The 1957 B-movie Attack of the Crab Monsters was promoted with the tagline “From the depths of the sea . . . a tidal wave of terror!” Directed and produced by Roger Corman, it grossed over $1m at the US box-office even though it had only cost $70,000 to make. Corman attributed its success and subsequent cult status to “the wildness of the title and the construction of the storyline”.
Under the effects of radiation, crabs on a remote Pacific island mutate into 25ft monsters relishing the taste of human brains and mimicking their victims’ voices to lure the surviving scientists towards their claws. Pamela Duncan was the female lead, Martha Hunter, fighting the giant talking crustaceans, alongside the Corman regulars Richard Garland and Mel Welles.
She also starred in Corman’s horror movie The Undead (1957), again alongside Garland and Welles, this time as Diana Love, a call girl who is submitted to hypnosis and relives her past life as Helene, a medieval witch. The cast almost suffocated during filming in Los Angeles when Corman filled the small soundstage located in an abandoned supermarket on Sunset Boulevard with creosote fog. Retrogression proved a popular theme at the box office and the pneumatic charms of the bosomy witches and wenches portrayed by Duncan, Allison Hayes and Dorothy Neumann lured in enough viewers to enable Corman to recoup his $70,000 outlay within weeks of the movie’s release.
These lead parts came halfway through a busy 12 years for Duncan, who appeared in over 50 episodes of television series such as Dragnet, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Maverick and Perry Mason between 1951 and 1962. When the acting work dried up, she left California and moved back to the East Coast and, in 2000, was one of several entertainers interviewed at the Lillian Booth Actors’ Fund of America Home in Englewood, New Jersey, for the Chuck Braverman documentary Curtain Call, which was nominated for an Oscar.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1932, Pamela Duncan had such grace and poise as a teenager that she won several beauty pageants in the New York area. In 1951, she moved to Hollywood and landed the part of a saloon barmaid in a B-western, Whistling Hills, subsequently appearing in Lawless Cowboys (1951) and The Saracen Blade (1954).
Her dark looks meant she was often cast as a señorita (in 1956, in Budd Boetticher’s Seven Men From Now or in 1957, in Gun Battle at Monterey) or as a private detective’s secretary (My Gun Is Quick, 1957). Still, she also appeared in Julie (1956), the Andrew L. Stone film starring Doris Day as a air hostess on the run from her murderous husband Louis Jourdan, and in episodes of Rawhide, Laramie, Colt 45 and Dr Kildare.
When her last three film appearances, in Don’t Give Up the Ship (1959) starring Jerry Lewis, as Pearl in Summer and Smoke (1961) and as the cigarette girl in the Elvis Presley vehicle Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962) went uncredited, Duncan knew that she would not make the leap from starlet to bona fide actress. She drifted back into obscurity and only re-emerged to reminisce about the good old days for fan magazines and for the Curtain Call documentary in 2000.
Pierre Perrone
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
June Vincent: Not Just Another Pretty Face — by Guest Blogger Kristina Dijan
Shadows and Satin is pleased and privileged to present our very first guest blog post, by none other than Senior Writer for The Dark Pages film noir newsletter, Kristina Dijan! Kristina also writes regularly for Landmark Report (www.landmarkreport.com/kdijan) and hosts her own blog, Kristina’s Kinema, at www.kinoroll.blogspot.com. The following originally appeared in the April/May 2009 issue of The Dark Pages. (For information on subscribing to The Dark Pages, or to request a sample issue, visit:http://allthatnoir.com/newsletter.htm.) Enjoy!
June Vincent strikes a glamorous pose.
At the beginning of 1945, Universal bought the film rights for The Black Angel, a novel by Cornell Woolrich, and a little over a year later, in April 1946, the film was set to start production with Ava Gardner in the lead role. Only days after that casting announcement, however, Gardner dropped out to travel east and visit husband Artie Shaw. The immediate beneficiary of this turn of events was June Vincent, a luminous blonde who replaced Gardner and thus stepped into her first major starring role. Black Angel is a great noir, and possibly Vincent’s best known feature, though she did grace a number of good B westerns and crime films. Vincent had to her credit one other notable but brief noir appearance – more on that one later.
Vincent was born Dorothy June Smith in Ohio, the daughter of a pastor. At 17 she went to New York to pursue a modeling career, and received her first break with Harper’s Bazaar. While modeling, she struck up a friendship with Lauren Bacall, with whom she went to Hollywood after appearing on Broadway and shooting a screen test for Universal. Vincent started her film work in Honeymoon Lodge (1943).
Next for Vincent came Ladies Courageous (1944), a war film about the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, with Loretta Young, Anne Gwynne and Evelyn Ankers. During filming, Vincent was fixed up on a blind date, through which she met her future husband, navy pilot Lieutenant William Sterling. The couple wed in 1944, and the first of their three children was born in August 1945. Vincent worked sporadically, and then came her big break.
Black Angel is a whodunit about a woman whose husband is falsely accused of murdering slinky singer and blackmailer Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling). The loyal wife Catherine Bennett, played by June Vincent, embarks on her own investigation to find the real killer and save her husband from execution. Vincent teams up with Mavis’ estranged husband, a tortured and alcoholic songwriter played by Dan Duryea, who is one possible suspect until he’s cleared by an alibi. Vincent and Duryea follow a clue to Peter Lorre, whom Duryea remembers seeing at Dowling’s apartment building the night of her murder. Vincent and Duryea pretend to be a nightclub act to work at Lorre’s joint and Vincent further ingratiates herself to get her hands on evidence to clear her husband. In true noir fashion, though, things fall apart.
Vincent in Black Angel is a very appealing presence; elegant, cool and polished, but also warm, kind, concerned. She and Dan Duryea, whom Vincent called one of her favorite leading men, made an interesting couple, with him playing against type as a nicer guy, and highly sympathetic at that. Vincent goes through a fascinating transformation in the film. When she learns of her husband’s presence at Dowling’s apartment, she’s the plain, decidedly un-stylish housewife. As she takes matters into her own hands, she gradually transforms into the ultra-glamorous nightclub singer (her voice in the musical scenes was dubbed). The change is so dramatic it’s no wonder other characters think she’s familiar but can’t quite place her as the humiliated wife seen at he husband’s trial. Little wonder also that Duryea falls in love with her. She has several good scenes, like the one where Duryea unveils his latest love song to her, and she conveys both her realization that Duryea loves her and also that she doesn’t return his feelings, and feels guilty and sad about it. Vincent is also good at barely hiding her disgust at Peter Lorre’s advances, having to tolerate his creepiness to get closer to evidence that might expose him. It’s a shame Vincent never progressed to A-list stardom – Black Angel alone proved she had both the talent and the presence.
