Richard Widmark mini-bio: Richard Widmark established himself as an icon of American cinema with his
debut in the 1947 film noir "Kiss of Death" (1947) in which he won a Best
Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination as the killer Tommy Udo. "Kiss of
Death" and other noir thrillers established Widmark as part of a new
generation of American movie actors who became stars in the post-World War
II era. With fellow post-War stars 'Kirk Douglas' and Robert Mitchum,
Widmark brought a new kind of character to the screen in his character leads
and supporting parts: a hardboiled type who does not actively court the
sympathy of the audience (although Mitchum's hangdog demeanor marked him as
the most endearing of the three). Widmark was not afraid to play deeply
troubled, deeply conflicted, or just down right deeply corrupt characters.
After his debut, Widmark would work steadily until he retired at the age of
76 in 1990, primarily as a character lead. His stardom would peak around the
time he played the U.S. prosecutor in "Judgement at Nuremburg" as the 1950s
segued into the 1960s, but he would continue to act for another 30 years.
Richard Widmark was born on Boxing Day (the Day After Christmas) in 1914 in
Sunrise, Minnesota. He says that he loved the movies from his boyhood,
claiming "I've been a movie bug since I was 4. My grandmother used to take
me." The teenaged Widmark continued to go to the movies, and was thrilled by
Dracula and Frankenstein. "I thought Boris Karloff was great," Widmark said.
Although he loved the movies and excelled at public speaking while attending
high school, Widmark attended Lake Forest College with the idea of becoming
a lawyer. However, he won the lead role in a college production of,
fittingly enough, the play "Consellor-at-Law", and the acting bug bit deep.
After taking his bachelor of arts degree in 1936, he stayed on at Lake
Forest as the Assistant Director of Speech and Drama. However, he soon quit
the job and moved to New York to become an actor, and by 1938, he was
appearing on radio in "Aunt Jenny's Real Life Stories." He made his Broadway
debut in 1943 in the play "Kiss and Tell", and continued to appear on stage
in roles that were light years away from the tough cookies he would play in
his early movies. After World War II, he was signed by 20th Century Fox to a
seven-year contract. After seeing his screen-test for the role of Tommy Udo,
20th boss `Darryl F. Zanuck' insisted that the slight, blonde Widmark - no
one's idea of a heavy, particularly after his stage work - be cast as the
psychopath in "Kiss of Death", which had been prepared as a `Victor Mature'
vehicle. Even though the role was small, Widmark stole the picture. 20th
Century Fox's publicity department recommended that exhibitors market the
film by concentrating on thumbing the tub for their new anti-hero.
'Sell Richard Widmark' advised the studio's publicity manual that an alert
20th Century Fox sent to theater owners. The manual told local exhibitors to
engage a job-printer to have 'Wanted' posters featuring Widmark's face to be
printed and pasted up.
He won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nod for the part, which lead to an early
bout with typecasting at the studio.
Widmark played psychotics in "The Street With No Name" (1948) and "Road
House" (1948), and held his own against new Fox superstar Gregory Peck in
the 'William Wellman''s Western, "Yellow Sky" (1949), playing the villain,
of course. When he finally pressured the studio to let him play other parts,
his appearance as a sailor in "Down to the Sea in Ships" (1949) made
headlines: "Life" magazine's March 28, 1949 issue featured a three-page
spread of the movie, headlined, "Widmark the Movie Villain Goes Straight".
He was popular, having captured the public imagination, and before the
decade was out, his hand and foot prints were immortalized in concrete in
the court outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
The great director Elia Kazan cast Widmark in his thriller Panic in the
Streets (1950) not as the heavy - that role went to Jack Palance - but as
the physician who tracks down Palance, who has the plague, in tandem with
detective 'Paul Douglas'. Widmark was establishing himself as a real
presence in the genre that later would be hailed as "film noir".
Having proved he could handle other roles, Widmark didn't shy away from
playing heavies in quality pictures. The soon-to-be-blacklisted director
Jules Dassin cast him in one of his greatest roles, as the penny-ante
hustler Harry Fabian in Night and the City (1950). Set in London, Widmark's
Fabian manages to survive in the jungle of the English demimonde, but is
doomed. Widmark was masterful in conveying the desperation of the criminal
seeking to control his own fate but who is damned, and this performance also
became an icon of film noir. In that same year, he appeared in Oscar-winning
writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's "No Way Out" as a bigot who
instigates a race riot.
