Stuart Whitman

Hunky and handsome and possessing a honey-coated speaking voice, Stuart Whitman was tucked in with Stephen Boyd, Don Murray, Anthony Franciosa, Bradford Dillman and a few others at 20th Century Fox in the late fifties, early 1960s.  The studio was hoping one or more of them would turn into a Tyrone Power from the 40s or at least a Robert Wagner from the 50s but it was not to be.  

I remember seeing a couple of brief interviews with him many years ago on one or more of those entertainment shows, probably plugging a film, and in each case I was struck by how little enthusiasm he seemed to have for his profession.  Then noting how his career has gone over the years, I was convinced that was the case.  By and large his studio pals were all better actors and they generally landed better roles.  He was also much more of a television actor than the others.

Born in San Francisco in 1928, his father was a successful real estate agent.  When Whitman was three the family moved to New York and they lived in so many places and cities that the youngster went to 26 schools.  By the age of five he claimed he wanted to be an actor.  By age 12 he appeared in several stock productions.  At the same time his father became even more successful when he became a lawyer specializing in property development.

By the time Whitman, who was called Blackie by most everyone, was about to enter high school, the family had moved to Los Angeles and he attended Hollywood High.  He then enlisted in the army where he did a lot of boxing.  Back in civilian life he made an impromptu decision to follow his father into law but within a year found it too boring.  He did dabble in real estate with the old man.  He followed the old man's investment advice and would eventually become very wealthy while still a young man.

In college Whitman was discovered by a talent scout.  In no time at all he was making one movie after another.  If all of the films weren't forgettable most of his roles certainly were.  He received no screen credit for many of them or if he did the characters had no names, being listed as man on beach or orderly, patient, sergeant, New York club patron.  His fifties' films include The Day the Earth Stood Still, All I Desire, Rhapsody, Brigadoon, Interrupted Melody, Seven Men from Now and The Girl in Black Stockings. 

He did stand out opposite Ethel Barrymore, no less, in Johnny Trouble (1957), his best role to date but few saw it.  The following year he appeared as Diane Varsi's boyfriend who impregnates her and is disliked by her controlling family, in Ten North Frederick opposite Gary Cooper.   It bombed.

In 1958 he signed a contract with Fox.  The same year he entered the trivia books when he and Dorothy Dandridge engaged in the screen's first interracial kiss in The Decks Ran Red.  He referred to her as a goddess.  He was probably hired to keep his alcoholic friend and costar Broderick Crawford off the sauce.

Enjoying R&R with Dorothy Dandridge

The next year he replaced Robert Wagner in The Sound and the Fury opposite Joanne Woodward and Yul Brynner (with hair) and based on a steamy William Faulkner novel.  Again he was a boyfriend of whom the family disapproves.  I liked it because I was always there for steamy southern but it, too, was not a success.

Also in 1959 he was fifth-billed after Fox pals Don Murray, Richard Egan (great in a villainous role), Lee Remick and Patricia Owens in These Thousand Hills, an ambitious clunker.  If that weren't bad enough, the same year he supported Fabian (!) in Hound Dog Man.  Fox loved its biblical pics and they gave Whitman top billing in The Story of Ruth (1960) and third billing in St. Francis of Assisi (Brad Dillman had the title role.)  

To say that Fox didn't know quite what to do with him seems an understatement.  But what did he do about it?  Did he fight for good roles?  Did he put his agent on high alert?  When Hedda Hopper wrote that he seemed like the new Clark Gable to her, did he act upon it?  Or did he just go golfing or skeet shooting or buy some more properties?  

Regardless, lady luck would soon be paying a visit and would stick around for the first half of the sixties.  That handsome face, sweet personality and calming voice got me to most of his movies in the decade.  He became like Tom Tyron and George Nader and a few other handsome guys who weren't going to make an acceptance speech at the Oscars but I didn't care.  I enjoyed their mainly B movies.  Clark Gable?  Who's that?

Murder, Inc. (1960) looked and felt like an episode of TV's The Untouchables, only longer.  Whitman and May Britt are a married couple who unfortunately get involved with the mob and getting uninvolved provides a great deal of the drama.  While both are quite good, it is Peter Falk as the mob's enraged hit man who commanded most of the attention... and a deserved Oscar nomination.  Most people, if they know the film at all, would call it a Peter Falk flick. 

Then Whitman appeared in his most critically-acclaimed movie, The Mark (1961), replacing Richard Burton.  Certainly ahead of its time and I question how well it would play today.  He plays a man who has ended a three-year prison stretch for his intention to molest a child.  A kindly prison psychiatrist assists him in getting a job and Whitman falls in love with the owner's daughter.  Things go fairly well until a young girl is molested in the town.

With Maria Schell in The Mark

Whitman admitted that he was shocked when he was nominated for an Oscar.  He always spoke well of the film and his experience of making it.  He adored the luminous Maria Schell who played his lover and Rod Steiger in one of his kindest roles.