After Black Angel, Vincent left Universal for Columbia, and the change was reflected in her hairstyle. She had arrived in Hollywood wearing a long, peek-a-boo coif, similar to Veronica Lake, but with her relocation to Columbia, Vincent became a trendsetter when she started sporting white streaks – frosted hair in the front and darker in the back. At Columbia, Vincent worked almost nonstop, and appeared in many westerns and crime films, including Song of Idaho (1948), Trapped by Boston Blackie (1948), the horror film the Creeper (1948) The Arkansas Swing (1948), and Mary Ryan, Detective (1950)
So what was her uncredited cameo in a noir classic? Right after the opening credits finish rolling for In a Lonely Place (1950), a convertible pulls up next to Humphrey Bogart’s and June Vincent neatly introduces his character with her words, “Dix Steele! Don’t you remember me? You wrote the last picture I did for Columbia!” Her annoyed husband threatens Bogie, then races away.
Vincent made another noir thriller, Night Without Sleep(1952), in which her husband, composer Richard Morton (Gary Merrill), awakens with a nasty hangover and amnesia about last night, and then digs through several flashbacks to figure out if his nightmare of killing a woman was real. With her film appearances dwindling out, Vincent was often seen in TV guest spots, including a number of times on Have Gun Will Travel, and on Perry Mason, since actress friend Gail Patrick was producer of that series. Vincent used to joke with Patrick that they had better start varying her roles because viewers were catching on that she always played the murderess. Vincent worked well into the 1970s, appearing on Bewitched, The Streets of San Francisco, and Kung Fu.
After guesting on Maude in 1976, Vincent said she no longer enjoyed what she saw coming out of Hollywood and retired for good. Some time in the 1980s, Vincent’s foot was run over by a supermarket shopper with a full cart. The injury required a lot of surgery and developed into arthritis, and Vincent also was afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. In an interview, she expressed her gratitude for the Actor’s Guild benefits that helped her through her health problems, a valuable reward for her 30 plus years in Hollywood. Vincent died in November 2008.
Adam Benedick’s obituary of Alexander Knox in “The Independent” in 1995:
The air bites keenly at the top of Ibsen’s mountains. It takes stamina on each side of the footlights to make the ascent a success; the atmosphere hums with metaphysics and metaphors. We were riding high at an Edinburgh Festival with the ’69 Theatre Company which had loomed up first at Hammersmith with Brand in 1958, a rare enough piece by Ibsen to stick for generations in the memory; and now 10 years later in the Edinburgh Assembly Hall came another resurrection, Michaell Elliott’s revival of When We Dead Awaken.
t would also, like Brand, end with an avalanche. The things Ibsen expected of his players and designers! Out of the mists of all this gloomy and daring symbolism, emerged the Canadian-Scottish actor Alexander Knox, stern, intense, authoritative, chilling, and supposedly a sculptor.
He was playing with drily persuasive conviction one of Ibsen’s artists rediscovering a soulmate – a sexually insensitive egotist and idealist whose relationship with his uninspiring and disenchanted wife makes way for a reunion with a former model.
She had sat for the ageing sculptor’s masterpiece without inciting his lust. She (Wendy Hiller) could never forgive him. He, the cold, high-principled thinker, was crucially unaware of her needs.
The spectacle, with lesser players, might have been laughable, but Ibsen, given the right director, can be marvellously bracing; and Knox, the stillest and sometimes subtlest of players, had us in his palm as he moved up the menacing mountain towards the inevitable symbol of personal failure – with the bride-like Hiller at his side. It may have been her evening in its dignified evasion of absurdity, but it was Knox who commanded that peninsular stage – Tyrone Guthrie’s famous but tricky invention – to an extent which drove away all irreverent thoughts while he was on it.
He had been powerful before, in his quiet way, on London stages. In Ugo Betti’s The Burnt Flowerbed (Arts, 1955) he had played another Ibsenish character of symbolic and highly imaginative importance; and more strikingly still in Clifford Odets’s Winter Journey (St James’s) he had succeeded Michael Redgrave as the flamboyantly neurotic and drunken American actor trying to make a comeback. Even before the Second World War he was something of a name in London. At the Old Vic he had played opposite Laurence Olivier as Dr McGilp in James Bridie’s The King of Nowhere, in which he had a particular success; and he was in several of Shaw’s later plays like Geneva (1938) and, at Malvern Festival, Good King Charles’s Golden Days.
At the Old Vic he had been noted in Ralph Richardson’s Othello for a “strongly humanised” Brabantio and for Emlyn Williams’s Richard III (as Catesby) he gave “a secret, dour-lipped performance” which left at least one critic guessing. It was however as Snout in Guthrie’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream that Knox’s acting “leapt to life” – “mournful of face with a voice dripping melancholy, and a shy nervous habit of running his hand through his hair and down his side – the very lyricism of woe”.
When a young actor provokes that kind of notice as one of the “rude mechanicals” his future as a comedian might seen assured, but it was not to be in comedy that Knox came to matter, but rather as a serious, even sombre classical actor.
After the outbreak of war he returned to America and was snapped up by Hollywood, again with little scope for comedy but with a gift for playing characters rather older than himself, such as President Woodrow Wilson in Wilson (in a chilling pince-nez), for which he was nominated as best actor of 1945 in the Academy Awards.
He also acted on Broadway, with some distinction, as Baron Tuzenbach in The Three Sisters and in Hollywood and the European cinema gave generally admired performances as professors, psychiatrists, judges, neurotics and other figures of usually grave authority. One of his more memorable screen appearances came opposite Ingrid Bergman in Rossellini’s Europa 51, otherwise entitled No Greater Love; but back in England in the 1950s he had shown his quality in Guthrie’s Henry VIII at the Old Vic. Guthrie had a specific if distorted notion of Wolsey which made it impossible for Knox to be true to Shakespeare, but as several critics recognised, he remained true to his own gifts of passion, bitterness, ribaldry and irony.
Adam Benedick
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Alexander Knox, actor: born Strathroy, Ontario 16 January 1907; married Doris Nolan; died Berwick-upon-Tweed 26 April 1995.
In Hollywood, in the days when men were men, Dale Robertson, who has died aged 89, was considered the epitome of masculinity. In the Clarion Call episode from O Henry’s Full House (1952), a giggling, snivelling crook, played by Richard Widmark, whom Robertson, a cop, has come to arrest, keeps calling him “the beeg man”. Robertson, an ex-prize fighter, was indeed “beeg” – tall, well-built and ruggedly handsome, with a gravelly voice. He was tough but fair to men, and courteous to ladies, particularly in the many westerns in which he starred in the 1950s, and in his most famous role, that of special investigator Jim Hardie in the TV series Tales of Wells Fargo.
