseport” wound up being the final film Hackman appeared in to date, marking the start to his unofficial retirement. Hackman confirmed on a 2004 airing of “Larry King Live” (CNN, 1985-2010) that he had no projects lined up and believed that his acting career was indeed over. Meanwhile, he continued to co-author novels with Daniel Lenihan, including Justice for None (2006) and Escape from Andersonville (2009), which dramatized a prison break from Fort Sumter during the Civil War.

By Shawn Dwyer

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Guardian obituary in 2025.

Few of Hollywood’s leading actors made such an unlikely journey to stardom as Gene Hackman, who has died aged 95. He had no early contact with show business, came from a fraught family background and had looks that might generously be described as “homely”.

He did not decide on acting as a career until his late 20s and was in his late 30s when he had his breakthrough, as the elder brother in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Yet within four years he had won the first of his two Oscars, playing the cop Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in The French Connection (1971).

 

While this was his biggest commercial success, his critical status grew with his performance as the paranoid surveillance expert in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974). Although it was a box office flop, it gave him the greatest opportunity of his career. As Harry Caul, a private surveillance expert who becomes involved in corrupt business and murder, resulting in his isolation and near insanity, Hackman brought a tense interior despair and complexity to the movie. He went on to become one of the most prolific and respected character stars of the late 1980s and the 90s.

Hackman acted in about 80 movies. Many were dire, and Empire magazine once described him as “the master of the art of rotten career moves”. But he survived those films, as well as problems with drink, a heart ailment and periods of depression. He admitted that he took many jobs for the money – certainly nothing else could account for his return to the Superman series in 1987 – to support an expensive lifestyle. He enjoyed flying his own planes and maintained homes throughout the US and Europe

 

His readiness to accept so much work may have stemmed from a disrupted childhood during the Depression years. Born in San Bernardino, California, he was the son of Lyda (nee Gray), a waiter, and Eugene Hackman. His father, a journalist, in a restless search for employment moved the family from town to town before leaving for good when Gene was 13, upsetting his schooling and life so that he later remarked he never felt he belonged anywhere. He lied about his age and joined the Marines when he was 16, serving an instructive though unhappy few years, mainly in the far east. After a serious motorcycle accident, he was invalided out of the forces and had to find a livelihood.

His attempts included radio (he had gained experience while in the Marines) and painting (he was a talented artist but it remained a hobby, never a career). In 1956 he married a New Yorker, Faye Maltese, and with her support decided to try acting.

They moved to the west coast and Hackman enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse College of Theatre Arts, where he found himself years older than his fellow students. They included Dustin Hoffman, who later became the Hackmans’ lodger and a lifelong friend. Allegedly the duo were nominated by their fellows as those “least likely to succeed”.

On their return to New York, Faye became a secretary and Hackman took casual jobs between a few off-Broadway plays and occasional television work in episodes of The Defenders and The United States Steel Hour. In his film debut, Mad Dog Coll (1961), he played a cop, and he then appeared in a TV western, Ride With Terror (1963).

He anticipated better from a role in Robert Rossen’s Lilith (1964), which starred Warren Beatty. Despite the film’s subsequent cult status, the initial response to it hardly helped the struggling actor, who by then had a family – a son, Christopher, and daughter, Elizabeth. A Broadway role in Any Wednesday (1964), starring Jason Robards and an unfriendly Sandy Dennisreceived good notices, leading to him being given eighth billing as a missionary in the turgid movie Hawaii (1966).

Happily, Beatty turned producer for Bonnie and Clyde and, remembering Hackman from Lilith, cast him as Buck Barrow. The violent film set in Texas during the late 20s became a hit and Hackman’s assertive performance gained him an Oscar nomination, as best supporting actor.

Meanwhile, he readily accepted all the offers that came in, from television series to war films, from a part as a detective in The Split (1968) to that of an astronaut in the unmemorable Marooned and a convict in Riot (both 1969). In the same year he was cast opposite Burt Lancaster, who introduced him to the notion of star power, in The Gypsy Moths, and in Downhill Racer, as a ski coach to Robert Redford, a friend from his New York days. He also had a third child, Leslie, and a marriage made increasingly difficult by his relentless schedule.

Critical kudos and a second Oscar nomination came from his role as the son in I Never Sang for My Father (1970). The lack of audience for that sturdy film led to him accepting the execrable Doctors’ Wives (1971) and, the same year, the violent western The Hunting Party – potboilers that provided income and experience. But it was his subsequent success as the truculent detective in William Friedkin’s The French Connection that changed his life.

When Steve McQueen and others rejected the film, Hackman seized the moment and made the unyielding cop on the trail of drug dealers his own. He received an Oscar as best actor and reprised the role in the darker French Connection II (1975). By then he had director approval and chose John Frankenheimer, with whom he had worked successfully on The Gypsy Moths

 

Between these thrillers, he was notable in two films released in 1972: Prime Cut, as a vicious gangland boss, and as the lead in the popular film The Poseidon Adventure. Bafta named him best actor for the latter, as they had done the previous year for The French Connection.

A year later, he displayed his versatility as one of two drifters (opposite Al Pacino) in the oddly platonic love story Scarecrow, but the rigour of his role in The Conversation was decidedly absent from the lugubrious Zandy’s Bride (1974). However, compensation came with a cameo as the blind hermit in Young Frankenstein (1974) and then the vast fee for recreating Doyle.

Despite the admiration of his peers and the public, Hackman had a reputation for impatience with the slow process on set and for his refusal to grind the publicity mill. His mood darkened during the rest of the decade, and was not helped by poor choices in 1975, including the thriller Night Moves and the western Bite the Bullet.

Following the highly paid chore of playing the villain Lex Luthor in Superman (1978), Hackman went into semi-retirement. Luckily, his scenes for Superman II (1980) had been completed during the initial shoot and he took time out to paint and sculpt, fly and travel. Only Beatty’s insistence that he play a cameo in Reds (1981) coaxed him back to work.

In 1983 he launched the second phase of his career, playing a jaded reporter in Roger Spottiswoode’s political thriller Under Fire and a colonel in Uncommon Valor, and taking the challenging role of the reclusive billionaire in Nicolas Roeg’s Eureka, the director’s wilful take on both his own The Man Who Fell to Earth and Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. Eureka was badly distributed and was only rescued from oblivion by BBC television. It took Hackman a while to find his stride, mixing disasters such as Misunderstood (1984) and Superman IV (1987) with successes in Best Shot (released as Hoosiers in the US, 1986) and a villainous secretary of defence in the stylish No Way Out (1987).

It was the fourth of his six films in 1988 that gave him his best role for years, playing the co-investigator of racial murders in the US deep south. Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning received some stick for its alleged inaccuracies, but Hackman enjoyed a tailor-made part, exhibiting a combination of world-weary humanity and wry humour, cloaked by an exterior toughness. If ever there was a time in his career when he almost inherited the mantle of the great Spencer Tracy, this was it. He received the Berlin film festival Silver Bear and another Oscar nomination for the role.

 

Embarking on the busiest period of his career, when he also returned to the stage, opposite Glenn Close and Richard Dreyfuss in Death and the Maiden on Broadway (1992), Hackman made much of a small role as a film director in Postcards from the Edge, and played the prosecutor in the remake of the noir classic Narrow Margin (both 1990). Including roles as narrator and General Mandible’s voice in Antz (1998), he made 25 appearances in 10 years. One documentary was a tribute to Clint Eastwood, to whom Hackman had reason to be grateful.

In 1992 Eastwood had nagged him into playing the sadistic sheriff Daggett in the sombre Unforgiven. Hackman brought weight and credibility to the pivotal role and received his second Oscar, plus a Bafta and Golden Globe. It started him on a run of westerns – as a brigadier general in Geronimo (1993), Nicholas Earp alongside Kevin Costner in Lawrence Kasdan’s monumental Wyatt Earp (1994), then another evil sheriff in the quirky The Quick and the Dead (1995). In Tony Scott’s cold war thriller Crimson Tide (1995) he was memorable as the hawkish submarine captain who nearly brings about a nuclear war.

