When Alan Rickman died in 2016, stories emphasized his movie
roles as villains, despite the actual range of the characters he played in
dramas and comedies. Yet the
images and clips accompanying the stories often were from his only romantic
lead (however offbeat a romance, in that his character is dead) in the
wonderful film
Truly, Madly, Deeply.
Something similar happened when David Warner died in July
2022: stories focused on his villains, though he played more honorable characters,
but the images were usually from his only film as an offbeat romantic lead, the
1966 Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, known in the US also as
simply Morgan!
That movie, stylistically a quintessential 60s film directed in England by Karl Reisz, made a big impression on me when it came
out. Caught between working class
communism he grew up with, and the self-satisfied world of the rich he married
into, partly because he became a commercially viable artist, Morgan is a
kind-hearted man who identifies his rebellion with the natural instincts of
apes as well as the symbols of revolution.
He longs for his ex-wife, played by Vanessa Redgrave in her first film
role, who is also torn between her accustomed comforts and Morgan’s rough
charm. The gap between his idealistic
fantasies and reduced reality, as dramatized by his futile gesture of breaking
up her wedding reception while dressed in an ape costume, gets him committed to
a bucolic asylum.
Warner’s character and performance in this film suggest what
his 1965 performance as Hamlet might have been like: highly physical and
mercurial, alternating catatonic brooding with sudden frenzies of speech and
action. When David Tennant was slated
to perform as Hamlet in 2008, he made a short TV film in which he interviewed
other actors who had played the role.
Most acknowledged that the greatest Hamlet of their lifetime was David
Warner.
Warner did play a lot of film villains, and eventually tired
of it, but he also played Bob Cratchit in the 1984 George C. Scott version of Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, and
the Klingon Chancellor modeled on Gorbachev (who also died in 2022) in the last
Star Trek original cast feature film.
He played historical characters from Jack the Ripper to the young
William Wordsworth. He performed in at
least two filmed roles in Chekhov plays: in the 1968 Sidney Lumet feature
version of The Seagull, and a 1991 BBC production of Uncle Vanya. He returned to the stage in the early 21st
century, playing King Lear in 2005, the traditional capstone to a career that
includes a Hamlet.
Warner’s voice was always a stage asset, and became the
source of his many roles in animated and audio stories that included playing
Doctor Who. Because of Morgan (and the
fact that I identified with both the character and the actor), I followed David
Warner’s career with affection as well as appreciation and admiration.
It would take a book to begin to describe the importance of
Sidney Poitier’s movie performances in the 1960s, just as the Civil Rights
movement was moving into unavoidable prominence. No history of the racial attitudes and official changes in those
years would be complete without referring to
A Raisin in the Sun, Lillies of
the Field (for which Poitier became the first black recipient of the Best
Actor Oscar),
Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, To Sir With Love and
In
the Heat of the Night.
His career began in the 1950s, though he was a Blacklist
victim for part of that decade. In
addition to more popular movies like The Defiant Ones, he was in some
lesser known films I saw on television and loved: Go, Man, Go (a low
budget look at the origins of the Harlem Globetrotters) and Paris Blues
( Blacklisted director Martin Ritt’s look at American jazz musicians in Paris,
with comment on race issues, costarring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward as well
as Diahann Carroll and Louis Armstrong.)
After the mid-1960s when he was the biggest box office draw
in Hollywood, he turned to directing, producing and playing occasional lead and
supporting roles, as well as political activism. The only comparison I can come up with concerning his onscreen
charisma and distinctive line-readings and physicality is Marlon Brando. In 2009, his list of honors—and his work
for racial justice—were capped by receiving the US Medal of Freedom from
President Barack Obama. He died in
January 2022 at the age of 94.
There aren’t too many actors left from the classic Hollywood
period before 1950, so I take special interest in the ones whose names get one
more mention as their deaths are announced.
