Ben Gazzara

Part of his seduction, I suspect, was his grand passion for most everything and everyone crossing his path.  It was in his bones, his heritage, it was a deep commitment from within but it didn't stay cerebral.  He loved words.  He had a great need to express himself and it's no surprise that he became an actor.  When I watched him on the screen, I was transfixed by that passionate nature... his squinty eyes, his pursed lips, the frightening quiet and his explosive outbursts.  He always commanded my attention.

He was in it for the work.  He searched for truth in his art.   He wanted to get into the soul of his characters.  He needed to push his boundaries, to see what he was made of.  He had little use, respect or tolerance for the trappings of acting and as such, and with a display of some temperament, I suspect Ben Gazzara was never up for the Mr. Popularity award.

He occasionally reminded me of a Paul Newman or Steve McQueen although he never ascended to their heights.  I have wondered if he stayed true to his earliest acting ambitions.  What I do suspect is that he sold out to the almighty dollar, chiefly but not entirely by doing a lot of television.  Yes, some of it was good, even popular, but where were those big films?  

Biagio Anthony Gazzarra was born in 1930 in Manhattan's tough Lower East Side to a Sicilian immigrant laborer and his wife.  His father never particularly liked America, resisted learning English and always thought he'd return to Sicily.  Like many a poor boy in those days, the youngster got into mischievous trouble and it might have gotten worse had he not joined the Boys Club which was located on his own block.
One day he went to see his buddy in a play at the Boys Club and with no disrespect to the friend, he thought I can do that.  Maybe even better.  It wasn't until he saw Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie that he thought he would become an actor although he first pursued studies in engineering.

He studied with influential dramatic coach Erwin Piscator at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School and then join the famed Actors Studio.  He fit in quite well at a school that produced such actors as Clift, Brando, Dean and Newman.

In 1951 Gazzara married radio actress Louise Erickson.  He would say that he was thrilled she was a blonde because that meant class.  Oh really?   She was the one who encouraged him to join the Actors Studio.  Excessive arguing and in-law problems eventually brought about the end of the marriage after six years.

He began his Broadway career in End as a Man in 1954 and dazzled apparently all who saw his stunning performance as a troubled military cadet.  A year later he was starring on Broadway as Brick in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  He said he was offered the lead in the 1958 movie but declined it.  He next electrified theatergoers in A Hatful of Rain but when it came time for the movie, Don Murray assumed his role.

When End as a Man was brought to the screen, its cast, for the most part, came along.  The title was changed to The Strange One (1957) and Gazzara's mesmerizing performance caught the attention of moviegoers.  Dunno whether it's a good or bad thing but I've seen this character in nearly all of Gazzara's performances.

A year after the divorce and movie debut, Gazzara was back on Broadway in one of his least successful plays, The Night Circus, but he did fall madly in lust with his leading lady, Janice Rule.  The couple married in 1961 with an ugly episode hanging over their pretty little heads.  She had been married during their entire affair and when she had Gazzara's baby in 1960 she allowed her husband to think the child was his... that is, until she divorced him.   

With second wife Janice Rule

Jimmy Stewart had long been one of Gazzara's idols and he could hardly believe he would be starring with him in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959).  As attorney and defendant, Stewart and Gazzara have many scenes together and I found their basically worlds-apart approach to acting great fun to watch.   (The men had met a year earlier when Rule played Stewart's fiancée in Bell, Book and Candle.)  The courtroom drama, filmed in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, concerned a feisty small-town attorney who is defending a soldier (Gazzara) accused of brutally killing the man who raped the soldier's wife.  (Oooh I could have made good use of adjectives in that sentence.)  It is a fascinating tale with outstanding acting all around.  Here was Gazzara's second film and probably the best one he ever made.

Gazzara with Preminger and Stewart

Gazzara went to Italy to play the title role in The Passionate Thief (1960), a comedy about a couple of guys out to fleece New Year's Eve revelers.  It received decent reviews but what Gazzara remembered most was costar Anna Magnani trying to seduce him.  She had a difficult time taking no for an answer.  He claimed it would have been like being with one of his aunts.  Ew.