He clearly enjoyed playing the sleazy producer in Get Shorty (1995). Relishing his increasing status and workload, he knocked spots off Hugh Grant in Extreme Measures (1996) and responded to the competition offered by Paul Newman in the nostalgic private-eye movie Twilight (1998). Hackman worked increasingly in big-budget movies: as the murderous president in Eastwood’s Absolute Power (1997), and the reclusive surveillance expert in Scott’s Enemy of the State (1998) – where the role and many of the scenes were a homage to The Conversation.

In his own production, the disturbing thriller Under Suspicion (2000), he played a wealthy lawyer being tracked by a dogged detective for a child murder. It was one more in the gallery of latter-day monsters that dominated his output during the period. He cornered the market in introspective, disturbed characters. It was not difficult to see why he had obtained the rights to The Silence of the Lambs, with a view to directing. In the event, Hackman found the material too disturbing and declined to play the lead role under another director.

There were lighter moments, such as his rightwing senator in The Birdcage (1996), a feeble revamp of La Cage aux Folles, and a return to coaching – this time football – in The Replacements (2000). During this busy period he somehow found time to co-write – with Dan Lenihan – his first novel, Wake of the Perdido Star (2000), an adventure story set in the early 19th century, which prompted him to give interviews, something he seldom did on behalf of his movies.

In 2001 he again embarked on a series of big-budget films, beginning with a cameo role in The Mexican, an uneasy blend of romance and black comedy starring Brad Pitt, quickly followed by Heartbreakers, in which Hackman played a cigarette tycoon bamboozled by Sigourney Weaver. In welcome contrast, he was very much the star as a gang leader, Joe, in David Mamet’s smart and complicated Heist – a thriller in which, characteristically for the writer-director, nothing was exactly what it seemed. Hackman was elevated to the rank of admiral in Behind Enemy Lines, a jingoistic and gung-ho war film that was more rewarding financially than artistically.

In one of the best films of his career, Wes Anderson’s witty and poignant The Royal Tenenbaums, Hackman took the lead as Royal, a long-absent father who returns to salvage his erratic family from a complicated domestic dilemma. Boasting a fine cast, it was made with panache and style.

Runaway Jury (2003), adapted from a John Grisham novel, proved efficient entertainment, largely thanks to an original premise and fine performances from Hackman and his friend Hoffman. After a minor comedy, Welcome to Mooseport (2004), Hackman gave a television interview stating that he had no plan to act in future and was going to enjoy a more simple life.

He returned to books, co-authoring three further historical novels with Lenihan. He subsequently worked alone, first writing an energetic western, Payback at Morning Peak (2011) and then a thriller, Pursuit (2013).

His first marriage ended in divorce in 1986. He married Betsy Arakawa, a pianist, in 1991; she was found dead with Hackman at their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His three children survive him

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gene Hackman (born 1930) is widely regarded by critics and peers alike as the “ultimate everyman” of American cinema. A critical analysis of his work reveals an actor of tremendous psychological density—a performer who could inhabit a character so completely that he appeared to be “not acting” at all.

He is the American cousin to the British Kitchen Sink actors you enjoy; he brought a blue-collar, unvarnished reality to every genre, from the Western to the Noir thriller. He didn’t just play a role; he occupied it with a restless, often combustible energy.

I. Career Overview: The Late-Blooming Titan

1. The Method Foundations (1950s–1966)

Like many of his contemporaries (Dustin Hoffman, Robert Duvall), Hackman was a “slow burn.” He studied at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he and Hoffman were famously voted “Least Likely to Succeed.”

  • The Breakthrough: His role as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) changed everything. He brought a terrifying, high-pitched “giggle” and a sense of doomed familial loyalty that earned him his first Oscar nomination.

2. The “Everyman” Icon (1971–1980)

The 1970s was Hackman’s decade. He became the face of “New Hollywood” realism.

  • The French Connection (1971): As Popeye Doyle, he redefined the cinematic cop. He was bigoted, obsessive, and violent, yet Hackman made him undeniably human. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

  • The Conversation (1974): In this Neo-Noir masterpiece, he played Harry Caul. It is perhaps his most “intellectual” performance—a study in paranoia, loneliness, and the “Kitchen Sink” minutiae of a man who listens to others for a living.

3. The Character Lead and Villain (1980s–2004)

As he aged, Hackman became the industry’s most reliable “Heavy.”

  • Mississippi Burning (1988): A masterclass in “Quiet vs. Loud” acting alongside Willem Dafoe.

  • Unforgiven (1992): In one of the greatest Revisionist Westerns, he played Little Bill Daggett. He won his second Oscar by portraying a “villain” who genuinely believes he is the hero of the story.

II. Detailed Critical Analysis

1. The “Working Class” Naturalism

Critically, Hackman is analyzed for his physicality. He never looked like a “movie star”; he looked like a man you’d see at a hardware store or a bus station.

  • The “Lived-In” Performance: In your favorite Westerns, Hackman brought a “messy” reality. In Bite the Bullet (1975), he doesn’t just ride a horse; he looks like his back hurts, his canteen is empty, and he’s tired. He stripped the “myth” away from the Western, replacing it with exhaustion and persistence.

2. The “Harry Caul” Interiority

In Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, Hackman delivered a performance of extraordinary stillness.

  • The Architecture of Loneliness: Analysts point to how Hackman used his glasses and his plastic raincoat as armor. He portrayed a man who was “spiritually translucent.” This performance hits the same notes as the 60s Kitchen Sink dramas—finding the profound tragedy in the “boring” life of an ordinary man. He proved that an actor doesn’t need to shout to be powerful; he just needs to be.

3. The “Moral Ambiguity” of Power

Hackman excelled at playing characters who were technically wrong but emotionally right (or vice versa).

  • The “Little Bill” Paradox: In Unforgiven, his character is building a house with a leaky roof. This “ordinary” detail—his domestic incompetence—makes his sudden explosions of violence even more terrifying. Critics note that Hackman understood that villainy is most effective when it is mundane. He brought a “Noir” complexity to the Western frontier.

Iconic Performance Highlights

Work Role Year Critical Achievement
The French Connection Popeye Doyle 1971 Created the “Obsessive Anti-Hero” archetype.
The Conversation Harry Caul 1974 The definitive study in “Cinematic Introversion.”
Unforgiven Little Bill Daggett 1992 Deconstructed the “Lawman” myth in the Western.
The Royal Tenenbaums Royal Tenenbaum 2001 Showcased his “Anarchic Comic Timing” late in career.
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Russell Crowe
Russell Crowe
Russell Crowe

Crowe is one of my favourite actors. He was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1964. and raised in Australia. He made his mark internationally with “Romper Stomper” and received the Oscar in 2000 for “Gladiator”. He is seen here at the Oscar ceremony with Benecio Del Toro, Marcia Gay Harden and Julia Roberts, all winners that year. Thanks to John Mulry for the autograph.

TCM overview:

A galvanizing presence who earned Hollywood’s highest acting accolades, but whose mercurial temperament put him in hot water publicly, actor Russell Crowe ultimately built a reputation as an A-list leading man, whose electric performances well overshadowed his so-called bad boy nature. With an intense breakout performance as a racist skinhead in the Australian-made “Romper Stomper” (1992), Crowe established himself as an actor on the rise. Crossing the Pacific, he exploded off the screen as a violent 1950s police detective in “L.A. Confidential” (1997), announcing loudly to American audiences that he had arrived. Two years later, Crowe earned his first Academy Award nomination with a sterling performance as a tobacco executive trapped between telling the truth and protecting his family in “The Insider” (1999). But it was his turn as a Roman general in “Gladiator” (2000) that brought home Oscar glory. He was exceptional as schizophrenic math genius John Nash in “A Beautiful Mind” (2001), and followed up with acclaimed roles in “Cinderella Man” (2005) and “3:10 to Yuma” (2007). Crowe reached a personal low point when he was famously arrested for striking a New York hotel concierge with a telephone, prompting an arrest that dogged him for years afterward. But such incidents failed to derail his career, as he turned in fine performances in “American Gangster” (2007), “State of Play” (2009) and “Robin Hood” (2010). Despite his highly public personal stumbles, Crowe was an actor of extraordinary talent and range capable of delivering one acclaimed performance after another.