He was born Dayle Lymoine Robertson, in Harrah, Oklahoma, and attended Oklahoma Military Academy, Claremore, where he was named “all around outstanding athlete”. During the second world war, he served with Patton’s Third Army, winning bronze and silver stars, before having his knee shattered by German mortar fire. He claimed that, had it not been for this injury, he would have pursued a professional boxing career.
When Robertson was stationed in California, he had his photograph taken to send to his mother. The photographer liked the picture so much that he enlarged it and put in his window. It was seen by talent agents, who contacted Robertson.
Without ever having acted, or taken a lesson, Robertson made for Hollywood in 1946, but it took two years before he was given a few small roles at various studios, one as a lifeguard in The Girl from Jones Beach (1949). Then Nat Holt, producer of westerns, cast him as Jesse James in Fighting Man of the Plains (1949). It was a small role, but Robertson got to rescue Randolph Scott from the gallows at the last minute, and was offered a long-term contract with 20th Century Fox.
He was given a supporting role as a hardened soldier in Robert Wise’s civil-war western Two Flags West (1950), and Fox decided to try him in a couple of musicals in 1951: Call Me Mister, starring Betty Grable, in which he played a doting soldier; and Golden Girl, in which he co-starred with Mitzi Gaynor, he as a Confederate spy, she a Yankee showgirl.
He got his first top billing in Return of the Texan (1952), and subsequently settled down to being a cowboy hero in a number of competently made westerns at Fox, often co-starring with the studio’s young contract players, as in The Silver Whip (1953) with Rory Calhoun and Robert Wagner. Occasionally, Robertson had a change of pace, as in the period musical The Farmer Takes a Wife (1953) in which he sang (not badly) We’re in Business, with Grable.
Robertson’s favourite among his own movies was The Gambler from Natchez (1954), in which he played the title role of a man on the track of three men who had killed his father. In Sitting Bull, the same year, he played an army major who brings about peace between the Sioux tribe and the American forces. The romance on and off screen was provided by Mary Murphy, who had just played Marlon Brando’s girlfriend in The Wild One. She and Robertson were married the same year; however, the marriage was annulled six months later because Murphy claimed her husband did not want children. (Actually, Robertson already had a daughter by his first wife.)
Robertson, who always professed his love of God and country, was never very co-operative with the press, even once shunning the powerful columnist Louella Parsons. As a result, he won the press Sour Apple Celebrity award for three years running. But then, commented Robertson, “that dang Sinatra had to hit some photographer in the nose and stop me from getting my fourth”.
One of his rare appearances in contemporary clothes was in Top of the World (1955), as a senior jet pilot naturally piqued when transferred from Honolulu to the frozen Arctic.
As the movie western declined in the late 1950s, Robertson found his niche in westerns for TV, such as Tales of Wells Fargo, which ran for four years from 1957. The stories revolved around Robertson as troubleshooter for the pioneering transport company. Not always the most animated of actors, Robertson was effective as a stolid, taciturn type, often letting his left-handed gun speak for him. His other long-running series was Iron Horse (1966-68), in which he was a gambler turned railway baron.
In the 60s, Robertson returned to the big screen in a few B westerns, and starred in the British-made Coast of Skeletons (1964) as a US tycoon whose African diamond operation is being investigated by Richard Todd. However, most of his later appearances were on TV, in series such as Death Valley Days, and as a guest on Love Boat, Murder She Wrote, Dallas and Dynasty, while he lived in semi-retirement at his ranch in Oklahoma.
There, he and his fourth wife, Susan, and his two daughters, Rochelle and Rebel, who survive him, bred polo ponies and racehorses.
• Dale Robertson (Dayle Lymoine Robertson), actor, born 14 July 1923; died 27 February 2013.
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Sara Haden was born on November 17, 1899 in Galveston, Texas, USA as Sarah Haden. She was an actress, known for The Shop Around the Corner (1940), The Bishop’s Wife(1947) and Woman of the Year (1942). She was married to Richard Abbott. She died on September 15, 1981 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Exceptionally tall, with distinctive, unconventional features and a commanding presence, actor Raymond Massey built an impressive career out of playing reassuring authority figures and scheming villains equally well. The Canadian-born actor first honed his craft on the stages of the U.K. for nearly 10 years before venturing across the Atlantic to appear on Broadway as “Hamlet” and in early sound pictures like “The Speckled Band” (1931), in the role of Sherlock Holmes. Massey demonstrated his versatility with venomous characters in films like “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1937) juxtaposed against his career-defining portrayal of the 16th U.S. president in “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” (1940), based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play written with him in mind. Massey became the stuff of Hollywood legend when the aftermath of his divorce from actress Adrianne Allen inspired the beloved Tracy-Hepburn comedy “Adam’s Rib” (1949). As an actor, Massey continually impressed with is ability to make difficult characters sympathetic in such films as “The Fountainhead” (1949), opposite Gary Cooper, and as James Dean’s emotionally unavailable father in “East of Eden” (1955). A younger generation of fans came to appreciate his later work as Richard Chamberlain’s authoritative mentor Dr. Gillespie on “Dr. Kildare” (NBC, 1961-66). Even as his half-century career neared its end, Massey continued to make memorable contributions to such big-budget Hollywood offerings as the Western “Mackenna’s Gold” (1969). One of the first and best examples of a “working actor” in film, Massey never failed to elevate the integrity of any project.
Raymond Hart Massey was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on Aug. 30, 1896. He was the son of Ann and Chester Daniel Massey, whose family roots could be traced back to pre-Revolutionary War America. Although Raymond participated in a few school productions while attending the Appleby School in Oakville, Ontario, the assumption was that he would eventually enter into his well-to-do family’s farm equipment business upon completing his education. As a member of the Canadian Officer’s Training Corps while attending the University of Toronto when World War I began, he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Canadian Army. Massey served with a field artillery unit at France’s Western Front until he was wounded at Ypres in 1916. Hospitalized for several months and diagnosed with shell shock, he was later sent to the U.S., where he served as an artillery instructor for a time before rejoining the Canadian Expeditionary Forces in 1918 and being sent to Siberia in the wake of the Russian Communist Revolution. While stationed at Vladivostok, Massey was put in charge of entertainment for the troops, for whom he mounted several theatrical productions. In later years, the venerable actor related that it was then that the performing bug truly bit him, once and for all.