Angela Lansbury is the most prominent among them, for
her career started in the 40s with two best supporting actress nominations, but
it extended well into the 21
st century on stage as well as
television, where she was best known for her 1980s series
Murder She Wrote.
 |
| Marsha Hunt |
Beginning at age 17,
Marsha Hunt appeared in
Hollywood films of the late 1930s through the 1940s (including the Laurence
Olivier and Greer Garson version of
Pride and Prejudice, and the 1944
film
None Shall Escape, regarded as the first film about the Holocaust),
and was Blacklisted for most of the 1950s.
She did theatre and played a few movie and TV parts in the 1960s and
afterwards, and in the 1990s appeared in an episode
of Star Trek: The Next
Generation. She remained a political
activist and humanitarian. She was 104.
Mildred Kornman was one of the last surviving cast
members of the Our Gang comedies in the 1920s and 30s, though she had a
non-speaking role. She was a bit player
in 20th Century Fox films of the 1940s, and a magazine model. She
was 97. As a child actor, Mickey Kuhn was the last surviving cast member
of the 1939 blockbuster Gone With the Wind.
He appeared in other major films in the 1940s and early 1950s. He was
90. Faye Marlow played a few
leads and supporting roles in 1940s movies and early 1950s TV before becoming
an author. She was 96. Nehemiah Persoff was a sometimes
familiar face (when not disguised) if not a familiar name in supporting roles
in more than 200 television shows as well as movie roles, including a few in
the late 1940s. He was 102.
 |
| Irene Papas in Zorba the Greek |
Memorable performers
from 1950s television passed away in 2022, among them:
Tony Dow (Wally
on
Leave It To Beaver),
Dwayne Hickman (Dobie Gillis),
Tim
Considine (Disney’s
The Hardy Boys and various Disney movies),
June
Blair (
Ozzie and Harriet—she played and was David Nelson’s wife), and
comedian
Pat Carroll (Sid Caesar, Danny Thomas shows.) Actors in 1950s movies include
Akira
Takarada (Gojira),
Hardy Kruger,
Linda Lawson, Georgia Holt, Andra
Martin and Greek actress
Irene Papas, who went on to a film and
stage career of more than 50 years.
Bernard
Cribbins began his movie and TV career in this decade and it never stopped until he did—he’d
become a beloved icon in the UK.
 |
| Yvette Mimieux |
Actors who helped characterize the 1960s include
Nichelle
Nichols, Yvette Mimieux ,
Henry Silva, James Olson, Mitchell Ryan
and
Ann Flood as well as European actor
Monica Vitti (Antonioni
films.)
 |
| Sally Kellerman & J. Caan |
Actors first associated with the 1970s include
James Caan
(
The Godfather),
Louise Fletcher (
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest),
Sally Kellerman (M*A*S*H),
Howard Hesseman, Dani
(Truffaut films
), Bo Hopkins, Ruth Madoc, Stuart Margolin (The Rockford
Files),
David Birney (Bridget Loves Bernie);
Emilio Delgado and Bob
McGrath (both Sesame Street perennials),
Bob Elkins,
Susan Tolsky,
Jo Kendall and
Mary Alice, who began her long film, TV and stage
career in this decade.
 |
| William Hurt |
Known best for their work in the 1980s and 90s are
William
Hurt, Fred Ward, Paul Sorvino, Ray Liotta, Anne Heche, Tadeusz Bradecki (
Schindler’s
List),
Kirstie Alley (Cheers),
Robert E. Mosley (Magnum
P.I.);
Al Strobel, Kenneth Welsh and
Gary Bullock (Twin Peaks),
Mary
Mara (Nash Bridges),
John Aniston (Days of Our Lives),
Estelle
Harris and
Kathyrn Kates (Seinfeld), Jack Kehler and comedians
Judy
Tenuta and
Bob Saget. In the
2000s:
Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid),
Helen Slayton-Hughes,
Leslie
Jordan, Gary Friedkin;
Tom Sirico and
Bruce MacVittle
(Sopranos.)
Finally, actors who mostly graced the stage include Joan
Copeland (sister to Arthur Miller), Robert LuPone, Rae Allen and Doreen
Brownstone. May they all rest in peace.
Their work lives on.
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