Born on April 7, 1964 in Wellington, New Zealand, Crowe grew up in and around show business. His grandfather, Stan Wemyss, was a cinematographer whose footage of World War II earned him the title of Member of the Order of the British Empire. His parents, Alex and Jocelyn, were both film set caterers who moved the family to Australia because of better job opportunities, providing Crowe ready access when he began acting at age six. His first onscreen role was in an episode of the Australian TV series “Spyforce,” starring Jack Thompson – a part he landed thanks to his mother, who worked on the show. When Crowe was 14, the family moved back to their native New Zealand where his father took over managing a pub called The Flying Jug. About this time, Crowe began performing in rock bands under the name Rus Le Roq, though much of his early music was not especially well-received.

Determined to pursue a career in show business, Crowe returned to Australia when he was 18. Within a year of his return, Crowe landed a role singing and dancing on stage in an Australian production of “Grease.” While he spent two years (1986-88) touring as Dr Frank N Furter in “The Rocky Horror Show,” it was his turn in Willy Russell’s “Blood Brothers” (1989) that caught the attention of director George Ogilvie, who cast him in a leading role the triangular drama “The Crossing” (1990). It was on the set of this film that he met his longtime girlfriend and later wife, actress-singer, Danielle Spencer. Playing a dishwasher who befriends a blind photographer in Jocelyn Moorhouse’s “Proof” (1991) earned Crowe strong reviews, as well as the Best Supporting Actor Award from the Australian Film Institute. He copped a Best Actor trophy and international fame the following year for a blistering, yet nuanced performance as the vicious leader of a skinhead gang lashing out against a growing number of Asian immigrants in the controversial “Romper Stomper.” That same year, Crowe – who had been a musician since he was a teenager – formed the rock band 30 Odd Foot of Grunts with his old mates from Australia. Over the years, the band recorded several albums, none of which achieved any notable recognition or success.

With several films achieving success on the art house circuit, Crowe was established internationally and began to invoke comparisons with another transplanted Aussie, Mel Gibson. He followed up with an intriguing variety of offbeat projects, ranging from the historical drama “Hammers Over the Anvil” (1993) to the children’s film “The Silver Stallion King of the Wild Brumbies” (1993). Crowe gave another splendid performance as a virginal Welsh Baptist in “Love in Limbo” (1993) and shone as a gay plumber living with his middle-aged father (Jack Thompson) as both search for love in “The Sum of Us” (1994). It was inevitable for Hollywood to woo him with roles like his gunslinger-turned-preacher in the punchy Sharon Stone-produced Western, “The Quick and the Dead” (1995) and as the malevolent computer-generated serial killer in Denzel Washington’s star vehicle, “Virtuosity” (1995).

Thanks to Crowe’s brooding onscreen intensity, director Curtis Hanson offered him the plum role of Officer Bud White, a quick-tempered, brutal homicide detective in the superb adaptation of James Ellroy’s noir thriller “L.A. Confidential” (1997). Paired with fellow Aussie mate Guy Pearce and Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey, the actor completed a trio of detectives who investigate a web of police corruption and public scandal in 1950s Los Angeles. With a higher profile and an armload of good notices, Crowe next played a hockey player who gets the chance to play against a professional team in the David E. Kelley-scripted “Mystery, Alaska” before landing the choice role of tobacco industry whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand in Michael Mann’s fictional take on a true story, “The Insider” (both 1999). Crowe garnered a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his characterization of a family man who risks his life and reputation to refute public testimony given by cigarette manufacturers. The fact the he was able to morph into a paunchy, balding middle-aged man believably, also added to the growing comparisons to Brando and DeNiro.

As a follow-up, Crowe buffed up and undertook the title role in Ridley Scott’s big-budgeted summer release “Gladiator.” Playing Maximus, a fallen Roman general-turned-professional fighter, the actor more than dominated the film – he tore a hole in the big screen with his intensity, earning rave notices and a Best Actor Academy Award for his efforts. The role solidified Crowe as one of Hollywood’s top actors and most bankable male movie stars. He rounded out the year playing a professional negotiator in kidnapping cases who comes to the aid of an American woman in a fictional South American country in “Proof of Life.” The movie, however, was overshadowed by the media’s reporting of his brief fling with co-star Meg Ryan, whose then-marriage to Dennis Quaid was falling apart. A critical drubbing coupled with audience indifference – and some disgust over Crowe’s assumed corrupting of “America’s Sweetheart” by the press – put a final stake into the film, making it one of Crowe’s least memorable.

The disappointing box office and domestic scandal notwithstanding, Crowe emerged unscathed. He next portrayed John Nash, a real-life mathematician who descended into schizophrenia only to overcome his illness and go on to win a Nobel Prize in Ron Howard’s biopic “A Beautiful Mind” (2001). His beautifully realized, nuanced performance ranked as one of his best to date and earned the actor his third consecutive Best Actor Academy Award nomination, as well as a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama. Unfortunately, the well-earned Oscar slipped through his fingers following the first of a series of public altercations which cast a temporary shadow over his onscreen accomplishments. During Crowe’s acceptance of a BAFTA for Best Actor for “A Beautiful Mind,” the BAFTA show’s producer cut him off mid-speech and mid-poem, causing a fracas backstage when Crowe reportedly pinned the producer against the wall, threatening him and hurling obscenities. Feeling put upon by the media’s excessive attention to his personal life – especially his reputation as a brawler – Crowe retreated from the limelight for a spell, emerging only to marry longtime on-again, off-again girlfriend Danielle Spencer and to subsequently announce his impending fatherhood in 2003.

At the end of that year, however, Crowe’s name was again on the lips of filmgoers, critics and the Hollywood elite following his much-praised performance in director Peter Weir’s “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.” In the rollicking, harrowing high-seas adventure based on the series of 20 historical novels by Patrick O’Brien, Crowe made for a perfect screen incarnation of Capt. “Lucky” Jack Aubrey, the skipper of the beleaguered British naval vessel the H.M.S. Surprise during the Napoleonic Wars, who wrestles with his conscience as he forces his crew to embark on a perilous pursuit of their enemy. Crowe’s turn was immediately hailed as award-worthy, and the actor yet again demonstrated his lack of vanity and commitment to his craft when he physically bulked up to match the heavyset literary description of Lucky Jack. Though no Oscar nod was forthcoming, Crowe did receive a nomination for Best Actor in a dramatic role at the 2003 Golden Globes.

After a yearlong absence from the big screen, Crowe reunited for the third time with director Ron Howard for “Cinderella Man” (2005) and received yet another round of glowing reviews and Golden Globe nod for his charming turn as Depression-era fighter and folk hero Jim Braddock, who defeated heavyweight champ Max Baer in a 15-round slugfest in 1935. In his initial public appearances to promote the film, Crowe seemed more relaxed and at peace with himself than ever before. So it came as a bit of a shock when, in an even more publicized smackdown, the actor was arrested for assault in New York City the week of the film’s debut after he allegedly threw a telephone at a hotel concierge in a fit of pique when he could not reach his wife in Australia. The actor subsequently appeared on “The Late Show” (CBS, 1993- ) alongside host David Letterman to publicly apologize for his by-then infamous short fuse, while pleading guilty in November 2005 to third-degree assault in a court of law. He paid $160 in court fees and was told to behave himself for a year, avoiding a more serious charge that could have landed him in prison and cost him his U.S. work visa.

With the ugliness of the assault behind him, Crowe went back to work, starring in a couple of small budget films – perhaps to maintain a low profile. In “A Good Year” (2006), his second collaboration with Ridley Scott, Crowe played an investment banker operating in the cutthroat world of London finance who reluctantly agrees to take over a small vineyard after the death of his uncle (Albert Finney). It is in the open French countryside where he eventually learns that life is meant to be savored. After providing the narration for “Bra Boys” (2007), an Australian documentary about a much-maligned surfer community living near the Sydney suburb of Maroubra, Crowe returned to high profile features with James Mangold’s gritty western “3:10 to Yuma” (2007). While the film suffered a bit from the glut of Westerns released the same time, it was critically well-received, as was Crowe’s performance as an imprisoned desperado who convinces a desperate rancher (Christian Bale) to help him escape in exchange for a share of hidden loot.

