Actor Richard Widmark, March 24
Richard Widmark, who made an indelible screen debut in 1947 as a giggling sadistic killer and later brought a sense of urban cynicism and unpredictability to his roles as a leading man, died on Monday, March 24, 2008, at his home in Roxbury, Conn., after a long illness. He was 93. Equally believable playing heavies and heroes, Widmark portrayed a broad range of characters in a film career that spanned more than 70 theatrical and television movies from the late 1940s to the early '90s. He played a rabid racist in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's No Way Out (1950), an obsessed prosecutor in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), an authoritarian Navy destroyer captain during the Cold War in James B. Harris' The Bedford Incident and a tough New York City police detective in Don Siegel's Madigan (1968). The lean and rugged Widmark, who director Samuel Fuller once said "walks and talks like no one else," was known to be equally at home astride a horse -- in films such as William Wellman's Yellow Sky, John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn and Two Rode Together, John Wayne's The Alamo and the star-studded epic How the West Was Won. But it's as Tommy Udo, the sadistic New York City gangster in Henry Hathaway's 1947 film noir classic, Kiss of Death, that Widmark made what may be his most enduring on-screen impression. Kiss of Death starred Victor Mature as a small-time crook and family man who reluctantly informs on his ex-partners to gain parole from prison. But Widmark stole the show as the revengeful Udo, who gleefully ties up an older woman in her wheelchair with a lamp cord and then pushes her down a flight of stairs. The chilling performance prompted film critic James Agee to write of Widmark's character: "It is clear that murder is one of the kindest things he is capable of." Widmark received his only Oscar nomination -- as best supporting actor -- and he won a Golden Globe as "most promising [male] newcomer" for the role. Widmark is shown here in 1965's The Bedford Incident. (March 27, 2008)