Ray WalstonConvicts 4, poster, top l-r: Ben Gazzara, Stuart Whitman, Ray Walston, Sammy Davis Jr, bottom: Rod Steiger on poster art, 1962. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
“Guardian” obituary from 2001.
Ray Walston, who has died aged 83, was short, bald, had a clownish face and a penetrating, strangely articulated voice – ideal to play an extra-terrestrial, which he did from 1963 to 1966 on television in My Favourite Martian. The comic situations derived from Walston’s deadpan humour as the character struggles to adapt to a more primitive civilisation, his ability to appear and disappear uncontrollably, read minds, speak to animals and levitate.Walston was a down-to-earth character, who hated to be identified as the Martian for so long. He preferred to be remembered for two hit Broadway – and screen – musicals, South Pacific and Damn Yankees, his roles in Billy Wilder’s The Apartment and Kiss Me, Stupid, and a string of character parts.
Walston was born in New Orleans, and made his professional debut for the Community Players in Houston, Texas, in 1938, playing Buddy in High Tor. It took him a few years, after working as a printer and reporter, before he returned to the profession. From playing an attendant in the Maurice Evans Hamlet in 1945 in New York, he went on to appear on Broadway in The Front Page, The Alchemist, and Tennessee Williams’s Summer And Smoke, before landing the role of the conniving marine, Luther Billis, in the touring production of Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific in 1950. He repeated the role for two years at London’s Drury Lane, staged by Joshua Logan, who also directed Walston in the 1958 film version. Walston survived Logan’s stodgy direction, stealing every scene in which he appeared.
Before he made his film debut in 1957 as Cary Grant’s naval sidekick in Stanley Donen’s Kiss Them For Me, Walston sang in three more Broadway musicals, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Me And Juliet, Harold Arlen’s House Of Flowers and George Abbott’s Damn Yankees. In the last, for which he received a Tony, and in the 1958 movie, Walston played a deliciously wicked and frustrated Devil in the human form of an entrepreneur called Mr Applegate, stopping the show with Those Were The Good Old Days.
In 1960, Walston made The Apartment, in which he was one of the bosses using underling Jack Lemmon’s pad for assignations; a shifty chauffeur bringing some reality into the risible soap opera Portrait in Black; a title character in Convicts 4, and a professor trying to help student Anthony Perkins pass an exam to permit him to play in a basketball game in Josh Logan’s Tall Story.
In 1963 Walston appeared as Mr Quimby, the shop manager in the Frank Tashlin-Jerry Lewis comedy, Who’s Minding The Store?, and returned to the big screen in Kiss Me, Stupid (1964). He got the part of Orville J Spooner when Peter Sellers suffered a heart attack. “Both my wife and I sat down and read the script,” Walston recalled, “and I said when I finished it, ‘It’s not good, it’s not good.’ But one doesn’t say that about a Billy Wilder- IAL Diamond script. The feeling was that they would repair it.” They did, and Walston was amusing as a jealous piano teacher and would-be songwriter in Climax, Nevada, who sends his wife away while horny crooner Dean Martin is staying with him, hiring local hooker Kim Novak to play his wife.
“I had a line, when I first bring Kim Novak into the house: ‘Well, it’s not very big but it’s clean.’ And they wanted it done with a slight look from her as if it meant my cock. ‘Hey, Ray,’ Wilder said. ‘Vat are the keedies gonna tink about you ven this film is released?’
“I replied, ‘What are people gonna say about you? How do you think you’re gonna get away with some of this stuff?’ “
IAL Diamond’s wife had her own thoughts: “They should have waited for Peter Sellers to recover, Ray Walston was too unattractive a personality.” She was right in that Walston seldom heeded the exhortatory song You Gotta Have Heart from Damn Yankees, his performances tending towards caricature.
