Richard Widmark

Richard Widmark.

Richard Widmark was interviewed at the National Film Theatre on the 14 July 2002 by Adrian Wooton.

In this interview he discusses working with Marilyn, The Duke and uncomprimising directors.

Interview © BFI 2002

Kiss of Death

Adrian Wootton: You started in New York doing theatre and radio. I wonder what that taught you?

Richard Widmark: I went to a small college north of Chicago called Lake Forest, and I started doing plays in college. The professor in the drama department asked me to stay on as an instructor after I graduated. So I stayed two years. I graduated, I hate to say, in 1936.

Two years later I went to New York, and I had a friend who was doing a radio soap opera called, Aunt Jenny's Real Life Stories. My friend started me doing little bits on the show, and then I started auditioning for other shows on radio and fortunately I became quite busy. So I stayed in New York for almost ten years doing radio and plays before I went to California in 1947.

AW: In 1947 you made your first screen appearance in Kiss of Death, directed by Henry Hathaway. You both became very good friends, but he didn't want you in Kiss of Death'

RW: An agent sent me over to audition for this part, and I did a test. Henry wanted a guy called Harry the Hipster, a saloon comic. But unbeknownst to Henry, the production manager sent this test I made to Zanuck, and Zanuck said, "Take him."

Now, this was a small part, I only worked thirteen days on the whole thing, but Henry gave me a terrible time for the first few days ' he was on me right and left, it was terrible. Finally we had a big sequence in a fight arena, and about 400 extras, a lot of them my friends, were there. Henry insulted me really quite badly, and I said, "To hell with this!" I pushed Henry aside and said I was going home. Henry's assistant came after me and asked me to have lunch with Henry. I said, "No. I don't wanna be in movies."

But I went to lunch with Henry and the assistant and not a word was said. We went back to where we had left off, picked up, finished the rest of the day and from then on Henry couldn't have been sweeter. Strangely enough we made five pictures after that and we became very good friends; in fact, I was a pallbearer at his funeral. So Henry and I didn't start off well, but we ended up close buddies.

AW: As part of Kiss of Death, you signed a seven year contract with 20th Century Fox

RW: Yes. I didn't pay any attention to it. This was only thirteen days, it was nothing, and I hadn't told my wife. The picture came out, and it attracted some attention, and they called me and said, "You're due in California in September." We were vacationing on Connecticut shore at the time, and I had to tell my wife that we were moving to California. She said, "What?!" But we went. And I was there for the next seven years.

AW: What was it like, being a contract player for Zanuck. And what was he like to work for?

RW: Zanuck was a tough cookie, but a very good producer. He knew what he was doing. He revered writers, so he took very special care with everything he did. A lot of actors said they hated the studio system, but I loved it. It was like a college ' it was a great place to learn; an actor had a great continuity of work and I found that seven years to be a great place to learn my trade.

AW: How did you manage to avoid being stereotyped?

RW: Well, Zanuck was a very astute producer, he knew he had to protect his investment ' which was me at the time ' and he couldn't keep collecting on this hoodlum stuff picture after picture. So he put me in a Western with Greg Peck; then I did another picture with Henry Hathaway, Down to the Sea in Ships, where I was a good guy. He mixed it up. I think it extended my career, at least at Fox.

Co-Stars and Gun Shots

AW: Two of the pictures I'm interested in are Panic in the Streets, which you made with Elia Kazan'

RW: Kazan was an old friend, I first met him in 1938 when he was an actor with a theatre group. He picked up radio jobs for eating money, so I met him on a couple of radio shows. Later on I was in a play he directed, so we had known each other through the years and he's still a good friend.

AW: Apparently, he's one of the few directors in Hollywood that you admired.

RW: Kazan, in my opinion, is the best actor's director there ever was. He was kind of a Svengali, he did it instinctively and never dealt with two actors in the same way. He said very little, but he was so astute and so good that he could give you the right little moment as to what to do.

AW: I wanted to talk to you about Pick Up On South Street, directed by Sam Fuller. I read that he shot a gun on set. Is that right?

RW: Well, Sam was a good director for the stuff he did. He was a journalist, and he made his pictures very lean and to the point and they were good. They were all very effective. But Sam had a habit where instead of saying, "Action!", he had this pistol and would fire it instead. That was Action. It was very disturbing. So I said to Sam, "Sam, don't do that any more." And he didn't, he's a nice guy, I like Sam.

We made two pictures together, the other one was Hell and High Water. That was a winner.

