James Garner (1928-2014)

One of the greatest dangers an actor faces is overexposure. After all, it’s said that absence makes the heart grow fonder. And don’t forget the old showbiz rule to always leave the audience asking for more. But James Garner has ignored these clichés throughout his lengthy career. He has starred in scores of movies, several TV series, and has also appeared frequently in commercials, often juggling work in all three areas at the same time. Yet, while other stars would burn out with so much exposure, Garner’s star keeps shining brightly. It’s no wonder his most famous role was as a "Maverick."

If his career contradicts the clichés, his personal story does not. It’s the usual one of a youth spent in poverty until fame and fortune strike as suddenly as lightning. Born James Bumgarner in 1928, the Oklahoma native’s mother died when he was five years old. After his father’s remarriage, the boy, now eight, went to work to help pay the bills. "God, I worked," he told TV Guide in 1975. "I worked harder than anybody."

Garner mowed lawns, mopped floors, worked in the oil fields of Texas, and, after moving to California, laid carpet with his father in the City of Angels. He never wanted to be an actor, but after a stint in Korea (and earning a Purple Heart), an old friend now working as a producer got him into the cast of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial on Broadway. In 1955, Garner was signed to Warner Bros. That year, he did a few guest shots on the studio’s popular TV western Cheyenne. Two years later, he was appearing with Marlon Brando in Sayonara, and had a TV western of his own. As the gun shy gambler known as Maverick, Garner became a star, the hottest actor on television, in fact.

Even in an era when westerns were as conspicuous on the home screen as they are scarce today, the Roy Huggins created series made a lasting impression by spoofing the genre. Slyly satiric and sophisticated in ways that other western series were not, Maverick presented a hero who rarely engaged in heroics, and dreaded violence to the point of cowardice. For three seasons, Garner perfected what would become his trademark: the self-effacing charmer who relied more on his wit than his fists when confronted with danger.

Garner may have been the most popular star on television, but his paycheck did not reflect his success. In 1960, he sued to get out of his contract and turned his back on television for more than a decade.

Making the transition from TV to movies is difficult, and few actors have done it successfully, but Garner, who had already starred in William Wellman’s Darby’s Rangers while still cranking out episodes of Maverick, made the move with no trouble at all. He may have seemed ill at ease opposite Audrey Hepburn and Shirley Maclaine in the overly dramatic The Children’s Hour, but made himself very comfortably at home in no less than four 1963 releases.

As the husband bewildered by his wife’s sudden rise to stardom in television commercials, Garner was memorably teamed with Doris Day in The Thrill of It All, a film in which he demonstrated his already proven flair for comedy. In The Wheeler Dealers, he was hilarious as a Texas oil tycoon with a fondness for "burnt" steaks and a hot Lee Remick.

If a second film that year with Doris Day, Move Over, Darling, threatened to typecast him as a leading man with a light touch, John Sturges’ The Great Escape gave him the opportunity to show a tougher side. In what is perhaps the ultimate World War II adventure film, Garner may not have had a moment as memorable as Steve McQueen’s famous motorcycle escape from the Nazis, but as Hendley "The Scrounger," who puts his own life in jeopardy by taking the blind Donald Pleasance under his wing as they escape from the P.O.W. camp, he displayed a warmth not always found in such macho surroundings.

In 1964, Garner appeared opposite Julie Andrews in what would become his favorite of all his films, The Americanization of Emily. With a screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky, the Arthur Hiller directed film asked some pungent questions about war and bravery, hence its appeal to an actor who made his mark playing characters who shunned the typically violent approach to settling cinematic predicaments.

After Maverick, Garner avoided westerns as much as he did TV, but now firmly established as a film star, one big enough for the Cinerama format in which John Frankenheimer’s 1966 racing drama Grand Prix was filmed, he got back in the saddle opposite Sidney Poitier in Ralph Nelson’s offbeat Duel at Diablo. A year later, he made one of the movies’ most impressive Wyatt Earps in John Sturges’ Hour of the Gun. Advertised with the tag line, "Hero with a badge or cold blooded killer?," the film was less exciting than its ad campaign would have you believe, but it remains one of the more intriguing explorations of the legendary lawman’s character.

Having returned to the range with such impressive results, by 1969 Garner was ready to once more play the genre for laughs. The memories of Maverick were vivid in Support Your Local Sheriff, Garner’s finest comedy to date. Whether asking outlaw Bruce Dern to pretend that the jail cell in which he is being locked actually has bars, or stuffing his finger in Walter Brennan’s gun barrel and admonishing him for rudeness, Garner gives his most winning comedic performance. The film, directed by Burt Kennedy from a screenplay by William Bowers, was popular with audiences, and inspired a spin-off in the form of the less successful Support Your Local Gunfighter two years later. But by then, Garner was contemplating an even stronger return to his roots.