Walston worked on into the 1990s playing the race announcer in on a scam in The Sting (1973), one of the two killers pursuing Gene Wilder in Silver Streak (1976), Poopdeck Pappy in Robert Altman’s Popeye (1981), and the quirky schoolteacher in Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982), a part he repeated in the TV series Fast Times. Aged 75, Walston gave one of his best, and warmest, performances in Of Mice And Men (1992) as the veteran farmworker Candy, heartbroken at his old dog having to be put down.
Walston is survived by his wife, daughter and two grandchildren.
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Niall MacGinnis is not as well known outside of Europe, but he was a wonderful character actor whose variety of roles matched his great gift for characterization and the look beyond just makeup that he projected. He was educated at Stonyhurst College and Trinity College, Dublin. He obtained a basic medical education which qualified him as a house (resident) surgeon during World War II in the Royal Navy. But after the war he decided to pursue acting. He worked in stage repertoire and stock companies and moved on to do significant stage work at the Old Vic Theatre in London, where John Gielgud was director and Shakespeare has a particular focus. MacGinnis had the burly look of a farm hand with a large head and curly hair falling away from a progressively receding hairline. He could portray a broad enough accent – or little at all, as the case might be – which could entail any part of the British Isles.
He moved on to film work in 1935 when British sound cinema was hitting its stride. He met young but well experienced director Michael Powell, who was eager to sell his script for an intriguing film to be shot on the furthest island from the north coast of the UK, Foulda. Alexander Korda was impressed and optioned the production of this script forThe Edge of the World (1937), and MacGinnis got the nod as the central protagonist, Andrew Gray. Soon after in 1938, MacGinnis worked with Old Vic mentor and director Gielgud for a role in an early TV production of the play “Spring Meeting” (1938). As the war years ensued and before his own service, MacGinnis did several war effort films, most notably asked by Powell to take the role of a German U-boat cook in 49th Parallel(1941). The film sported a great ensemble cast, including Leslie Howard and Raymond Massey, and was shot in Canada where the drama unfolded, but it lacked the drive to keep the story vital. MacGinnis shone as the good-natured peasant who loved food and had no use for Nazi strictures and warring on the world. Luckily for Powell, the movie with its flag waving spirit was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic.
By the late 1940s, MacGinnis was donning historical garb for what would be some of his most familiar roles. Olivier remembered him and gave him small but standout roles in both his Henry V (1944) and Hamlet (1948). At about that time MacGinnis began associations with American film actors and production money coming over to Britain, the first being with Fredric March and his wife Florence Eldridge in Christopher Columbus(1949). He finally came to American shores with an appearance on Broadway in “Caesar and Cleopatra” in late 1951 through April of 1952. In 1952 back in England, he had a supporting role as the Herald in a screen version of the story of Thomas a’ Becket titledMurder in the Cathedral (1951). Interestingly, he was also in the much better known and Hollywood-financed Becket (1964), as one of the four murderous barons. When MGM came back to England to follow up its previous visit and subsequent huge hit, Ivanhoe(1952), with Knights of the Round Table (1953), MacGinnis had a brief but again noticeable role as the Green Knight, bound by loss of combat to Robert Taylor as Ivanhoe. The next year brought one of his rare lead roles, an exemplary one in every measure. As Luther in Martin Luther (1953), MacGinnis joined a mostly British cast in a US/West German co-production and American director Irving Pichel with West German and historical scenery topped with a first rate script with American and German co-writers. It received two Oscar nominations.
Into the later 1950s, MacGinnis held to a steady diet of sturdy movie roles, usually supporting but always memorable because of his great acting skill. Historically, he went further back in time with several films of epic Ancient Greece, first as King Menelaus inHelen of Troy (1956), an American/Italian co-production with Robert Wise directing. That same year he stayed on the continent for another epic, this time Alexander the Great(1956) with American director Robert Rossen in an US/Spanish co-production that enlisted another first tier British cast, centered on box office idol Richard Burton, along with former co-star Freddy March. MacGinnis finally made it to Mount Olympus – that is, playing Zeus – in the rousing US/UK co-production of Jason and the Argonauts (1963), certainly best remembered for the stop motion animation magic of Ray Harryhausen.
