Mini Biography

Richard Widmark established himself as an icon of American cinema with his debut in
the 1947 film noir Kiss of Death (1947) in which he won a Best Supporting
Actor Academy
Award nomination as the killer "Tommy Udo". Kiss of Death (1947) and other noir thrillers established Widmark as part of a new generation
of American movie actors who became stars in the post-World War II era. With
fellow post-War stars Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum,
Widmark brought a new kind of character to the screen in his character leads
and supporting parts: a hardboiled type who does not actively court the
sympathy of the audience (although Mitchum's hangdog demeanor marked him as the
most endearing of the three). Widmark was not afraid to play deeply troubled,
deeply conflicted, or just down right deeply corrupt characters. After his debut,
Widmark would work steadily until he retired at the age of 76 in 1990,
primarily as a character lead. His stardom would peak around the time he played
the U.S. prosecutor in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) as the 1950s segued into
the 1960s, but he would continue to act for another 30 years.

Richard Widmark was born on Boxing Day (the Day After Christmas) in 1914 in Sunrise, Minnesota.
He says that he loved the movies from his boyhood, claiming "I've been a
movie bug since I was 4. My grandmother used to take me". The teen-aged
Widmark continued to go to the movies, and was thrilled by Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931). "I thought Boris Karloff was great", Widmark said. Although
he loved the movies and excelled at public speaking while attending high
school, Widmark attended Lake
Forest College
with the idea of becoming a lawyer. However, he won the lead role in a college
production of, fittingly enough, the play "Consellor-at-Law", and the
acting bug bit deep. After taking his bachelor of arts degree in 1936, he
stayed on at Lake Forest
as the Assistant Director of Speech and Drama. However, he soon quit the job
and moved to New York
to become an actor, and by 1938, he was appearing on radio in "Aunt
Jenny's Real Life Stories". He made his Broadway debut in
1943 in the play "Kiss and Tell", and continued to appear on stage in
roles that were light years away from the tough cookies he would play in his
early movies. After World War II, he was signed by 20th Century Fox to a
seven-year contract. After seeing his screen-test for the role of "Tommy
Udo", 20th boss Darryl F. Zanuck insisted that the slight, blonde
Widmark - no one's idea of a heavy, particularly after his stage work - be cast
as the psychopath in Kiss of Death (1947), which had been prepared as a Victor Mature vehicle. Even though the role was small, Widmark stole the picture. 20th
Century Fox's publicity department recommended that exhibitors market the film
by concentrating on thumbing the tub for their new anti-hero.

"Sell Richard Widmark" advised the studio's publicity manual that an
alert 20th Century Fox sent to theater owners. The manual told local exhibitors
to engage a job-printer to have "Wanted" posters featuring Widmark's
face to be printed and pasted up.

He won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nod for the part, which lead to an early
bout with typecasting at the studio.

Widmark played psychotics in The Street with No Name (1948) and Road House (1948), and held his own against new Fox superstar Gregory Peck in the William
A. Wellman's Western, Yellow Sky (1948), playing the villain, of course. When
he finally pressured the studio to let him play other parts, his appearance as
a sailor in Down
to the Sea in Ships (1949) made headlines: "Life" magazine's
March 28, 1949 issue featured a three-page spread of the movie, headlined,
"Widmark the Movie Villain Goes Straight". He was popular, having
captured the public imagination, and before the decade was out, his hand and
foot prints were immortalized in concrete in the court outside Grauman's
Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

The great director Elia Kazan cast Widmark in his thriller Panic in the
Streets (1950) not as the heavy - that role went to Jack Palance - but as the physician who tracks down Palance, who has the plague, in tandem
with detective 'Paul Douglas'. Widmark was establishing himself as a real
presence in the genre that later would be hailed as "film noir".

Having proved he could handle other roles, Widmark didn't shy away from playing
heavies in quality pictures. The soon-to-be-blacklisted director Jules Dassin cast him in one of his greatest roles, as the penny-ante hustler Harry Fabian
in Night and
the City (1950). Set in London,
Widmark's Fabian manages to survive in the jungle of the English demimonde, but
is doomed. Widmark was masterful in conveying the desperation of the criminal
seeking to control his own fate but who is damned, and this performance also
became an icon of film noir. In that same year, he appeared in Oscar-winning
writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's "No Way Out" as a
bigot who instigates a race riot.