By the close of the sixties, Garner was beginning to look askance at the violence and nudity that was commonplace in movies after the introduction of the MPAA rating system in 1969. That year, Garner starred in Marlowe, becoming the sixth actor to play Raymond Chandler’s legendary private eye (For the record, the preceding five were Humphrey Bogart, George Montgomery, Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery, and Philip Carey who played the role on TV). That nifty credit aside, television was beginning to look attractive again, and, in September 1971, Garner debuted as Nichols (pictured at right), the reluctant sheriff of a small town in turn of the century Arizona. The accent was on characterization and humor of a gentle kind, but even with a pre-Lois Lane Margot Kidder in the cast, it may have been too gentle for audiences in the era of Archie Bunker, and the series struggled through its one season run.

But with The Rockford Files in 1974, Garner struck gold. As Jim Rockford, a private investigator who lived in a house trailer with his father in L.A., Garner won an Emmy and a legion of new fans. As wry and witty as Maverick, but with shades of Chandleresque cynicism, the series ran for six seasons on NBC, and would be revived in the 90s as a series of CBS-TV movies.

By the time Rockford temporarily closed his files, Garner was also prominent as a television pitchman, appearing in commercials for Polaroid with actress Mariette Hartley. Their appearances were so effective that the public believed they were actually Mr. and Mrs, leading Hartley to wear a T-shirt bearing the words, "I am not James Garner’s wife." Before long, Garner became the spokesman for the beef industry, informing us that "It’s what’s for dinner" until open heart surgery made him a less than ideal representative for the artery clogging product.

He still had the movies, though. Garner had little to do but look attentive as the companion of Lauren Bacall in the 1981 slasher flick The Fan, but reuniting with Julie Andrews for Blake Edwards’ gender bending Victor/Victoria put him back on the big screen in style. An even better role came his way in 1985’s Murphy’s Romance. As the small town druggist romancing Sally Field, Garner finally received the recognition from his colleagues that the public felt he had deserved for years by nominating him for an Oscar as Best Actor.

If his skill for light comedy made people forget he was also an accomplished dramatic actor, his superb work in such TV movies as Heartsounds (1984), The Promise (1986), My Name is Bill W. (1989), Decoration Day (1990), Barbarians at the Gate (1993), Breathing Lessons (1994), and Streets of Laredo (1995) helped them remember.

And who better than Garner to reprise Wyatt Earp opposite Bruce Willis as Tom Mix in 1988’s Sunset? Or play an ex-president alongside Jack Lemmon in 1996’s My Fellow Americans? And he’ll start the millennium in good company, too, appearing with Clint Eastwood and Tommy Lee Jones in Space Cowboys.

And through it all, there was always Maverick.

"One of the things I can’t stand about television," Garner complained to TV Guide in 1968, "is that they never let you live down your past. I still have people coming up to me and complimenting me on Maverick. And I haven’t made a Maverick in nearly 10 years!" But 10 years after registering that complaint, Garner did make another Maverick, guest starring in a pilot for ABC-TV’s The New Maverick. Retitled Young Maverick when it briefly became a series, Garner guested in the first episode. In 1981, Garner starred for NBC in Bret Maverick, his fourth series, and, in 1994, he joined Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster in Richard Donner’s big screen revival of the series that first brought him fame. By embracing rather than shunning his past, perhaps Garner is suggesting that another showbiz cliché--"give the people what they want"-- is the one he has learned to respect.

James Garner may not be the "last real man" as People christened him some years back, but he may very well be the last real star--an actor who shines in any medium and loses none of his sparkle with age.

Brian W. Fairbanks

© Copyright 1999, Brian W. Fairbanks. All Rights Reserved.

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Richard Widmark (1914-2008)

It is one of the most chilling moments in screen history. An old woman in a wheelchair is confronted in her apartment by a trench-coated thug. "I’m askin’ ya, where’s that squealin’ son of yours?" he says. Dissatisfied by the woman’s response, the thug rips the cord from a nearby lamp, ties the woman into the chair, then pushes her down a flight of stairs, maniacally cackling as she plunges to the bottom of the staircase and to the floor. It’s doubtful there is another scene in all of film noir as shocking in its cruelty as this moment in 1947’s Kiss of Death, and it’s doubtful any actor has ever made such a stunning impression in his movie debut as Richard Widmark did as Tommy Udo, the giggling psychopath of this classic thriller. Of his performance, The New Yorker wrote that Widmark has "the ability to make a perfectly good set of white teeth appear more alarming than any prop-department fangs Boris Karloff ever bared."

