Widmark too often taken for granted

By PHILIP WUNTCH
Film Critic Emeritus
Richard Widmark's death Monday at the age of 93 serves as a guilt trip for movie buffs, cinema historians and that vanishing breed known as film critics. It's a sobering reminder of how easy it is to take an actor for granted.

Sure, Widmark's linked to an iconic movie scene. As demented mobster Tommy Udo in the 1947 noir classic "Kiss of Death," he ties terrified, elderly Mildred Dunnock to her wheelchair and kicks her down the stairs, punctuating each fatal kick with gleeful giggles.

That one scene launched his steady career of mid-level movie stardom and remained an indelible part of film folklore. In the 1995 remake, Nicolas Cage was twice as deranged but half as memorable. The film also typecast Widmark in the public eye as a gangster. Just one glimpse of him in 1974's all-star Agatha Christie marathon "Murder on the Orient Express," and you knew what kind of no-goodnik he was playing.

Yet Widmark could do much more than sneer, smirk and giggle maniacally. As the zealous prosecutor of Nazi war criminals in "Judgment at Nuremberg" (1960), his authoritative performance provided the film's fervent moral compass. Yet audiences and critics responded more readily to dynamic newcomer Maximilian Schell (who won the Oscar) and the legendary ensemble of Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Judy Garland, Montgomery Clift and Marlene Dietrich. Widmark's grand performance received little media attention. Shamefully, he was nominated for an Oscar only once, in the supporting-actor category for "Kiss of Death."

As a contract player, he frequently was handed routine roles, for which he provided a depth not always in the script. "Broken Lance" is an above-average 1954 horse opera, a "King Lear" on the range, often revived on cable. Tracy was the aging, raging patriarch, Robert Wagner the loyal son and Widmark, the nominally bad offspring. Yet Widmark's performance had such leathery intensity that you found yourself dismissing the pallid Wagner as a goody-goody while reviling in Widmark's vitality.

He also had his share of unique roles, ones that required the urban grit that was a Widmark specialty. Samuel Fuller's mesmerizing "Pickup on South Street" (1953), polishes B-movie conventions into an urban symphony, with Widmark's frantic, highly physical yet sensitive performance as its centerpiece. The movie's a classic for Widmark, Thelma Ritter's superb character-actor performance and Fuller's masterful flourishes.

Don Siegel's "Madigan" (1968) was released before the director achieved cult status with Clint Eastwood action flicks. But again Widmark elevates the material as a detective lost in the urban jungle. He's an early "Dirty Harry," not yet completely de-sensitized. But he wasn't limited to urban and western landscapes. In Otto Preminger's notorious flop "Saint Joan" (1957), with Jean Seberg as the martyred Joan, his impish performance as the Dauphin won consistently solid notices among a cast that included such classical veterans as Sir John Gielgud.

Widmark's off screen life was equally admirable. Despite his gangster image, he was an outspoken political liberal who voiced his dislike of guns and war. Nevertheless he played Jim Bowie alongside John Wayne's Davy Crockett in 1960's lackluster "The Alamo," apparently without any on-the-set havoc. He was also commanding as a racist bigot in 1950's "No Way Out," with Sidney Poitier as the object of his most violent tirades. According to The New York Times, he apologized to Poitier after each abusive scene.

He was, by all reports, a devoted husband to his wife of 52 years, Jean Hazlewood, who died in 1997. For 13 years, he was Sandy Koufax's father-in-law, until his daughter Anne and the baseball Hall of Famer were divorced in 1982. Widmark married longtime family friend Susan Blanchard in 1999.

But here's final proof of Widmark's respectability. The guy was president of his high-school class. That's enough to make Tommy Udo giggle maniacally and want to push him down the schoolyard steps.