Celebrities

Richard Windmark is well known for his role in “Kiss of Death” which turned him into a star and one of Hollywoods best leading man. He has played in over 40 films and has been recognized as an accomplished actor. After suffering through a long disease Windmark has died at the age of 93 in his home.

Widmark’s wife, Susan Blanchard, says the actor died at his home in Roxbury on Monday. She would not provide details of his illness and said funeral arrangements are private. “It was a big shock, but he was 93,” Blanchard said.  After a career in radio drama and theater, Widmark moved to films as Tommy Udo, who delighted in pushing an old lady in a wheelchair to her death down a flight of stairs in the 1947 thriller “Kiss of Death.” The performance won him an Academy Award nomination as supporting actor; it was his only mention for an Oscar.

“That damned laugh of mine!” he told a reporter in 1961. “For two years after that picture, you couldn’t get me to smile. I played the part the way I did because the script struck me as funny and the part I played made me laugh. The guy was such a ridiculous beast.” A quiet, inordinately shy man, Widmark often portrayed killers, cops and Western gunslingers. But he said he hated guns.

“I know I’ve made kind of a half-assed career out of violence, but I abhor violence,” he remarked in a 1976 Associated Press interview. “I am an ardent supporter of gun control. It seems incredible to me that we are the only civilized nation that does not put some effective control on guns.” “The director, Henry Hathaway, didn’t want me,” the actor recalled. “I have a high forehead; he thought I looked too intellectual.” The director was overruled by studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck, and Hathaway “gave me kind of a bad time.”

An immediate star, Widmark appeared in 20 Fox films from 1957 to 1964. Among them: “The Street With No Name,” “Road House,” “Yellow Sky,” “Down to the Sea in Ships,” “Slattery’s Hurricane,” “Panic in the Streets,” “No Way Out,” “The Halls of Montezuma,” “The Frogmen,” “Red Skies of Montana,” “My Pal Gus” and the Samuel Fuller film noir “Pickup on South Street.” In 1952, he starred in “Don’t Bother to Knock” with Marilyn Monroe. He told an interviewer in later years: “She wanted to be this great star but acting just scared the hell out of her. That’s why she was always late couldn’t get her on the set. She had trouble remembering lines. But none of it mattered. With a very few special people, something happens between the lens and the film that is pure magic. … And she really had it.”

After leaving Fox, Widmark’s career continued to flourish. He starred (as Jim Bowie) with John Wayne in “The Alamo” with James Stewart in John Ford’s “Two Rode Together,” as the U.S. prosecutor in “Judgment at Nuremberg,” and with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas in “The Way West” He also played the Dauphin in “St. Joan,” and had roles in “How the West Was Won,” “Death of a Gunfighter,” “Murder on the Orient Express,” “Midas Run” and “Coma.”