Yet, MacGinnis’ perhaps best remembered role – certainly to discriminating fans of horror/fantasy – was that of two-faced Dr. Julian Karswell, jocular magician – but deadly serious cult leader and demon conjurer (loosely based on the outrageous English social rebel and occultist Aleister Crowley). The film Curse of the Demon (1957) (the American cut was renamed “Curse of the Demon”) was a stylishly atmospheric and convincingly spooky outing directed by Val Lewton, the protégé of Hollywood veteran film directorJacques Tourneur, best known for Cat People (1942). Based on M.R. James‘ Edwardian ghost story, “Casting the Runes,” the film is now considered a classic of the genre with MacGinnis, sporting a devilish goatee, having fun with his split personality but also effectively betraying his inward fear of the powers he has unleashed. He easily stole the show from co-star Dana Andrews, as the stubborn American psychologist almost done in by the demon he does not believe exists.
Through the 1960s and into the 1970s, MacGinnis kept to up a fairly steady stream of varied historical and contemporary movie roles, always noticeable, and in some of the high profile films of the period, including: Billy Budd (1962), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), and the Cinerama adventure Krakatoa: East of Java (1968). There were some TV spots as well to showcase his character-molding talents into the year of his passing to round out a body of over 75 screen appearances.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: William McPeak
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
James McCaffrey was born in 1959 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is an actor and producer, known for Rescue Me (2004), Max Payne (2001) and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (2003) Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland; he was raised in Albany, New York. Attended the University of New Haven on a football, baseball, and Fine Arts scholarships.After graduating from college, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he earned a living as an artist, graphic designer, and commercial art director. He also worked as a bartender at Gatsby’s Restaurant on Boylston Street. Has been a member of ‘The Actors Studio’ since 1987, and co-owned ‘The Workhouse Theatre’ in Tribeca, New York City from 1992-99.
Warren Christie was born on November 4, 1975 in Belfast, Northern Ireland as Hans Warren Christie. He is an actor, known for Apollo 18 (2011), This Means War (2012) andAlphas (2011). He has been married to Sonya Salomaa since 2007.
Virginia O’Brien, who has died aged 79, appeared in 16 movies between 1940 and 1947, mostly in small roles or merely to deliver a speciality number or two. Yet this singular singer was very much part of that great escapist era during which MGM musicals dominated.O’Brien, nicknamed variously The Diva of Deadpan and Miss Red Hot Frozen Face, was an attractive brunette, with a deep voice, who delivered her songs in an unsmiling sphinx-like manner, her lovely dark eyes unblinking, her face hardly moving a muscle, although her neck sometimes jutted back and forwards.
A typically memorable moment was her acidly comic rendering of In A Little Spanish Town in the all-star cavalcade Thousands Cheer (1943), in contrast to the sweetly-sung version by Gloria De Haven and June Allyson, who flanked her. In Ziegfeld Follies (1946), after Fred Astaire has sung Bring On The Beautiful Girls – who appear in pink, on a merry-go-round, seated on live horses – the staring O’Brien, astride a vigorous fake white horse, pleads Bring On The Wonderful Men.
Born in Los Angeles, Virginia Lee O’Brien was related to Civil War General Robert E Lee, and she was named after his home state. Her Irish father was the captain of detectives of the Los Angeles Police Department and later the city’s deputy district attorney. One of her uncles was the film director Lloyd Bacon, whose credits include 42nd Street.
At North Hollywood high school, Virginia took dancing and singing lessons. In 1939, aged 17, modelling herself on her idol, Ethel Merman, “moving my arms and singing up a storm,” in the stage show Meet the People, she won an MGM contract.
Before she made her screen debut, however, O’Brien appeared on Broadway in the revue Keep Off The Grass, which starred Jimmy Durante. New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson called her, “a deadpan singer who convulses the audience by removing the ecstasy from high pressure music”.