[Laughter]

Zanuck had a girlfriend at the time named Bella Darvi. Her name was a combination of'I don't know. She was a nice Polish girl, but she'd never acted in her life. So Sam picked her up some place and he was going to make a big star out of her. The first day she appeared on set, her dressing room was huge ' much bigger than anyone else's. It was filled with flowers. It was her debut day and we finished Hell and High Water.

AW: But she didn't become a big star' Could you say a little about Don't Bother to Knock and working with Marilyn Monroe.

RW: Marilyn was terrible to work with. I was very fond of her, she was a nice girl, but she was a damaged girl. She was very difficult. In the first place, you couldn't get her on the set; but if you got her on the set, she didn't know the words. So Roy Ward Baker pieced it together with a line here and a line there.

She also had a coach with her, Natasha Lytess I think was her name. She was always in the background saying Yes or No and driving poor Roy crazy. But we staggered through it. There was something about Marilyn. She couldn't act her way out of a bag, but she became an icon because something happened between her and the lens, and no one knows what it is. If we could figure it out we'd all be millionaires. But she was that, and the minute she hit the screen everyone else was gone.

I remember I was talking to Olivier one night, and he was making Prince and the Showgirl. And he was saying that it was miracle to get her to do anything. But then he said, "I finish the day, and I go to look at the rushes, and she's batted me right off the screen." That was Marilyn.

Tyrants, Autocrats and Directors

AW: Could you say a little bit about St. Joan, which you made in England with Otto Preminger?

RW: Ha ha ha! St. Joan is something I should have done in a closet! I said to Preminger, "What the hell do you want me in it for?" He said, "I think it would be very interesting." It was interesting alright. It practically did-in my career. He had a great cast, except for poor Jean Seburg and me.

AW: You didn't work with him again'

RW: No. He was under contract at Fox, and all the actors tried to avoid Otto because he was a tough, tough taskmaster. So it was very difficult for Otto to find a cast.

Speaking of St. Joan, I have another winner. Did anyone ever see Swarm?

[Laughter]

Swarm. The killer bees. That was one that I was very anxious to do because of Michael Caine, who I admire greatly. So Michael and I did The Swarm. And that's the end of that.

AW: You made two films with John Ford. Ford is revered as a director, but also said to be an extremely difficult man to work with. What were your experiences?

RW: I loved Jack Ford. I got him in his later days, and he was a total tyrant and a total autocrat and an Irish drunk. But I had a great time, and I found him very, very funny. I met him when we were doing The Alamo with Duke [John] Wayne. Duke was directing, and Ford said, "Go ahead, Duke, you do it." But I think Ford really wanted Duke to say, "No, Ford, you do it."

Poor Duke was producing, directing and acting in this film, as well as trying to move 5,000 extras around, and it was a terribly difficult job. Two weeks after we started, Ford came down and started causing Wayne trouble; he was mischievous. One day, me and Duke were doing a little scene together ' and we got on great professionally ' and Duke said, "That OK for you?"

And I said, "Yup."

"Print it?"

"Yeah, it was good."

And Ford walked by and yelled, "Do it again!"

[Laughter]

And Duke, who was like a little kid with Ford, despite being this great movie icon, said, "Why, coach?"

"Because it was no damn good!"

A couple of years later I made this Western called Two Rode Together with Jimmy Stewart, who was one of my idols. We made that with Ford and had a great time. Ford was so funny that I couldn't wait to go to work in the morning.

You know what Ford used to do? He used to come to work in a big car with two Admiral's flags, one on each side of the car. He was a reserve Admiral in the navy because he made a lot of documentaries during the war. He'd arrive with the two flags flying, and his assistant would be there with his accordion, playing, 'Hail to the Chief'. Ford would get out, look around, someone would get him a coffee and Ford would stand there. Then he said, "They're all waiting for me to tell 'em what to do. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do!"

The Secret Ways

AW: Jimmy Stewart was one of your heroes'

RW: I enjoyed working with him ever so much. There are three guys I would work with at the drop of a hat: Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart and Hank Fonda. They were the three guys who I really wanted to act like. They were down to earth, there was no baloney, they just did the work and went home to dinner. They were very simple, and I admire that greatly.

I learnt so much from Tracy, who I started watching when I was a kid. I think I learned an awful lot. I wanted to learn to act like Tracy ' the utter simplicity and realism.

AW: You've made a number of films with Fonda, and you've been friends for many years.

RW: We made about five films, and we were friends, yes. In fact, my wife passed away five years ago and I married Hank's third wife, who has been our friend for thirty-odd years. So that was a continuation of our life, it's been very nice.

