The first film starring Widmark I ever saw was Last Wagon. It must have been back in the 1980s, so I would have been a teenager. I'd always had a soft spot for antiheroes (Robin Hood (Michael Praed and Jason Connery), Knight Rider, Streethawk and Airwolf -of the three, Jan-Michael Vincent in Airwolf was my firm favourite- and of course Zorro in various incarnations) and I was transfixed by Comanche Todd, this brave suffering outcast who turned out to be the hero after all. The problem was, I'd just happened to catch Last Wagon by sheer luck; I hadn't planned to watch it, we didn't have a TV paper and there was no internet then. Though I longed to see it again, I had nothing go on; not the name of the actor or the title of the film - nothing but the name of the character. And it wasn't until this year that I finally got round to typing 'Comanche Todd' into Google, and that's when everything changed.
For the first time I discovered who this fantastic actor actually was; not only that, but I found that he'd had an extremely prolific career. I took it easy at first, ordering the DVD of The Last Wagon, waiting impatiently for it to arrive (all of a couple of days later) and then watching it more or less back to back about twenty times in succession. And it was as good as I remembered; perhaps better in some ways. But what if the other stuff wasn't as good? What if I didn't like it?
Well you can guess the rest. I watched what I could on You Tube or Westerns on the Web (does exactly what it says on the tin), often ordering the films on DVD if I liked them - which I did. Most can't be seen online first so I had to go on trust, getting DVDs in from all over the place; UK, Germany, France, Spain, even Australia. I don't like all his output; I'm not mad keen on war films, for example, but I always like him. And thanks to Widmark I've been introduced to film noir, and to a whole bunch of other great actors and actresses that I might never have heard of or appreciated otherwise. And the more films I watched with Widmark in, the more I marvelled that he managed to do something different with each character. Most actors - especially these days - seem to be the same person with a different hat. Widmark was the character. Yes of course there were many similarities, particularly that edge of anger, that contained tension (sometimes not so contained), that hint or threat of violence that sometimes erupted in the most dramatic way. One critic described the young Widmark as 'extraordinarily beautiful' - I don't think even I would go that far - but he had the most dramatic face, skull-like with deep set eyes and a scary ability to maintain absolute stillness even whilst speaking, even whilst angry - even whilst murderous. Because you just know that when he does erupt into action it's going to be fast and it's very likely to be lethal.
The older Widmark got, the more craggy he became, his skin damaged perhaps by a combination of too much sun and far too much smoking. It's always a shock to see just how much people smoked in those old films. In Roadhouse, Widmark as Jefty tells the singer Lily that she smokes far too much - talk about the pot calling the kettle black. In every film I've seen except Backlash and Last Wagon he's lighting up in nearly every scene he's in. Still, thanks to his fantastic bone structure and the fact that he never seemed to put on any significant weight, Widmark always looked younger than he was and managed to carry off the leading roles into his fifties. But in Death of a Gunfighter (1969) he plays an old man; he looks like an old man and though no doubt a lot of it is down to make-up and some deeply unforgiving close-ups, you realise that his high-octane leading roles are behind him. I still reckon that his best stuff was early on in what I've heard called 'the long fifties' - from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.
As a person, Widmark seems to have been the direct opposite of most of the parts he played; no doubt a psychologist would have fun with that. He had a long and happy marriage to one woman to whom he was faithful; he was teetotal, liberal and anti-gun. He was apparently also quite shy. How you square all that with some of the gun-toting, fist-throwing psychos he featured - Udo, Jefty, Biddle and Hollister to name but a few - is a tough one; that's what makes him amazing. Not just that he played baddies and did it so well but that he did them all differently. Good guys weren't really his strong point, I feel. Not enough to go on, perhaps?
For the first time I discovered who this fantastic actor actually was; not only that, but I found that he'd had an extremely prolific career. I took it easy at first, ordering the DVD of The Last Wagon, waiting impatiently for it to arrive (all of a couple of days later) and then watching it more or less back to back about twenty times in succession. And it was as good as I remembered; perhaps better in some ways. But what if the other stuff wasn't as good? What if I didn't like it?
Well you can guess the rest. I watched what I could on You Tube or Westerns on the Web (does exactly what it says on the tin), often ordering the films on DVD if I liked them - which I did. Most can't be seen online first so I had to go on trust, getting DVDs in from all over the place; UK, Germany, France, Spain, even Australia. I don't like all his output; I'm not mad keen on war films, for example, but I always like him. And thanks to Widmark I've been introduced to film noir, and to a whole bunch of other great actors and actresses that I might never have heard of or appreciated otherwise. And the more films I watched with Widmark in, the more I marvelled that he managed to do something different with each character. Most actors - especially these days - seem to be the same person with a different hat. Widmark was the character. Yes of course there were many similarities, particularly that edge of anger, that contained tension (sometimes not so contained), that hint or threat of violence that sometimes erupted in the most dramatic way. One critic described the young Widmark as 'extraordinarily beautiful' - I don't think even I would go that far - but he had the most dramatic face, skull-like with deep set eyes and a scary ability to maintain absolute stillness even whilst speaking, even whilst angry - even whilst murderous. Because you just know that when he does erupt into action it's going to be fast and it's very likely to be lethal.
The older Widmark got, the more craggy he became, his skin damaged perhaps by a combination of too much sun and far too much smoking. It's always a shock to see just how much people smoked in those old films. In Roadhouse, Widmark as Jefty tells the singer Lily that she smokes far too much - talk about the pot calling the kettle black. In every film I've seen except Backlash and Last Wagon he's lighting up in nearly every scene he's in. Still, thanks to his fantastic bone structure and the fact that he never seemed to put on any significant weight, Widmark always looked younger than he was and managed to carry off the leading roles into his fifties. But in Death of a Gunfighter (1969) he plays an old man; he looks like an old man and though no doubt a lot of it is down to make-up and some deeply unforgiving close-ups, you realise that his high-octane leading roles are behind him. I still reckon that his best stuff was early on in what I've heard called 'the long fifties' - from the late 1940s to the early 1960s.
As a person, Widmark seems to have been the direct opposite of most of the parts he played; no doubt a psychologist would have fun with that. He had a long and happy marriage to one woman to whom he was faithful; he was teetotal, liberal and anti-gun. He was apparently also quite shy. How you square all that with some of the gun-toting, fist-throwing psychos he featured - Udo, Jefty, Biddle and Hollister to name but a few - is a tough one; that's what makes him amazing. Not just that he played baddies and did it so well but that he did them all differently. Good guys weren't really his strong point, I feel. Not enough to go on, perhaps?
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