Her first film for MGM, Hullabaloo (1940), in which she played a wisecracking manicurist, allowed her to interpret two songs in her inimitable poker-faced style. In Lady Be Good (1941), she partnered comedian Red Skelton for the first time as his kooky girlfriend, who is only happy “when she’s eating”. In the Marx Brothers comedy, The Big Store (1941), she was a salesgirl whose raucous rendition of Rock-A-Bye-Baby would have woken any tiny tot. She delivered three numbers in Panama Hattie (1941), including Did I Get Stinkin’ At The Savoy?, which the star of the film, Ann Sothern, refused to sing because she thought it in bad taste. O’Brien, with her expressionless delivery, managed to get away with it.
In 1942, she married actor Kirk Alyn, who was to become the Superman of serials after the war. They had two daughters and a son. In fact, she was pregnant with her first child while making the exuberant Judy Garland musical The Harvey Girls (1946). As Alma, one of the waitresses out west, her part got smaller and smaller as she got larger. Still, she had an enchanting number with Garland and Cyd Charisse in night-gowns called It’s A Great Big World.
Her largest previous role had been as the lovestruck cigarette girl in love with Red Skelton in Du Barry Was A Lady (1943), in which she sang Salome Was The Grandma of Them All. In Meet The People (1944), O’Brien sang Say We’re Sweethearts Again, which contains the lyric “I never knew our romance had ended till you tried to poison my food.” It became her most requested song when she did cabaret.
Her penultimate picture at MGM was the Jerome Kern biopic Till The Clouds Roll By (1946), in which she performed Life Upon The Wicked Stage, and A Fine Romance. She was then co-starred with Red Skelton again in Merton Of The Movies (1947).
Of her role, Variety wrote “Virginia O’Brien proves herself a capable leading lady without recourse to deadpan vocaling. The erstwhile canary doesn’t have a number to chirp throughout and sells herself strictly on talent merits in the romantic lead opposite Skelton. The manner in which she delivers should further her career.”
Alas, it was not to be, and when MGM failed to replace Garland with O’Brien in Annie Get Your Gun, mainly because she admitted she had a fear of horses, they did not renew her contract.
In 1955, she divorced Kirk Alyn (who died in 1999), and took a small role as a nurse in Francis In The Navy, starring Donald O’Connor and a talking mule. In 1957 she married electronics engineer Vern Evans, a marriage which produced a daughter. In 1968, after a divorce, she wed aviator and inventor Harry B White, a marriage which lasted until his death in 1996.
During the next two decades, O’Brien would appear in many comedy and variety series on television, and she also toured in a number of road companies. In 1983 she recorded a live performance album of her act at the Hollywood Masquer’s Club, which included many of the songs that made her famous.
Virginia O’Brien, actress and singer, born April 8 1921; died January 18 2001.
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
One of Hollywood’s most private and guarded leading men, Andy Garcia has created a few iconic characters while at the same time staying true to his acting roots and personal projects.
Garcia was born on April 12, 1956, in Havana, Cuba, to Amelie Menéndez, a teacher of English, and René García Núñez, an attorney and avocado farmer. Garcia’s family was relatively affluent. However, when he was two years old, Fidel Castro came to power, and the family fled to Miami Beach. Forced to work menial jobs for a while, the family started a fragrance company that was eventually worth more than a million dollars. He attended Natilus Junior High School and later at Miami Beach Senior High School. Andy was a popular student in school, a good basketball player and good-looking. He dreamed of playing professional baseball. In his senior year, though, he contracted mononucleosis and hepatitis, and unable to play sports, he turned his attention to acting.
He studied acting with Jay W. Jensen. Jensen was a South Florida legend, counting among his numerous students, Brett Ratner, Roy Firestone, Mickey Rourke, and Luther Campbell. Following his positive high school experiences in acting, he continued his drama studies at Florida International University.