Upon being discharged, Massey attended Britain’s Balliol College, Oxford. The stay at Oxford was not a long one, however, and before long he was back home in Canada, where he attempted to make a go of it in the family business. But the thrill of the theater still called to Massey, who, upon the advice of renowned thespian John Drew and after pleading for permission from his patriarchal Methodist father, returned to England to pursue a career on the stage. Eventually the determined actor landed his first professional role in a 1922 production of Eugene O’Neill’s “In the Zone” and from that point forward, there was no looking back. Within four years, Massey was established on the stages of London as both an actor and director, and in less than a decade, he made trip back across the Atlantic for his Broadway debut as the star of a revival of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” in 1931.
Although he had made a pair of brief, uncredited screen appearances two years prior, Massey’s first major film role was as Sherlock Holmes in the mystery “The Speckled Band” (1931), the first talkie to depict the exploits of the great detective. Other leading roles soon came in films like director James Whale’s superb “The Old Dark House” (1932), opposite Boris Karloff. Massey’s imposing features also allowed him to adapt easily to more villainous roles, such as the slithering Chauvelin in “The Scarlet Pimpernel” (1935). Massey had far from abandoned work on the stage, though, appearing on Broadway many times over the next two decades and earning accolades for such portrayals as “Ethan Frome” in 1936. Back on screen, he showed his bad side twice more as Black Michael opposite David Niven’s “The Prisoner of Zenda” (1937) and as the conniving Prince Ghul in the British Empire epic, “The Drum” (1938). At 6’3″ tall, Massey was perfectly suited to play the legendarily lanky commander-in-chief in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” (1938) which was written specifically with the actor in mind by playwright Robert Sherwood.
Massey’s personal life took a decidedly truth-is-stranger-than-fiction turn in 1939 when he and his wife of 10 years, actress Adrianne Allen, entered into divorce proceedings. Massey and Allen were each represented by one-half of the husband and wife legal team of William and Dorothy Whitney. With the divorce finalized, the attorneys quickly divorced each other and went on to marry their respective famous clients – Massey and Allen. The bizarre turn of events later inspired husband and wife screenwriting team of Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin to pen the classic 1949 battle of the sexes comedy “Adam’s Rib,” starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. During their time as a couple, Massey and Allen had two children, Daniel and Anna, both of whom went on to enjoy acting careers of their own.
The following year, Massey reprised his most famous stage persona in the film version of “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” (1940), for which he received an Academy Award nomination. He took on another historical figure that year with a wild-eyed, unsympathetic portrayal of the radical abolitionist John Brown in “Santa Fe Trail” (1940), starring Errol Flynn as Confederate Civil War hero J.E.B. Stuart. Working steadily throughout the war years, Massey took over the role his “Old Dark House” co-star Boris Karloff had originated on stage for director Frank Capra’s film adaptation of the play “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1944), then lent his intimidating visage to the role of a stern prosecutor in the Heaven-set sequences of the imaginative Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger fantasy, “A Matter of Life and Death” (1945). Maintaining his ties to the stage, the actor returned to Broadway to play Professor Henry Higgins in the 1945 production of “Pygmalion.”
Other notable work of the period included a performance as General Ezra Mannon – an updated version of Greek King Agamemnon – in “Mourning Becomes Electra” (1947), the screen adaptation of O’Neill’s epic reinterpretation of “The Oresteia,” a trilogy of Greek tragedies by Aeschylus. He was sympathetic as the well-meaning but weak-willed newspaper magnate Gail Wynand in director King Vidor’s adaptation of author Ayn Rand’s treatise on individuality, “The Fountainhead” (1949), starring Gary Cooper as visionary architect Howard Roark. Still at the height of his powers, Massey was excellent years later as the proud and emotionally distant patriarch Adam Trask opposite James Dean in the filmed version of Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” (1955) and delivered a far more balanced portrayal in his second outing as John Brown in the under-appreciated “Seven Angry Men” (1955).
By the second half of the decade, Massey transitioned more predominantly into the burgeoning medium of television, appearing in guest spots on many of the popular anthology series of the day, such as “General Electric Theater” (CBS, 1953-1962). The venerable stage and film star became widely known by a new generation of audience as the gruff but caring Dr. Gillespie on the popular medical-drama “Dr. Kildare” (NBC, 1961-66), featuring a fresh-faced Richard Chamberlain in the title role. Fans of his work as the stern taskmaster Gillespie may not have been surprised when Massey made his personal politics known by actively campaigning for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater during the 1964 race against incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson.
Long established as an elder statesman of screens both large and small, Massey continued to appear in projects, albeit with less frequency as the ’60s drew to a close. His final performance in a feature film was as a fortune-hunting preacher in the Gregory Peck Western “Mackenna’s Gold” (1969). This was followed a few years later by his last television appearances in the political-thriller “The President’s Plane is Missing” (ABC, 1973) and the family film “My Darling Daughter’s Anniversary” (ABC, 1973), starring one of his contemporaries, Robert Young. After battling a case of pneumonia for nearly a month, Massey died at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles on July 29, 1983, just weeks shy of his 87th birthday. Somewhat overshadowing the sad event was the passing of actor David Niven, Massey’s “Prisoner of Zenda” co-star, who died that same day.
By Bryce Coleman
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
RAY STRICKLYN WAS NOT A HOUSEHOLD NAME; however, his face was memorable. He and James Dean were friends in New York, often compared to each other, often going on the same auditions. Then Dean went to Hollywood. Two years later, Stricklyn followed. Ray wanted to be not only an excellent actor but also a Hollywood star. That part was not to be.While under contract to 20th Century Fox, Ray made several films. I first saw him in 1959, in a play called Compulsion, at a little theater on Highland Avenue. His performance was so mesmerizing, I went back to see the play two more times.
Nearly 20 years later, Ray’s path again crossed mine. He was then West Coast head of the John Springer Public Relations firm, and I was editor of Drama-Logue. We did interviews with many of Springer’s star clients, and Ray’s friends David Galligan and Kim Garfield wrote for me. And so, a long, rich and rewarding friendship evolved.
Ray was a private person, impenetrable, not one to gossip (though he loved to hear it), a model of gentility whether onstage or escorting Bette Davis to receive her AFI Lifetime Achievement Award in 1977.
One time Ray told me he wanted to restart his stalled acting career, which happened in a play called Naomi Court at the long-gone Pilot Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard. His friend Mary Jo Catlett directed it. Though Naomi Court was only a moderate success, it gave Ray the confidence to continue his career. Other plays followed, most notably Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carre, produced by Karen Kondazian, in 1983. Ray played Nightingale, a Williams prototype. It ran eight months at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, owned by acting teacher Milton Katselas.
