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HE DIED WITHOUT AN OSCAR
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Even the best character actors never won Oscars
of TheColumnists.com
On screen, Jack Warden seemed to be the kind of guy you really would like to have around to protect your back in a tough situation. He sounded like that kind of guy in real life, too.
Although nominated twice for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor--for 1975’s “Shampoo” and 1978’s “Heaven Can Wait”--Warden never won the Big One on the Big Screen. He did win the Big One on the Little Screen, however: an Emmy as Best Supporting Actor for the 1971 TV movie, “Brian’s Song.”
Warden stands among the top on my all-time favorite supporting actor list. He was not a nondescript Everyman like Martin Balsam (1919-1996), another character actor I enjoyed watching for years--and one who DID get an Oscar in the supporting category. Warden was distinctive, with a gruff but often-empathetic presence moviegoers could remember after leaving the theater.
The first film with Warden that I remember seeing was 1953’s “From Here To Eternity,” starring Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr and Montgomery Clift and co-starring Donna Reed and Frank Sinatra, adapted from novelist James Jones’ best seller about Army life in Hawaii right around the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Warden played Army Corporal Buckley, about the only non-com in the entire outfit sensitive to Clift’s predicament. (Don’t look for details here. See the film, which won the Oscar as Best Picture.)
Warden joined a plethora of other outstanding character actors for 1957’s “12 Angry Men” that probed deeply into the hearts and souls of a divided jury in a homicide case, including the aforementioned Martin Balsam and also Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, John Fielder, E.G. Marshall, Ed Binns, Jack Klugman, George Voskovec, Robert Webber and Joseph Sweeney. It starred Henry Fonda. Wow, what a cast!
As do so many of us today when we receive a jury summons, Warden, as Juror #7 (We never learned any of the jurors' names.), would rather have been anywhere else but confined to the jury’s deliberting room. “12 Angry Men” is considered his “break-out” role. In the company of such a great cast, it’s remarkable that he would be so recognized.
According to on-line biographies, Warden began his professional career as a welterweight boxer after being expelled from high school. Born John Lebzelter, he fought under his mother’s maiden name as Johnny Costello. His purses were so poor, the bios claim, that he soon left the ring and worked as a nightclub bouncer and a lifeguard before joining the Navy in 1938.
In 1941, he joined the Merchant Marine, reportedly because it paid better. But he didn’t particularly care for being located deep below the main deck during aircraft attacks on those extended convoy runs, so he enlisted in the Army in 1942. Warden became a paratrooper with the famed Screaming Eagles--the 101st Airborne Division--but missed the D-Day invasion in June 1944 because of a severely broken leg suffered during a practice jump at night. He later saw action at the Battle of the Bulge.
A sergeant when the war ended, Warden used the G.I. Bill to study acting and made his Broadway debut in 1951 after spending several years in small stage productions. His movie debut, although uncredited, came in 1951 in “You’re in the Navy Now,” with a couple of other WWII vets--Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson, the latter then known as Charles Buchinsky.
Like many outstanding character actors, Warden was equally at home on television or movies. His small screen credits are even more lengthy than his big screen appearances, everything from “Mr. Peepers” in the 1950s to “Crazy Like a Fox” in the 1980s. Among his movie credits--he appeared in more than 100 films--are “All the President’s Men” (1976), “Death on the Nile” (1978), “Being There” (1979), “The Verdict” (1982), “The Presidio” (1988), “Bullets over Broadway” (1994), and “Bulworth” (1998).
“The Verdict,” one of my favorite Warden outings, stars Paul Newman as down-and-almost-out alcoholic lawyer Frank Galvin and co-stars Warden as his associate and pal, Mickey Morrissey. Morrissey brings Galvin one last chance for redemption in what appears on the surface to be a slam-dunk medical malpractice suit. It’s not, of course.
As one who has seen just about every Newman film, starting with 1956’s “Somebody Up There Likes Me” while still in college, I think “The Verdict” ranks as one of Newman's best performances. Maybe the best ever.
We ordinary moviegoers seldom seem to realize how essential each supporting player is to moving a movie's plot forward and making the stars shine even more brightly. That's the essence of the character actor--and Warden did just that for Newman in "The Verdict."
Jack Warden, unfortunately, never will
get the Oscar he deserved. He died July 19, 2006, at age 85.
©2007 by Len Klempnauer. This column first posted Feb. 19, 2007.
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OTHER GREAT CHARACTER ACTORS WHO WERE NOMINATED, BUT NEVER WON OSCARS:
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