Soon, he was headed out to Hollywood. His first break came as a gang member on the very first episode of the popular TV series Hill Street Blues (1981). His role as a cocaine kingpin in 8 Million Ways to Die (1986) put him on the radar of Brian De Palma, who was casting for his gangster classic The Untouchables (1987). At first, he envisioned Garcia asAl Capone‘s sadistic henchman Frank Nitti, but fearing typecasting as a gangster, Garcia campaigned for the role of “George Stone”, the Italian cop who gets accepted into Eliot Ness‘ famous band of lawmen. Garcia’s next notable role came in Black Rain (1989) by acclaimed director Ridley Scott, as the partner of police detective Michael Douglas. He then co-starred with Richard Gere in Internal Affairs (1990), directed by Mike Figgis. In 1989, Francis Ford Coppola was casting for the highly anticipated third installment of his “Godfather” films. The Godfather: Part III (1990) included one of the most sought-after roles in decades, the hot-headed son of “Sonny Corleone” and mob protégé of “Michael Corloene”, “Vincent Mancini”. A plum role for any young rising star, the role was campaigned for by a host of actors. Val Kilmer, Alec Baldwin, Vincent Spano, Charlie Sheen, and even Robert De Niro (who wanted the role changed to accommodate his age) were all beaten out by the up-and-coming Garcia. His performance was Oscar-nominated as Best Supporting Actor, and secured him international stardom and a place in cinematic history. Now a leading man, he starred in such films as Jennifer 8 (1992) and Hero (1992). He won raves for his role as the husband of Meg Ryan in When a Man Loves a Woman (1994) and gave another charismatic gangster turn in Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995). He then returned in Night Falls on Manhattan (1996), directed by Sidney Lumet, as well as portraying legendary mobster Lucky Luciano inHoodlum (1997). In perhaps his most mainstream role, he portrayed a cop in the action film Desperate Measures (1998). Garcia then starred in a few lower-profile projects that didn’t do much for his career, but things turned around in 2001, with the first of many projects being his role as a cold casino owner in Ocean’s Eleven (2001), directed bySteven Soderbergh. Seeing his removal from Cuba as involuntary, Garcia is proud of his heritage which influences his life and work. One such case is his portrayal of renowned Cuban trumpet player Arturo Sandoval in For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story (2000). He is an extremely private man, and strong believer in old-fashioned chivalry. Married to his wife, Maria Victoria, since 1982, the couple has three daughters. One of the most talented leading men around, Garcia has had a unique career of staying true to his own ideals and thoughts on acting. While some would have used some of the momentum he has acquired at different points in his career to get rich off lightweight projects, Garcia has stayed true to stories and films that aspire to something more. But with a presence and style that never seem old, a respect from directors and film buffs, alike, Andy Garcia will be remembered for a long time in film history.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Brian Stewart and Chase Rosenberg
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Stage and screen actor hailed for his 1965 Hamlet at the RSC who went on to have a distinguished film and TV career
It would be misleading to suggest that the actor David Warner, who has died aged 80, struggled to recapture the success he found early on in his career. While it is true that he never again caused the sort of shockwaves generated by his radical interpretation of Hamlet at the RSC in 1965, or on screen as the troubled antihero of Karel Reisz’s comedy Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966), Warner gave no impression of struggling after anything much at all.
Fame and acclaim interested him not; it was said that he read all his reviews for Hamlet but kept only the bad ones. He was motivated, he said, by “a driving lack of ambition” and claimed: “I don’t think I’m on anyone’s wavelength, even my own.” Reluctant to take his profession too seriously, his advice to younger actors was simple: “Don’t run with scissors.”
But for that briefest time in the mid-1960s, he became the embodiment of youthful discontentment. In Peter Hall’s groundbreaking Hamlet, he was a very modern student prince in long red scarf, spectacles and Aran sweater. “David’s gentleness and passivity chimed absolutely with flower power and all that,” noted Hall. “He was wonderful.”