In 1985, Katselas commissioned a sculptured bust of Williams for the theater’s courtyard and asked Ray to do a 20-minute dedication piece. Ray’s prodigiously researched monologue ran for an hour, and Milton asked him to do a run at the playhouse. Confessions of a Nightingalewas born. Eva Marie Saint and her husband, Jeffrey Hayden, took out a full-page trade ad exalting Ray’s performance. It started an industry rush. Film and television roles were offered, as well as engagements of Nightingaleall over the country, including a New York run and bookings in Europe.
In the late ’90s, Ray was still touring occasionally but, due to his heavy smoking, had developed emphysema. I learned he was writing his biography, working feverishly as if against time. He asked if I would be his editor, and if I would finish it for him should he die before its completion. He lived two and a half years after it went to print, enjoying the book’s excellent reception while enduring the ravages of his disease.
Near the end, he saw few friends, and, in moments, I saw a rage emerge from him that I’d never seen previously. He had realized his dreams. Well, many of them. As the book’s title, Angels & Demons, implies, he must have been carrying both on his shoulders.
Lee Melville is the editor and publisher of L.A. Stage. A memorial service for Ray Stricklyn takes place Monday, June 24, 7:30 p.m., at the Canon Theater, 209 N. Canon Drive, Beverly Hills.
A chameleonic actor equally at home on stage or in film either as a hero or a villain, Kevin Spacey first gained notice with several strong stage performances both on and off-Broadway. Performing in stage productions of “Ghosts,” “Long Day’s Journey into Night” and “Hurlyburly” helped pave the way for a feature film career atop the A-list, though his real on-camera start came with his deliciously eccentric performance as a heroin-addicted millionaire on the cult television series, “Wiseguy” (CBS, 1987-1990). After making the segue into features, Spacey bounced around in supporting roles until he gained widespread recognition for “Glengarry Glen Ross” (1992), in which he managed to keep up with heavyweights Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin and his personal idol, Jack Lemmon. But it was his Academy Award-winning performance as the mysterious Verbal Kint in “The Usual Suspects” (1995) that propelled Spacey into the limelight. He made equally impressionable appearances in “L.A. Confidential” (1997) and “Se7en” (1997), cementing his status as a hypnotic performer willing to challenge himself by playing unique characters. Though he slipped a bit with “Pay It Forward” (2000) and “K-PAX” (2001), Spacey remained a vital force in films like “Superman Returns” (2006), while also assuming the role of artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London in 2003. With award-worthy performances in the made-for-HBO movie “Recount” (2008) and the feature “Casino Jack” (2010), Spacey only enhanced his stature as one of Hollywood’s most diverse and accomplished performers.
Born July 26, 1959 in South Orange, NJ, Spacey was raised from an early age in and around Los Angeles by his father, Thomas, an oft-unemployed technical writer, and his mother, Kathleen, a secretary. Though his parents were strict, Spacey was rebellious; even destructive – he burned down his sister’s tree house in the backyard of his family’s Malibu home and was later expelled from the Northridge Military Academy for hitting a fellow student with a tire. He moved on to Chatsworth High School, where he discovered theater and acted alongside fellow classmate and future actors, Val Kilmer and Mare Winningham. After graduating, he tried his hand at stand-up comedy, even trying out for “The Gong Show” (1975-1980), but failed to make the cut. He then followed Kilmer to the dramatic program at the Julliard School in Manhattan, where he managed to stick around for only two of the required four years. Spacey occasionally landed small roles on small stages, while working as a shoe salesman and a building superintendent to pay the bills. At the beginning Spacey’s career was decidedly hard-fought.
Spacey was doing office work at Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival when the festival director saw him in an off-off-Broadway play and told him he should be acting, not pushing pencils. He soon landed the role of a soldier in the company’s production of “Henry VI, Part I” (1981). Other roles soon followed and Papp one day “fired” the office worker so he would be free to find employment as an actor. It was not long until Spacey made his Broadway debut opposite Liv Ullman in “Ghosts” (1982), effectively launching his stage career. After appearing in regional theater, Spacey auditioned for the national touring company of “The Real Thing,” but director Mike Nichols instead suggested he try for a role in another one of his productions, “Hurlyburly.” After serving as the understudy for the role of Mickey – which was played by Harvey Keitel – Spacey was the standby for two of the other male roles in the same play. Nichols later gave the actor his first onscreen break as a subway rider who mugs Meryl Streep’s Rachel in “Heartburn” (1986), then later cast him as a Wall Street broker in “Working Girl” (1989).
In between his two parts, Spacey earned plaudits – though he was the only cast member passed over for a Tony Award nomination – playing Jamie Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (1986), a part he landed thanks to stealing a cocktail party invitation from an old woman falling asleep next to him at a lecture given by the play’s director, Jonathan Miller. Spacey sauntered into the party, sat next to Miller and described his months of difficulty getting an audition. Two days later, Spacey scored an audition and eventually landed the part. After calling upon his background as a stand-up comic for “Rocket Gibralter” (1988), Spacey was cast as the lecherous, heroin-addicted multi-millionaire villain Mel Profitt in the cult favorite drama, “Wiseguy.” Spacey continued the television trend, appearing in the miniseries “The Murder of Mary Phagan” (NBC, 1988), which he followed with a return to features with the maudlin “Dad” (1988). As the 1990s dawned, he delivered a dazzling starring turn as disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker in “Fall From Grace” (NBC, 1990), then performed admirably as renowned attorney Clarence Darrow in “Darrow” (PBS, 1991). Both roles preceded his Tony-winning featured performance as a gangster wannabe in Neil Simon’s nostalgic play “Lost in Yonkers” (1991), which cemented his status as an exceptional stage performer capable of making the transition to the big screen.
Despite wide exposure from his television and film work, it was his stage performances that helped propel him down a path of critically acclaimed films that eventually vaulted him atop the Hollywood A-list. Al Pacino had been an audience member at “Lost in Yonkers” and came away duly impressed with Spacey’s performance, lobbying for Spacey to be cast to as Mr. Williamson, the put-upon manager of an office full of deadbeat salesmen in David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” (1992). So electric were the scenes between Spacey and the other actors – including Pacino, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin and mentor Jack Lemmon – that Spacey felt beaten down from all the yelling and cursing hurled his way. Later that same year, he visited a suburbia riddled with dark secrets for the first time in Alan Pakula’s not entirely successful tale of wife swapping and murder, “Consenting Adults” (1992). Spacey starred in the underrated black comedy “The Ref” (1994) which paired him with the equally formidable Judy Davis as battling spouses whose home is burglarized by a gunman (Denis Leary) who holds them hostage and forces them to reconcile their differences for the sake of his diminishing sanity.