                "When I was a kid I loved Frankenstein," Widmark once told an interviewer. "I thought Boris Karloff was great." But until his screen debut in 1947, no one ever thought to compare the slight, blonde haired actor with the cinema’s king of horror. Born in Sunrise, Minnesota on December 26, 1914, Richard Widmark’s love affair with the movies started early. "I’ve been a movie bug since I was 4. My grandmother used to take me."

                An effective public speaker in high school, Widmark had his eye on a career in law until the lead role in a college production of Counselor-at-Law convinced him to try his luck as an actor. He quit his position as the Assistant Director in Speech and Drama at Lake Forest College where he had earned a B.A. in 1936, moved to New York, and in 1938, scored a hit on radio in Aunt Jenny’s Real Life Stories. In 1943, he made his Broadway debut in Kiss and Tell and went on to appear in such plays as Trio, Get Away Old Man, Kiss Them for Me, and Dunnigan’s Daughter.

                On stage he generally played sympathetic good guys, so it was something of a surprise when 20th Century Fox chairman Darryl F. Zanuck insisted Widmark be cast as the homicidal Tom Udo in Kiss of Death after viewing the actor’s screen test for the role. Top billing went to star Victor Mature with newcomer Widmark’s name buried in the credits under the title, but it was his supporting performance that proved a sensation. Fan clubs for Tom Udo sprang up overnight and, in addition to an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor (he lost to Edmund Gwenn’s Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street), Widmark became the first recipient of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer. Only two years later, the actor was placing his hand and foot prints in cement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

                Having signed a seven year contract with Fox, the new star was put to work in other psychotic roles. In 1948’s The Street With No Name he was cast as Alec Stiles, a fight promoter/gangster whose mob is infiltrated by an FBI agent. Cooler and more calculating that the hot blooded Udo but prone to sudden flashes of violence, Stiles showed that Widmark could be a commanding screen presence even with his loony giggle on hold. Of his role in this film, New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote, "the timbre of (Widmark’s) voice is that of filthy water going down a sewer."

                Later in 1948, he was also slightly unhinged in Road House, an odd noirish drama in which his unrequited love for Ida Lupino leads him to frame her lover for theft only so he can torture his rival when he’s released in his custody. Proving equally at home on the range as in an urban milieu, Widmark next took his villainy out West opposite good guy Gregory Peck in William Wellman’s Yellow Sky.

                Frustrated that he was being typecast as hoods, Widmark successfully lobbied for more varied roles and, in 1949, traded in his black hat for a sailor’s cap in the atmospheric Down to the Sea in Ships. His reformation was detailed in a three page spread in the March 28 issue of Life magazine ("Widmark the Movie Villain Goes Straight").

                Next came Elia Kazan’s excellent 1950 thriller Panic in the Streets. As the by the book doctor who joins forces with hard-boiled detective Paul Douglas to track down a plague carrying Jack Palance, Widmark showed he need not always be a villain to be effective in film noir. But he was much too good at playing heartless heels to remain on the side of the angels for long. In Jules Dassin’s grim Night and the City, the actor was cast in what may be his best role, that of Harry Fabian, a small-time hustler, "an artist without an art" as author Foster Hirsch describes him in his book The Dark Side of the Screen. More so than Robert DeNiro in the 1992 remake, Widmark made Fabian a desperate figure, one who claws his way through London’s underworld yet never reaches the top. When film noir was finally recognized as a genre worthy of study in French critics Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton’s Panarama du film americain, it was Widmark’s gaunt frightened face in Night and the City that was pictured on the cover.

                No Way Out, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, was another noir nightmare, this time with a social conscience. As a bigot who blames a black intern (Sidney Poitier) for his brother’s death and retaliates by instigating a race riot, Widmark gave 1950 audiences a look at an Archie Bunker not played for laughs. The controversial film still packs a punch today.

                Widmark’s reformation began in earnest in 1951’s The Halls of Montezuma, wherein he was cast as Lt. Anderson of the U.S. Marines. It would be followed by an assortment of military and adventure films starring Widmark, including The Frogmen, Red Skies of Montana, and Destination Gobi.