Warner acknowledged the unpredictable quality of his own performance: “I’m a bit erratic. Sometimes I can hear the others thinking, ‘What’s he up to tonight?’” In 2001, the Telegraph decided that he had been “the finest Hamlet of his generation”, though the actor was characteristically slow to accept such praise. “It’s not for me to say … I just don’t know – I didn’t see it. The only thing I can say is that the kids did go to see it. It brought a whole new generation to Stratford.” He later referred to it as “my Citizen Dane”.
David Warner and Vanessa Redgrave in Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment, 1966, directed by Karel Reisz. Photograph: Studio Canal/Shutterstock
His distracted handsomeness, golden locks and formidable jaw could have made him a viable romantic lead were it not for the languid oddness that set him apart, sharpening gradually into menace as he became a popular screen villain. He played Jack the Ripper in Time After Time (1979), Evil in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981) and a computerised tyrant in Disney’s Tron (1982), for which he had only one stipulation for the studio: “There’s to be no doll of my character on the market. I don’t want my child having a plastic baddie as a daddy.” A younger generation got the chance to boo him as a dastardly valet in the smash-hit Titanic (1997).
He was born in Manchester to Ada Hattersley and Herbert Warner, who owned a nursing home. His parents separated during his childhood. “There was no theatrical tradition but plenty of histrionics,” he remarked of them. His upbringing became increasingly peripatetic. He attended eight different boarding schools and floundered academically. “My parents kept stealing me from each other, so I moved across England a lot.”
He became interested in acting when he appeared in plays at school (“I was the tallest Lady Macbeth”) and eventually got a place at Rada, where one of his classmates was John Hurt, with whom he would later appear in the film version of David Halliwell’s play Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs (1974). His first notable screen role was in Tony Richardson’s period romp Tom Jones (1963). He appeared as Snout in Richardson’s 1962 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and was earmarked for the RSC by Hall, who saw him in Afore Night Come at the Arts Theatre.
He was Henry VI in the RSC’s celebrated War of the Roses trilogy, which was adapted by John Barton from the three Henry plays and Richard III, and directed by Barton and Hall. A dynamic BBC film of the plays, ambitiously shot with 12 cameras, reached a wide audience during its two broadcasts in 1965 and 1966. Warner was then surprised by Hall’s invitation to play Hamlet. “I’m really a character actor, an old man actor,” he said, though he was only 24 at the time.
He next landed the title role in Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment as a daydreamer descending into apparent insanity. “You can’t count on me being civilised,” he tells his wife (Vanessa Redgrave). “I’ve lost the thread.” Later he dons an ape suit, imagines commuters as wild animals and ends the film in a mental institution where he is last seen tending a flower-bed in the shape of a hammer and sickle. The picture was every bit as trenchant a commentary on class, conformity and rebellion as better-known examples such as If… and Billy Liar. It also remains the screen work that best captures Warner’s particular mix of the kooky and the volatile.
David Warner as Hamlet in Peter Hall’s 1965 RSC production.Photograph: Hess/ANL/Shutterstock
After playing Konstantin in Sidney Lumet’s film of The Seagull (1968), he starred in The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), the first of three movies for Sam Peckinpah. That year, Warner broke both his feet after falling from a balcony in Rome. The mysterious circumstances of the accident gave rise to rumours of drug use. Not until he was much older did medical tests reveal a chemical imbalance which left him prone to vertigo and panic attacks. Peckinpah brought him out of hospital to play a man with educational difficulties in the violent thriller Straw Dogs (1971). “He knew I wanted to get back in front of a camera,” said Warner, who limped noticeably on screen.
He worked with Peckinpah once more, on the second world war drama Cross of Iron (1977). By that time, Warner had retreated from the theatre after suffering stage fright in 1972 during productions of I, Claudius and David Hare’s The Great Exhibition; he would not return for another 30 years. He starred in Joseph Losey’s film version of A Doll’s House (1973) and the shlock horror hit The Omen (1976), in which he was memorably decapitated by a sheet of glass.
