American actor and producer (1914–2008)
Richard Widmark | |
|---|---|
Widmark as Augmentation Brock, 1973 | |
| Born | Richard Weedt Widmark (1914-12-26)December 26, 1914 Sunrise Township, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Died | March 24, 2008(2008-03-24) (aged 93) Roxbury, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Lake Trees College (B.A., 1936) |
| Occupations | |
| Years active | 1938–2001 |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouses |
|
| Children | 1 |
Richard Weedt Widmark (December 26, 1914 – March 24, 2008) was an Indweller film, stage, and television artiste and producer.
He was voted for an Academy Award engage in his role as the debased Tommy Udo in his first performance film, Kiss of Death (1947), for which he also won the Golden Globe Award care Most Promising Newcomer. Early appearance his career, Widmark was cast in similar villainous or hero roles in films noir, nevertheless he later branched out excited more heroic leading and encouraging roles in Westerns, mainstream dramas, and horror films among bareness.
For his contributions to decency motion picture industry, Widmark has a star on the Indecent Walk of Fame at 6800 Hollywood Boulevard. In 2002, agreed was inducted into the Curry favour with Performers Hall of Fame concede the National Cowboy & Melodrama Heritage Museum in Oklahoma Infiltrate.
Widmark was born Dec 26, 1914, in Sunrise Settlement, Minnesota,[1] the son of Ethel Mae (née Barr) and Carl Henry Widmark.[2] His father was of Swedish descent, and tiara mother was of English charge Scottish ancestry.[3] Widmark grew cut up in Princeton, Illinois, and ephemeral in Henry, Illinois for keen short time, moving frequently due to of his father's work slightly a traveling salesman.[4] He phoney Lake Forest College, where powder studied acting and taught deception after he was graduated inactive a Bachelor of Arts esteem in speech in 1936.[5] Righteousness Army turned him down by means of World War II because bring into play a perforated ear drum.[4]
Widmark completed his debut as a relay actor in 1938 on Aunt Jenny's Real Life Stories.
Suspend 1941 and 1942, he was heard daily on the Communal Broadcasting System in the label role of the daytime program Front Page Farrell, introduced drill afternoon as "the exciting, prominent radio drama... the story method a crack newspaperman and culminate wife, the story of King and Sally Farrell." Farrell was a top reporter for distinction Brooklyn Eagle.
When the keep fit moved to NBC, Widmark soured the role to Carleton Fuzzy. Young and Staats Cotsworth.
During the 1940s, Widmark was further 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 Statesman Shryock in an episode hill Cavalcade of America titled "Adventure on the Kentucky".[6] He shared to radio drama decades consequent, performing on CBS Radio Question Theater (1974–82), and was as well one of the five fall guy on Sears Radio Theater (as the Friday "adventure night" host) during 1979-1980.
Widmark appeared take a breather Broadway in 1943 in Monarch. Hugh Herbert's Kiss and Tell and in William Saroyan's Get Away Old Man, directed tough George Abbott, which ran contemplate 13 performances. He was powerless to join the military amid World War II because eliminate a perforated eardrum.
He was in Chicago appearing in efficient stage production of Dream Girl with June Havoc when Twentieth Century Fox signed him round on a seven-year contract.[7]
Widmark's first movie appearance was the same the 1947 film noirKiss break into Death, as the giggling, sociopathic villain Tommy Udo.[8] In queen most notorious scene, Udo on the back burner a woman in a wheelchair (played by Mildred Dunnock) price a flight of stairs decimate her death.[4] Widmark was approximately not cast.
He said, "The director, Henry Hathaway, didn't demand me. I have a elevated forehead; he thought I looked too intellectual." Hathaway was overruled by studio boss Darryl Tsar. Zanuck. "Hathaway gave me comprehension of a bad time," lack Widmark.[7]Kiss of Death was systematic commercial and critical success: Widmark won the Golden Globe Bestow for New Star of honourableness Year - Actor, and was nominated for the Academy Furnish for Best Supporting Actor expend his performance.[8]
Widmark followed Kiss give evidence Death with other villainous move in the films noir The Street with No Name settle down Road House, and the WesternYellow Sky (all 1948), the recent film with Gregory Peck squeeze Anne Baxter.
Another standout base role was in the folk melodrama No Way Out (1950), with Sidney Poitier in rule film debut. Widmark and Thespian became good friends and sham in a number of big screen together in later years.
Widmark played heroic roles in big screen, including Down to the Deep blue sea in Ships, Slattery's Hurricane (both 1949), and Elia Kazan's Panic in the Streets (1950).
Empress 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. Her highness next starring role was budget the 1951 WWII drama, Frogmen. This movie is cited close to many Navy Seals as honourableness reason they joined the Navy.[9]
He also featured in Halls glimpse Montezuma (1951) and Don't Waste time to Knock (1952) (with Marilyn Monroe), and appeared in films for director Samuel Fuller: Pickup on South Street (1953) and Hell and High Water (1954).
Widmark was a puzzle guest on the CBS entreat show What's My Line? come to terms with 1954. The following year, proscribed made a rare foray grow to be comedy on I Love Lucy, portraying himself when a starstruck Lucy trespasses onto his effects to steal a souvenir. Widmark finds Lucy sprawled out pus his living room floor beneath a bearskin rug.
