The Silver Screen Oasis

I thought someone might have commented on it all ready, but Richard Widmark has died.

i can't pretend to know all his films, but he was still a darn good actor in the films i saw. he seemed to have the ability the play the hero and the villian with equel ease.

two bad guy roles he made where he wanted to kill hero's Gregory Peck and Robert Wagner, because he wanted to sleep nights in Yellow Sky and Broken Lance.

i remember as an army instructer his catchphrase 'You will never make it,' as he speaks to to the young men in their basic training before setting of to Korea in Take The High Ground.

Richard was terrific as Comanche Todd in Delmer Daves The Last Wagon with Felicia Farr (Jack Lemon's widow)

he was a good hero in the western Warlock and to an extend stole the film The Alamo from the great John Wayne with his potrayal of Jim Bowie. he was also effective in John Ford's The Two Rode Together, romantically involved with Shirley Jones while star James Stewart gets Indian captive Linda Crystal

following in the footsteps of Jack Warner in British cop movie The Blue Lamp, in Madigan he was killed of at the end of the film only to resurface fo the tv series just as Warner did for Dixon Of Dock Green 20 yrs before.

he was the American star in the British movie Who Dares Wins, a tribute film to the elite crack Brit army outfit the SAS, in a film that was supposed to make an international star out of Lewis Collins

He dropped from my attention sometime in the '70s, and lately I've found a huge core of his great performances in those late '40s into the '50s films. My favorite big performance might be PANIC IN THE STREETS, where he plays a Navy medical officer chasing down a merchant seaman whose brought The Plague into New Orleans with him.

Paul Douglas plays the Nawlin's Cop assigned to be his nursemaid, and the film gives us a reasoned construction for that changing relationship. Well done on that regard.

My favorite small performance by him could be in any number of the lesser crime dramas, where he's usually playing some henchman so wonderfully vicious.

my apoliges to Anne Harding who as all ready done a tribute to Richard Widmark on another thread.

For more on Richard Widmark's life, career and obit, here are two threads started earlier today:

Gone With or Without Fanfare:
http://silverscreenoasis.com/oasis/view ... 9&start=30


RIP Richard Widmark
http://silverscreenoasis.com/oasis/view ... highlight=

Always a favorite. I'm partial to his films:
"Kiss Of Death" (of course)
"Road House"
"Yellow Sky"
"Pickup on South Street"
"Down to the Sea in Ships"

Quoted:
[speaking in 1976] The heavies in my day were kid's stuff compared to today. Our villains had no redeeming qualities. But there's a new morality today. A villain is a guy with a frailty. Heroes are villains.

May he rest in peace.

I adored Richard Widmark. Although my taste normally doesn't run toward blonde men . . . . . . . like Robert Redford, Richard Widmark was a special exception. Like Robert Mitchum, Richard quietly went along turning out 110% in every role he played. He never called special attention to himself, but stole scenes constantly without trying. You find yourself watching his quiet brilliance, holding his own against co-stars like Wayne, Stewart, Fonda, and Kirk Douglas. I could almost imagine seeing him assisting newcomer Sidney Poitier with the intense work necessary in The Bedford Incident, and cutting up in one of his last roles as the crochety hard head on the made for TV Cold Sassy Tree. He looked pretty sexy in his buckskins in The Last Wagon, and The Way West, and equally impressive as the Naval officer in Panic in the Streets, lovable in Tunnel of Love, and frustrated in Cobweb. So sad that more people didn't acknowledge him.

Anne

Has anyone seen Don't Bother to Knock with Marilyn Monroe and Anne Bancroft in her first role? If so, what did you think?

I'll take a whack at an explanation of MM in Don't Bother to Knock. Except for some photo ops where she was playing the sexpot 110%, I never saw MM in any kind of interview/discussion. Now, . . . if she was the sexy cutsey all the time, that is one thing, BUT . . . if she showed any intelligence at all off screen, then she should have been given some jobs where she could actually act. The reason I say this is, for her first job, she did a first rate blond bimbo, that is, if she was acting. If she was an intelligent young woman, she had to muster up some talent to be so realistic. But, if she was normally a bimbo, then she wasn't acting. If you look at her a short time later, in All About Eve, she is playing the bimbo, but you can see the wheels turning in her head as she is playing George Sanders and that foreign guy to get better parts. The same goes for No Business Like Show Business. At first she is the typical Blond Bimbo, but as the movie goes on, she has evolved into a first rate entertainer and business woman. So, I guess I have to answer a question with another question. Was MM a sincere young actress trying to become a real actress, or was she a bimbo just trying to be a STAR?

Now, please, I'm using the term 'blond bimbo' simply as an explanatory term, not as a slur to all blond women.

Anne

He was really the last man standing in the Dark City; hated to see him go. I admire Richard Widmark not only for his acting, but for how he lived his own life by his own rules with integrity.

A colleague interviewed him at his home in Connecticut. After a long day, Widmark insisted on driving my friend to the railroad station personally and seeing him off. Class act, Richard Widmark.