                Back in civilian garb, Widmark provided an up and coming starlet named Marilyn Monroe some solid support in the otherwise flimsy thriller Don’t Bother to Knock, but there was nothing flimsy about 1953’s Pickup on South Street. The New York Times may have found cult favorite Samuel Fuller’s noir thriller "a trifle silly," but it was recently chosen as one of the best 100 films of the century by Entertainment Weekly. As a pickpocket caught between the FBI and Communist spies, Widmark’s Skip McCoy is the ultimate anti-hero, a lowly criminal in whose hands the fate of the free world falls.

                Widmark ended his tenure at Fox with two 1954 westerns: Garden of Evil benefitted from the presence of Gary Cooper and Susan Hayward, as well as a thrilling Bernard Herrmann score, while Broken Lance cast Widmark as the most acrimonious member of a dysfunctional family headed by Spencer Tracy. “Acrimonious” may also be the way to describe the actor’s relationship with the studio at this time. Angry that the star would not extend his contract, studio mogul Zanuck pushed him into a supporting role in Broken Lance and gave him fourth billing behind lesser lights Robert Wagner and Jean Peters.

                Now freelancing, Widmark’s career became erratic as he worked for a variety of studios in films both good and bad. Whereas seven years earlier he was cast as characters in need of psychiatric treatment, in MGM’s The Cobweb he was Dr. Stewart McIver, the head of a mental institution who treats patients while treating himself to the charms of Lauren Bacall. There were westerns like the excellent The Last Wagon and more adventure films (Run for the Sun, A Prize of Gold), as well as the role of the Dauphin in Otto Preminger’s disastrous Saint Joan (1957).

                For his own Heath productions, Widmark called upon his friend Karl Malden to direct Time Limit, a grim war drama, before lightening the mood considerably by starring opposite Doris Day in the Gene Kelly directed comedy Tunnel of Love.

                Political differences and personality conflicts were reportedly rife throughout the filming of John Wayne’s labor of love, The Alamo (1960), but if the two stars didn’t hit it off personally, Widmark’s Jim Bowie was one of the highlights of the hit and miss production. Maximilian Schell had the flashier and, therefore Oscar winning role in Stanley Kramer’s ambitious Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) but Widmark’s prosecutor was the glue that held the all-star drama together.

                With television taking its toll on theater attendance, "all-star" productions were considered the safest way to fill theater seats, so Widmark often found himself teamed with another big name in many of his films during the decade. In addition to taking a place among the all-star cast of How the West Was Won, he was paired with James Stewart in John Ford’s Two Rode Together, with Sidney Poitier in The Long Ships and The Bedford Incident, with Yul Brynner in Flight from Ashiya, with William Holden in Alvarez Kelly, and he joined both Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum for The Way West, an ambitious but less than spectacular adaptation of A.B. Guthrie’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel. The best of his films from this period was probably Ford’s Cheyenne Autumn, the last of the great director’s westerns and, if not one of his best, it was still more thoughtful than any other western of the time.

                If Ford’s western was his best film of the mid to late ‘60s, Madigan gave him his best role. Directed by Don Siegel, the 1968 film followed a maverick detective and his partner’s pursuit of a homicidal maniac. Though there’s some fine action and crisp dialogue, the film, a precursor of sorts to Siegel’s Dirty Harry, was marred by subplots involving the detective’s less than ideal relationship with wife Inger Stevens and Commissioner Henry Fonda’s investigation of corruption in the NYPD. Still, Widmark was very much at home on the police beat, playing a detective in a terse style later echoed by TV’s NYPD Blue.

                Another fine role, one which Los Angeles Times critic Kevin Thomas believed "deserves to be remembered come Oscar nomination time," came in 1972’s When the Legends Die. As a former rodeo star tutoring Frederic Forrest, Widmark was better cast than Cliff Robertson, Steve McQueen, and James Coburn, all of whom also hit the rodeo circuit in films at the time.

                But with good roles in quality projects becoming scarce, Widmark, whose only previous television appearance was in a 1955 episode of I Love Lucy, ended his long embargo against the medium by heading the all-star cast of NBC’s 1971 four hour "World Premiere Movie," Vanished. Very impressive indeed as the President of the United States whose administration is rocked by the mysterious disappearance of an advisor, Widmark won an Emmy nomination.

                The year 1971 found such movie stalwarts as Anthony Quinn, Shirley Maclaine, Rock Hudson, James Garner, Rod Taylor, and Henry Fonda seeking renewed popularity as stars of their own TV series, and that’s what Widmark had in mind with Brock’s Last Case, another NBC-TV movie, this one serving as a series pilot. The premise - a New York detective disgusted with crime retires to a ranch in California only to become embroiled in a murder case involving a ranch hand - was weak at best, and the network instead asked the star to reprise Madigan. This he did in six 90 minute episodes that began appearing in September 1972 as one-third of the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie. Short-tempered and blunt to the point of rudeness, Widmark’s detective was a breath of fresh air on network television but despite excellent reviews and good ratings, the show was cancelled after one season.

