Giggling Star of 'Kiss of Death' Dies

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WEST HARTFORD — He was quiet and shy by nature, but when the cameras started rolling Richard Widmark made startling transformations into killers, cops and gunslingers.

Widmark, who burst onto the Hollywood scene as the giggling murderer in "Kiss of Death" in 1947, died at his home in Roxbury on Monday, his wife Susan Blanchard, said Wednesday.

"When he was off the screen, he was just a down-to-earth guy and fun," actress Shirley Jones, who appeared with Widmark in "Two Rode Together," said in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "But I admired him as an actor as well. He had that passion."

Widmark earned his only Academy Award nomination, for best supporting actor, in "Kiss of Death" playing Tommy Udo, the giggling killer who delighted in pushing an old lady in a wheelchair down a flight of stars to her death.

"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."

The role propelled him to stardom and he went on to become a leading man in "Broken Lance," "Judgment at Nuremberg," "The Alamo" and some 40 other films.

Widmark made his mark in crime dramas and westerns, but off screen he had no fondness for 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."

Widmark was born Dec. 26, 1914, in Sunrise, Minn., where his father ran a general store, then became a traveling salesman before settling in Princeton, Ill.

"Like most small-town boys, I had the urge to get to the big city and make a name for myself," he recalled in a 1954 interview. "I was a movie nut from the age of 3, but I don't recall having any interest in acting."

Two years out of college, Widmark reached New York in 1938 during the heyday of radio drama. His mellow Midwest voice made him a favorite in soap operas, and he found himself racing from one studio to another.

Rejected by the Army because of a punctured eardrum, Widmark began appearing in Broadway plays in 1943. His first was a comedy hit, "Kiss and Tell." He was appearing in the Chicago company of "Dream Girl" with June Havoc when 20th Century Fox signed him to a seven-year contract. He almost missed out on the "Kiss of Death" role.

"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."

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, Widmark starred in "Don't Bother to Knock" with Marilyn Monroe.

After leaving Fox, Widmark's career continued to flourish. He starred 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 appeared in "St. Joan," "How the West Was Won," "Death of a Gunfighter," "Murder on the Orient Express," "Midas Run" and "Coma."

"Madigan," a 1968 film with Widmark as a loner detective, was converted to television and lasted one season in 1972-73. It was Widmark's only TV series. He also was in some TV films, including "Cold Sassy Tree" and "Once Upon a Texas Train."

"Dick was just one of the nicest guys I ever worked with: very, very professional, very, very prepared and he couldn't have been more cooperative," said A.C. Lyles, a producer with Paramount Pictures, who worked with Widmark on the 1975 western "The Last Day."

"He would have little comments to make during rehearsal about a scene and it was never a suggestion that would enhance him," Lyles said. "It was always to enhance someone else in the scene and I thought that was very courageous of him."

His first wife, Ora Jean Hazelwood, died in 1997 and Widmark married Blanchard in 1999. His daughter with his first wife, Ann, became the wife of baseball immortal Sandy Koufax.

In later years, Widmark appeared sparingly in films and TV. He explained to Parade magazine in 1987: "I've discovered in my dotage that I now find the whole moviemaking process irritating. I don't have the patience anymore. I've got a few more years to live, and I don't want to spend them sitting around a movie set for 12 hours to do two minutes of film."

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Associated Press writers Bob Thomas and Sandy Cohen in Los Angeles and Stephen Singer and Pat Eaton-Robb in Hartford contributed to this report.

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