Author Topic: Richard Widmark, Actor, Dies at 93 (Communist Down!)  (Read 1840 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Lord Undies

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 11388
  • Reputation: +639/-250
Richard Widmark, Actor, Dies at 93 (Communist Down!)
« on: March 26, 2008, 11:46:20 AM »
Quote
Richard Widmark, who created a villain in his first movie role who was so repellent and frightening that the actor became a star overnight, died Monday at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 93.
Enlarge This Image
 
Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Richard Widmark in his Manhattan apartment in 2001.
Related
Filmography: Richard Widmark

His death was announced Wednesday morning by his wife, Susan Blanchard. She said that Mr. Widmark had fractured a vertebrae in recent months and that his conditioned had worsened.

....

A passionate liberal Democrat, Mr. Widmark played a bigot who baits a black doctor in Joseph Mankiewicz’s “No Way Out” (1950). He was so embarrassed by the character that after every scene he apologized to the young actor he was required to torment, Sidney Poitier. In 1990, when Mr. Widmark was given the D.W. Griffith Career Achievement Award by the National Board of Review, it was Mr. Poitier who presented it to him.

Within two years after his Fox contract ended, Mr. Widmark had formed a production company and produced “Time Limit” (1957), a serious dissection of possible treason by an American prisoner of war that The New York Times called “sobering, important and exciting.” Directed by the actor Karl Malden, “Time Limit” starred Mr. Widmark as an army colonel who is investigating a major (Richard Basehart) who is suspected of having broken under pressure during the Korean War and aided the enemy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/arts/26cnd-widmark.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5088&en=b2cd9b220740ba82&ex=1364270400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

It's hard to believe someone who was in his 40's when he guest starred on "I Love Lucy" was still alive.  Remember the Richard Widmark grapefruit?

RIP, Mr. Widmark.  I'll bet you are a conservative now.

Offline Airwolf

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 12138
  • Reputation: +905/-163
Re: Richard Widmark, Actor, Dies at 93 (Communist Down!)
« Reply #1 on: March 26, 2008, 03:02:31 PM »
Damn this sucks. He was in so many great movies playing both good and bad guys.
MOLON LABE

"Someday, when all your civilization and science are likewise swept away, your kind will pray for a man with a sword."-- Conan the Barbarian

Clint Eastwood - Because God wanted Chuck Norris to have nightmares.

"I am not a Number,I am a free man"

"He's my hero, you don't put away your heros, you honor them!"

Offline DumbAss Tanker

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 28493
  • Reputation: +1710/-151
Re: Richard Widmark, Actor, Dies at 93 (Communist Down!)
« Reply #2 on: March 26, 2008, 09:45:54 PM »
Moonbat or not, he made some great films (and a couple of stinkers of course).  "Hell and High Water" is one of my faves, and you can't beat "The Bedford Incident" for Cold War tension and irony.
Go and tell the Spartans, O traveler passing by
That here, obedient to their law, we lie.

Anything worth shooting once is worth shooting at least twice.