Spacey continued tackling character-centered roles in small films that he helped amplify with his strong, intense performances. In “Swimming With Sharks” (1994) – on which he also served as a co-producer – Spacey let it fly as an abusive Hollywood studio executive who is taken hostage by his lowly assistant (Frank Whaley) after he steals the recent film grad’s script idea. Hitting his stride as a variety of villainous characters, Spacey offered a chilling – and unbilled – turn in David Fincher’s atmospheric “Seven” (1995), playing serial killer John Doe, who commits a series of bizarre and grisly murders based on the seven deadly sins. As the man who delivered Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in a box to her unsuspecting onscreen husband Brad Pitt, Spacey proved no one could do creepy as well as he could. On an unbelievable roll, he stole the show as the seemingly crippled con man, “Verbal” Kint, in “The Usual Suspects” (1995), one of the most talked about films of the 1990s, thanks to one simple question: Who is Keyser Söze? Despite stellar performances from Chazz Paleminteri, Stephen Baldwin, Benicio Del Toro and Gabriel Byrne, Spacey was again singled out by most critics for his intricate portrayal of the pathetic Kint, who narrates to a customs agent the story of a heist gone bad without giving away his ulterior motives. Spacey earned several award nominations and for his work as Kint, won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
With his sudden rise to the top of his profession, Spacey began fielding offers for roles in more mainstream Hollywood fare. After playing a researcher at the Center for Disease Control in the unfortunate “Outbreak” (1995), Spacey essayed the role of a smugly crusading prosecutor in “A Time to Kill” (1996). Like many successful performers, Spacey had an itch to direct. So he stepped behind the cameras for “Albino Alligator” (1997), a character-driven thriller about three petty crooks mistaken for big-time bank robbers. While Spacey had much to learn about camera placement and movement, he clearly knew how to deal with actors, eliciting fine work from Gary Sinise, Matt Dillon and Viggo Mortensen. Returning to his stock in trade, Spacey delivered one of his finest screen performances as the smarmy celebrity cop Jack Vincennes in “L.A. Confidential” (1997), Curtis Hanson’s brilliant adaptation of James Ellroy’s serpentine novel about crime and corruption on both sides of the law in 1950s Los Angeles. In fact, critics considered his death scene a marvel for the way he literally did not move a muscle once shot dead, holding the shot for well over 15 seconds, eyes wide open. Similarly his portrayal of Jim Williams, the homosexual Savannah resident accused of murder in “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” (1997), allowed the actor to plumb the depths of an upstanding public citizen who succumbs to his darker impulses.
His successful turn as Jim Williams merely fueled speculation about his private life, which peaked with an October 1997Esquire cover story by Tom Junod that intimated that the actor was, in fact, gay. The matter proved a double-edged sword for Spacey. He earned sympathy from those who felt the journalist and the magazine had crossed a line, but scorn from those who felt he should offer comments on his private life, and if indeed gay, “come out” already. Spacey later addressed the concerns in a 1999 Playboy interview, effectively denying the rumors. The profile, however, had zero effect on his career – Spacey took on a rare heroic role to play a cop who excels at excising hostages from their kidnappers in “The Negotiator” (1998). Paired with Samuel L. Jackson – who portrayed a good cop suspected of wrongdoings – Spacey proved a mesmerizing presence and matched Jackson’s intensity. The pair meshed well and elevated a somewhat pedestrian mystery into an enjoyable film. After a turn voicing the evil Hopper in the animated “A Bug’s Life” (1998), Spacey reprised his stage role as the amoral and cynically sarcastic casting agent, Mickey, for the filmed version of “Hurlyburly” (1998).
Unlike many stage-trained actors who achieved Hollywood success, Spacey returned to the theater with a great deal of fanfare. He undertook the difficult role of Theodore “Hickey” Hickman in Eugene O’Neill’s mammoth “The Iceman Cometh,” originally staged at London’s Almeida Theatre in the spring of 1998. By taking on a role that had become associated with Jason Robards, Spacey managed to successfully make it his own, offering a unique perspective on the hardware salesman. Spacey earned himself a Tony Award nomination, but lost to Brian Dennehy, who ironically starred in a Chicago production of “Iceman Cometh.” Spacey returned to the big screen as Lester Burnham in “American Beauty” (1999), a character who ranked among his best and most fully realized screen creations. In delineating the mid-life crisis of a man who moves from a henpecked husband, ignored father and impotent employee to an empowered, take-charge guy, Spacey undertook a risky role that firmly vaulted him from esteemed character actor to full-fledged leading man. Spacey earned critical kudos for “Beauty” across the board – as well as his second Academy Award; this time, for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Returning to his more conventional slickster persona, he joined Danny DeVito to star as a smooth-talking salesman in “The Big Kahuna” (2000) – a dazzling performance in an otherwise little-seen film – before starring in “Ordinary Decent Criminal” (2000), a fictionalized biography of Irish master thief Martin Cahill. Playing juicy roles in small films had no effect on Spacey’s reputation as being one of the premiere actors working in Hollywood, but the actor seemed to have lost some steam when he starred in the mawkish “Pay It Forward” (2000), playing a scarred schoolteacher who opens himself up to love when his young student (Haley Joel Osment) devises a system of paying good deeds forward to three people. Spacey’s affected manner and overdone makeup did little to aid this already over-sentimentalized tale. Spacey received mixed reviews when he teamed with Jeff Bridges in “K-PAX” (2001), playing a man who claims to be an alien from outer space. Later that year, he was cast – and many argued, miscast – as the milquetoast hero of the screen adaptation of the Pulitzer-winning “The Shipping News” (2001), which also suffered from tepid reviews and indifferent audience response. Meanwhile, Spacey made the requisite appearance on “Inside the Actors Studio” (Bravo, 1995- ), where he impressed host James Lipton and the audience with dead-on impressions of Jimmy Stewart, Johnny Carson, Christopher Walken, Marlon Brando and even Katherine Hepburn.
In between projects, Spacey distinguished himself as a champion of his craft, becoming involved with the Screen Actors Guild and launching Triggerstreet.com as a means for aspiring creative people to form an online community. In 2003, he was named artistic director of London’s historic Old Vic Theater, a stage where he appeared in his triumphant production of “The Ice Man Cometh.” Despite being a celebrity – guaranteeing not giving him the anonymity enjoyed past artistic directors – Spacey’s tenure at the Old Vic was a rocky one. He was heavily criticized for not putting on enough classics, though his “Richard II,” in which he starred as the immature and detached king, was critically acclaimed. While the press had a field day lambasting his choices, Spacey cited his success in bringing the theater back into public prominence. Several productions – notably “National Anthems” (2005) and “Philadelphia Story” (2005) – filled seats, but reviews were savage. Then Spacey hit a bona fide disaster with Arthur Miller’s “Resurrection Blues,” which suffered from poor performances and attendance that failed to reach even half-capacity. Spacey remained unapologetic, however, claiming that the press was out to get him because of his celebrity.
