Richard Widmark

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

Richard Widmark
Widmark as Max 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 Forest College (B.A., 1936)
Occupations	Actor producer
Years active	1938–2001
Spouses	Jean Hazlewood ​ ​ (m. 1942; died 1997)​ Susan Blanchard ​ (m. 1999)​
Children	1

He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the villainous Tommy Udo in his debut film, Kiss of Death (1947), for which he also won the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer. Early in his career, Widmark was typecast in similar villainous or anti-hero roles in films noir, but he later branched out into more heroic leading and supporting roles in Westerns, mainstream dramas, and horror films among others.

For his contributions to the motion picture industry, Widmark has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6800 Hollywood Boulevard. In 2002, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Early life

Widmark was born December 26, 1914, in Sunrise Township, Minnesota,^[1] the son of Ethel Mae (née Barr) and Carl Henry Widmark.^[2] His father was of Swedish descent, and his mother was of English and Scottish ancestry.^[3] Widmark grew up in Princeton, Illinois, and lived in Henry, Illinois for a short time, moving frequently because of his father's work as a traveling salesman.^[4] He attended Lake Forest College, where he studied acting and taught acting after he was graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in speech in 1936.^[5] The Army turned him down during World War II because of a perforated ear drum.^[6]

Radio

Widmark made his debut as a radio actor in 1938 on Aunt Jenny's Real Life Stories. In 1941 and 1942, he was heard daily on the Mutual Broadcasting System in the title role of the daytime serial Front Page Farrell, introduced each afternoon as "the exciting, unforgettable radio drama... the story of a crack newspaperman and his wife, the story of David and Sally Farrell." Farrell was a top reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle. When the series moved to NBC, Widmark turned the role to Carleton G. Young and Staats Cotsworth.

During the 1940s, Widmark was also heard on such network radio 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 Cincinnatus Shryock in an episode of Cavalcade of America titled "Adventure on the Kentucky".^[7] He returned to radio drama decades later, performing on CBS Radio Mystery Theater (1974–82), and was also one of the five hosts on Sears Radio Theater (as the Friday "adventure night" host) from 1979 to 1981.

Broadway

Widmark appeared on Broadway in 1943 in F. Hugh Herbert's Kiss and Tell and in William Saroyan's Get Away Old Man, directed by George Abbott, which ran for 13 performances. He was unable to join the military during World War II because of a perforated eardrum. He was in Chicago appearing in a stage production of Dream Girl with June Havoc when 20th Century Fox signed him to a seven-year contract.^[8]

Films

Kiss of Death and villainous roles

 

Mark Stevens, Barbara Lawrence and Widmark in The Street with No Name (1948)

 

Panic in the Streets (1950)

Widmark's first movie appearance was in the 1947 film noir Kiss of Death, as the giggling, sociopathic villain Tommy Udo.^[9] In his most notorious scene, Udo pushed a woman in a wheelchair (played by Mildred Dunnock) down a flight of stairs to her death.^[4] Widmark was almost not cast. He said, "The director, Henry Hathaway, didn't want me. I have a high forehead; he thought I looked too intellectual." Hathaway was overruled by studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck. "Hathaway gave me kind of a bad time," recalled Widmark.^[8] Kiss of Death was a commercial and critical success: Widmark won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year - Actor, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance.^[9]

Widmark followed Kiss of Death with other villainous performances in the films noir The Street with No Name and Road House, and the western Yellow Sky (all 1948), the latter film with Gregory Peck and Anne Baxter. Another standout villainous role was in the racial melodrama No Way Out (1950), with Sidney Poitier in his film debut. Widmark and Poitier became good friends and worked in a number of films together in later years.

Heroic roles and continued success

 

In The Last Wagon (1956)

 

Gig Young, Widmark and Doris Day in The Tunnel of Love (1958)

Widmark played heroic roles in films, including Down to the Sea in Ships, Slattery's Hurricane (both 1949), and Elia Kazan's Panic in the Streets (1950). His role as first mate Lunceford in the whaling movie Down to the Sea in Ships was his first starring role as the principal hero. His next starring role was in the 1951 WWII drama, Frogmen. This movie is cited by many Navy Seals as the reason they joined the Navy. The film is very accurate in its depiction of the Underwater Demolition Teams that removed obst&cles put on the beaches by the Japanese. It has a great cast, and Widmark is very credible as the new commander of the Team trying to replace a beloved leader who was killed in action. War movie buffs identify this little known film as one of the best war movies ever made.

