Hidden Star: Richard Widmark

 

Richard Widmark and Jean Peters in Sam Fuller's Pickup on South Street (1953)

 

Excerpted by Nicholas Stix

Opening to Kent Jones’ May-June 2001 Film Comment article:

“Less drawn to showstopping outbursts than John Goodman but much more of a star, only slightly more flamboyant and extroverted than Red Garland, the most recorded and least obtrusive jazz musician ever, Richard Widmark may well have been the most dependable actor of his generation. Widmark, who made 74 movies between the 1947 Kiss of Death and the 1991 True Colors (not counting his guest appearance on I Love Lucy), is the kind of star whose mastery sneaks up on you. He was equally at home playing psychotic punks (Kiss of Death’s Tommy Udo, Road House’s Jefty), affable two-bit grifters (Skip in Pickup on South Street, Night and the City’s all-charged-up Harry Fabian), trained professionals trying to beat the clock (Dr. Clinton Reid in Panic in the Streets chasing down a trio of gangsters with the plague, or Dr. Stewart McIver in The Cobweb staving off a catastrophe over the choice of drapes at his psychiatric clinic), or, in the final stage of his career, locked-down professionals on the brink of delirium (The Bedford Incident’s maniacal cold warrior, Coma’s stoically evil chief of surgery). Widmark was the career-professional-as-star, a job description that no longer exists. He was a pure product of the studio era—Fox, to be specific, where he was under contract for seven years. In those days, as the 83-year-old Widmark told me recently over lunch, ‘everything was efficient, and it wasn’t a federal case like it is now. Jesus, you make a picture now and everybody’s career hangs on the weekend gross. There, we figured if we got one out of five, we were ahead of the game.’”