Alan Arkin (1934-2023)
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Alan Arkin - Second City alumnus, stage and film director, writer/author, Tony/Emmy/Oscar winner, and famed character actor adept at comedy and drama alike - died in San Marcos CA at the age of 89.
Alan began his performance career as a singer and guitarist with the Tarriers, a folk group known for their hit “The Banana Boat Song”. His first notable work as an actor was with the Second City in Chicago, which he joined in 1960. He made his Broadway debut in 1961 in the company’s revue “From the Second City.” Alan’s first Broadway theater appearance was in the 1963 Broadway comedy “Enter Laughing,” Joseph Stein’s adaptation of Carl Reiner’s semi-autobiographical novel about a stage-struck boy from the Bronx - where he stole the show, won the hearts of the critics and went on to win the Tony for his performance. He returned to Broadway in 1964 as a woebegone misfit in Murray Schisgal’s absurdist farce “Luv,” staged by Mike Nichols and co-starring Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson. In 1966 he directed the Off Broadway play “Eh?,” which featured a young Dustin Hoffman. In 1969 he directed a successful Off Broadway revival of Jules Feiffer’s dark comedy “Little Murders.” He also directed the 1971 movie version, which starred Elliott Gould and in which he played a small role. It was one of only two feature films he directed. By far the most successful of his dozen or so stage directing credits was the original Broadway production of the Neil Simon comedy “The Sunshine Boys” (1972), which starred Jack Albertson and Sam Levene as two feuding ex-vaudevillians reunited against their will, and for which he received a Tony nomination. His first feature film, “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” garnered him his first Oscar Nomination. The film was an offbeat comedy about the hysteria that ensues when a Russian submarine runs aground on an island in Massachusetts. As the frantic leader of a landing party sent ashore to find a way to refloat the vessel, he earned a place in cinema history with a riotous scene in which he teaches his non-English-speaking crew to say “Emergency! Everybody to get from street!” He played a French detective in “Inspector Clouseau” (1968), putting his own spin on a role created by Peter Sellers; a Puerto Rican widower in “Popi” (1969); a Lithuanian sailor in the television movie “The Defection of Simas Kudirka” (1978), but soon became known for playing likably hapless Everyman characters. The ultimate Arkin Everyman was Captain Yossarian in “Catch-22” (1970), Mike Nichols’s film version of Joseph Heller’s celebrated World War II novel. The New York Times’ Vincent Canby said “because he projects intelligence with such monomaniacal intensity, he is both funny and heroic at the same time.” In “Wait Until Dark” (1967), a suspense drama starring Audrey Hepburn as a blind woman who is terrorized by drug dealers looking for a secret stash of heroin, he was convincingly evil as the dealer in chief. In “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” (1968), based on the novel by Carson McCullers, he played a deaf man drawn to help the disadvantaged in a racially divided Southern town. That performance earned him his second Oscar nomination. Alan’s third Oscar nomination - and only win - came almost 30 years later, for his portrayal of a crusty and heroin-habituated grandfather in the indie comedy “Little Miss Sunshine” (2006). His fourth and final nomination was for his role as a cynical movie producer in “Argo” (2012), Ben Affleck’s based-on-a-true-story account of the made-in-Hollywood rescue of hostages in Iran. He was nominated for six Emmys in his career, including for his performances in two TV movies based on real events, “Escape From Sobibor” (1987) and “The Pentagon Papers” (2003). In 1998 he returned to the stage for the first time in more than 30 years, when he teamed with Elaine May for “Power Plays,” an Off Broadway program of three one-acts. In addition to directing all three and writing one of them (the other two were written by Ms. May), he appeared in two: his own “Virtual Reality,” the surreal story of two men awaiting the delivery of a mysterious shipment, with his son Anthony Arkin; and Ms. May’s “In and Out of the Light,” in which he played a lecherous dentist alongside Anthony, Ms. May and her daughter, Jeannie Berlin. Also an author, Alan wrote several children’s books, among them “The Lemming Condition” (1976) and “Cassie Loves Beethoven” (2000). In 2011 he published a memoir, “An Improvised Life”; he followed that in 2020 with “Out of My Mind,” a brief history of his search for meaning in the universe and his embrace of Eastern philosophy. Alan studied acting at Los Angeles City College and later at Bennington College in Vermont, which was a women’s school at the time but accepted a few male theater students. In addition to his sons, Matthew, Adam and Anthony, Alan is survived by his thrid wife, Suzanne Newlander Arkin, and four grandchildren. |