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

Widmark continued to appear in a number of successful films, including The Tunnel of Love (1959) with Doris Day, the Westerns Warlock (also 1959) with Henry Fonda, as Jim Bowie in John Wayne's The Alamo (1960), the courtroom drama Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and reuniting with Sidney Poitier in the adventure The Long Ships (1964).

Widmark produced and starred in the films Time Limit (1957), The Secret Ways (1961) — based on a novel by Alistair MacLean, which Widmark also directed (uncredited) due to clashes with original director Phil Karlson's proposed tongue-in-cheek direction of the screenplay ^[10] — and The Bedford Incident (1965), his third film with Sidney Poitier and loosely based on the Herman Melville novel Moby Dick.

1970s

Widmark began to drift into supporting roles during the 1970s, though he still played the occasional lead, for instance in the 1976 British-West German film To the Devil a Daughter. He was part of an all-star cast in the 1974 film Murder on the Orient Express (playing the murder victim), the 1977 film Rollercoaster (as an FBI agent), and The Swarm (1978). He had a prominent supporting role in Michael Crichton's Coma (also 1978), with Geneviève Bujold and Michael Douglas.

Later career

Widmark continued to appear in a number of films during the 1980s, again with Sidney Poitier who directed him in the comedy Hanky Panky (1982), with Gene Wilder. He also featured in the political thriller Who Dares Wins (also 1982), and Against All Odds (1984), with Jeff Bridges and James Woods.

In all, Widmark appeared in more than 60 films during his career, and he made his final film appearance in the 1991 drama True Colors.^[1]

In an interview with Michael Shelden in 2002, Widmark complained that "movie-making has lost a lot of its magic". He thought it had become "mostly a mechanical process...All they want to do is move the camera around like it was on a rollercoaster. A great director like John Ford knew how to handle it. Ford didn't move the camera, he moved the people".^[11]

Television

 

Widmark in Broken Lance (1954)

Widmark was a mystery guest on the CBS quiz show What's My Line? in 1954. The following year, he made a rare foray into comedy on I Love Lucy, portraying himself when a starstruck Lucy trespasses onto his property to steal a souvenir. Widmark finds Lucy sprawled out on his living room floor underneath a bearskin rug.

Returning to television in the early 1970s, Widmark received an Emmy Award nomination for his performance as Paul Roudebush, the president of the United States, in the TV movie Vanished! (1971), a Fletcher Knebel political thriller. In 1972, he reprised his detective role from Don Siegel's Madigan (1968) with six 90-minute episodes on the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie. He participated in a mini-series about Benjamin Franklin, transmitted in 1974, which was a unique experiment of four 90-minute dramas, each with a different actor impersonating Franklin: Widmark, Beau Bridges, Eddie Albert, Melvyn Douglas, and Willie Aames who portrayed Franklin at age 12. The series won a Peabody Award and five Emmys. During the 1980s, Widmark returned to TV with a half-dozen TV movies.

Personal life

 

Jean Hazlewood and Richard Widmark in the 1950s

Widmark was married to screenwriter Jean Hazlewood for 55 years from 1942 until her death in 1997. They had a daughter, Anne Heath Widmark, an artist and author who was married to baseball player Sandy Koufax from 1969 to 1982. In 1999, Widmark married Susan Blanchard, the daughter of Dorothy Hammerstein and stepdaughter of Oscar Hammerstein II; she had been Henry Fonda's third wife.^{[citation needed]}

Widmark owned a cattle ranch near Green City, Missouri during the 1950s and 1960s. He contributed funds to the construction of an airport there, bearing his name in his honor.^{[citation needed]}

Despite having spent a substantial part of his career appearing in gun-toting roles such as cowboys, police officers, gangsters and soldiers, Widmark disliked firearms and was involved in several gun-control initiatives. In 1976, he stated:^[12]

"I know I've made kind of a half-assed career out of violence, but I abhor violence. I am an ardent supporter of gun control. It seems incredible to me that the United States is the only civilized nation that does not put some effective control on guns."

