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Richard Widmark: Roles
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No one ever made a more haunting film debut than Richard Widmark. Just recruited from Broadway, the young actor lucked out at Fox in his first screen role as the handsome homicidal heavy in Henry Hathaway's Kiss of Death (1947), Hollywood's first major postwar gangster movie. His Tommy Udo is a tittering psycho who pushes an old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs while he cackles with glee. He plays the character as a mass of twitches; when he grins, his sparkling white teeth are more horrific than any vampire's fangs. Reviewing the film, James Agee remarked, "It is clear that murder is one of the kindest things he is capable of." Widmark's portrayal of doomed and neurotic creatures was so strong that it was difficult to cast him in "normal" roles.
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Widmark had one of his meatiest roles in this tough, psychologically acute cold war thriller. He’s the captain of a U.S. submarine equipped with nuclear weapons, patrolling the Arctic waters off Greenland. There’s a reporter on board (played by Sidney Poitier) writing a magazine story on life on a sub. The captain’s anti-Soviet zeal reaches a Queeg-like intensity when he finds a Russian sub: as his mania to force the sub into submission increases, so does the pressure on his crew. This is one of the finest of Widmark’s later performances: those fierce eyes, set within his rugged older face, suggest a will of steel. Directed by Kubrick’s old partner, the eternally underrated James B. Harris.
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Widmark surprises with a very charming and easygoing comic performance. He and Miss Day work well together and it's too bad they didn't have better material to serve them. Gig Young is in his usual fine form in this the third of four on-screen performances opposite Miss Day. Elisabeth Fraser in the second of four roles opposite Miss Day displays her usual polish. Gia Scala adds window dressing and the viewer will come away not feeling they'd wasted their time but with the talent involved probably wishing for a sweeter aftertaste. Perhaps color would have brightened the proceedings in more ways than one.
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Over subsequent decades, Widmark perfected his haggard, haunting style, playing numerous psychotics, sons of bitches, and cold-blooded killers. Among his many memorable roles, he played a gangster in The Street with No Name with Ed Begley, Sr., a small-time hood in Night and the City with Gene Tierney, and framed an innocent man in Road House with Cornel Wilde. He triggered a race riot in No Way Out with Sidney Poitier, he played a pickpocket with potentially cataclysmic consequences in Pickup on South Street with Thelma Ritter, and he was the surgeon with a secret in Coma with Michael Douglas.
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By the 1970s Widmark had turned his considerable talents to television. For a two-part television movie, Vanished, he was nominated for an Emmy, but lost. His lone prime-time series, Madigan, based on his film role, did better, lasting two seasons. He ended his career with frequent appearances in television movies and mini-series.
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On January 12, 1948, Widmark, Victor Mature and Coleen Gray reprised their screen roles for a Lux Radio Theatre broadcast. Mature and Widmark ... reprised their screen roles for three broadcasts on The Screen Guild Theater, the first of which aired on October 28, 1948.
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