As the 1950s progressed, Widmark played in Westerns, military vehicles, and
his old stand-by genre, the thriller. He appeared with Marilyn Monroe (this
time cast as the psycho) in "Don't Bother to Knock" (1953) and made "Pick Up
on South Street" that same year for director Samuel Fuller. His seven-year
contract at Fox was expiring, and Zanuck - who would not renew the deal -
cast him in the Western Broken Lance (1954) in a decidedly supporting role,
billed beneath not only Spencer Tracy but even 'Robert Wagner' and Jean
Peters. The film was well-respected, and it won an Oscar nomination for best
screenplay for the front of Hollywood 10 blacklistee Albert Maltz.
Widmark left Fox for the life of a freelance, forming his own company, Heath
Productions. He appeared in more Westerns, adventures and social dramas, and
pushed himself as an actor by taking the thankless role of The Dauphin in
Otto Preminger's adaptation of `George Bernard Shaw''s "Saint Joan" (1957),
a notorious flop that didn't bring anyone any honors, neither Preminger, his
leading lady Jean Seberg or Widmark. In 1960, he was appearing in another
notorious production, 'John Wayne''s ode to suicidal patriotism, " The
Alamo" (1960), with the personally liberal Widmark playing Jim Bowie in
support of the very-conservative Wayne's Davy Crockett. Along with character
actor Chill Wills, Widmark arguably was the best thing in the movie.
In 1961, Widmark acquitted himself quite well as the prosecutor in
producer-director Stanley Kramer's "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1961), appearing
with the Oscar-nominated Spencer Tracy and the Oscar-winning `Maximilian
Schell', as well as with superstar Burt Lancaster and acting genius
Montgomery Clift and the legendary 'Judy Garland' (the latter two winning
Oscar nods for their small roles). Despite being showcased with all this
thespian-firepower, Widmark's character proved to be the axis on which the
drama turned.
A little later, Widmark appeared in two Westerns directed by the great 'John
Ford', with co-star 'James Stewart' in "Two Rode Together" (1961) and as the
top star in Ford's apologia for Indian genocide, "Cheyenne Autumn' (1964).
On "Two Rode Together", Ford feuded with Jimmy Stewart over his hat. Stewart
insisted on wearing the same hat he had for a decade of highly successful
Westerns that had made him one of the top box office stars of the 1950s.
Both he and Widmark were hard-of-hearing (as well as balding and in need of
help from the makeup department's wig-makers), so Ford would sit himself far
away from them while directing scenes and then give them directions in a
barely audible voice. When neither one of the stars could hear their
director, Ford theatrically announced to his crew, that after over 40 years
in the business, he was reduced to directing two deaf toupees. It was
testimony to the stature of both Stewart and Widmark as stars that this was
as far as Ford's baiting went, as the great director could be
extraordinarily cruel.
Widmark continued to co-star in A-pictures through the 1960s. He capped off
the decade with one of his finest performances, as the amoral police
detective in 'Don Siegel''s gritty cop melodrama "Madigan" (1968). Watching
"Madigan", one can see Widmark's characters as a progression in the
evolution of what would become the late 1960s nihilistic anti-hero, such as
those embodied by Clint Eastwood in Siegel's later "Dirty Harry" (1971_.
Im the 1970s, he continued to make his mark in movies and, beginning in
1971, in television. In movies, he appeared primarily in supporting roles,
albeit in highly billed fashion, in such films as Sidney Lumet's "Murder on
the Orient Express", Robert Aldrich's "Twilight's Last Gleaming", and
Stanley Kramer's "The Domino Theory" (1977). He even came back as a heavy,
playing the villainous doctor in "Coma" (1978). In 1971, in search of better
roles, he turned to television, starring as the President of the U.S. In the
TV movies " Vanished." His performance in the role brought Widmark an Emmy
nomination. He resurrected the character of Madigan for NBC, in six
90-minute episodes that appeared as part of the rotation of "NBC Wednesday
Mystery Movie" for the Fall 1972 season. Widmark was married for 55 years to
playwright Jean Hazlewood, from 1942 until her death in 1997 (they had one
child, Anne, who was born in 1945). He lived quietly and avoided the press,
saying in 1971, "I think a performer should do his work and then shut up.".
"Los Angeles Times" critic Kevin Thomas thought that Widmark should have won
an Oscar nomination for his turn in "When the Legends Die" (1972, playing a
former rodeo star tutoring `Frederic Forrest'. It is surprising to think
that "Kiss of Death" represented his sol Oscar nomination, but with the rise
of the respect for film noir around the time his career began tapering off
in 70s, he began to be reevaluated as an actor. Unlike Bogart, who did not
live to see his reputation flourish after his death, well before he retired,
Widmark became a cult figure.
