Another Great Gone… Richard Widmark Passed Away

Richard Widmark, one of my mom’s all-time favorite actors (and very high on my list, too) was probably best known for his portrayal as the insane, giggling killer in KISS OF DEATH – how could you forget it? He passed away on Monday at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut. He was 93 years old.

His wife, Susan Blanchard, would not provide details of his illness which had been on-going and said funeral arrangements are private.

“It was a big shock, but he was 93,” Blanchard said.

Widmark’s first wife, Hazelwood, died in 1997 and Widmark married Blanchard in 1999.

Widmark earned an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor for his role in the 1947 thriller “Kiss of Death.” In it, he portrayed maniacal Tommy Udo, who delighted in pushing an old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs to her death. It was to earn him his only Oscar nomination.

“That damned laugh of mine!” he told a reporter in 1961. “For two years after that picture, you couldn’t get me to smile. I played the part the way I did because the script struck me as funny and the part I played made me laugh. The guy was such a ridiculous beast.”

In an ironic twist, Richard Widmark was a quiet, inordinately shy man who often portrayed killers, cops and Western gunslingers. But he said he hated guns.”I know I’ve made kind of a half-assed career out of violence, but I abhor violence,” he remarked in a 1976 Associated Press interview. “I am an ardent supporter of gun control. It seems incredible to me that we are the only civilized nation that does not put some effective control on guns.”

Widmark was born Dec. 26, 1914, in Sunrise, Minn. His father ran a general store, then became a traveling salesman. The family moved around a bit, from Sioux Falls, S.D., to Henry, Ill., and Chillicothe, Mo., before settling in Princeton, Ill.

“Like most small-town boys, I had the urge to get to the big city and make a name for myself,” he recalled in a 1954 interview.

“I was a movie nut from the age of 3, but I don’t recall having any interest in acting,” he said.

But at Lake Forest College, he found his niche as the protege of the drama teacher and met his first wife, drama student Ora Jean Hazelwood. Their daughter, Ann, married (and later divorced) baseball immortal Sandy Koufax.

During the heyday of radio drama, Widmark’s mellow and distinctive Midwest voice made him a favorite in soap operas, and he found himself in demand at more than one studio, at the same time.

Not able to join the Army in 1943 because of a punctured eardrum, Widmark began appearing in Broadway plays. His first was a comedy hit KISS AND TELL. He was appearing in the Chicago company of DREAM GIRL with June Havoc when 20th Century Fox signed him to a seven-year contract. He almost missed out on the KISS OF DEATH role.

“The director, Henry Hathaway, didn’t want me,” the actor recalled. “I have a high forehead; he thought I looked too intellectual.” The director was overruled by studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck, and Hathaway “gave me kind of a bad time.”

Among the movies he made once KISS OF DEATH made him a star: THE STREET WITH NO NAME, ROAD HOUSE, YELLOW SKY, PANIC IN THE STREETS, THE HALLS OF MONTEZUMA, and another of my mom’s very favorites, the Samuel Fuller film noir PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET.

In 1952, Widmark also starred in DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK along with Anne Bancroft, Jim Backus and Marilyn Monroe. He told an interviewer years later regarding Monroe:

“She wanted to be this great star but acting just scared the hell out of her. That’s why she was always late – couldn’t get her on the set. She had trouble remembering lines.”

“But none of it mattered. With a very few special people, something happens between the lens and the film that is pure magic. … And she really had it.”

Widmark even managed to make his mark in television: MADIGAN, originally a movie which came out in 1968 with him in the title role as a loner detective, was converted to television and lasted one season in 1972-73. It was his only TV series.

Goodbye to another great screen, stage and television actor of the Golden era. (I grew up watching his movies and now he’s gone – Man, I’m REALLY starting to feel old!)

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