The cast of “3:10” was nominated for a Best Cast award from the Screen Actor’s Guild, as was the cast of Crowe’s next feature, “American Gangster” (2008). This time, Crowe was back on the right side of the law, playing a detective who teams up with a former drug kingpin (Denzel Washington) in order to expose corrupt cops and foreign nationals profiting from smuggling heroin. Later in the year, Crowe appeared opposite Leonardo DiCaprio as the overseer of a CIA operative tracking a high-ranking terrorist in Ridley Scott’s “Body of Lies” (2008). The rote espionage thriller was boosted by the pair’s excellent performances. Crowe followed up with another politically inspired tale, “State of Play” (2009), which found him portraying a newspaper editor investigating the mysterious death of a Washington politician’s (Ben Affleck) mistress. Teaming with director Scott again, Crowe took on the historic role of “Robin Hood” (2010), combining his explorations of law enforcement and criminals to portray the leader of a band of “Merry Men” whose mission is to spread the wealth of the wealthy among the deserving poor. That same year, he played a mild-mannered husband determined to free his wrongly jailed wife – even if that means busting her out of prison – in Paul Haggis’ rather underwhelming thriller “The Next Three Days” (2010).

In October 2012, after nearly a decade of marriage, Crowe and wife Danielle Spencer announced their separation, each committing to maintain a civil relationship for the sake of their sons. As speculation ran rampant among the tabloids, the prime suspect in what led to the break up was Crowe’s increasingly hectic work schedule, which had ramped up considerably in the recent year. Among the slew of projects Crowe began appearing in by the end of the year was the martial arts actioner “The Man with the Iron Fists” (2012), an homage to Hong Kong action flicks from the ’70s, directed and co-scripted by rap superstar RZA. In the film, co-written and produced by horror auteur Eli Roth, Crowe played Jack Knife, an opium-addicted British soldier named after his weapon of choice. Little more than a month later, he was seen again in one of the most eagerly anticipated productions of the year, a lavish, big-budget cinematic adaptation of the smash Broadway musical “Les Misérables” (2012), based on the novel by Victor Hugo. Cast as the obsessed Inspector Javert, Crowe not only delivered an intense portrayal opposite fellow Aussie Hugh Jackman, but gave audiences a sampling of his impressive vocal abilities, performing several of the iconic songs by Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil and Herbert Kretzmer.

By Shawn Dwyer

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
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Robert Shaw
Robert Shaw
Robert Shaw

My favourite autograph and one of the rarest is of the brilliant actor Robert Shaw. He has starred in such magnificent movies as “Jaws”, “The Deep”, “The Sting”, “The Taking of Pelham 1…2…3..”, “A Man For All Seasons” and “From Russia With Love”. Sadly he died of a heart attack at his Irish home in Tourmakeady, Co Mayo in 1978 at the age of only 51. He was married to the beautiful Mary Ure(who starred in “Where Eagles Dare” with Clint Eastwood) who also died very young aged 42 in 1975.

TCM overview:

A rough-hewn British character actor who played more leading roles later in his career, Robert Shaw went from being typecast as tough-guy villains to proving his versatility in a wide range of performances. Shaw had his start on the stage in the late 1940s and quickly segued to the screen where he broke through as an assassin for SPECTRE in “From Russia with Love” (1963). But it was his Oscar-nominated turn as King Henry VIII in “A Man for All Seasons” (1966) that helped shed new light on the actor, leading to a variety of characters in films like “Battle of Britain” (1969), “A Town Called Hell” (1971) and “Young Winston” (1972). Shaw then entered his most fruitful period to play ruthless mob boss Doyle Lonnegan in “The Sting” (1973) and criminal mastermind Mr. Blue in “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” (1974), which paved the way for his most iconic performance as salty Quint in Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” (1975). From there, Shaw was a leading man in a number of major studio films like “Black Sunday” (1977), “Force 10 from Navarone” (1977) and “Avalanched Express” (1979). But at the height of his career, Shaw suffered a fatal heart attack. Whether on screen or as the author of award-winning novels, Shaw was a unique talent the likes of whom would not be seen again.

Born on Aug. 9, 1927 in Westhoughton, Lancashire, England, Shaw was raised by his father, Thomas, a physician, and his mother, Doreen, a former nurse. When he was seven years old, the family moved to Scotland and when he was 12, Shaw’s father – a manic depressive and alcoholic – committed suicide. As a result, the family moved to Cornwall where Shaw attended the independent Truro School and briefly taught school in Saltburn-by-the-Sea, before attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1949, he made his stage debut with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon and later in the year toured Australia with the Old Vic. Shaw soon made his London stage debut in a West End production of “Caro William” (1951) and a few years later, transitioned to the screen with minor supporting roles in “The Dam Busters” (1955) and “A Hill in Korea” (1956), before returning to the stage to star in his own play, “Off the Mainland” (1956). Following a turn in the British crime thriller “Man from Tangier” (1957), he spent 39 episodes as the lead pirate on the children-themed series “The Buccaneers” (ITV, 1956-57).

Following the show, Shaw went back to the big screen for small roles in “Sea Fury” (1958) and “Libel” (1959), before landing episodes of British series like “The Four Just Men” (ITV, 1959-1960) and “Danger Man” (ITV, 1960-68). After playing Leontes in the feature adaptation of “The Winter’s Tale” (1961), he played cunning SPECTRE assassin Red Grant in “From Russia with Love” (1963). At this point, Shaw became a published author with The Hiding Place (1960) and The Sun Doctor, the latter of which won the 1962 Hawthornden Prize. He next played King Claudius in Grigori Kozintsev’s adaptation of “Hamlet” (1964), the Ghost of Christmas Future in “Carol for Another Christmas” (1964), and a fictional colonel fighting in “Battle of the Bulge” (1965), an epic war film about the famed World War II battle starring Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas and Charles Bronson. In “A Man for All Seasons” (1966), Shaw was King Henry VIII to Paul Scofield’s Sir Thomas More and Orson Welles’ Cardinal Wolsey, a performance that earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor – the only such honor of his career.

Shaw went on to portray Gen. George Armstrong Custer in the critically derided Western “Custer of the West” (1967), before starring in William Friedkin’s adaptation of Harold Pinter’s “The Birthday Party” (1968). In the “Battle of Britain” (1969), Shaw was cast alongside British heavyweights like Laurence Olivier, Trevor Howard, Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine and Susannah York for this epic and surprisingly historically accurate depiction of England’s fight to stop the Luftwaffe from bombing Britain back to the Stone Age. That same year, he starred opposite Plummer in the historical drama “The Royal Hunt of the Sun” (1969), while the following year he had his first screenwriting credit with “Figures in a Landscape” (1970), wherein he played an escaped convict alongside Malcolm McDowell who try to escape from the secret police of an unidentified totalitarian country. Following a leading performance in the little known Western “A Town Called Hell” (1971), he was Lord Randolph Churchill, father to Winston Churchill (Simon Ward) in “Young Winston” (1972), a British-made biopic about the early years of the future prime minister.

Though a well-known actor both in Britain and America, Shaw had yet to hit his most fertile period, which commenced with his turn as ruthless Irish mob boss Doyle Lonnegan in “The Sting” (1973), who becomes the target of a long con by two confidence men (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) after he kills their friend and mentor (Robert Earl Jones). Shaw’s performance as the barely contained Lonnegan was a terrific counterpoint to Newman’s devil-may-care turn as expert con artist Henry Gondorff, which was perfectly exemplified in a card game where Lonnegan is out-cheated by Gondoff – one of the more memorable scenes of this multi-Oscar winning film. Shaw next played Mr. Blue, a criminal mastermind who leads a gang of thieves into a New York subway to steal $1 million in the commercial and critical action hit “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” (1974). Standing in Mr. Blue’s way is a gruff, but determined transit cop (Walter Matthau), who contends with the chaos of multiple city agencies and a reluctant mayor (Lee Wallace) while trying to figure out just how the gang plans to escape the subway tunnel while surrounded by police.

