Richard Widmark

Widmark was born December 26, 1914, in Sunrise Township, Minnesota,[1] the son of Ethel Mae (née Barr) and Carl Henry Widmark.[2] His father was of Swedish descent, and his mother was of English and Scottish ancestry.[3] Widmark grew up in Princeton, Illinois, and lived in Henry, Illinois for a short time, moving frequently because of his father's work as a traveling salesman.[4] He attended Lake Forest College, where he studied acting and taught acting after he was graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in speech in 1936.[5] The Army turned him down during World War II because of a perforated ear drum.[4]

Widmark made his debut as a radio actor in 1938 on Aunt Jenny's Real Life Stories. In 1941 and 1942, he was heard daily on the Mutual Broadcasting System in the title role of the daytime serial Front Page Farrell, introduced each afternoon as "the exciting, unforgettable radio drama... the story of a crack newspaperman and his wife, the story of David and Sally Farrell." Farrell was a top reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle. When the series moved to NBC, Widmark turned the role to Carleton G. Young and Staats Cotsworth.

During the 1940s, Widmark was also heard on such network radio programs as Gang Busters, The Shadow, Inner Sanctum Mysteries, Joyce Jordan, M.D., Molle Mystery Theater, Suspense, and Ethel and Albert. In 1952, he portrayed Cincinnatus Shryock in an episode of Cavalcade of America titled "Adventure on the Kentucky".[6] He returned to radio drama decades later, performing on CBS Radio Mystery Theater (1974–82), and was also one of the five hosts on Sears Radio Theater (as the Friday "adventure night" host) from 1979 to 1981.

Widmark appeared on Broadway in 1943 in F. Hugh Herbert's Kiss and Tell and in William Saroyan's Get Away Old Man, directed by George Abbott, which ran for 13 performances. He was unable to join the military during World War II because of a perforated eardrum. He was in Chicago appearing in a stage production of Dream Girl with June Havoc when 20th Century Fox signed him to a seven-year contract.[7]

Widmark in Broken Lance (1954)

Widmark was a mystery guest on the CBS quiz show What's My Line? in 1954. The following year, he made a rare foray into comedy on I Love Lucy, portraying himself when a starstruck Lucy trespasses onto his property to steal a souvenir. Widmark finds Lucy sprawled out on his living room floor underneath a bearskin rug.

Returning to television in the early 1970s, Widmark received an Emmy Award nomination for his performance as Paul Roudebush, the president of the United States, in the TV movie Vanished! (1971), a Fletcher Knebel political thriller. In 1972, he reprised his detective role from Don Siegel's Madigan (1968) with six 90-minute episodes on the NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie. He performed in a mini-series about Benjamin Franklin, broadcast in 1974, which was a unique experiment of four 90-minute dramas, each with a different actor impersonating Franklin: Widmark, Beau Bridges, Eddie Albert, Melvyn Douglas, and Willie Aames who portrayed Franklin at age 12. The series won a Peabody Award and five Emmys. During the 1980s, Widmark returned to TV with a half-dozen TV movies.

Richard Widmark with his first wife, Jean Hazlewood, in the 1950s

Widmark was married to screenwriter Jean Hazlewood for 55 years from 1942 until her death in 1997. They had one daughter, Anne Heath Widmark, an artist and author who was married to Baseball Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax from 1969 to 1982.[4]

In 1999, Widmark married socialite Susan Blanchard, the daughter of Dorothy Hammerstein and stepdaughter of Oscar Hammerstein II; she had been Henry Fonda's third wife.[4]

Despite having spent a substantial part of his career appearing in gun-toting roles such as cowboys, police officers, gangsters and soldiers, Widmark disliked firearms and was involved in several gun-control initiatives. In 1976, he stated:

I know I've made kind of a half-assed career out of violence, but I abhor violence. I am an ardent supporter of gun control. It seems incredible to me that the United States is the only civilized nation that does not put some effective control on guns.[11]

Widmark was a lifelong member of the Democratic Party.[4]

Retiring in 2001, Widmark died after a long illness on March 24, 2008, at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, at the age of 93.[12][13] His failing health in his final years was aggravated by a fall he suffered in 2007. He was buried at Roxbury Center Cemetery.[4][14][15][16]

Widmark's performance in Kiss of Death inspired the name of mystery and crime writer Donald E. Westlake's best-known continuing pseudonym, Richard Stark, under which he wrote some of his darkest, most violent books. According to Westlake, "part of (Widmark's) fascination and danger is his unpredictability. He's fast and mean, and that's what I wanted the writing to be: crisp and lean, no fat, trimmed down ... stark."[17]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Richard Widmark.

• Richard Widmark at IMDb
• Richard Widmark at AllMovie
• Richard Widmark at the TCM Movie Database
• Richard Widmark at the Internet Broadway Database
• Literature on Richard Widmark
• Obituaries:
  • Variety, 26 March 2008
  • The Daily Telegraph, 27 March 2008
  • The Times, 27 March 2008
  • The Independent, 27 March 2008
  • The Guardian, 27 March 2008