                His lined aging face now looking like it wouldn’t be out of place on Mount Rushmore, Widmark spent the next two decades alternating between roles in movies and television, now more often than not cast in authoritative roles. He was Ratchett, the millionaire whose Murder on the Orient Express was one of 1974’s top box-office hits. In Robert Aldrich’s Twilight’s Last Gleaming (1977), he was a General negotiating with terrorist Burt Lancaster, and in 1978’s Coma, he returned to villainy as the nefarious surgeon involved in a scheme to sell body parts on the black market.

                On television, he was an unusual choice to play Benjamin Franklin: the Rebel (1975), but was on familiar ground in the westerns, The Last Day (1975), Mr. Horn (1979), and Once Upon a Texas Train (1988). His liberal political credentials drew him to such socially minded projects as All God’s Children (1980) and A Gathering of Old Men (1987), while his interest in conservation led him to narrate numerous wildlife documentaries and to appear in 1981’s A Whale for the Killing. In 1989 at the age of 74, he even romanced Faye Dunaway in the TNT presentation of Cold Sassy Tree.

                Devoted to the craft of acting but not to the perpetuation of a star image, Widmark maintained a low profile when not in the camera’s range. Married to playwright Jean Hazlewood from 1942 until her death in 1997 (a daughter, Anne, was born in 1945), Widmark lived quietly, avoided interviews and, except for appearances on The Merv Griffin Show in 1976 and 1978, and a salute to Broadway legend George Abbott on a segment of Dinah Shore’s show in 1977, has rarely appeared on talk shows or taken part in publicity seeking endeavors. As a result, he is not always given the credit he deserves as a great star and a fine actor. "I think a performer should do his work and then shut up," he told The New York Times in 1971. This Richard Widmark did well for more than five decades.

Brian W. Fairbanks

1999

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Anthony Perkins (1932-1992)

Anthony Perkins began his career as a teen idol of sorts, impressing young girls with his awkwardness and diffident charm as Gary Cooper’s son in 1955’s Friendly Persuasion, but within five years his image would be dramatically and permanently altered. As Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Perkins would give birth to a character that would become a stereotype in cinema, that of the shy, seemingly harmless boy next door who is both a sex pervert and a murderer. Perkins’ greatest role also became a curse. The actor became so identified in the public mind with the knife wielding, cross-dressing, and highly strung Norman that his Hollywood career went into an almost immediate decline. Late in his career, Perkins seemed to accept his identification with his most famous role, even going so far as to say, "I am Norman Bates."

                He was born April 4, 1932, the son of actor Osgood Perkins who died when Tony was five years old. The elder Perkins was 30 before he became a professional actor, but his son was already a member of Actor’s Equity by the age of 15. He started in summer stock. "I began as an off-stage bat-howl in Dracula," he joked to the press in 1959, and though that statement may not have been literally true, it was his way of suggesting he worked a variety of unglamourous jobs in theater before finally taking to the stage. What his first director saw when he hired him was "a boy who would also sweep up the place, clean up paint buckets, and nail scenery together."

                Eventually he was given the opportunity to act and he appeared in such plays as Junior Miss, George Washington Slept Here and My Sister Eileen before moving on to Rollins College productions of Harvey and The Importance of Being Earnest.

                Determined to break into movies, his ambition paid off when a trip to Hollywood led to his being cast in 1953’s The Actress. Though impressed by star Spencer Tracy , he was not enamored with the film or his performance. "I thought I’d given a very callow performance in a slight romantic picture, and I was critical of what I saw in Hollywood."

                Heading back to New York, he hunted for television roles in between classes at Columbia University. There were parts on Studio One, G.E. Theater, and other familiar legends from the Golden Age of Television, and, finally, success on Broadway as the successor to John Kerr as the sensitive college boy suspected of homosexuality in Robert Anderson’s Tea and Sympathy. His performance won praise from tough as nails critic Brooks Atkinson who felt that Perkins offered a "mature performance of an immature role."

                In 1956, a Goodyear TV Playhouse production titled Joey in which he sang "A Little Love Goes a Long, Long Way" led to a recording contract, first at Epic Records, then at RCA Victor. It was a course that many other "teen idols" would also take, and a teen idol is exactly what the lanky six footer was becoming. Nonetheless, the singing career was not a success. "Nobody played ‘em," he said of his three solo albums, "nobody bought ‘em, as far as I can determine."