He also spoke about accepting the role without seeing a script and didn't read it until he landed in Ireland.  He said that he was under contract to the studio and had to do what he was told.  Well, yes and no.  Overall he's right but plenty of actors, even in those times, did put up a little resistance.  I'm betting Murray, Franciosa, Gazzara and others fought for their projects or their agents did on their behalf.  If you needed to fight, fight.  But Whitman was not part of that brigade.

Also in 1961 came The Comancheros with John Wayne.  It is Whitman's most popular film and one of his best roles.  The pair enjoy a highly comical first half while the second half is action-packed.  It's on the tube all the time.  I know your juices are flowing.

With Ina Balin in The Comancheros

The next year Whitman and Wayne had scenes together in Darryl Zanuck's all-star war epic, The Longest Day.  It was an important film that attracted a lot of patrons but no star came out as anything special.

Convicts 4 (1962) is a Ben Gazzara flick about a man whose death sentence in Sing-Sing is commuted to life in prison in Dannemora.  There he is mistreated by staff and prisoners alike until a few come around.  One of those is a prison official played by Whitman.  I liked it.

In 1963 he was offered a French film, The Day and the Hour.  It concerns a Frenchwoman, Simone Signoret, who aids two downed Allied pilots.  The stars formed a warm relationship.

The mental institution drama Shock Treatment (1964) with Lauren Bacall, Carol Lynley and Roddy McDowell was pretty lame but the same year's muscular western, Rio Conchos, held my attention throughout.  Richard Boone, Tony Franciosa, Jim Brown and Whitman play a quartet who attempt to keep a crazy ex-confederate colonel from selling guns to the Apaches.  Boone is top-billed and Franciosa has the best role.  This film ended Whitman's contract with Fox.  They chose not to renew and of course he went along with it.

Shirtless: the usual goal

Signpost to Murder (1964) reunited Whitman with Joanne Woodward.  They had formed a mutual admiration society.  MGM had no faith in the thriller about an escapee from a mental institution who takes refuge in a woman's home and the studio dumped it in the bottom half of double bills.  Too bad.  I thought it was suspenseful.

I wish I could jump to the defense of Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes... but I cannot.  I don't even want to talk about it.  Terry-Thomas?  Red Skelton?  Benny Hill?

OMG, get me out of here.

He ended his best period with Sands of the Kalahari (1965).  A good adventure opus concerning a small plane crash in the desert involving seven passengers with one determined to murder the others to increase his own chances of survival.

Star Stanley Baker also produced and early on he fired the lead George Peppard.  Whitman was the replacement and before he accepted he asked that he and Baker change roles.  It was not successful when first released (and I don't get that) but it's gained some momentum over the years.  Frankly, the least impressive of the leads is Whitman.

At this point Whitman hadn't had a true hit since The Longest Day and he, along with most of the others in largely cameo roles, had nothing to do with that.  Post-Fox he made back-to-back films at MGM and they didn't light up the sky either.  

Not unsurprisingly he ended up in a western television series, Cimarron Strip.  It was one of the first 90-minute series.  It lasted one season.  He continued appearing in various series as a guest star.  His movie choices were abysmal.  

He supported Lee Van Cleef (!) in Captain Apache (1971), a western filmed in Spain, and battled oversized rabbits with Janet Leigh in Night of the Lepus the following year.  He said the movie damaged his reputation and caused him to no longer be bankable.

In 1973 a cancer-ridden Laurence Harvey asked Whitman to star in Welcome to Arrow Beach which Harvey was directing.  Whitman declined the lead role but said he would take a supporting role.  Who does that?  Harvey assumed the starring role along with directing.  The film died at the box office and Harvey was dead by the end of the year.

I never saw Whitman in another movie and he made plenty of them, many in Europe  It's pretty safe to say all were various shades of awful.  A few went directly to video.  Television was the name of the game.  Like all actors whose movie careers had faded, he appeared on Murder She Wrote, although he appeared in four of them.

He would say that he never needed to act to make a living but he had a real passion for it.  If passion can at all be measured by the length of time one works at a job, then perhaps he had it because he had just begun his sixth decade in the business when he passed away.  I'll give him that.

But I expect his extreme wealth kept him from being hungry and I've always thought most actors needed to be a little hungry to get it all moving along.  He made 96 big-screen films, most of which were not very good.  He made those few fine films in the early sixties but could never seem to parlay them into a big career.  Perhaps he had a passion for working, for needing to stay busy... especially when one considers he has another 100 credits or so on television.  If he truly had a passion for acting itself, I didn't see it.  

In the early 60s, Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky said that he still lacked the shine of a bright movie star.  The sad truth is for many of his films, even some of his best ones, Whitman was not the first choice.

He was married three times and had a daughter and four sons.  He lived for years in Montecito on a ranch with Robert Mitchum living across the street and Richard Widmark and Jane Russell as neighbors.  

He was an avid storyteller who thrived being the center of attention.  He loved being a ranch owner and came alive in the great outdoors.  I suspect he was a genuinely nice guy... perhaps too nice for a mean-ass place like Hollywood.  His creed, which was also his mother's... make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.

Stuart Whitman died of skin cancer in Montecito at age 92 in 2020.

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All about an unhappy movie actress