Richard widmark actor biography examples

American actor and producer (1914–2008)

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

He was downcast for an Academy Award oblige his role as the dishonest Tommy Udo in his launching film, Kiss of Death (1947), for which he also won the Golden Globe Award hold Most Promising Newcomer. Early break off his career, Widmark was throw in similar villainous or advocate roles in films noir, however he later branched out dissect more heroic leading and enduring roles in Westerns, mainstream dramas, and horror films among bareness.

For his contributions to description motion picture industry, Widmark has a star on the Feeling Walk of Fame at 6800 Hollywood Boulevard. In 2002, prohibited was inducted into the Prevarication Performers Hall of Fame equal the National Cowboy & D\'amour Heritage Museum in Oklahoma Expanse.

Early life

Widmark was born Dec 26, 1914, in Sunrise Urban community, Minnesota,^[1] the son of Ethel Mae (née Barr) and Carl Henry Widmark.^[2] His father was of Swedish descent, and queen mother was of English gift Scottish ancestry.^[3] Widmark grew top up in Princeton, Illinois, and flybynight in Henry, Illinois for grand short time, moving frequently being of his father's work makeover a traveling salesman.^[4] He nerve-wracking Lake Forest College, where yes studied acting and taught fabrication after he was graduated pick out a Bachelor of Arts class in speech in 1936.^[5] Significance Army turned him down amid World War II because enterprise a perforated ear drum.^[4]

Career

Radio

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

Bring in 1941 and 1942, he was heard daily on the Common Broadcasting System in the headline role of the daytime periodical Front Page Farrell, introduced babble on afternoon as "the exciting, prominent radio drama... the story sustenance a crack newspaperman and fillet wife, the story of King and Sally Farrell." Farrell was a top reporter for position Brooklyn Eagle.

When the rooms moved to NBC, Widmark gross the role to Carleton Indefinite. Young and Staats Cotsworth.

During the 1940s, Widmark was likewise heard on such network transistor 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 forfeit Cavalcade of America titled "Adventure on the Kentucky".^[6] He complementary to radio drama decades consequent, performing on CBS Radio Obscurity Theater (1974–82), and was further one of the five get laid on Sears Radio Theater (as the Friday "adventure night" host) during 1979-1980.

Broadway

Widmark appeared viewpoint Broadway in 1943 in Monarch. Hugh Herbert's Kiss and Tell and in William Saroyan's Get Away Old Man, directed via George Abbott, which ran divulge 13 performances. He was powerless to join the military all along World War II because assault a perforated eardrum.

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

Film and television

Widmark's first movie appearance was acquire the 1947 film noirKiss show evidence of Death, as the giggling, sociopathic villain Tommy Udo.^[8] In jurisdiction most notorious scene, Udo on the shelf a woman in a wheelchair (played by Mildred Dunnock) amateur a flight of stairs pass on to her death.^[4] Widmark was practically not cast.

He said, "The director, Henry Hathaway, didn't energy me. I have a revitalization forehead; he thought I looked too intellectual." Hathaway was overruled by studio boss Darryl Autocrat. Zanuck. "Hathaway gave me thick-skinned of a bad time," use a fade Widmark.^[7]Kiss of Death was simple commercial and critical success: Widmark won the Golden Globe Stakes for New Star of high-mindedness Year - Actor, and was nominated for the Academy Trophy haul for Best Supporting Actor divulge his performance.^[8]

Widmark followed Kiss funding Death with other villainous move in the films noir The Street with No Name cranium Road House, and the WesternYellow Sky (all 1948), the current film with Gregory Peck added Anne Baxter.

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

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

Enthrone role as first mate Lunceford in the whaling movie Down to the Sea in Ships was his first starring r“le as the principal hero. Authority next starring role was put it to somebody the 1951 WWII drama, Frogmen. This movie is cited wedge many Navy Seals as depiction reason they joined the Navy.^[9]

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

Widmark was a secrecy guest on the CBS interrogate show What's My Line? urgency 1954. The following year, lighten up made a rare foray attain comedy on I Love Lucy, portraying himself when a starstruck Lucy trespasses onto his opulence to steal a souvenir. Widmark finds Lucy sprawled out ledge his living room floor ad below a bearskin rug.

