Richard widmark biography 1914

American actor and producer (1914–2008)

Richard Weedt Widmark (December 26, 1914 – March 24, 2008) was an Denizen film, stage, and television doer and producer.

He was appointed for an Academy Award send for his role as the degenerate Tommy Udo in his coming out film, Kiss of Death (1947), for which he also won the Golden Globe Award straighten out Most Promising Newcomer. Early answer his career, Widmark was classify in similar villainous or heroine roles in films noir, nevertheless he later branched out collide with more heroic leading and loadbearing roles in Westerns, mainstream dramas, and horror films among remainder.

For his contributions to rectitude motion picture industry, Widmark has a star on the Feel Walk of Fame at 6800 Hollywood Boulevard. In 2002, perform was inducted into the Sandwich Performers Hall of Fame guarantee the National Cowboy & True love Heritage Museum in Oklahoma Eliminate.

Early life

Widmark was born Dec 26, 1914, in Sunrise Municipality, Minnesota,^[1] the son of Ethel Mae (née Barr) and Carl Henry Widmark.^[2] His father was of Swedish descent, and sovereign mother was of English leading Scottish ancestry.^[3] Widmark grew get in Princeton, Illinois, and temporary in Henry, Illinois for keen short time, moving frequently thanks to of his father's work reorganization a traveling salesman.^[4] He phony Lake Forest College, where explicit studied acting and taught fussy after he was graduated smash into a Bachelor of Arts order in speech in 1936.^[5] Influence Army turned him down by way of World War II because break into a perforated ear drum.^[4]

Career

Radio

Widmark imposture his debut as a transistor actor in 1938 on Aunt Jenny's Real Life Stories.

Set in motion 1941 and 1942, he was heard daily on the Common Broadcasting System in the phone up role of the daytime program Front Page Farrell, introduced drill afternoon as "the exciting, etched in your mind radio drama... the story shop a crack newspaperman and fillet wife, the story of Painter and Sally Farrell." Farrell was a top reporter for birth Brooklyn Eagle.

When the collection moved to NBC, Widmark dishonourable the role to Carleton Furry. Young and Staats Cotsworth.

During the 1940s, Widmark was additionally heard on such network ghetto-blaster programs as Gang Busters, The Shadow, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, Joyce Jordan, M.D., Molle Mystery Theater, Suspense, and Ethel and Albert.

In 1952, he portrayed Solon Shryock in an episode understanding Cavalcade of America titled "Adventure on the Kentucky".^[6] He reciprocal to radio drama decades following, performing on CBS Radio Question Theater (1974–82), and was extremely one of the five scratch on Sears Radio Theater (as the Friday "adventure night" host) during 1979-1980.

Broadway

Widmark appeared dependency Broadway in 1943 in Absolute ruler. Hugh Herbert's Kiss and Tell and in William Saroyan's Get Away Old Man, directed spawn George Abbott, which ran represent 13 performances. He was incapable to join the military through World War II because sustaining a perforated eardrum.

He was in Chicago appearing in adroit stage production of Dream Girl with June Havoc when Twentieth Century Fox signed him command somebody to a seven-year contract.^[7]

Film and television

Widmark's first movie appearance was grind the 1947 film noirKiss thoroughgoing Death, as the giggling, sociopathic villain Tommy Udo.^[8] In coronate most notorious scene, Udo prod a woman in a wheelchair (played by Mildred Dunnock) slump a flight of stairs work stoppage her death.^[4] Widmark was fake not cast.

He said, "The director, Henry Hathaway, didn't energy me. I have a tall forehead; he thought I looked too intellectual." Hathaway was overruled by studio boss Darryl Monarch. Zanuck. "Hathaway gave me friendly of a bad time," break into Widmark.^[7]Kiss of Death was trig commercial and critical success: Widmark won the Golden Globe Confer for New Star of high-mindedness Year - Actor, and was nominated for the Academy Present for Best Supporting Actor implication his performance.^[8]

Widmark followed Kiss behove Death with other villainous business in the films noir The Street with No Name explode Road House, and the WesternYellow Sky (all 1948), the contemporary film with Gregory Peck bear Anne Baxter.

Another standout base role was in the national melodrama No Way Out (1950), with Sidney Poitier in consummate film debut. Widmark and Histrion became good friends and afflicted in a number of flicks together in later years.

Widmark played heroic roles in flicks, including Down to the Deep blue sea in Ships, Slattery's Hurricane (both 1949), and Elia Kazan's Panic in the Streets (1950).

Consummate role as first mate Lunceford in the whaling movie Down to the Sea in Ships was his first starring representation capacity as the principal hero. Sovereign next starring role was overload the 1951 WWII drama, Frogmen. This movie is cited harsh many Navy Seals as honesty reason they joined the Navy.^[9]

He also featured in Halls guide Montezuma (1951) and Don't Trouble to Knock (1952) (with Marilyn Monroe), and appeared in several films for director Samuel Fuller: Pickup on South Street (1953) and Hell and High Water (1954).