                Luckily, by year’s end, his acting career would take off in a big way. Directed by William Wyler, Friendly Persuasion is a film much beloved for its warmth and unpretentious depiction of Quaker life. As Josh Birdwell, the thoughtful son of Gary Cooper and Dorothy McGuire, the 24 year-old Perkins earned an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor.

                Like many another young actor who achieved stardom in the wake of James Dean’s emergence as a rebel without a cause, many of the roles Perkins was offered could best be described as "misunderstood." In the western, The Lonely Man, he was the son of a repentant outlaw (Jack Palance) hoping to reconcile with the son he abandoned years before. A father and son relationship was also at the center of 1957’s Fear Strikes Out.

                The disturbing account of the events leading to baseball player Jim Piersall’s mental breakdown, Fear Strikes Out is one of Perkins’ most powerful performances. "Tony lived his role," director Robert Mulligan said, "and his tortures were real." With a subtly monstrous Karl Malden as the father who pushes his son beyond a point that he can handle, Perkins slowly unravels in an extraordinary portrait that made the real Piersall seem worthy of sympathy. In recent years, Perkins’ remarkably sensitive portrayal has been criticized by everyone from Piersall (who insensitively complained that a "fag" played him in the movie) to Kevin Costner who has snickered at Perkins’ alleged lack of believability in the baseball scenes. Such ignorant carping misses the point, of course. Fear Strikes Out is not about baseball, but a son’s inability to satisfy his father’s unrealistic ambitions and the toll it takes on his psyche. Whatever faults Perkins may have had as a baseball player were more than compensated for by his stunning portrait of Piersall’s mental collapse. As Laura Kay Palmer observes in her book, Osgood and Anthony Perkins, other actors may have played baseball more believably, but "No one else could freak out in Fenway Park like Anthony Perkins."

                The Tin Star, another western, this time with Perkins as a sheriff tutored by bounty hunter Henry Fonda, was not a worthy follow-up, nor was Desire Under the Elms with Sophia Loren or the genteel comedy of The Matchmaker with Shirleys Booth and Maclaine. The pretentious Green Mansions was a disaster all-around with both Perkins and Audrey Hepburn miscast.

                Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach was pretentious, too, as any film dealing with the end of the world is bound to be, but it was better than most. Off-screen, Perkins earned the admiration of co-star Fred Astaire. "He was terribly, terribly nice to me," the legendary dancer said. "He knew that I was concerned about playing my first serious part, and I used to talk to him about that."

                Then came the most pivotal year in Anthony Perkins’ career: 1960.

                It started innocently enough with the starring role in the Broadway musical Greenwillow which closed after 95 performances. At the movies, there was the innocuous Tall Story, a none too amusing and dated comedy with Jane Fonda as a college girl with eyes for the basketball team’s star athlete (Perkins).

                And then there was Psycho.

                After its June release, Anthony Perkins would never be the same again.

                Except for the presence of Alfred Hitchcock behind the camera, there was little about Psycho to suggest the impact it would have. Made quickly and cheaply at Universal studios with the same crew the director employed for his then current TV anthology series, there was even talk of the film airing as a two-part segment of that show when the original distributor, Paramount, had misgivings about its violence.

                Psycho was released, of course, and it was a sensation. With his nervous ticks and conflicting air of sweetness and menace, the actor inhabited more than the skin of his character. He plunged deep into Norman’s soul, as well as the soul of Norman’s mother. A remarkable, and remarkably subtle performance, Norman Bates, thanks to Perkins, is one of the most unforgettable characters in the history of cinema, "The Hamlet of Horror," as he himself had wisely suggested.

                Perkins’ performance may have been too good. "I am ashamed of your fellow actors," Hitchcock told his star via telegram after Perkins’ work was ignored come Oscar nomination time.

                Prior to Psycho, no one had thought of him as homicidal or even odd except in a shy, anxious way. In fact, Hitchcock was very cleverly casting against type when selecting his star. It was the novelty of casting Perkins that won over screenwriter Joseph Stefano who had little enthusiasm for the task of adapting Robert Bloch’s novel in which Norman Bates was a seedy 40 year-old. "I suddenly saw a tender, vulnerable young man you could feel incredibly sorry for." Moviegoers in France were not so quick to associate the actor with the knife wielding young man of the Hitchcock thriller. After his role as the young American pursuing Ingrid Bergman in 1961’s Goodbye Again, he became the Elvis Presley of Paris, a teen idol whose dress and hairstyle were widely emulated by French teenagers. He was also named best actor at the Cannes Film Festival.