The following year, Shaw delivered his most iconic performance in Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” (1975) playing Quint, a salty old shark fisherman who hunts down a killer great white with a landlubber police chief (Roy Scheider) and a know-it-all marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss). Shaw’s turn as the grizzled seafarer was the film’s most memorable, particularly in his confrontations with Dreyfuss’ bookish biologist and in his haunting recount of the sinking of the doomed U.S.S. Indianapolis. The movie was a monster hit and the highest-grossing film ever made at the time, making “Jaws” Shaw’s most successful film on all fronts. From there, Shaw starred alongside James Earl Jones as two pirates in “Swashbuckler” (1976) and played the Sheriff of Nottingham to Sean Connery’s Robin Hood in “Robin and Marian” (1976). He went on to search for sunken treasure with Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset in “The Deep” (1977) and was an Israeli military officer trying to thwart a crazed Vietnam vet (Bruce Dern) from blowing up the Super Bowl in “Black Sunday” (1977). Shaw next starred in the sequel “Force 10 From Navarone” (1977), taking over the Gregory Peck role as the leader of a special forces group that tries to blow up a bridge with a traitor in their midst. After completing the filming of “Avalanche Express” (1979), where he played a Russian general who defects to the United States, Shaw suffered a sudden heart attack while home in Tourmakeady, County Mayo, Ireland. He was only 51 years old.

By Shawn Dwyer

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Robert Shaw
Robert Shaw
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Keith Prentice
Keith Prentice
Keith Prentice
Keith Prentice
Keith Prentice

 

As per Wikipedia: Keith Prentice (February 21, 1940 – September 27, 1992) was a Dayton, Ohio-born American TV, film and stage actor, whose most famous role was the part of Larry in both the original stage and film versions of The Boys in the Band. Prentice also appeared on the classic TV soap Dark Shadowsduring the series’ final months in 1971. Until just several years ago, his picture was displayed on the Tasters Choice coffee label.

Prentice studied in New York City at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. His stage musical credits include Sail Away, The Sound of Music,Paint Your Wagon, and The King and I. In 1968, he appeared off-Broadway in the non-musical The Boys in the Band, a once controversial play featuring gay characters at a dramatic birthday party – the Summer before the Stonewall gay civil rights riots. He also appeared in the movie version of the play. In 1971 Keith joined the cast of Dark Shadows playing Morgan Collins in the show’s 1841PT plot line. Prentice also appeared as Nils Fowler in the 1972 film The Legend of Nigger Charley and had a small role in the 1980 film Cruising which, like Boys in the Band, was directed by William Friedkin.

In 1982 Keith Prentice co-founded Kettering Theatre Under The Stars, and directed summer shows there until the year of his death. He died of AIDS-related cancer on September 27, 1992 inKettering, Ohio.[1][2][3]

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Armand Assante
Armand Assante
Armand Assante

Armand Assante was born in 1949 in New York City.   His parents were of Italian and Irish extraction.   His movies include “Private Benjamin” in 1980, “Unfaithfully Yours” and this year’s “Dead Man Down”.

TCM overview:

With his ethnic name and exotic good looks, Armand Assante was often mistaken by casting agents early in his career for foreign talent. The native New Yorker paid his dues in regional theatre and as a regular on the soap opera “The Doctors” (NBC, 1963-1982), but work in films was longer in coming. Although Assante was courted by such 1970s auteurs as Francis Ford Coppola and Terence Malick, it was future action star Sylvester Stallone who gave him his first big breaks – as an extra in “The Lords of Flatbush” (1974) and as his co-star in “Paradise Alley” (1978). Typed as a slightly unreliable romantic leading man, Assante scored with moviegoers in “Private Benjamin” (1980) opposite Goldie Hawn and “Little Darlings” (1980) with Tatum O’Neal, but his first star outing, as Mike Hammer in the 1982 “I, the Jury” remake, was a box office dud. More successful on the small screen, Assante subspecialized in mobster roles in the trashy miniseries “Rage of Angels” (NBC, 1983), Jack Nicholson’s “Hoffa” (1992) and the HBO biopic “Gotti” (1996), while proving a credible leading man in the indie “Belizaire, the Cajun” (1986) and “The Mambo Kings” (1991) with Antonio Banderas. Disinclined to trade on his looks for A-list status, Assante quit Hollywood to live off the grid with his family in upstate New York. The actor spent the better part of his career bouncing between low budget films and made-for-TV fare, lending an inarguable intensity and a disarming level of intelligence to any job he chose to take on.

Armand Anthony Assante, Jr., was born on Oct. 4, 1949, in New York City. The middle child and only son of Armand Assante, Sr., a fine artist-turned-Madison Avenue ad man, and Katherine Healy, a published poet and teacher at the Manhattan School of Music, Assante moved with his family to the upstate New York town of Cornwall in 1957 but never forgot the lessons in tolerance and compassion he had learned in his ethically mixed neighborhood in Washington Heights. Interested initially in music, Assante was a drummer for the local band the Phaeton Four, performing professionally on weekends. Although he had flirted with the notion of joining the U.S. Marines after his graduation from Cornwall High School, Assante enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. Winning the Jehlinger Prize for promising new actors in 1969, he was invited to study opera at the Manhattan School of Music but pointed himself instead toward the life of a professional actor.

During his journeyman years as a jobbing actor on Broadway and in regional theatre, Assante scored an early coup with a recurring role on the NBC soap opera “The Doctors” (1963-1982). An association with rising star Sylvester Stallone landed him extra work in the Columbia Pictures nostalgia piece “The Lords of Flatbush” (1974). Flush from his later success as the writer and star of “Rocky” (1976), Stallone would remember Assante and cast him in his directorial debut, “Paradise Alley” (1978). Set in Hell’s Kitchen during the Forties, with Assante as the ambitious brother of Stallone’s amiable meathead, the film set the tone for Assante’s early career as a dark-eyed actor of brooding handsomeness and banked fury. Early in his career, Assante dated the actress Dyan Cannon, ex-wife of Hollywood legend Cary Grant and 12 years his senior.

The Irish-Italian actor would be called upon to essay a plethora of ethnic types early in his career: an Arab in the CBS telefilm “The Pirate” (1978), an American Indian in John Frankenheimer’s revenge-of-nature thriller “Prophecy” (1979), and a suave Frenchman who woos Goldie Hawn’s vulnerable non-com in “Private Benjamin” (1980). Gaining international attention as much from his good looks as his acting abilities, Assante was slotted into the role of an adult camp counselor who contemplates a sexual liaison with an underage girl in “Little Darlings” (1980), opposite Tatum O’Neal. As a Cuban dictator patterned after Fidel Castro, Assante was lost in the twice-baked mix of James Toback’s critically-reviled “Love & Money” (1982), but proved an inspired and updated Mike Hammer in “I, the Jury” (1982), the second film adaptation of the classic pulp novel by Mickey Spillane. Unfortunately for Assante, the film was both a critical and box office failure.

Based on the trash classic by Sidney Sheldon, the NBC miniseries “Rage of Angels” (1983) widened Assante’s fanbase more than all his feature films put together. Growing weary of life in Hollywood, the actor relocated to upstate New York to raise his children near his parents, while frustrating publicists with his disinclination to trade on his image as a Latin lothario. He next appeared opposite funnyman Dudley Moore and actress Nastassja Kinski in “Unfaithfully Yours” (1984), an amusing but inconsequential remake of the Preston Sturges classic. A better use of Assante’s time was as an Acadian healer in the independent film “Belizaire, the Cajun” (1986), written and directed by Glen Petrie and shot on location in Louisiana. A fully-bearded Assante made the role a tour-de-force but the film was given only a limited release and remained one of his more obscure credits.

Alienated from Hollywood and no longer considered A-list material, Assante lapsed into a run of low budget and made-for-TV films, among them the ABC miniseries “Napoleon and Josephine” (1987), in which he played Napoleon Bonaparte to Jacqueline Bisset’s Josephine Beauharnais, and the Mexican morality play “The Penitent” (1988) with Raul Julia. Traveling to London for the CBS miniseries “Jack the Ripper” (1988) opposite Michael Caine, Assante threw himself into the part of famed stage actor Richard Mansfield and his signature roles of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Exhausted by the effort, Assante suffered a nervous breakdown upon completion of the film and was put onto the Concorde back to the United States in a wheelchair. He was paired with Karen Allen in the romantic comedy “Animal Behavior” (1989) but amped up his trademark intensity as a Puerto Rican drug lord in Sidney Lumet’s “Q&A” (1990).