The Young Doctors (1961) is a run-of-the-mill medical drama with a top doctor (Gazzara) at odds with a department head (Fredric March). His romantic interest in the film is Ina Balin.  He had great affection for her and commented he would have pursued a romance had he not been with Rule. 

In 1963 he ventured into his first television series, Arrest and Trial.  I believe it was the first nighttime 90-minute series.  Divided into two 45-minute segments, Gazzara was a cop and Chuck Connors an attorney with both being involved in the same case.  I tuned in every week and my only disappointment was that it lasted for only one season.

How interesting he would make A Rage to Live (1965) about the other man (Gazzara) in Suzanne Pleshette's marriage.  I liked it because I thought they made a sexy pair but the film offered nothing new and it went nowhere.

How would you live your life if a doctor told you you had two years to live?  That's precisely what the TV drama Run for Your Life (1965-68) was all about.  It was a big hit for Gazzara and when asked why he was doing it, he said because the movies don't pay me this kind of dough.  Ultimately, however, he simply walked away from the show.

He got an offer to join some of his contemporaries-- George Segal, Robert Vaughn and Brad Dillman-- for a good WWII actioner, The Bridge at Remagen (1969).  It concerns allied soldiers looking for a way to cross the Rhine to destroy a German fortress.  I loved that Gazzara always seemed so competitive with other male actors.  Competition was another thing about which he felt passion.

A true lovefest... Falk, Gazzara, Cassavetes

When he was making the TV series on the Columbia back lot he met John Cassavetes who made a proposal.  Cassavetes was looking to spread his wings as an actor-director and wanted to make a largely improvisational film about three friends dealing with the sudden loss of a good friend.  He wanted Gazzara and Peter Falk to join him.  

Husbands (1970) becomes one of Cassavetes's better experiments and is as good an exploration into the male psyche as one is likely to see.  The acting of this trio, how they work off one another, how they apparently surprise one another with their genius, is some exciting stuff.  They came to love one another dearly and would become lifelong buddies... a rare Hollywood friendship.

In 1974 I had my own passion about the premier of a new TV format called a miniseries and the debut offering was going to be QBVII.  Damn, I was anxious.  Gazzara was starring with Anthony Hopkins, Leslie Caron and Lee Remick (his wife in Anatomy of a Murder) in not a whodunit but did-he-do-it and if so why.  The six-and-a-half hour story concerns a respected physician's lawsuit against a novelist for publishing statements implicating the doctor in Nazi war crimes.

You know they didn't make 'em like they did at Universal.  Capone (1975) is one of those cheapo exploitation things but damn if it isn't just all kinds of gangster fun.  Gazzara sucking on a cigar in a pin-striped suit is the stuff of Chicago dreams.

Cassavetes knew that on the heels of Capone, no less, he was gonna be perfect for the lead in his newest indie, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976).  Gazzara would star and Cassevetes would write and direct. It's about a guy at odds with being a casino owner.  He concentrates on an artistic side of the business while everyone else is there for the naked showgirls.  There is also the story of his gambling addiction and trouble with the mob.  Gazzara, who nails the role, said I knew I was playing John (Cassavetes).

Around this time Gazzara appeared on the stage with Colleen Dewhurst in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  to rock 'em-sock 'em reviews.  I'd have cleaned out my savings to see it.

Voyage of the Damned (1977), based on a true story, concerned a 1939 shipload of German Jewish refugees looking for a country that would accept them.  It has a large and impressive cast.  Gazzara plays an American lawyer pleading their case.  Good film.

From Opening Night... Gazzara, Rowlands & Cassavetes

I was beside myself with glee watching Opening Night (1977), another indie opus from Cassavetes.  The lead is Gena Rowlands, one of the most brilliant actresses I've ever encountered.  She blows me away as an actress not coping with aging who shows up drunk on the opening night of her play.  Gazzara is the play's director and Cassavetes is the lead actor.  Watching the three of them acting together was a great joy.