In 1975, he divorced his first wife, Harriet Lindgren, whom he had married seven years earlier; the two remained friends, Warner even stepping in when her new husband’s best man dropped out at the 11th hour. The actor was part of an ensemble that included John Gielgud, Dirk Bogarde and Ellen Burstyn in the enigmatic but lightweight Providence (1977), directed by Alain Resnais, and played Heydrich in the mini-series Holocaust, starring Meryl Streep. Less illustrious work including a remake of The Thirty-Nine Steps (also 1978), the bat-based horror Nightwing (1979) and the pirate thriller The Island (1980).
David Warner, left, with Gregory Peck in The Omen, 1976. Photograph: Allstar
He starred alongside Streep again in The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981) and got a welcome chance to show off his comic timing in the loopy Steve Martin comedy The Man with Two Brains (1983). He was Red Riding Hood’s father in Neil Jordan’s imaginative Angela Carter adaptation The Company of Wolves and landed two memorable television roles on ITV: as a dishevelled private eye in the mini-series Charlie and as the Creature in Frankenstein (all 1984).
Again he was Heydrich in the television movie Hitler’s SS: Portrait in Evil (1985). He starred in the second series of David Lynch’s cult crime series Twin Peaks (1991) and as different characters in two Star Trek films, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991). In the latter he delivered the immortal line: “You’ve not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.”
He was sanguine about the parts that came his way, insisting that “one cannot live on Vanyas alone” and calling himself a “letterbox actor” – “If the script comes through the letterbox, I’ll do it.”
Accepting a part in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1992), he said: “Now, at last, I can look [my child’s] friends in the face. When they ask me ‘What do you do?’, I don’t have to say, ‘I’ve done a bit of Shakespeare, a bit of Chekhov.’ I can say I was in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II.”
Roles continued to be plentiful. He had a hoot in the clever horror-comedy Scream 2 (1997) but divided most of his time between voice work for animated series and computer games and guest roles on US television and in straight-to-video genre knock-offs. He donned prosthetics for Tim Burton’s mediocre reboot of Planet of the Apes (2001), joined in with the silliness of The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse (2005) and had recurring roles as a retired police officer with Alzheimer’s in the powerful BBC series Conviction (2004) and as the father of the popular Swedish detective played by Kenneth Branagh in Wallander (2008-15). He also made his stage comeback in New York in Major Barbara, in 2001, and in London in The Feast of Snails the following year, as well as playing King Lear in Chichester in 2005.
He is survived by his partner, the actor Lisa Bowerman, and by Luke, the child of his second marriage, to Sheilah Kent, which ended in divorce
Gangly British stage-trained actor David Warner entered film in the early 1960s and came to attention in the title role of Karel Reisz’s eccentric drama, “Morgan!” (1966), playing an unbalanced artist driven to the edge by his divorce. He has worked for such distinguished directors as John Frankenheimer, Sidney Lumet, Richard Donner, Joseph Losey, Alain Resnais and–on three occasions–Sam Peckinpah (“The Ballad of Cable Hogue” 1970; “Straw Dogs” 1971; and “Cross of Iron” 1977). While highly capable of sympathetic and even poignant roles, Warner has delivered many notable performances as villains, including Jack the Ripper to Malcolm McDowell’s H.G. Wells in “Time After Time” (1979), the Evil Genius in Terry Gilliam’s “Time Bandits” (1983) and the sinister doctor in “Mr. North” (1988). – TCM Overview
Described in the press as the heir apparent to James Stewart and Jack Lemmon, Jim Hutton broke out of the pack with his funny, awkward TV Thompson in Where the Boys Are (1960). Son of Col. Thomas R. Hutton and Helen Ryan, his parents divorced when he was an infant. Jim recalled seeing his father only twice before his death, and moved to Albany, New York, in 1938. A bright but troublesome child (claiming to have been in five high schools and a boarding school), he excelled as a writer and won a journalism scholarship when he began writing sports for his high school newspaper. At Syracuse University, he lost his position in the school of journalism (& scholarship) when he was bitten by the acting bug. He subsequently lost academic ambition and failed three classes as a freshman. He used his summers to train in summer stock, but his intentions to continue academic pursuits were ended when he was expelled from Syracuse as a sophomore and again at Niagara College as a junior.