It was Assante’s supporting performance in the Lumet film that won him a leading role opposite Antonio Banderas in “The Mambo Kings” (1992), in a part abdicated by Kevin Kline. Although the film’s producers wanted a more marketable name and pushed for the casting of Jeremy Irons, first-time director Arne Glimcher insisted on Assante, whose career enjoyed an appreciable uptake after the film’s release. Actor-director Jack Nicholson tapped Assante for the small role of a mobster in “Hoffa” (1992) while Ridley Scott cast him as Gabriel Sanchez, chief treasurer of the Spanish Court of Aragon, in “1492: Conquest of Paradise” (1992). Comedy director Carl Reiner offered the actor a change-of-pace role in “Fatal Instinct” (1993), a broad spoof of “Basic Instinct” (1992) that allowed Assante to perform slapstick. Assante again appeared opposite Sylvester Stallone, as a Third Millennium psychopath bedeviling Stallone’s peacekeeping “Judge Dredd” (1995), and came to the rescue of FBI secretary-turned-pole dancer Demi Moore in “Striptease” (1996), based on the steamy crime novel by Carl Hiaasen.

For the made-for-cable movie “Gotti” (1996), Assante took on the role of real life New York Mafiosi, who had seized control of the Gambino crime family in 1985 and was then serving a life sentence for a laundry list of charges running from racketeering to murder. In 2000, Assante starred in the made-for-TV remake of the doomsday drama “On the Beach” and provided a voice for the DreamWorks animated feature “The Road to El Dorado.”  Director Ridley Scott reunited with Assante for the fact-based “American Gangster” (2007), in which the actor appeared as a crime family capo. Assante was a racketeer of another stripe in the Hallmark Channel’s “Shark Swarm” (2008), in which his floridly named real estate magnate Hamilton Lux is the cause of the eponymous feeding frenzy, but he brought surprising pathos to the title role of “When Nietzsche Wept” (2007), as the famously troubled 19th Century German philosopher.

By Richard Harland Smith

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
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Ted Danson
Ted Danson
Ted Danson
“One critic reviewing ‘Dad’ said that Ted Danson was the best light comedian in the world – which was tempting providence, since Jack Lemmon was also in the film.   Would anyone settle for the second best light comedian in the world?   For some years now his bartender – formerly owner – of ‘Cheers’ has delighted millions.   Sam Malone is ever hopeful, ever optimistic, a jock with a big head and a big heart .   He has had a yen for both his leading ladies, Shelley Long and Kirstie Alle, both uppity dames in their different ways, but he has always been ready to overlook than when they shows signs of admitting what he knows to be true. that he is irresistible   Lemmon is the most outstanding of his predecessors, in a line going back to William Powell – but no further since we are talking about the Sound era when their vowels and consonants can wander over a veritable glissando: at the same time Danson can be witty with his hands, his eyes, his chin – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars- The Independent Years”. (1991).
 
 
Danson will forever be remembered for his performance as ‘Sam Malone’ in the hit TV series “Cheers” which ran from 1982 until 1993. He has starred in movies too such as !”The Onion Field” and “Body Heat”. He is married to actress Mary Steenburgen.
TCM overview:

An ingratiating actor who projected an air of easygoing charm in both comedic and dramatic roles, Ted Danson reigned at the top of the television ratings heap for over a decade as Sam Malone, the lothario ex-pitcher-turned-bartender on the hit sitcom “Cheers” (NBC, 1982-1993). The show’s popularity translated into occasional film work for Danson, most notably “Three Men and a Baby” (1987) and its 1990 sequel. But it was the small screen that offered him the widest variety of projects, from a father accused of incest in the television movie “Something About Amelia” (1984) to Jonathan Swift’s famed explorer in “Gulliver’s Travels” (1996). None of his subsequent attempts at a series matched “Cheers” in terms of popularity, but he found some of his best roles guest starring as himself on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” (HBO, 2000- ) and the first season of “Damages” (FX, 2007- ), on which he played Arthur Frobisher, a manipulative CEO desperately trying to fend off a ruthless prosecutor (Glenn Close). Thanks to that role, Danson enjoyed a return to critical acclaim while opening doors to other projects, including the HBO comedy “Bored to Death” (2009- ) and the long-running hit series “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” (CBS, 2000- ), making him a more viable performer than ever before.

The son of a prominent archeologist and museum director, Danson was born Edward Bridge Danson III on Dec. 29, 1947 in San Diego, CA, and was raised near the Navajo reservation in Flagstaff, AZ. Tall and athletic at an early age, he excelled at basketball while at prep school in Connecticut, and would have graduated from Stanford had he not followed a prospective girlfriend into an audition. He transferred to Carnegie Mellon to study drama during his second year, graduating in 1968. The stage provided his earliest roles, including a stint with Joseph Papp’s Shakespeare in the Park and as understudy in the Broadway production of Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Inspector Hound,” but commercials and print work – including a run as the “Aramis Man” for the popular cologne – provided a steady paycheck. From 1970 to 1975, he was married to stage and television actress Randy Danson; shortly after their marriage dissolved, he landed his first recurring TV job as heelish lawyer Tom Conway on the daytime soap “Somerset” (ABC, 1970-76). After the show’s cancellation, he was a regular guest star on episodic series, which prompted a move to Los Angeles in 1978. By then, he had remarried to Casey Coates, with whom he had two daughters; Coates suffered a stroke during the birth of their first daughter, which required Danson to curtail some of his acting pursuits for six months while raising his newborn child single-handedly. The couple also adopted a second daughter, who experienced some public troubles later in life.

The following year, he landed his first movie role as the mournful and ill-fated Lt. James Campbell in Harold Becker’s “The Onion Field” (1979). Danson received positive reviews, but returned to television guest shots immediately thereafter. Another career peak came in 1981, when he was cast as the glib district attorney in Lawrence Kasdan’s terrific neo-noir, “Body Heat.” Producer Glen Charles caught his performance in the film and tapped Danson to play Sam Malone on his new series – a comedy set in a Boston bar called “Cheers.” A ratings disaster during its freshman year on the air, it eventually blossomed into one of NBC’s biggest hits and one of only a handful of quintessential sitcom classics in the history of the medium. The show’s sharp writing and terrific ensemble cast were among its many virtues, but few could ignore the chemistry between Danson and Shelly Long’s uptight grad student-turned-waitress Diane Chambers, which boiled slowly for three seasons before blossoming into full-blown romance by the fourth season. Long left the show at the end of its fifth season in 1987 under a cloud of controversy – most notably allegations of bad blood between she and the rest of the cast – but time healed most of those wounds over the next two decades, particularly between she and Danson. The actor’s testosterone-fueled, yet breezy delivery and charm made him very popular with fans, especially female viewers (many of whom were shocked when he revealed that he wore a hair piece on the series finale). Such was the popularity of Danson and his Sam Malone, he received two Emmys (in 1990 and 1993) and two Golden Globes (in 1989 and 1990). All in all, Danson was nominated 11 times for the Emmy and six for the Golden Globe.

Danson’s popularity on “Cheers” allowed him considerable leverage to explore other roles on television as well as in film; among his best efforts outside the series were the uncomfortable incest movie-of-the-week, “Something About Amelia,” which earned him a Emmy nod and a Golden Globe for his dramatic performance, as well as the blockbuster hit “Three Men and a Baby,” which partnered him with fellow 1980s superstars Tom Selleck and Steve Guttenberg. Danson also received good notices as a married man who falls for another woman (Isabella Rosellini) in “Cousins” (1989), a charming remake of the French comedy “Cousin, Cousine” (1975). He also dabbled with serving as producer on several made-for-television movies, including the solid mystery “When the Bough Breaks” (1986) and the short-lived series “Down Home” (NBC, 1990-91).

By 1993, however, Danson’s career found itself in the weeds. “Cheers” had rung the bell for last call to great fanfare that year, and despite the success of the “Three Men” movies, he was still Sam Malone in the minds of most Americans. His marriage to Coates was floundering as well, and many cringed when he began a very public romance with Whoopi Goldberg, his co-star in a DOA comedy called “Made in America” (1993), while still legally married. A subsequent appearance at a Friar’s Roast for Goldberg, for which he donned blackface and ate watermelon, only cast him further adrift (the ensuing furor over his performance tended to ignore the fact that Goldberg herself had written much of the material). Danson, now divorced from his wife, dropped out of view for a few years, and popped up in harmless family fare like “Getting Even with Dad” (1994) and independent dramas like “Pontiac Moon” (1994). The latter production proved fateful for Danson, as it introduced him to acclaimed actress Mary Steenburgen, whom he would marry in 1995. Her relationship with then-First Lady Hillary Clinton kept Danson in the news courtesy of photo opportunities with President Bill Clinton, and the couple were frequent and public campaigners for the environment and other liberal endeavors.