In 1979 he first worked with director Peter Bogdanovich in Saint Jack, a superb character study about a hustler running a brothel in Singapore who hopes to make a fortune so he will be able to return to America and live a life of luxury.  The actor would say this film and two with Cassavetes, Husbands and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, were his favorites of his 74 movies. 

Gazzara signed on to do Bloodline (1979) opposite such stars as Omar Sharif, Romy Schneider, James Mason, Irene Papas and Audrey Hepburn.  It was a thriller about the corporate world and apparently all of them knew it wasn't going to be very good.  Gazzara admitted he took it for the money and assumed the others did, too.

With Audrey

What he did not expect is that he and Hepburn would fall in love.  He was separated (again) from Rule and she was still in an unhappy marriage that would be ending in a couple of years.  Their affair could be chalked up to a location romance of sorts (and would include a second film together, They All Laughed  in 1981) but both claimed they were madly in love.  Ultimately, however, they determined their lives and careers were going in different directions and they ended their romance while maintaining a friendship.

Gazzara and Rule were legally married until 1982.  Most of their union was mired in infidelities on both sides and much arguing, including a couple of very public spats.  Both were hot-tempered and self-righteous.  About the only place they found any common ground was in their well-loved daughter, Liz.

A year or so after the Hepburn affair ended and a month after his divorce from Rule became final, Gazzara married, a much younger non-pro, Elke Stuckman, and it would become his longest marriage.    

In the early eighties Gazzara moved to a big movie star villa in Italy where he remained for most of the decade.  He appeared in Italian movies that no one ever heard of in the states.  In 1981 he appeared as Jacqueline Bisset's husband in the Korean War drama Inchon simply because he wanted to work with Laurence Olivier.  It was a bust.  

One of my favorite Gazzara roles comes in the TV AIDS drama, An Early Frost (1985).  Aidan Quinn hasn't come out to his parents (Gazzara and Rowlands) and must do so at the same time as revealing he has AIDS.  Rowlands is the understanding mother and Gazzara a most frosty father.  It is an exquisite piece of filmmaking made all the more poignant by being released about a month after Rock Hudson's death.

In 1989 Gazzara appeared opposite Patrick Swayze and Sam Elliott in
Road House as a sociopathic super villain.  It is arguably the movie for which he is the most famous.  To me it seemed like he was too good of an actor to waste his time in this kind of blue-collar, macho flick but I cannot deny I found him engrossing in so villainous a role.  He could suck the air out of the room.

By the 90s he had moved back to the states, a little older and now in more character roles, he actually had a career renaissance.  Most of his films in this decade, as I see it, were pretty bad but there were a few worth noting.  The Spanish Prisoner (1997), written and directed by David Mamet, is about corporate espionage and although I liked it, it was not perfect.  It starred Campbell Scott and Steve Martin.  Gazzara had a decidedly costarring role.  Good trivia question here for your next get-together.  Who has acted in different projects with an actor, actress and their son?  Answer:  Ben Gazzara.  Here he's with Campbell Scott, he was with Colleen Dewhurst in Virginia Woolf and George C. Scott in Anatomy of a Murder.

In 1998 he had three small roles in some good films.  He was a smarmy porn producer in The Big Lebowski, a despondent father in Happiness and in the indie masterpiece Buffalo '66 another father role.  Gazzara also made a number of films in the 2000s and with one exception, I haven't even heard of them, much less seen them.  He also, of course, did a great deal of television.  His final film was released the year following his passing.

In 1999 he beat throat cancer, surely a result of smoking four packs of cigarettes a day.  In 2004 he wrote his autobiography, In the Moment, and it is a good one, honest, and he didn't appear to hide any blemishes.  In 2005 he suffered a stroke which did not prevent him from working.  He died in 2012 in Manhattan at the age of 81 of pancreatic cancer, 23 years to the day of his best buddy Cassavetes.

I think he made mainly awful films (he did love acting and in the beginning he turned down some important work, which he regretted). Good or bad films, I loved watching him, studying him, lost in the reverie of his intimidating performances as a laconic man experiencing inner turmoil until he could stand it no longer and erupted into something downright frightening.   

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A fifties anthology film