Richard Widmark (1914-2008) Actor Richard Widmark, whose best work saw him tackle both heroic and villanous parts with stunning ease, died on March 24 at his Roxbury, Connecticut home after suffering a long illness. He was 93.

He was born on December 26, 1914 in Subrise, Minnesota but raised in Princeton, Illinois. After getting his first taste of acting with the drama club in high school, he entered Lake Forest College in Illinois. Despite being a pre-law major, his interest in theater was stronger, and he switched majors. After graduating in 1936, he taught in the drama department for a few years before making the move to New York City.

With his smooth timbre, it wasn't long before Widmark found work in radio, and after the arrival of the war (a perforated eardrum kept him out of active service), Widmark entertained the troops when he performed under the American Theatre Wing. From there, he made his Broadway debut in 1943, playing a young military officer in the coy wartime comedy Kiss and Tell.

When Widmark made his film debut in Kiss of Death (1947), few critics, let alone audience members, could forsee his characterization as Tommy Udo as one of the great villainous sociopaths of American cinema. In that film, he plays a small-time crook who is eager to get revenge on the informer (Victor Mature) who sent him to prison. Gleefully vicious, and with a helium pitch laugh that disturbs from the get go, Widmark thrilled audiences with his manic intensity. Moments such as Udo tying up an old woman in a wheelchair and throwing her down a staircase is one of the most unforgettable images in noir cinema. Widmark would earn his only Oscar® nomination and captured a Golden Globe as most promising male newcomer for that performance.

After Kiss of Death, Widmark, with his small but intense eyes and tight lipped smile, became a vibrant, if somewhat unconventional lead for a series of classic noir and gritty dramas with noirish elements: a mobster ready to take anybodyon in The Street with No Name (1948); an obsessed nightclub owner tormenting a torch singer (Ida Lupino) in Road House (1948); the valiant doctor who has only 48 hours to prevent the outbreak of plague in New Orleans in Elia Kazan's masterful Panic in the Streets (1950); a violent racist in Joseph Mankiewicz's searing prison drama No Way Out (1950); a low level bookie whose dream of big-time glory fades away with tragic results in Jules Dassin's marevelous slice of "Brit Noir" Night and the City (1950); a man who comes to realize that the young lady he's pursuing (Marilyn Monroe) is mentally unstable in Don't Bother to Knock (1952); and one of his most memorable roles - pickpocket Skip McCoy who stumbles across government secrets in Samuel Fuller's tough thriller Pickup on South Street (1953).

For all his deserved recognition in the noir genre, Widmark was equally at home in other genres, such as westerns: the selfish son of a land baron (Spencer Tracy) in Broken Lance (1954); a reformed gunslinger protecting a town in Warlock (1959); and playing Jim Bowie for director/star John Wayne in The Alamo(1960). Even more surprising was his deft handling of romantic comedy in such charmers as My Pal Gus (1952) opposite Joanna Dru, and Tunnel of Love (1958) with Doris Day.

Good roles were harder to find by the '60s, but he still sunk his teeth into some fine dramas as the prosecuting attorney in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961); a coldy efficient submarine commander in the taut Cold war suspenser The Bedford Incident (1965); a no-nonsense detective in Don Seigel's gritty police actioner Madigan (1968); and as that awful American businessman Mr. Ratchett, who gets his violent comeuppance in Murder on the Orient Express (1974).

By the late '70s, Widmark's screen appearances were more likely to be smaller character parts in mediocre or uneven movies such as Rollercoaster (1977), Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977), The Swarm (1978) and Coma (1978). Fortunately for him, he found an outlet in television and he fared better than most actors of his generation who turned to the small screen for work. He was solid in the short-lived series of his role reprisal in Madigan (1972-73) and was excellent in the lead of the popular mini-series Benjamin Franklin (1974). Finally, he closed his career with two excellent turns in a pair of first rate telefilms: A Gathering of Old Men (1987), as an aging sheriff trying to quell the racial tension in a small southern town after a white farmer is shot; and as Enid Blakeslee the elderly storeowner in Cold Sassy, Georgia who discovers life anew when he falls in love with a younger woman (Faye Dunaway) in Cold Sassy Tree (1989). Widmark's first wife of 55 years, the actress Jean Hazlewood, died in 1997. He married Susan Blanchard in 1999 and she and a daughter from his first marriage, Anne, survives him.

by Michael T. Toole