Eldergays, tell me about Richard Widmark

Didn't he also have a marvelous grapefruit?

Dick Widmark had a delicious career in TCM underground type fare in his twilight years

He always knew how to show a gal a good time.

And younger elder gays might well remember him as the murder victim in Murder on the Orient Express. The good version.

He was definitely an A-List star in the late 40s through the 60s.

Except for his big game hunting he’s seems to have been a nice person in real life.

Have you seen [italic]Road House[/italic], OP? It's worth a look. Rich, hot-headed Jefty hires Ida Lupino to sing at his road house. She falls for his childhood friend and road house manager, Cornell Wilde. Complications ensue.

Cornel Wilde!!!!

This was one of his few forays into comedy. And it wasn't very good.

He was a noir icon and could project a real sense of danger and menace. He's fabulous in noirs like Night and the City (perhaps his best performance), Kiss of Death, Pickup on South Street, Don't Bother to Knock, and the aforementioned Road House (which is indeed excellent). I haven't seen Panic in the Streets but he's supposed to be great in that as well.

I also enjoyed him as the one sane person on staff at the posh lunatic asylum in Vincent Minnelli's fun melo, The Cobweb.

His personal life seemed pretty quiet and undramatic. But if you have any dirt, dish away!

His dastardly, psychopathic performance as Tommy Udo in "Kiss of Death" (referenced at R3) was quite shocking for its time and became one of the all-time Greatest Villians of Film Noir.

His daughter Anne married Sandy Koufax, the rumored to be gay baseball pitcher whose career was cut short by injury.

Shirley Jones wrote in her book that they had a romance while filming "Two Rode Together" and that she fell in love with Widmark while married to Jack Cassidy.

Widmark's widow is Susan Blanchard, who was once married to Henry Fonda.

He was good in “Judgment at Nuremberg “.

R6, you scamp. Gave me quite a turn. Widmark in real life, I was just glad to learn, hated violence and pushed for stricter gun control. I would have expected that, as he was very liberal politically. When he played a virulent bigot opposite Poitier in "No Way Out," he was constantly apologizing to Poitier about his character's racist dialogue. I think he was a teacher before getting into film. Terrific in "Road House."

"Tunnel of Love" is fabulously unfunny and smutty, about a couple trying to conceive--that title! Gene Kelly directed? Both Gig Young and Gia Scala committed suicide later.

Also good as Mr. Ratchett in Murder on the Orient Express (1974), IMO one of the best movies ever made.

I'll always love him for calling that piece of shit film Forrest Gump "a hymn to stupidity."

He also muttered these immortal lines in the DL classic The Swarm: "Will history blame me, or the bees?"

Panic In the Streets is a fantastic, overlooked movie. It's directed by Elia Kazan and Widmark is a hero doctor trying to stop the spread of bubonic plague in New Orleans. Zero Mostel and Jack Palance are the villains.

Not exactly a noir but a very gritty film.

And he's really hot opposite chickie Jean Peters in "Pickup on South Street," by crazy Sam Fuller.

Pickup On South Street and Roadhouse are a couple of favorites. Two opposite type performances. Jefty of Roadhouse is whackadoodle cuckoo over the top maniacal, but the whole movie is pretty great. (The Roadhouse is half bowling alley, half piano bar cocktail lounge!) Richard Widmark stayed married to one wife for 100 years and was not a fuckabout, from what I've read. He was not into the Hollywood bullshit so much.

He was really good in a ridiculously overlooked thriller "Coma".

I watched him in "The Long Ships."

The one where Poitier "rides the maiden"?

^^^"the mare of steel" truly creepy. Poitier is really cute in that movie.

Long article about him in "Film Comment." Google:Richard Widmark, hidden star.

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[quote] His dastardly, psychopathic performance as Tommy Udo in "Kiss of Death" (referenced at [R3]) was quite shocking for its time and became one of the all-time Greatest Villians of Film Noir.

So much so that Mafia boss Crazy Joe Gallo modeled himself after Tommy Udo. So effectively it was Richard Widmark who executed Albert Anastasia in the barbershop, but by proxy.

In his star-making role in "Kiss of Death", besides pushing the old lady in the wheelchair down the steps, he also squints his eyes at the same time as he smiles broadly which is creepy, giving a particularly disturbing and memorable vibe to his character.

He was a great actor. His best film may be an underrated film called "Cheyenne Autumn " by John Ford. He was also, like Bogie, Gene Kelly, Olivia De, and Loy, a big early civil rights supporter.

My fat ass over that fence?