AW: You don't have much time for method acting. How do you approach your work?

RW: Every actor has his own way of working, and whether they know it or not, every actor uses some part of the Method. It's pretty elemental, really. I was never a part of the Actor's Studio, because two friends of mine started it in 1947 and by that time I'd gone to California. So I was never part of it.

In fact I never had any formal training apart from college, I sort of learnt as I went.

AW: Are you an actor that likes a lot of rehearsal?

RW: Every actor works differently. In my own case, I like to rehearse and do it in one or two takes. The more takes I do, the worse I get. That's not true of other actors, they like to rehearse on film, they like thirty or forty takes. When you get an actor like that, it becomes difficult for me because I'm ready to quit after number two. So you have to compromise all the way.

The only thing that counts is the result, and however the actor gets it, it's the result that counts.

AW: In the 1960s you did produce some films. Did you partly direct The Secret Ways?

RW: My friend Euan Lloyd produced Secret Ways. We had troubles. We were in Vienna for about six months, and it wound up that I directed for the last couple of weeks because we had director troubles. But it was a good experience.

AW: You never wanted to do more directing?

RW: No. I'm temperamentally unfit to be a director. I don't like it. I'm impatient and intolerant.

AW: Another director you worked with for a long time was Edward Dmytryk. You did Alvarez Kelly with him.

RW: He was a very good director ' he'd been a film editor and knew his way around. I enjoyed working with Eddie very, very much.

AW: One big blockbuster you made was The Long Ships, where you acted with Sidney Poitier.

RW: Yeah, Sid consented to do it after I asked him. We made it in Yugoslavia. It was a long shoot, and Sidney and I used to break it up by going to Paris every now and again. We had a good time. I had a good time making it, but I don't think the audience had a good time watching it.

Running Around London

AW: You made a lot of films in England. One was The Bedford Incident, which you made with James Harris, a long-time associate of Kubrick.

RW: Jimmy Harris was a friend of mine, and was Stanley Kubrick's producer. He wanted to go out on his own, so he bought this novel and he asked me to do it with him. We co-produced it and he directed it. It was a good experience.

I was here for six or eight months, I've come for long periods at different time. I love England, and I especially love the English countryside. I remember we had a little cottage in Sussex and I loved those cottages.

AW: Night and the City, which you acted in in 1950, was shot round here, before the NFT was built, at the time of the Festival of Britain. Can you tell us about working with Jules Dassin on that classic British crime movie?

RW: I had a great time doing Night and the City. We had a great ride over on the ship, had a great flat in Long Square and we had the cottage in Sussex. And then came the movie.

[Laughter]

It was a great experience. London in 1949 was still all bombed-out. The whole town was a real shambles, so everything was in the process of being reconstructed. I spent thirty nights running around London. I mean running. I lost about twenty pounds. But it was worth it, I thought it was a good movie.

Googie Withers, who was in the film, called me the other day. I haven't spoken to her since 1949! She phoned me to apologise for not being able to make it here tonight. Dassin was a great director, he made the Naked City and caught the same idea in New York that he did in London.

AW: I want to talk about Madigan. What drew you to that film?

RW: I liked the script a lot. It was one of those tight, lean scripts that Don Siegel is adept at. I wanted to do it with Don. It was a very good cast, and I really enjoyed working with Don. We made some of it in New York, but it was 1967 and New York was kinda in a turmoil. We were on location and they started tipping over our cars and what-not, so we got out of town and finished it in California.

AW: You came back to the character in 1972 for the TV series.

RW: They asked me to do a series of six, six hour-and-a-half movies. I went for it, but only on the condition that I could make three in Europe so that I could come to London. So we made one in London with my friend George Cole, who played a policeman. Expertly.

From the Floor

AW: Let's open it up to the audience.

Q: Cheyenne Autumn was an unusual film, because it was from the Indian perspective, how was it received in the States?

RW: It was received not too successfully. It was a little long, and it wasn't quite right. But I still think it was a very good movie. It was kinda Ford's apology for the way he had treated Indians in his past pictures. It meant a lot to him to make that picture. I read a book called The Last Frontier, which was the same story, and I couldn't buy it from them because they'd used the title on another picture. So I had the material researched at Yale university, and took all these papers over to Ford and said, "How about we make this picture?" And he said,

"Yeah, I know that story. Can't do it."

"Why not?"

"Because Indians can't act."

So I was in Vienna doing Long Ships and this script came over and it was the same story. Another producer had gone to Ford with the same story. He asked me to do it, which I think was because I'd done all this research, but normally he would have asked Duke. But I really wanted to do it.