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

Retiring in 2001, Widmark died after a long illness on March 24, 2008, at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, at the age of 93.^[13][14] Widmark's failing health in his final years was aggravated by a fall he suffered in 2007. He was buried at Roxbury Center Cemetery.^{[15][16][17][18][19]}

In popular culture

Widmark's performance in Kiss of Death inspired the name of mystery and crime writer Donald E. Westlake's best-known continuing pseudonym, Richard Stark, under which he wrote some of his darkest, most violent books. According to Westlake, "part of (Widmark's) fascination and danger is his unpredictability. He's fast and mean, and that's what I wanted the writing to be: crisp and lean, no fat, trimmed down ... stark."^[20]

Filmography

Films

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1947	Kiss of Death	Tommy Udo	Film debut Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer Nominated—Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
1948	The Street with No Name	Alec Stiles
1948	Road House	Jefferson T. "Jefty" Robbins
1948	Yellow Sky	Dude
1949	Down to the Sea in Ships	First Mate Dan Lunceford
1949	Slattery's Hurricane	Lt. Willard Francis Slattery
1950	Night and the City	Harry Fabian
1950	Panic in the Streets	Lt. Cmdr. Clinton "Clint" Reed M.D.
1950	No Way Out	Ray Biddle	Co-starring Sidney Poitier
1951	Halls of Montezuma	Lt. Anderson
1951	The Frogmen	Lt. Cmdr. John Lawrence
1952	Red Skies of Montana	Cliff Mason
1952	Don't Bother to Knock	Jed Towers
1952	O. Henry's Full House	Johnny Kernan	Segment: "The Clarion Call"
1952	My Pal Gus	Dave Jennings
1953	Destination Gobi	CPO Samuel T. McHale
1953	Pickup on South Street	Skip McCoy
1953	Take the High Ground!	Sgt. Thorne Ryan
1954	Hell and High Water	Capt. Adam Jones
1954	Garden of Evil	Fiske
1954	Broken Lance	Ben Devereaux
1955	A Prize of Gold	Sergeant Joe Lawrence
1955	The Cobweb	Dr. Stewart "Mac" McIver
1956	Backlash	Jim Slater
1956	Run for the Sun	Michael "Mike" Latimer
1956	The Last Wagon	Comanche Todd
1957	Saint Joan	The Dauphin, Charles VII
1957	Time Limit	Col. William Edwards	Producer
1958	The Law and Jake Wade	Clint Hollister
1958	The Tunnel of Love	August "Augie" Poole
1959	The Trap	Ralph Anderson
1959	Warlock	Johnny Gannon
1960	The Alamo	Colonel Jim Bowie
1961	The Secret Ways	Michael Reynolds	Producer; uncredited director
1961	Two Rode Together	First Lt. Jim Gary
1961	Judgment at Nuremberg	Col. Tad Lawson
1962	How the West Was Won	Mike King
1964	The Long Ships	Rolfe	Second film with Sidney Poitier
1964	Flight from Ashiya	Lt. Col. Glenn Stevenson USAF
1964	Cheyenne Autumn	Capt. Thomas Archer
1965	The Bedford Incident	Captain Eric Finlander USN	Producer; third film with Sidney Poitier
1966	Alvarez Kelly	Col. Tom Rossiter
1967	The Way West	Lije Evans
1968	Madigan	Det. Daniel Madigan
1969	Death of a Gunfighter	Marshal Frank Patch
1969	A Talent for Loving	Major Patten
1970	The Moonshine War	Dr. Emmett Taulbee
1972	When the Legends Die	Red Dillon
1974	Murder on the Orient Express	Samuel Ratchett aka Lanfranco Cassetti
1976	To the Devil a Daughter	John Verney
1976	The Sell Out	Sam Lucas
1977	Twilight's Last Gleaming	Gen. Martin MacKenzie – Commander in Chief, SAC
1977	The Domino Principle	Tagge
1977	Rollercoaster	Agent Hoyt
1978	Coma	Dr. Harris
1978	The Swarm	Gen. Slater
1979	Bear Island	Otto Gerran
1982	National Lampoon Goes to the Movies	Stan Nagurski	"Municipalians"
1982	Hanky Panky	Ransom	Directed by Sidney Poitier
1982	Who Dares Wins	Secretary of State Arthur Currie
1984	Against All Odds	Ben Caxton
1991	True Colors	Sen. James Stiles	Final theatrical film role