He lived in Greenwich Village for almost a year to pursue a career on the stage, but when out of money and unable to pay his rent or buy food, he joined the army and was assigned to special services to act in training films. He was later stationed in Berlin where he founded the American Community Theater by renovating an abandoned theater for a GI production of the play “Harvey” (which he starred in). Receiving high praise from officers including official commendation, his superior officer agreed to assign Hutton to manage the theater as part of his official duties and he produced, directed, and acted in five productions over two years, receiving the European Theater Award for Best GI Theater. One of his productions, The Caine Mutiny (1954), received the attention of director Douglas Sirk, who offered him the significant role of Hirschland in A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) as a young Nazi who commits suicide. Using his entire military leave to film for 22 days, Universal was so impressed they offered him a contract, but he still had 18 months of service. Within five days of his military discharge he had married and moved to Hollywood to pursue a career, but by then the offer was off the table from Universal. He eventually landed at MGM. The first role of significance to get attention (and use his new stage name Jim Hutton) was a first season episode ofThe Twilight Zone (1959) which earned the newbie good notice within the industry. Eventually he landed his breakout role of TV Thompson in Where the Boys Are (1960), paired with newcomer Paula Prentiss. He came in third in 1960’s Golden Laurel Awards Top Male New Personality, was named one of Motion Picture Herald’s Stars of Tomorrow, was a Photoplay Favorite Male Newcomer nominee, and Screen World Award winner for Most Promising Personality.
Prentiss and Jim Hutton were immediately paired into three other films, The Honeymoon Machine (1961), Bachelor in Paradise (1961), and The Horizontal Lieutenant (1962). But despite their likable personalities and on screen chemistry, none of the films captured the magic of the first film. Frustrated, Hutton campaigned for the lead in Period of Adjustment and then refused jobs for 15 months until MGM agreed give him better roles or dissolve their exclusive contract. He agreed to appear with ‘Connie Francis (I)’ in the film, Looking for Love (1964) if he were let go to pursue work independently.
Once free from contracts he was selected by Sam Peckinpah for the role of the young Lieutenant in Major Dundee. Dundee’s turbulent production was the primary subject of reviews, yet the subsequent reassessment of the flawed film (particularly by Peckinpah scholars) has garnered Hutton posthumous praise for his youthful and exuberant performance. Dundee was followed by several acting veterans taking an interested in the underused actor’s career, including Burt Lancaster, in The Hallelujah Trail (1965), Cary Grant in Walk Don’t Run (1966), and ‘John Wayne (I)’ in The Green Berets (1968). Like his later appreciated performance in Dundee, his role in The Green Berets (1968) was overlooked due to the film’s controversial political stance on Vietnam. Yet it has become common to see Hutton’s performance as one of the bright spots in the film, thanks to his ability to incorporate his natural comic skills and cocky swagger into the role of war time cynical scavenger who becomes the heroic adoptive father of a Vietnamese orphan. His work in these films, and leading roles in the underrated heist farce Who’s Minding the Mint? (1967) showed his growth as an actor. However, when all three of his 1965 releases flopped at the box-office his Hollywood stock took a major tumble, particularly when Gene Kelly dropped him from the lead in of A Guide for the Married Man (1967) one month before production started.
Film roles dried up and he was relegated to TV work, which coincided with what he called an eight year depression. It wasn’t until 1975 that he experienced a career comeback with the cult detective series Ellery Queen (1975), which coincided with an upturn of theater work and reunion with his son, actor Timothy Hutton, who moved in with him at this time at 15 years old. Tragically, his comeback didn’t last long, as he died of liver cancer in 1979, two days after his 45th birthday.