                Appreciative of his cult status, he remained in Europe throughout much of the 1960s for Phaedra, Orson Welles’ adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial, Five Miles to Midnight, and Claude Chabrol’s The Champagne Murders among other films, and would return to make more films there in the next decade. Working in foreign films gave him a chance to escape Norman Bates, but upon his reentry into American films, he was back in psycho territory for Pretty Poison. The 1968 film which has gone on to achieve cult status, cast Perkins as a disturbed young man recently released from an institution where he was sent after killing his aunt. More at home in his own fantasy world than reality, he soon hooks up with a majorette played by Tuesday Weld who proves to be more disturbed than he is.

                But the movie roles were becoming infrequent. The next two years found him directing theater, including an Off-Broadway production of Bruce Jay Friedman’s Steambath in 1970. The same year, he starred in How Awful About Allan, a made for TV thriller that, despite its cast (Julie Harris and Joan Hackett co-starred) and Curtis Harrington behind the camera, never quite hit its target.

                Mike Nichols’ big-screen adaptation of Joseph Heller’s acclaimed novel Catch-22 might have been a success had the book not cast such a long, imposing shadow, and if Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H not already proven such a big success. In an all-star lineup that included Alan Arkin, Orson Welles, Bob Newhart, and Art Garfunkel, Perkins appeared as the chaplain who tries to comfort the men, but only manages to make them uneasy.

                On the surface, WUSA was impressive, too. Produced by Paul Newman who co-starred with wife Joanne Woodward, the heavy handed political drama was seen by some critics as the left-wing equivalent of John Wayne’s widely condemned gung-ho and right-wing take on Vietnam in The Green Berets. It was an embarrassment for all involved except Perkins, who managed to make his initially gentle character’s transformation into an assassin very believable even in a less than believable script.

                It was back to France for Someone Behind the Door co-starring another husband and wife team of note, Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland, and to star again for Claude Chabrol in the lifeless Ten Days Wonder which also reunited him with Orson Welles for their third film together.

                Universal’s Play It As It Lays was every bit as pretentious as its title, but on the plus side, it re-teamed him with Tuesday Weld. "Making Pretty Poison, Tuesday and I had several severe disagreements," he said. However, Weld specifically requested him for the role of her husband, a request that directed Frank Perry granted because "Tony was so incredibly right for the part...." Unfortunately, not only was Play It As It Lays pretentious, but the film, based on a Joan Didion novel, was a dull affair with little beyond its stars to recommend it.

                His terrific and amusing cameo in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean was less notable than the off-camera relationship he had with co-star Victoria Principal. At age 39, Perkins had his first sexual experience with a woman, and in the following years he would enter psychotherapy in an attempt to turn from his homosexuality. Marriage to Berry Berenson (a passenger on the first plane to strike the World Trade Center during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 ) and the birth of two children did give the actor a taste of a more conventional life.

                He next added screenwriter to his resume. With Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim, he wrote The Last of Sheila, a clever whodunit that won the two amateur screenwriters the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1974 for the best mystery screenplay.

                A more established author of mysteries, Agatha Christie, wasn’t the only attraction of Murder on the Orient Express. An all-star cast that included Albert Finney, Sean Connery, and Lauren Bacall brought the audience out in big numbers for this handsome, though sometimes sluggish, mystery. Perkins was especially memorable as the nervous secretary to villainous millionaire Richard Widmark.

                Peter Shaffer’s Equus was already a hit on Broadway when Perkins was asked to replace Anthony Hopkins. Perkins didn’t think he was right for the role of the psychiatrist who analyzes a boy who blinded six horses, but director John Dexter insisted he take it. Although his success was overshadowed when the more flamboyant  Richard Burton took over the role, Perkins was praised for his performance.

                "Kitsch" may be the fashionable way to describe Mahogany, the 1975 film that Motown founder Berry Gordy executive produced and directed for ultra-diva Diana Ross. Looking sensational throughout, Ross is an aspiring fashion designer who finds fame and fortune as a model while being wooed by a politically active Billy Dee Williams. As the gay photographer who guides her to the top, Perkins used his entire bag of tricks (twitching, mock laughter) from every previous psycho he had played. If he overdid it a bit, the results were in keeping with the stylishly shallow tone of the film. Mahogany is very entertaining in its trashy way, and Perkins provides most of the fun. Some offbeat assignments followed, such as hosting duties on Saturday Night Live, Alan Rudolph’s Remember My Name, Disney’s The Black Hole and a particularly vicious villain who battles Roger Moore in ffolkes, but with Norman Bates always lurking behind him in the public’s eye, the sequel-mania that was sweeping through Hollywood seemed destined to affect him, too.