The actor was next seen as an academic with strong views on capital punishment who finds himself accused of murder in director Alan Parker’s film “The Life of David Gale” (2003). Again slipping into a now-familiar martyr role, Spacey found his performance praised despite the movie’s many flaws, which included an overwrought and unconvincing story, and an overindulgent anti-death penalty message. Changing gears, Spacey returned beyond the camera to helm – as well as co-write and star in – “Beyond the Sea” (2004), a pet project about the popular 1950s and 1960s singer Bobby Darin, who the actor had idolized and imitated since he was a child. Ironically, the singer had died an early death and by the time Spacey got the project into production, he was nearly too old to play Darin. Fortunately, a clever script device had Darin looking back at his life and plugging his later-years self into his memories, allowing audiences to easily forget Spacey’s age. The actor provided a tour de force performance and provided all of the Darin-like vocals himself. As a director, he excelled at visually interpreting the film’s lavish and energetic musical sequences, though some of the performances were a tough sell. Nonetheless, Spacey delivered an engaging film and one of his finest performances.
Spacey made headlines when he agreed to reunite with Bryan Singer for the first time since “The Usual Suspects,” starring in the director’s controversial revival of the original comic book film franchise, playing the Man of Steel’s brilliant nemesis Lex Luthor in “Superman Returns” (2006). With a shaven head and flashy suits, Spacey exuded a much more subdued evil than did predecessor Gene Hackman’s campy take in the 1978 version. Nonetheless, Luthor’s plot this time around was no less dastardly – he plans to use Superman’s own technology from Krypton to create a new land mass in the Atlantic Ocean so he can destroy the United States, sending Superman (Brandon Routh) on an epic journey through the depths of the ocean and into the reaches of outer space. After playing an efficiency expert hell-bent on ridding the world of Christmas in the terribly unfunny “Fred Claus” (2007), Spacey was an unorthodox math professor and genius statistician who leads a group of likewise brilliant MIT students to Las Vegas to crack the gambling code in “21” (2008), a slick and sexy thriller based on the best seller, Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions.
Before he was inked to revive Lex Luthor for Bryan Singer’s second go-round with “Superman: Man of Steel” (2011), Spacey generated considerable critical acclaim playing Democratic insider Ron Klain in the made-for-television movie, “Recount” (HBO, 2008), a behind the scenes look at the voting scandal that erupted in Florida in 2000 during the election between Al Gore and George W. Bush. For his work, he was nominated in late 2008 for a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television. After voicing the robot Gerty in the acclaimed “Moon” (2009), Spacey co-starred opposite George Clooney in the moderately panned military satire, “The Men Who Stare at Goats” (2009). Returning to the political arena, Spacey was the perfect choice to play Jack Abramoff in the satirical comedy “Casino Jack” (2010), which chronicled the rise and fall of Washington’s most notorious and disgraced lobbyist. Directed by George Hickenlooper, who died just weeks after the release of the film, “Casino Jack” gave Spacey the right platform to once again put his formidable talents on display, resulting in a Golden Globe nod for Best Performance by an Actor in a Comedy or Musical.
After playing Jason Bateman’s manipulative boss in the hit R-rated comedy “Horrible Bosses” (2011), Spacey was a Wall Street executive whose decisions during the first days of the 2008 financial crisis are called into question in the indie financial thriller “Margin Call” (2011). Surrounded by a strong cast that included Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Demi Moore, Zachary Quinto and Simon Baker, Spacey stood out as a man worn down by the machinations of the cutthroat financial world. In 2011, he returned to the stage to star in a production of “Richard III” directed by Sam Mendes, which premiered at the Old Vic, and later commenced on a worldwide tour that ended in early 2012. From there, Spacey took a rare turn into television with “House of Cards” (Netflix, 2013- ), a remake of a British miniseries of the same name that aired on the BBC in 1990. Set in the world of Washington politics, “House of Cards” starred Spacey as Frank Underwood, the Democratic House Majority Whip who hides behind his genial Southern charm while plotting Machiavellian-like vengeance for being passed over as Defense Secretary. Co-starring Robin Wright as his Lady Macbeth, Kate Mara as an ambitious young reporter and Cory Stoll as a drug-addled congressman under Underwood’s thumb, “House of Cards” made waves for being streamed exclusively on Netflix, where all 13 episodes were available for viewing at once. Both the series and Spacey’s performance were widely hailed by critics.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Like his brothers David, Robert and Bruce and half-brother Michael Bowen, Keith Carradine followed in the footsteps of his father, John Carradine, and became an actor in the early 1970s. He enjoyed considerable success in that decade thanks to performances in independent-minded films like “Nashville” (1975), “Welcome to L.A.” (1976) and “Pretty Baby” (1978). Carradine branched into Hollywood features in the 1980s, but found more success on Broadway in the following decade, most notably with his Tony-nominated turn as American humorist Will Rogers in “The Will Rogers Follies” (1991). Carradine later divided his time between features and television, often in Western roles which benefited from his laconic presence, particularly as Wild Bill Hickok on David Milch’s brilliant revisionist series, “Deadwood” (HBO, 2004-07). By the time he played a formidable FBI agent hunting down the titular serial killer in “Dexter” (Showtime, 2006- ), Carradine had proven himself to be a highly-sought and versatile actor comfortable in both leading and supporting roles.
Born on Aug. 8, 1949 in San Mateo, CA, Carradine was raised in a show business home headed by his actor father, John, and his actress mother, Sonia Sorel. Carradine’s father had made a name for himself in Hollywood for his performances in films by John Ford and Cecil B. DeMille, among many others. After Sorel gave birth to his brothers Robert and Christopher, Carradine’s parents split when he was 6; she later married artist Michael Bowen and gave birth to Carradine’s half-brother Michael Bowen Jr. A protracted custody battled followed, but his father eventually claimed custody of his three sons, who joined their half-brothers, David and Bruce, in the sprawling clan. Meanwhile, Carradine began acting in high school and later attended Colorado State University as a theater major. But he found collegiate life stifling and dropped out after three months to pursue acting fulltime. After returning to Los Angeles in 1968, Carradine joined the Broadway production of “Hair” the following year; ironically, it was David who auditioned for the role and brought Carradine along to accompany him on piano. The producers preferred Carradine over David and cast him in the role of “tribal leader” Claude. During his tenure with the show, he and co-star Shelley Plimpton had a daughter, Martha, who later became an acclaimed stage and film actress of her own.