Television offered a way back for Danson. He scored a substantial success as Lemuel Gulliver in an award-winning miniseries adaptation of “Gulliver’s Travels” (1996), but stumbled with “Ink” (CBS, 1996-97), a much-publicized return to sitcoms, with Danson and Steenburgen playing divorced journalists who still carry a torch for one another (Danson also served as executive producer). “Becker” (CBS, 1998-2004) proved more popular, though the show aimed for easy targets in its story of an easily annoyed medico and his tolerant staff and friends. Danson also popped up in supporting turns for two high profile movies during this period; he was seen briefly in Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” (1998) and Lawrence Kasdan’s comedy “Mumford,” though neither appearance sparked a revival of his film career.

Though “Becker” kept him busy, Danson managed to find time to star in several TV movies, including a Secret Service agent involved in a controversy brewing over refused treatment to Gulf War vets in “Thanks of a Grateful Nation” (1998), a Satellite Award-nominated turn as psychic James Van Praagh in the creepy “Living with the Dead” (2002), and “It Must Be Love” (2004), a cute romantic comedy which afforded him screen time with Steenburgen. The couple also began appearing as themselves in Larry David’s offbeat HBO comedy “Curb Your Enthusiasm;” Danson in particular seemed to enjoy playing the occasional foil to David’s crotchety TV persona, and at times evinced a gleefulness not seen since his “Cheers” days.

After “Becker” closed down shop, Danson appeared in several high-profile television movies, including “Our Fathers” (2005), about the Roman Catholic abuse scandals, and “Knights of the South Bronx (2005), for which Danson earned a Screen Actors Guild nomination for his portrayal of an inner city teacher who inspires his students through chess. As expected, Danson returned to regular series work with “Help Me Help You” (ABC, 2006). The show, about a troubled therapist (Danson) and his patients, was axed mid-season due to low ratings, and a comedy feature, “The Amateurs” (2005) about small town citizens attempting to raise cash by shooting an adult film went unreleased until 2007.

That same year, Danson landed one of his best roles to date in “Damages” as Arthur Frobisher, an unscrupulous businessman who attempts to cover up a massive scheme to defraud his employees of their savings. A congenial family man on the surface, Frobisher shows his true colors by unleashing all manner of vicious schemes to keep the legal team, led by the ruthless Patty Hewes (Glenn Close), from uncovering his machinations. Critics hailed Danson’s performance, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination in 2008. The busy actor also returned to the movies with several projects in 2008. He co-starred as Diane Keaton’s husband in the comedy “Mad Money,” lent his voice to an animated children’s feature, “The Magic Seven” (2008), and reunited with Steenburgen onscreen in a supporting role in “Nobel Son” (2007). Meanwhile, Danson revived Arthur Frobisher for the second season of “Damages,” which earned him an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2009. Returning to comedy, Danson was one of the stars of “Bored to Death” (HBO, 2009- ), playing the party-going boss of a neurotic writer-turned-bungling private detective (Jason Schwartzman) who tries to solve mysteries to varying degrees of success. Back with “Damages” for the third season, Danson again earned an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his performance as Arthur Frobisher. On a late-career roll, Danson made entertainment headlines when it was announced that he would be replacing Laurence Fishburne as the new head of the fictional crime lab during the 12th season of the long-running forensic procedural “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” (CBS, 2000- ). Much to the relief of his “Bored to Death” fans, the actor had no plans to leave the quirky comedy, and would accommodate the demands of both shows into his increasingly busy schedule.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

 
 

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Betsy Blair
Betsy Blair
Betsy Blair

Betsy Blair is perhaps best remembered by moviegoers for her performance in “Marty” opposite Ernest Borgnine in 1955.   She was born in New Jersey in 1923 and began her acting career on the Broadway stage.   In her late teens she married the actor/dancer Gene Kelly and went with him to Hollywood.  Her film debut came in 1947 in “A Double Life” which starred Ronald Colman.   She was also featured in “Another Part of the Forest” and “The Snake Pit” which starred Olivia de Havillamd.     After her divorce from Kelly, she married the British based film director Karel Reisz and settled in the UK whereshe made such movies as “A Delicate Balance” in 1975.   She died in 2009 in London.

Brian Baxter;s “Guardian” obituary:

Few film-makers of the left emerged unscathed from the Hollywood witchhunt led by Senator Joe McCarthy. Some died, some were ruined, some headed for Europe. Others named names. Among its victims, the actor Betsy Blair, who has died aged 85, considered herself fortunate.

Despite being blacklisted, she was made less vulnerable by her marriage to fellow socialist Gene Kelly who, by the early 1950s, was virtually untouchable thanks to such succesful movies as On the Town, An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain. Eventually she was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar for her role in the 1955 film Marty.   Blair began acting in films in the late 1940s, with small roles in sturdy dramas such as The Guilt of Janet Ames, George Cukor’s A Double Life and Another Part of the Forest, from the play by Lillian Hellman. She fell out of favour for activities that included substantial fundraising for leftwing causes. After Kind Lady (1951), where she nearly lost the part, she found herself unemployable. But, cushioned by wealth and a highly intelligent, inquisitive mind, she coped – still in her early 20s – with “committee” work, as wife to a superstar and mother to their five-year-old daughter.

Born Elizabeth Winifred Boger in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, she had started her career very early. After graduating from high school at 15 and being too impatient to wait to take up her scholarship at university, she went – with her teacher mother’s connivance (her father was an insurance broker) – for an audition as a dancer in a New York night club. The teenager from a sedate, small-town background found herself in the big city, directed by and in love with the choreographer Gene Kelly.   She understudied the role of Laura in the Broadway production of The Glass Menagerie and took the lead in Willliam Saroyan’s play The Beautiful People. When Hollywood beckoned, the newly married couple headed west, arriving in Los Angeles on the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, 7 December 1941.

Blair’s initial disdain for movies allowed her to concentrate on theatre work, motherhood, keeping open house to the elite of Hollywood and fundraising. She was turned down by the Communist party, which feared that her joining might compromise Kelly’s outside activities.   After a handful of parts and an enforced hiatus between 1951 and 1955, she was tentatively offered the role of Clara in the movie version of Paddy Chayevsky’s teleplay, Marty. Thanks to pressure from the writer and Kelly, she was finally given the role, despite the blacklist.

The film, a tender portrait of a lonely butcher (Ernest Borgnine) and a plain girl who fall in love, became a sleeper: a critical and box-office success despite unknown actors and a small budget. It led to Oscar nominations for both leads. Borgnine took the best actor award. For Blair the outcome was different: “I got the nomination. I won the best actress award at the Cannes film festival and was hot for 200 days.” She later took the best actress award at Bafta and found herself more famous in Europe than in America where, despite the accolades, she found no work, except in a Joseph H Lewis western, The Halliday Brand (1957). She left the US and Kelly for France, a Frenchman and a new life.

A small role in Tony Richardson’s BBC TV production of Othello (1955) was followed by Meeting in Paris, a comedy with Claude Brasseur. More notice was paid to her next movie (in Spain) where she played a variation of her role as Clara. Calle Mayor (Main Street, 1956), directed by Juan Antonio Bardem, cast her as a small-town spinster who is duped into bed by the local lothario with a promise of marriage. Unfortunately for Isabel, he is doing it for a bet. During the shooting Bardem was arrested by the Franco regime but, thanks to international pressure, was released and completed the rather melancholy film to some acclaim.   Blair followed it with Il Grido (The Cry, 1957), directed by the great Michelangelo Antonioni. This neo-realist drama set in the industrialised Po valley of northern Italy came at the end of the cycle of such films, and was only a modest success. Blair continued working in movies, including an early version of Lies My Father Told Me (1960) in Ireland, and two Italian movies, I Delfini (1960) and Senilita (1961). Following a move to Britain, she made Basil Dearden and Michael Relph’s All Night Long (1962), a film set in the London jazz scene.