                Other actors could play James Bond or Sherlock Holmes and meet with public approval, but Norman Bates was a different matter (as Vince Vaughn would discover). In the early ‘80s, with Alfred Hitchcock safely in the grave and in no condition to protest, Universal, which had acquired the rights to Psycho from Paramount, decided a sequel was in order. Naturally, they came calling on Anthony Perkins. Psycho II was originally conceived as a way to cash-in on the "splatter" film trend that began with 1978’s Halloween. Since that John Carpenter film was often compared to Psycho, it was assumed that Hitchcock’s masterpiece was the granddaddy of the gratuitously violent genre.

                Under the confident, if undistinguished, direction of Richard Franklin, 1983’s Psycho II benefitted from a clever screenplay by Tom Holland. What really made it work, though, was Perkins who was attracted to the sequel because "It really represented Norman’s story. Psycho was about Janet Leigh and her activities and Norman and his mother were brought in more for local color."

                Twitching to perfection, and pronouncing "cutlery" in such a way that, once heard, it was not likely to be forgotten, he was once again superb. Those critics who did not consider a sequel to a masterpiece a blasphemous act were kind to the film, and it sold enough tickets to nab a place among the 10 biggest grossing films of the year. But its success also seemed to reinforce the notion that Perkins and Norman Bates were one and the same. His next film, Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion further capitalized on that belief. As the deranged reverend obsessed with a call girl (Kathleen Turner), he was a seedy delight, and he impressed his director with his commitment and creativity. When released in 1984, the film generated more talk than ticket sales, however, due to sexual content that required extensive editing to avoid the dreaded X rating. Perkins was soon back at Universal for Psycho III.

                Aware that it was hard enough to land a quality director for a sequel, let alone a sequel to a sequel, Perkins offered to direct the film, as well as star. Psycho III treats Norman more sympathetically than ever, as he wrestles with his demons while courting and being courted by a lovely woman (Diana Scarwid) whom he has saved from a suicide attempt. There are some touching moments, as well as some amusingly ghoulish ones, and Perkins shows himself to be a very confident and capable director.

                Released in summer 1986, Psycho III was a box-office failure, and Norman Bates’ big-screen career came to an end. Norman would be back for a 1990 cable TV movie that reeked of desperation, but mercifully there were a few other worthy roles for his creator before the curtain came down a final time. Edge of Sanity was unceremoniously dumped into second-run theaters in 1989, but it deserved a better fate. This retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is vibrant in its anger, and Perkins is disturbingly effective, as well as effectively disturbing.

                Perkins learned he had AIDS the same way millions of grocery shoppers did: courtesy of a 1989 headline in The National Enquirer. Once revealed, he neither confirmed nor denied the report, choosing to keep quiet about his personal tragedy because, as he said in a posthumously released statement, "The problems of an old actor don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." With his wife, he worked on behalf of Project Angel Food, a non-profit organization that delivered meals to AIDS patients. He died on September 12, 1992 at the age of 60. The rest of his statement suggests a philosophical attitude toward his illness, but a somewhat bitter one toward Hollywood:

"There are many who believe this disease is God's vengeance. But I believe it was sent to teach people how to love and understand and have compassion for each other. I have learned more about love, selflessness and human understanding from people I have met in this great adventure in the world of AIDS, than I ever did in the cutthroat, competitive world in which I spent my life."

                Intelligent, highly sensitive, and extremely gifted, Perkins did have at least one thing in common with the character that would make him a legend. Like Norman Bates, he was forever an outsider, a quality that no doubt brought an unnerving truth to his characterizations and a strong pathos to his work in such films as Fear Strikes Out and Play It As It Lays.

                But even though Perkins and Norman Bates are interchangeable in most people’s minds, the majority of his films find him breaking from the image he acquired and displaying a versatility that the continuing popularity of Psycho tends to obscure. If his performance in Hitchcock’s film were his only contribution to the cinema, Anthony Perkins could still rightfully claim an esteemed place in celluloid history. But rarely seen performances in such diverse fare as Lovin’ Molly and Remember My Name demonstrate that there was much more to him than Norman Bates.

                For those who know Anthony Perkins only through Psycho, its sequels and imitations, his true versatility has yet to be discovered. 

Brian W. Fairbanks

1999 

BOOKS BY BRIAN W. FAIRBANKS