Q: Did you feel comfortable in Westerns early on, after making Yellow Sky?

RW: I loved Westerns because I watched them in the old silent days. I had a Scottish grandmother who started taking me to movies at the age of three. I felt pretty comfortable with Westerns, apart from the fact I couldn't ride. I'd taken three weeks of riding lessons before Yellow Sky. I had one shot where I had to mount a horse at the end of a scene, and I put my foot in the stirrup and slipped. The director said, "Cut! You don't get to do it again." So if you watch the movie, you'll see one shot where I just get my foot up and then suddenly I'm on the horse.

Q: Can you talk about working with Joseph Mankiewicz on No Way Out, and the sort of tensions on set between him and Linda Darnell?

RW: Well, Mankiewicz was a brilliant director. I don't know about the tensions between Joe and Linda, every lunchtime Joe and Linda would disappear. I think there was hanky panky.

That's when I met Sidney Poitier, and I was playing this horrible part. I didn't want to play it because the character was an awful racist and I didn't want to lay this guy. But I'm glad I did it because I met Sidney.

In the script I had to say these terrible things to Sidney, and after each take I'd run up to him and apologise!

Q: Looking at The Bedford Incident and Twilight's Last Gleaming, the characters seem to be variations on early themes of a man with authority under pressure whose qualities are at odds with the modern world. Do you work with those continuities in mind?

RW: Yeah, those roles are the only ones I could get.

[Laughter]

Q: In The Bedford Incident you really attack the dialogue, rather than throwing it away. How did you prepare for that great scene with Sidney Poitier?

RW: Thank you very much. We rehearsed the picture for two weeks, so we were well prepared. At the time I had in mind Barry Goldwater who was running for President in 1964.

Q: But that particular scene'

RW: I'm having a senior moment. I don't remember'

[Laughter]

Q: In Broken Lance, your name was below the title for the first time after always being above the title. Not only that, but it was after Robert Wagner and Jean Peters. How does the system work?

RW: Ha ha! That was my last picture at Fox, and I wouldn't re-sign with Zanuck, so he said, "OK, I'll screw him!"

Q: First I want to say thanks so much for being here. You were at 20th Century Fox when Cinemascope came in. I wondered if that caused you any problems working as a contract player, having to accommodate the new wide lens. Also, how did you cope with the wide camera of Cinerama?

RW: It was no problem for the actor, we just did what we always did. It was a problem for the directors, not the actors.

Q: Is there anything about Hollywood today that you feel positive about?

RW: Not particularly. Most movies are made today for teenage boys. Once in a while a good one comes along. One of my favourite movies comes from here, it's a television series called As Time Goes By. I love it!

Q: What was it like staring with Gary Cooper in Garden of Evil?

RW: He was a good friend and a wonderful man, I loved it. He was a great nature lover. On location he would use to take long walks. He was like an American Indian, he knew every leaf that was turned over. It was an education to go for a walk with him.

Q: You've mentioned admiring Stewart, Fonda and Tracy. Which actresses do you admire?

RW: Ann Baxter was a very good actress, Donna Reid was a great actress. These are actresses I've worked with. In fact, you couldn't name an actress I wasn't crazy about.

Q: How difficult is it to play a real Mr Nasty?

RW: It came naturally! There's a thing in Kiss of Death, where the guy pushes her all the way down the stairs in a wheelchair. I'd been given this script which I was reading in-between a radio show rehearsal. I read this bit out in the script and everyone laughed hysterically saying, "That's ridiculous!" But I did it'

AW: Where did the laugh come from?

RW: Me and my brother had kind of goofy laughs to begin with, and under the stress and nervousness of my first picture, it came easy. If anything, I over did it.

Q: To the Devil a Daughter was, I think, a great film. What memories do you have?

RW: Really? Oh my God, that was a disaster!

AW: He wants you to give your memories of the film.

RW: No!

[Laughter]

RW: They put a young Australian director on that who's not a genius. I think he's long gone.

Q: Can you talk a bit about Murder on the Orient Express, and working with Sidney Lumet?

RW: Sidney is a wonderful director. I first met him when he was a kid actor at the age of twelve. He used to do radio shows, and they had to put him on a box so he could reach the microphone. But he developed into a wonderful director with Twelve Angry Men, his first big hit. I enjoyed working on the film very much, because it was one of those all-star casts.

Q: Were you affected at all by McCarthyism?