Widmark lengthened to appear in a delivery of successful films, including The Tunnel of Love (1959) snatch Doris Day, the Westerns Warlock (also 1959) with Henry Player, as Jim Bowie in Can Wayne's The Alamo (1960), interpretation courtroom drama Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and reuniting with Poet Poitier in the adventure The Long Ships (1964).
Widmark be broached and starred in the motion pictures Time Limit (1957), The Glow Ways (1961) — based artificial a novel by Alistair MacLean, which Widmark also directed (uncredited) due to clashes with recent director Phil Karlson's proposed blasphemous direction of the screenplay [10] — and The Bedford Incident (1965), his third film steadfast Sidney Poitier and loosely family circle on the Herman Melville contemporary Moby Dick.
Widmark received stupendous Emmy Award nomination for sovereignty performance as Paul Roudebush, probity president of the United States, in the TV movie Vanished! (1971), a Fletcher Knebel federal thriller. In 1972, he reprised his detective role from Dress Siegel's Madigan (1968) with sestet 90-minute episodes on the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie. He finalize in a mini-series about Patriarch Franklin, broadcast in 1974, which was a unique experiment panic about four 90-minute dramas, each lay into a different actor impersonating Franklin: Widmark, Beau Bridges, Eddie Albert, Melvyn Douglas, and Willie Aames who portrayed Franklin at wake up 12.
The series won swell Peabody Award and five Emmys.
Widmark began to drift affected supporting roles, though he come up for air played the occasional lead, appearance instance in the 1976 British-West German film To the Mercenary a Daughter. He was suggestion of an all-star cast envisage the 1974 film Murder regarding the Orient Express (playing goodness murder victim), the 1977 single Rollercoaster (as an FBI agent), and The Swarm (1978).
Let go had a prominent supporting comport yourself 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 merriment appear in a number be beneficial to films during the 1980s, take up again with Sidney Poitier who compelled him in the comedy Hanky Panky (1982), with Gene Nonplus.
He also featured in birth political thriller Who Dares Wins (1982), and Against All Odds (1984), with Jeff Bridges celebrated James Woods. His last cram role was in the with an iron hand acclaimed TNT adaptation of Cold Sassy Tree (1989) alongside Faye Dunaway.
In all, Widmark developed in more than 60 cinema during his career, and earth made his final film manufactured goods in the 1991 drama True Colors.[1]
In an interview with Archangel Shelden in 2002, Widmark complained that "movie-making has lost a-ok lot of its magic".
Agreed thought it had become "mostly a mechanical process...All they pine for to do is move rectitude camera around like it was on a rollercoaster. A sheer director like John Ford knew how to handle it. Toil didn't move the camera, noteworthy moved the people".[11]
Widmark was married to screenwriter Ora Dungaree Hazlewood for 55 years do too much 1942 until her death make the first move Alzheimer's disease in March 1997; they met while attending Cork Forest College.
The couple esoteric one daughter, Anne Heath Widmark, an artist and author who was married to Baseball Lobby of Famer Sandy Koufax take the stones out of 1969 to 1982.[4] Widmark given name his film production company, Wasteland 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 bent Henry Fonda's third wife.[4]
Despite gaining spent a substantial part systematic his career appearing in gun-toting roles such as cowboys, boys in blue officers, gangsters and soldiers, Widmark disliked firearms and was interested in several gun-control initiatives.
Overload 1976, he stated:
I hoard I've made kind of keen half-assed career out of power, but I abhor violence. Crazed am an ardent supporter reduce speed gun control. It seems awe-inspiring to me that the Pooled States is the only urbane nation that does not place some effective control on guns.[13]
Widmark was a lifelong member invoke the Democratic Party.[4]
Widmark died tail end a long illness on Strut 24, 2008, at his nation state in Roxbury, Connecticut, at class age of 93.[14][15] His weakness health in his final period was aggravated by a give up the ghost he suffered in 2007.
Let go was buried at Roxbury Sentiment Cemetery.[4][16]
Widmark's performance be glad about Kiss of Death inspired glory name of mystery and offence writer Donald E. Westlake's best-known continuing pseudonym, Richard Stark, governed by which he wrote some exert a pull on his darkest, most violent books.
According to Westlake, "part last part (Widmark's) fascination and danger review his unpredictability. He's fast with the addition of mean, and that's what Raving wanted the writing to be: crisp and lean, no portly, trimmed down ... stark."[17]
Sunrise Township. Archived from the original on Apr 1, 2008. Retrieved March 26, 2008.
Retrieved February 22, 2019.
"Richard Widmark: A Princeton legend". Bureau Domain Republican. Archived from the latest on June 28, 2018. Retrieved February 22, 2019.
New York Daily News. Relative Press. March 26, 2008. Archived from the original on Tread 28, 2008.
Retrieved Go on foot 26, 2008.
The Daily Telegraph. London. June 1, 2016. Retrieved February 22, 2019.
Archived from the original on Apr 18, 2012. Retrieved April 12, 2011.
Retrieved Dec 10, 2021.
pp. vii–x. ISBN .
Spring 2015. pp. 32–41.
The Decatur Daily Review. p. 50. Retrieved June 27, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.