A 1970 stage production of “Tobacco Road” with his father preceded his first onscreen appearance in the downbeat Western “A Gunfight” (1971) with Kirk Douglas and Johnny Cash. Director Robert Altman liked his performance and cast Carradine as a cowpoke in his revisionist Western, “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” (1971), a film that marked the first of several acclaimed collaborations between the actor and director over the next half-decade. He bolstered his resume with several television appearances, including a guest shot on David’s hit series “Kung Fu” (ABC, 1972-75), in which he played the teenage version of Caine in flashbacks. Carradine began delivering impressive dramatic performances in a series of independent features, as well as the occasional Hollywood title. He was best used in mildly sensuous roles, like the Depression Era bank robber who complicates the life of a small town girl (Shelley Duvall) by falling in love with her in Altman’s “Thieves Like Us” (1974), or the folk singer who carries on multiple affairs with fellow musicians in “Nashville.” Carradine’s composition for the film, “I’m Easy,” earned him a 1976 Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Original Composition, and even ushered in a brief spell as a pop star when the song reached #17 on the Billboardcharts.
Carradine’s offbeat romantic qualities were also put to excellent use in “Welcome To L.A.” (1976), an early effort by Robert Altman’s protégé Alan Rudolph, and in Joan Tewkesbury’s “Old Boyfriends” (1979). The terminal point for these types of roles came in Louis Malle’s controversial “Pretty Baby,” which cast him as a dissolute 19th century photographer who falls in love with a 12-year-old New Orleans prostitute (Brooke Shields). Carradine also scored as a French officer entangled in a bitter struggle over respect in Ridley Scott’s “The Duellists” (1976) and Walter Hill’s Western “The Long Riders” (1980), which found him co-starring with brothers David and Robert as notorious outlaws the Younger brothers.
Eventually, Carradine’s involvement in arthouse-minded efforts began to yield fewer positive returns – features like Rudolph’s “Choose Me” (1984) and Andrei Konchalovsky’s “Maria’s Lovers” (1984) received critical praise, but were seen by relatively few moviegoers. Around this time, he began to shift his interests to television, where he found rewarding work in television movies and miniseries like “A Rumor of War” (CBS, 1980), “Chiefs” (CBS, 1983), which earned him an Emmy nomination for playing a Southern serial killer, and “A Winner Never Quits” (1986), in which he played one-armed baseball pitcher Pete Gray. His most widely seen television appearance of the decade, however, was undoubtedly Madonna’s music video for “Material Girl” (1984), which cast him as a Golden Age Hollywood director who is smitten by the singer after seeing her in a production number inspired by “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953).
Carradine made a return to Broadway opposite the legendary Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy in “Foxfire” (1982), which brought him an Outer Critics Circle Award. He reprised the role in Los Angeles in 1985 while racking up praise for his turns in “Another Part of the Forest” (1983) and “Detective Story” (1984). His greatest stage success, however, came with “The Will Rogers Follies” (1991), which required him to not only sing and dance, but show off some impressive rope tricks and deliver quips on the day’s headlines at each show. For his ingratiating turn as the American humorist, Carradine earned a Tony Award nomination and a Drama Desk Award that same year.
Carradine’s film career continued to blaze an independent path during the late 1980s and early 1990s. He remained faithful to director Alan Rudolph, enjoying a richly florid role as a wildly coiffured killer in “Choose Me” (1986), before he tackled playing an American ex-patriate painter in “The Moderns” (1988) and reprising Will Rogers for a cameo in “Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle” (1994). Carradine also displayed a talent for art by creating the painting that served as the one-sheet for “The Moderns.” Most of his big-screen efforts, however, were viewed by limited audiences, though not for lack of quality. He was Vanessa Redgrave’s ex-husband in Simon Callow’s fine film version of “The Ballad of the Sad Café” (1991) for producers Merchant Ivory, but few saw managed to see it, as was the case for “CrissCross” (1992) and the dark Southern comedy “Daddy’s Dyin’, Who’s Got the Will?” (1990). Carradine had his biggest hit in theaters during the 1990s with “Andre” (1994), a genial true story about a Maine family who nurses a baby seal back to health and later adopts the animal when it returns to their home after trying to set him free. Carradine also marked the decade by claiming his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1993.
Carradine kept busy throughout the late 1990s and into the new millennium in numerous features and television projects, as well as occasional turns to the stage. Among the better received stage efforts was a fine take on George W. Bush in a 2005 production of David Hare’s “Stuff Happens,” which concerned the political thinking behind the invasion of Iraq. He also made his debut as a series regular for the Showtime series “Fast Track” (1997), a short-lived drama from Larry Gelbart about the world of professional stock car racing. Meanwhile, “Complete Savages” (ABC, 2004-05), Carradine’s foray into family comedy, met a similar fate. But he received outstanding notices as Wild Bill Hickok in the first season of “Deadwood” (HBO, 2004-06), despite only surviving the series for its initial four episodes. In playing the weary gunslinger, Carradine imbued the often misunderstood figure with depth and nuance, turning a typically caricatured persona into a highly complex human being. His identification with the Old West later brought him to the hosting duties for the History Channel technology series “Wild West Tech” (2003-05) and the Stephen Spielberg-produced miniseries “Into the West” (TNT, 2005), where he played misguided Native American policymaker and educator Richard Henry Pratt.
In 2006, Carradine returned to Broadway in the sparkling comedy “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.” The production preceded his joining the cast of Showtime’s darkly comic thriller, “Dexter” (2006- ); Carradine played Special Agent Lundy, who is tasked by the FBI to track down the Bay Harbor Butcher, also known as the series’ titular serial killer (Michael C. Hall). Off-screen, however, he was associated with a real-life criminal case when his first wife, Sandra Will Carradine, was convicted on two counts of perjury for her false testimony in the wiretapping trial of celebrity detective Anthony Pellicano. After divorcing Carradine in 1993, she hired Pellicano to place wire taps on her ex-husband’s phone, as well as that of his girlfriend and eventual second wife, Haley DuMond. Carradine’s ex-wife later complicated her involvement by becoming romantically involved with Pellicano. Meanwhile, Carradine appeared in an episode of “Criminal Minds” (CBS, 2005- ), which he followed by voicing a character in the Grapes of Wrath segment of “Novel Reflections on the American Dream” (PBS, PBS, 2007), a documentary look at how novelists have portrayed the idea of the American Dream.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