RW: I wasn't, because I wasn't a joiner. But that period is a low-point in American history, it never should have happened in a free society. People listened to a crazy demagogue and it was a terrible time. Many of my friends were blacklisted. America should be ashamed of it forever.

Q: When you made The Alamo, you played the part of Jim Bowie. Did you research his life?

RW: I stuck with the script. I'm against too much research because it becomes binding and academic, you're not able to move. In my opinion, once you've learnt the fundamentals of voice and movement, so much of acting is instinctive and imaginative. That's what I did with Jim Bowie, I imagined Jim Bowie.

Q: Warlock was an interesting film, how did you end up working with Quinn and Fonda?

RW: I enjoyed making the film. A photographer said, " You know the trouble with your Westerns? The hats are too small."

AW: You lived near Robert Mitchum'

RW: We were neighbours for years, but we never socialised. Except for Easter. Bob would come over to do the Easter egg roll with the kids. He would be half-smashed and watch the kids roll the eggs.

We were friends, but we didn't socialise because he liked the booze and I was big on chocolate malts.

AW: What was it like working with him?

RW: It was great. He was a great actor.

Q: What was your reaction to the arrival of Film Noir from France?

RW: Edward Dmytryk always said. What is this Film Noir? We've got to make a film in four weeks and we've only got this much money to make it? We've got to condense the sets? We didn't know we were making Film Noir, we were making a picture for a price!

Q: You referred to Twelve Angry Men. Apparently there was a rumour that there would be a remake with a classic cast that would include yourself. Were you approached?

RW: Nobody approached me!

Q: What was it like working with Robert Taylor on The Law and Jack Wade?

RW: He was a very good man, and a friend of mine. I admire Bob and I enjoyed working with him in that picture.

Q: What are your memories of working with John Wayne in The Alamo?

RW: Wayne and I got along great professionally, but we weren't friends socially. He was like Mitchum in the sense that he liked the booze. The first time I met Wayne was when I went out to California for the first time. I had just made the film Kiss of Death, and Wayne was standing in the corner with a drink in his hand and he said, "Well, here comes that laughing son of a bitch!"

So we never spent much time together socially' Wayne was a good director and did a good job on Alamo. He just is Westerns.

Wayne had a publicity guy who I didn't like. He used to plant terrible stories about me and Wayne that just weren't true.

Laurence Harvey was a good actor, and he and Wayne got on well, because they were both drinkers. I liked him.

Q: What was it like making Nuremburg? It had a very interesting cast.

RW: I like Nuremburg because I majored in political science in college, and I had a professor who was very interested in the German problem. When Hitler got in, I was at school in 1933. My professor got all steamed up, and got me steamed up, about the Nazis. In 1937, when I was teaching, a friend of mine and I went on a bicycle trip to Germany. Through some influence we got a letter that allowed us to film a little documentary about German youth camps.

For two weeks we filmed Hitler Youth camps. At the time it seemed slightly dull, but now it's very interesting. So I've been interested in that period all my life. The film had a great cast. I'm proud of that movie, because I think it has some meaning. It's not To the Devil a Daughter.

Q: I was told that you became quite a fast draw.

RW: Not as good as Jerry Lewis. I practiced a lot.

Q: What's your favourite movie?

RW: I've got lots. Lost Horizon. To Be or Not To Be is one of my favourite comedies, along with Some Like It Hot. I like anything that Hitchcock did. I loved his movies. I was a movie nut. When I was working in radio, I used to spend half my time over at the Modern Museum looking at old movies. I think I saw everything they had.

Q: Another great actor for me is Robert Ryan. Do you think playing the nasty characters allowed you to develop a greater range?

RW: I don't know. Bob was a wonderful actor ' he could play anything. Hoods are good parts because they're always flashy and attract attention. If you've got any ability then you can use that as a stepping stone.

Q: Is there any role that you turned down that you now regret.

RW: Nothing. I'm very lucky to wind up here. I've had a very lucky, happy life and I don't regret turning anything down. I wish I'd turned down To the Devil a Daughter'

Q: Does it make any difference acting in a colour or black and white film?

RW: Absolutely none.

Q: Could you tell us something about working with Ida Lupino?

RW: She was a great lady and became a good director. I liked her very much.

Q: Can you remember much about working on Roadhouse with her?

RW: Oh, we just learnt the lines and did it. It's like Tracy used to say, "Learn the lines and don't bump into the furniture."

Q: What current actor do you admire?

RW: I like Daniel Day Lewis, Robert De Niro. Wonderful actors.

AW: Richard Widmark, thank you very much.