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1955	I Love Lucy	Himself	TV series; "The Tour"
1971	Vanished	President Paul Roudebush	TV movie Nominated—Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie
1972–1973	Madigan	Sgt. Dan Madigan	TV series; 6 episodes Based on the 1968 film of the same name
1973	Brock's Last Case	Lieutenant Max Brock	TV movie
1974–1975	The Lives of Benjamin Franklin	Benjamin Franklin	TV mini-series
1975	The Last Day	Will Spence	TV movie
1979	Mr. Horn	Al Sieber	TV movie
1980	All God's Children	Judge Parke Denison	TV movie
1981	A Whale for the Killing	Tom Goodenough	TV movie
1985	Blackout	Joe Steiner	TV movie
1987	A Gathering of Old Men	Sheriff Mapes	TV movie
1988	Once Upon a Texas Train	Captain Owen Hayes	TV movie
1989	Cold Sassy Tree	Enoch Rucker Blakeslee	TV movie
1992	Lincoln	Ward Hill Lamon (voice)	TV movie Final acting role
1995	Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick	Himself	TV documentary
2002	Dobe and a Company of Heroes	Himself	TV documentary

Radio appearances

Year	Program	Episode/source
1952	Theatre Guild on the Air	Lilim^[21]
1953	Theatre Guild on the Air	1984^[22]
1953	Suspense	Othello (Parts 1 and 2)^[23]^[24]

References

1. . Sunrise Township. Archived from the original on April 1, 2008. Retrieved March 26, 2008.
2. Films in Review. Then and There Media, LCC. (1986)
3. "'Juvenile' in Gangster Role Reaches Apex of Terror". Los Angeles Times. October 19, 1947. p. 23. Retrieved February 22, 2019.
4. Harmetz, Aljean (March 26, 2008). "Actor Richard Widmark Dies at 93". The New York Times. Retrieved March 26, 2008.
5. Kassabaum, Bartlett Lee (March 18, 2016). . Bureau County Republican. Archived from the original on June 28, 2018. Retrieved February 22, 2019.
6. Harmetz, Aljean (March 27, 2008). "Richard Widmark, Film's Hoodlum and Flawed Hero, Dies at 93". The New York Times.
7. Kirby, Walter (March 9, 1952). "Better Radio Programs for the Week". Decatur Sunday Herald and Review. p. 42. Retrieved May 23, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.  
8. . New York Daily News. Associated Press. March 26, 2008. Archived from the original on March 28, 2008.
9. . CNN. Associated Press. March 26, 2008. Archived from the original on March 28, 2008. Retrieved March 26, 2008.
10. Palhares, Publicada por João. "Phil Karlson". Cine Resort.
11. "Marilyn Monroe was God-awful to work with. Impossible, really". The Daily Telegraph. London. June 1, 2016. Retrieved February 22, 2019.
12. Hinckley, David (March 26, 2008). "Actor Richard Widmark dies". New York Daily News. Retrieved April 12, 2011.
13. "Screen Villain and Gunslinger Richard Widmark Dies". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
14. "Richard Widmark: 1914-2008". CBS News. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
15. Harmetz, Aljean (March 26, 2008). "Richard Widmark, Actor, Dies at 93". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
16. "From the Archives: Richard Widmark dies at 93; actor played both heavies, heroes". Los Angeles Times. March 27, 2008. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
17. "Hollywood Veteran Richard Widmark Dies at 93". NPR. March 26, 2008. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
18. Byrge, Duane (March 26, 2008). "Actor Richard Widmark dies at 93". The Hollywood Reporter. AP. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
19. "Hollywood legend Richard Widmark dies". The Guardian. March 27, 2008. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
20. Richard Stark (March 1, 1999). "Richard Stark: Introduced by Donald E. Westlake". Payback. Grand Central Publishing. pp. vii–x. ISBN 978-0-446-67464-5.
21. Kirby, Walter (November 30, 1952). "Better Radio Programs for the Week". The Decatur Daily Review. p. 48. Retrieved June 14, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.  
22. "Those Were the Days". Nostalgia Digest. Vol. 41, no. 2. Spring 2015. pp. 32–41.
23. Kirby, Walter (May 3, 1953). "Better Radio Programs for the Week". The Decatur Daily Review. p. 52. Retrieved June 26, 2015 – via Newspapers.com.  
24. Kirby, Walter (May 10, 1953). "Better Radio Programs for the Week". The Decatur Daily Review. p. 50. Retrieved June 27, 2015 – via Newspapers.com. 

External links

•  Biography portal

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Richard Widmark.

• Richard Widmark at IMDb
• Richard Widmark at AllMovie
• at the TCM Movie Database  
• Richard Widmark at the Internet Broadway Database  
• Literature on Richard Widmark
• Obituaries:
  • Variety, 26 March 2008
  • The Times, 27 March 2008
  • The Independent, 27 March 2008
  • The Guardian, 27 March 2008