As the 1950s progressed, Widmark played in Westerns, military vehicles, and his
old stand-by genre, the thriller. He appeared with Marilyn Monroe (this time cast as the psycho) in "Don't Bother to Knock" (1953) and
made "Pick Up on South Street" that same year for director Samuel Fuller.
His seven-year contract at Fox was expiring, and Zanuck - who would not renew
the deal - cast him in the Western Broken Lance (1954) in a decidedly supporting role, billed beneath not only Spencer Tracy but even Robert
Wagner and Jean
Peters. The film was well-respected, and it won an Oscar nomination for
best screenplay for the front of Hollywood
10 blacklistee Albert
Maltz.

Widmark left Fox for the life of a freelance, forming his own company, Heath
Productions. He appeared in more Westerns, adventures and social dramas, and
pushed himself as an actor by taking the thankless role of The Dauphin in Otto Preminger's
adaptation of 'George Bernard Shaw''s "Saint Joan" (1957), a
notorious flop that didn't bring anyone any honors, neither Preminger, his
leading lady Jean
Seberg or Widmark. In 1960, he was appearing in another notorious
production, 'John Wayne''s ode to suicidal patriotism, " The Alamo"
(1960), with the personally liberal Widmark playing Jim Bowie in support of the
very-conservative Wayne's
Davy Crockett. Along with character actor Chill Wills,
Widmark arguably was the best thing in the movie.

In 1961, Widmark acquitted himself quite well as the prosecutor in
producer-director Stanley Kramer's "Judgment at Nuremberg"
(1961), appearing with the Oscar-nominated Spencer Tracy and the Oscar-winning
'Maximilian Schell', as well as with superstar Burt Lancaster and acting genius Montgomery Clift and the legendary 'Judy Garland' (the
latter two winning Oscar nods for their small roles). Despite being showcased
with all this thespian-firepower, Widmark's character proved to be the axis on
which the drama turned.

A little later, Widmark appeared in two Westerns directed by the great 'John
Ford', with co-star 'James Stewart' in "Two Rode Together" (1961) and
as the top star in Ford's apologia for Indian genocide, "Cheyenne Autumn'
(1964). On "Two Rode Together", Ford feuded with Jimmy Stewart over
his hat. Stewart insisted on wearing the same hat he had for a decade of highly
successful Westerns that had made him one of the top box office stars of the
1950s. Both he and Widmark were hard-of-hearing (as well as balding and in need
of help from the makeup department's wig-makers), so Ford would sit himself far
away from them while directing scenes and then give them directions in a barely
audible voice. When neither one of the stars could hear their director, Ford
theatrically announced to his crew, that after over 40 years in the business,
he was reduced to directing two deaf toupees. It was testimony to the stature
of both Stewart and Widmark as stars that this was as far as Ford's baiting
went, as the great director could be extraordinarily cruel.

Widmark continued to co-star in A-pictures through the 1960s. He capped off the
decade with one of his finest performances, as the amoral police detective in
'Don Siegel''s gritty cop melodrama "Madigan" (1968). Watching
"Madigan", one can see Widmark's characters as a progression in the
evolution of what would become the late 1960s nihilistic anti-hero, such as
those embodied by Clint Eastwood in Siegel's later "Dirty
Harry" (1971_.

Im the 1970s, he continued to make his mark in movies and, beginning in 1971,
in television. In movies, he appeared primarily in supporting roles, albeit in
highly billed fashion, in such films as Sidney Lumet's
"Murder on the Orient Express", Robert Aldrich's
"Twilight's Last Gleaming", and Stanley Kramer's "The Domino
Theory" (1977). He even came back as a heavy, playing the villainous
doctor in "Coma" (1978). In 1971, in search of better roles, he
turned to television, starring as the President of the U.S. In the TV
movies " Vanished." His performance in the role brought Widmark an
Emmy nomination. He resurrected the character of Madigan for NBC, in six
90-minute episodes that appeared as part of the rotation of "NBC Wednesday
Mystery Movie" for the Fall 1972 season. Widmark was married for 55 years
to playwright Jean Hazlewood, from 1942 until her death in 1997 (they had one
child, Anne, who was born in 1945). He lived quietly and avoided the press,
saying in 1971, "I think a performer should do his work and then shut
up.". "Los Angeles Times" critic Kevin Thomas thought that
Widmark should have won an Oscar nomination for his turn in "When the
Legends Die" (1972, playing a former rodeo star tutoring 'Frederic Forrest'.
It is surprising to think that "Kiss of Death" represented his sole
Oscar nomination, but with the rise of the respect for film noir around the
time his career began tapering off in 70s, he began to be reevaluated as an
actor. Unlike Bogart, who did not live to see his reputation flourish after his
death, well before he retired, Widmark became a cult figure.
IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon
C. Hopwood