Blair decided to stay in London where, in 1963, she met and married Karel Reisz, then established – via the Free Cinema movement and his feature debut Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – as an important director.   For years she worked only sporadically, including Das Bombe (1964) and Claude Berri’s comedy Marry Me, Marry Me (1968). She also returned to the theatre – an early highlight was an elegant evening of music and poetry, The Spoon River Anthology (1964), at the Royal Court theatre. She was also among a remarkable cast in the film version of Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance (1973), directed by Tony Richardson. But during this period she decided to train as a speech therapist – to the bemusement of her friends.   In the mid-1980s she embarked on a spate of television and movie work, beginning with an excellent thriller, Descent Into Hell (1986), made in France. She made Flight of the Spruce Goose (1986) in Poland, was the mother in the poor television revamp of a Hitchcock classic, Suspicion (1987), and featured in the series Thirtysomething (1989).

More than 30 years after her last Hollywood movie, she returned there to film Betrayed (1988), a political thriller directed by Costa-Gavras. This gripping story of a white supremacist (Tom Berenger) being tracked by an FBI undercover agent cast her as the racist’s mother. Blair matched Berenger’s chilling performance with authority and grace. A spot in one of the Marcus Welby television episodes, and a role as Sister of Mercy in the sprawling mini-series Scarlett (a sequel to Gone With the Wind, 1994), were – disappointingly – all that followed.   In 1999 she was one of many distinguished contributors to the documentary The Rodgers & Hart Story: Thou Swell, Thou Witty and – not surprisingly – turned up in both the Gene Kelly and Judy Garland episodes of the BBC Hollywood Greats series (2000). In 2002 she was due to feature in Stephen Daldry’s The Hours, playing the older Laura Brown; in her younger guise, the depressive 50s housewife was played by Julianne Moore. In the event Blair did not, because Reisz became ill and died later that year; Moore ended up playing those scenes with old-age makeup.

Blair’s autobiography, The Memory of All That: Love and Politics in New York, Hollywood and Paris, was published in 2003. She declared herself content, having, she said, no regrets about the blacklist, which obliged her to mature as a person and – consequently – as an actor. Modestly, she once said, “it certainly wasn’t much of a career. For all my ambitions, I think my life was more important to me.” Her daughter Kerry Kelly Novick and stepsons Matthew, Toby and Barney Reisz survive her.

Arabella Weir writes: I first met Betsy when I was a know-it-all 12-year-old via my friend, her stepson, Toby, Karel Reisz’s middle son of three. Betsy presided over a large, friendly, uniquely inclusive house. She had a charming, relaxed, sunny attitude to the stream of friends her stepsons would bring home at all hours. Betsy was unlike any grown-up I’d ever met – happily offering endless, delicious meals, more often than not a bed, tolerance and inclusion in adult conversations whenever we, “the kids”, would pop into view. Eventually Betsy and Karel became my friends independently, supporting and encouraging me as I started a career in acting. Although Betsy was an intelligent, informed and outspoken woman, it’s impossible to think of her without thinking of Karel. Whilst devoted to him, Betsy never seemed like anything less than his equal. Karel and Betsy’s house was often filled with the great and good, yet Betsy was never grand or precious with her guests. They were just their friends, like the rest of us.

If Betsy was in your corner you’d always be OK, but when you got into trouble she could be very steely. Betsy had a very distinctive, singsong way of saying “hello” when she answered the phone. One time she caught Toby, Barney and I larking around doing an exaggerated version of her unique “hello” – something as young teenagers we naturally found hilarious. Betsy did not and with one look we were chastened. You didn’t mess with Betsy.   She was a tremendously loving, loyal and ceaselessly supportive friend – and really good, often wicked, fun. You could talk to her about absolutely anything – nothing shocked her. I’m extraordinarily lucky to have had her as my surrogate mother for 40 years.

• Betsy Blair (Elizabeth Winifred Boger), actor, born 11 December 1923; died 13 March 2009

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Betsy Blair was born in Cliffside, New Jersey, a child model before finding work as a chorus dancer at the early age of 15. She received her first mini-break on Broadway in “Panama Hattie” in 1940 delivering a single line, but by the next year she had copped the ingénue lead in William Saroyan‘s “The Beautiful People.” At around the same time, she met dancer extraordinaire Gene Kelly and married him in 1940. Despite her background in dance, Betsy was admittedly not in the same league as a Vera-Ellen, Cyd Charisse, or Ann Miller, so she was never afforded the opportunity to glide with Gene in films. Moreover, she never even appeared in a musical film.

She made her large screen debut in 1947 and, for the next couple of years, appeared in a number of above-average dramas such as The Guilt of Janet Ames (1947), A Double Life(1947) starring Ronald Colman, The Snake Pit (1948), wherein she played a demented inmate alongside Olivia de Havilland, and a shining role in Another Part of the Forest(1948). After such promise, things came to a halt. Betsy had been involved in SAG politics as early as 1946 proposing the formation of the first Anti-Discrimination committee. Within a year the House Un-American Activities Committe began to investigate Betsy and others in the motion picture industry and what they considered left-wing extremist viewpoints. Her name appeared in the “Red Channels” and that was that. Her career was undone. By the early 1950s, all film offers had dried up. The only reason Betsy won the female lead in the 1955 cinematic classic Marty (1955) was because her husband threatened to stop shooting at MGM if they didn’t let her work despite the blacklist. It would be the role of a lifetime for Betsy. As the touching plain-Jane girlfriend of Ernest Borgnine‘s title butcher, Betsy won the Cannes Film and British Film acting awards, not to mention an Oscar nomination. It did not help her overcome the blacklist, however.

By 1957, she was divorced from Kelly and had moved to Europe to avoid the Hollywood shun. Shortly thereafter, she lived with French actor Roger Pigaut. In 1963, she married producer/director Karel Reisz. They would remain together for almost 40 years until his death in London of a blood disorder in 2002. Betsy later published her memoirs and discussed quite candidly her life on Broadway, life with Gene Kelly, and life amid the blacklisting. She continued to live in England before passing away from cancer on 13th March, 2009. She was 85 years old.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

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Michael J. Pollard
Michael J. Pollard

 

Michael J. Pollard is a gifted American character actor who was especially popular in the 1960’s.   He played ‘C. W. Moss’ in “Bonnie & Clyde” in 1967 and then “Hannibal Brooks” with Oliver Reed.   He died in 2019.

TCM overview:

With his impish grin, the diminutive Michael J Pollard became a familiar face to moviegoers and television viewers in the 1960s, often in offbeat roles. The stage-trained New Jersey native racked up numerous credits on and off Broadway from his 1958 debut in “Comes a Day”, including “A Loss of Roses” (1959), co-starring Warren Beatty, the musical “Bye Bye Birdie” (1960), “Enter Laughing” (1963), as the oddball friend of the leading character, a role he recreated in the 1967 feature version, and Sam Shepard’s “Curse of the Starving Class” (1978).

Pollard entered films with Martin Ritt’s “Adventures of a Young Man” (1962) and went on to portray a number of small roles in films ranging from “The Stripper” (1963) to the motorcycle drama “The Wild Angels” (1966). Pollard received his widest exposure in Arthur Penn’s groundbreaking “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967). For his turn as the getaway-car driver C.W. Moss, he received an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor. Despite the acclaim, Pollard lacked leading man qualities and except for “Little Fauss and Big Halsey” (1970), he was relegated to playing quirky supporting parts. Among his better-known features are “Melvin and Howard” (1980), “Roxanne” (1987), “Tango & Cash” (1989) and “Dick Tracy” (1990).In 1991, Pollard’s voice was heard on the animation series “The Toxic Crusaders” (1991). After working on several projects, he was cast as Mr. Cummings in Gavin O’Conner’s drama feature “Tumbleweeds” (1999). Since he began his career in the late 1950s, Pollard has been a frequent guest on TV on everything from “The Andy Griffith Show” to “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” to “Star Trek”. He was a regular in support of Harvey Korman and Valerie Perrine in the short-lived sitcom “Leo and Liz in Beverly Hills” (CBS, 1986). Pollard was formerly married to actress Beth Howland, remembered as Vera in the long-running sitcom “Alice”.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Michael J. Pollard
Michael J. Pollard
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ABOUT ME

Anyone who knows me are aware that I am a bit of a movie buff. Over the past few years I have been collecting signed photographs of my favourite actors. Since I like movies so much there are many actors whose work I like.

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