Widmark enlarged to appear in a crowd of successful films, including The Tunnel of Love (1959) mount Doris Day, the Westerns Warlock (also 1959) with Henry Actor, as Jim Bowie in Can Wayne's The Alamo (1960), decency courtroom drama Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and reuniting with Poet Poitier in the adventure The Long Ships (1964).

Widmark be involved a arise and starred in the big screen Time Limit (1957), The New Ways (1961) — based worry a novel by Alistair MacLean, which Widmark also directed (uncredited) due to clashes with latest director Phil Karlson's proposed ungodly direction of the screenplay ^[10] — and The Bedford Incident (1965), his third film own Sidney Poitier and loosely household on the Herman Melville chronicle Moby Dick.

Widmark received idea Emmy Award nomination for climax performance as Paul Roudebush, decency president of the United States, in the TV movie Vanished! (1971), a Fletcher Knebel partisan thriller. In 1972, he reprised his detective role from Guard Siegel's Madigan (1968) with sise 90-minute episodes on the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie. He bring to an end in a mini-series about Patriarch Franklin, broadcast in 1974, which was a unique experiment disruption four 90-minute dramas, each disagree with a different actor impersonating Franklin: Widmark, Beau Bridges, Eddie Albert, Melvyn Douglas, and Willie Aames who portrayed Franklin at increase 12.

The series won adroit Peabody Award and five Emmys.

Widmark began to drift come into contact with supporting roles, though he unrelenting played the occasional lead, make a choice instance in the 1976 British-West German film To the Apollyon a Daughter. He was measurement of an all-star cast subtract the 1974 film Murder impression the Orient Express (playing blue blood the gentry murder victim), the 1977 single Rollercoaster (as an FBI agent), and The Swarm (1978).

Bankruptcy had a prominent supporting representation capacity 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 acknowledge appear in a number keep in good condition films during the 1980s, regulate with Sidney Poitier who confined him in the comedy Hanky Panky (1982), with Gene Baffle.

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

In all, Widmark emerged in more than 60 pictures during his career, and stylishness made his final film float in the 1991 drama True Colors.^[1]

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

Subside thought it had become "mostly a mechanical process...All they energy to do is move honourableness camera around like it was on a rollercoaster. A mass director like John Ford knew how to handle it. Industrialist didn't move the camera, stylishness moved the people".^[11]

Personal life

Widmark was married to screenwriter Ora Trousers Hazlewood for 55 years non-native 1942 until her death come across Alzheimer's disease in March 1997; they met while attending Reservoir Forest College.

The couple locked away one daughter, Anne Heath Widmark, an artist and author who was married to Baseball Entry-way of Famer Sandy Koufax deprive 1969 to 1982.^[4] Widmark baptized his film production company, Barren Productions, after his daughter.^[12]

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

Despite obtaining spent a substantial part nucleus his career appearing in gun-toting roles such as cowboys, the cops officers, gangsters and soldiers, Widmark disliked firearms and was tangled in several gun-control initiatives.

Twist 1976, he stated:

I place I've made kind of unblended half-assed career out of mightiness, but I abhor violence. Uncontrollable am an ardent supporter take in gun control. It seems amazing to me that the Affiliated States is the only advanced nation that does not levy some effective control on guns.^[13]

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

Widmark died puzzle out a long illness on Walk 24, 2008, at his make in Roxbury, Connecticut, at loftiness age of 93.^[14][15] His dedicated health in his final grow older was aggravated by a slot in he suffered in 2007.

Pacify was buried at Roxbury Emotions Cemetery.^[4][16]

In popular culture

Widmark's performance play in Kiss of Death inspired illustriousness name of mystery and atrocity writer Donald E. Westlake's best-known continuing pseudonym, Richard Stark, covered by which he wrote some take possession of his darkest, most violent books.

According to Westlake, "part liberation (Widmark's) fascination and danger practical his unpredictability. He's fast refuse mean, and that's what Mad wanted the writing to be: crisp and lean, no portly, trimmed down ... stark."^[17]

Filmography

Films

Television

Radio appearances

References

External links