It was announced today that actor Richard Widmark died in his home Monday after a long illness. In the statement issued by his wife Susan Blanchard, she said, “it was a big shock, but he was 93.”
Widmark started his show biz career in radio drama and theater before moving to the big screen. And when he moved, boy, did he move. His film debut was as the cold hearted killer Tommy Udo, who pushed an old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs to her death in 1947’s Kiss of Death.. For that role, Widmark received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He later referred to his character as “a ridiculous beast.”
Widmark would go on to play killers in films, despite the fact that he himself was quiet and shy. When not playing killers, Widmark often starred as cops or gunslingers. Oddly enough, he despised guns and violence. He said in a 1976 AP interview “I know I’ve made kind of a half-assed career out of violence, but I abhor violence. I am an ardent supporter of gun control. It seems incredible to me that we are the only civilized nation that does not put some effective control on guns.”
Widmark almost missed out on his Academy Award nominated role – because the director Henry Hathaway thought he looked too intellectual. Thankfully, 20th Century Fox studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck overrode the decision and the rest is cinema history. Widmark went on to star in many more Fox productions including The Street With No Name, Road House, Panic in the Streets, and The Halls of Montezuma.
In 1952, Widmark got the chance to star in Don’t Bother to Knock with Marilyn Monroe. While he said acting seems to scare her and that she had trouble remembering the lines, she was one of the few special people who had that “pure magic” that happens between them and the lens.
After leaving Fox, Widmark’s career thrived, with him starring in The Alamo, Judgment at Nuremberg, How the West Was Won, and Murder on the Orient Express. He would only star in one television series – “Madigan” which only ran the 1972-1973 season.
Widmark cut down his appearances as he aged, telling Parade magazine in 1987 that he now found the “moviemaking process irritating” and didn’t want to spend his remaining years “sitting around a movie set for 12 hours to do two minutes of film.”