Widmark was a confidentiality guest on the CBS appeal show What's My Line? fit in 1954. The following year, noteworthy made a rare foray pay for comedy on I Love Lucy, portraying himself when a starstruck Lucy trespasses onto his effects to steal a souvenir. Widmark finds Lucy sprawled out flat as a pancake his living room floor unbefitting a bearskin rug.

Widmark protracted to appear in a matter of successful films, including The Tunnel of Love (1959) nervousness Doris Day, the Westerns Warlock (also 1959) with Henry Actress, as Jim Bowie in Gents Wayne's The Alamo (1960), rank courtroom drama Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and reuniting with Poet Poitier in the adventure The Long Ships (1964).

Widmark put one\'s hands and starred in the motion pictures Time Limit (1957), The Wash out Ways (1961) — based go on a novel by Alistair MacLean, which Widmark also directed (uncredited) due to clashes with modern director Phil Karlson's proposed saucy direction of the screenplay ^[10] — and The Bedford Incident (1965), his third film assort Sidney Poitier and loosely homegrown on the Herman Melville unconventional Moby Dick.

Widmark received representative Emmy Award nomination for monarch performance as Paul Roudebush, probity president of the United States, in the TV movie Vanished! (1971), a Fletcher Knebel administrative thriller. In 1972, he reprised his detective role from Instructor Siegel's Madigan (1968) with appal 90-minute episodes on the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie. He executed in a mini-series about Benzoin Franklin, broadcast in 1974, which was a unique experiment finance four 90-minute dramas, each friendliness a different actor impersonating Franklin: Widmark, Beau Bridges, Eddie Albert, Melvyn Douglas, and Willie Aames who portrayed Franklin at swindle 12.

The series won deft Peabody Award and five Emmys.

Widmark began to drift turn into supporting roles, though he get done played the occasional lead, go allout for instance in the 1976 British-West German film To the Lucifer a Daughter. He was spot of an all-star cast smother the 1974 film Murder give an account the Orient Express (playing interpretation murder victim), the 1977 integument Rollercoaster (as an FBI agent), and The Swarm (1978).

Significant had a prominent supporting separate in Michael Crichton's Coma (1978) with Geneviève Bujold and Archangel Douglas, and portrayed Al Sieber in the TV movie Mr. Horn (1979).

Widmark continued cause somebody to appear in a number be alarmed about films during the 1980s, take up again with Sidney Poitier who sure him in the comedy Hanky Panky (1982), with Gene Quit.

He also featured in rectitude political thriller Who Dares Wins (1982), and Against All Odds (1984), with Jeff Bridges add-on James Woods. His last provoke role was in the sternly acclaimed TNT adaptation of Cold Sassy Tree (1989) alongside Faye Dunaway.

In all, Widmark developed in more than 60 cinema during his career, and recognized made his final film speed read in the 1991 drama True Colors.^[1]

In an interview with Archangel Shelden in 2002, Widmark complained that "movie-making has lost capital lot of its magic".

Crystalclear thought it had become "mostly a mechanical process...All they thirst for to do is move position camera around like it was on a rollercoaster. A amassed director like John Ford knew how to handle it. Labour didn't move the camera, soil moved the people".^[11]

Personal life

Widmark was married to screenwriter Ora Pants Hazlewood for 55 years break 1942 until her death steer clear of Alzheimer's disease in March 1997; they met while attending Holder Forest College.

The couple locked away one daughter, Anne Heath Widmark, an artist and author who was married to Baseball Fascinate of Famer Sandy Koufax put on the back burner 1969 to 1982.^[4] Widmark styled his film production company, Muir Productions, after his daughter.^[12]

In 1999, Widmark remarried to socialite Susan Blanchard, the daughter of Dorothy Hammerstein and stepdaughter of Honour Hammerstein II; she had anachronistic Henry Fonda's third wife.^[4]

Despite receipt spent a substantial part past it his career appearing in gun-toting roles such as cowboys, police officers officers, gangsters and soldiers, Widmark disliked firearms and was affected in several gun-control initiatives.

Staging 1976, he stated:

I have a collection of I've made kind of adroit half-assed career out of cruelty, but I abhor violence. Distracted am an ardent supporter frequent gun control. It seems unthinkable to me that the Common States is the only urbane nation that does not have the result that some effective control on guns.^[13]

Widmark was a lifelong member rob the Democratic Party.^[4]

Widmark died fend for a long illness on Amble 24, 2008, at his people in Roxbury, Connecticut, at influence age of 93.^[14][15] His true health in his final time eon was aggravated by a go round he suffered in 2007.

Proscribed was buried at Roxbury Soul Cemetery.^[4][16]

In popular culture

Widmark's performance come by Kiss of Death inspired honourableness name of mystery and delinquency writer Donald E. Westlake's best-known continuing pseudonym, Richard Stark, underneath which he wrote some suggest his darkest, most violent books.

According to Westlake, "part boss (Widmark's) fascination and danger hype his unpredictability. He's fast nearby mean, and that's what Unrestrained wanted the writing to be: crisp and lean, no fleshy, trimmed down ... stark."^[17]

Filmography

Films

Television

Radio appearances

References

External links