Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.
It’s another week where nothing in the release window for the coming weekend interests me enough to generate inspiration. As such, the recent deaths of prominent actors Sidney Poitier and Betty White, for example, have made me realize how precious our living treasures are. As such, I decided to take a look at five actors over the age of 90 who are among my favorite actors, some of them would even place on my all-time list. Before I get to those, I thought I’d recognize two actors who ultimately didn’t make the list. While television is a major part of the careers of many great actors, including two of the ones on my list, the two that didn’t make the cut failed to do so simply because their achievements on television far outweighed their cinematic achievements. Estelle Harris, who has a knack for playing acerbic women, most notably on Seinfeld, one of the few characters from that show worth remembering, is one. Then there’s William Daniels who first came to my personal attention as the teacher on Boy Meets World, but whose contributions to St. Elsewhere and as the voice of K.I.T.T. on Knight Rider are indelible parts of television history. He’s even part of one of my favorite big screen musical adaptations: 1776.
With those honorable mentions out of the way, let’s look at five lions of cinema, some of whom will be immediately familiar to wide audiences and some who will only be known by name by a smaller number of film enthusiasts.
Mel Brooks
Of the five actors I’m discussing this week, three are incredibly well known. For Mel Brooks, it’s for his decades of comedy, an indelible part of everyone’s lives growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. While he did some television work, it’s his filmic work that towers above many of his generation. His work as director, writer, and actor is unparalleled with none his peer. Brooks spent several years as a writer before finally hitting the kind of farcical slapsticks that would make him famous. That cinematic breakthrough came in 1968 with The Producers, a film about a pair of Broadway producers who want to cash in on their insurance money by staging a flop. When the show becomes a surprise hit, things go sideways. It was such a successful film that it was turned into a Broadway musical, which was then re-adapted for the big screen.
His next big successes came in 1974 with the releases of Blazing Saddles, a send-up of the once-popular western, mocking all of the tropes of the style, and Young Frankenstein, a movie that used the black-and-white horror films of James Whale as inspiration, most notably Bride of Frankenstein. He finished out the 1970s with two more prominent comedies, Silent Movie, in which the only dialogue is spoken by legendary mime Marcel Marceau, and High Anxiety. The 1980s were a bit of a mixed bag. While History of the World Part I, Spaceballs, and To Be or Not to Be are well regarded in some circles, they were clearly a step down from his 1974 output. In the last two decades, Brooks has largely taken on voice acting roles, but the promise of a new History of the World series gives us hope that he’s not quite finished yet. And at the age of 95, that will be truly impressive.
Paul Dooley
Make no mistake, 93-year-old Paul Dooley is a prolific presence on television, but surprisingly, his big screen credentials are only modestly less impressive. His television career began in 1963 with a guest appearance on East Side/West Side, he then delivered one-off performances in several prominent series, including The Defenders, Get Smart, Bewitched, and countless more. Across his seven-decade career, he’s been a welcome presence on any program in which he makes an appearance. I first came to know him in a recurring guest role on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, a role that fit perfectly within his style. He was twice nominated for the Emmys for his guest work. First on HBO series Dream On, then on Fox legal drama The Practice.
His screen career started a year later in 1964 in a long forgotten film called The Parisienne and the Prudes. With more than 60 credits to his filmography, his efforts on the big screen are still diverse. Many ’80s kids may be familiar with his role as Wimpy in the live-action Popeye film or in the Brat Pack film Sixteen Candles. While his film career might not be illustrious, outside of his award-winning work on Breaking Away, he was always a welcome addition to any picture, a character actor of no minor skill even if he never reached the level of acclaim as the other luminaries on this list.
Angela Lansbury
There are few more capable talents than Angela Lansbury. The 96-year-old British actress began her career on the big screen in 1944 with two roles, the first as a snarky Cockney housemaid in Gaslight, earning her the first of her three Oscar nominations, and as Elizabeth Taylor’s older sister in National Velvet. She followed those two prominent films with her second Oscar-nominated performance in The Picture of Dorian Gray. An auspicious start to anyone’s film career. While her younger-than-she-looks appearance kept her from becoming the leading lady she deserved to be, her film career continued over the course of two decades until her third Oscar nomination for The Manchurian Candidate, likely her greatest performance on celluloid.
It took a few more years before she would turn in her next memorable performance in kid-friendly musical adventure Bedknobs and Broomsticks, clearly inspired by the success of Mary Poppins a few years before, and Death on the Nile where she plays the flamboyant Salome Otterbourne, a role that should have landed her a fourth Oscar nomination, but did not. During this time, she became the toast of Broadway with an acclaimed starring performance in the 1966 musical Mame, for which she won her first Tony Award, and which made up for the notorious Stephen Sondheim flop Anyone Can Whistle. After that, she won three more Tony awards on each of her subsequent three nominations, for Dear World, Gypsy, and, perhaps her crowning achievement, Sweeney Todd. She won a fifth Tony on her sixth nomination for Blithe Spirit in 2009 and capped off her theatrical career with her seventh Tony nomination in 2010 for the restaging of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. Clearly Sondheim was magic for her.
She would step off the Broadway stage as a regular career in the 1980s when she took on the role of Jessica Fletcher on the long-running mystery drama Murder, She Wrote. She scored an Emmy nomination for each of the series’ twelve seasons. Throw in six more nominations and she remains the most nominated actress in Emmy history not to have won the trophy. It’s a surprise that the TV Academy hasn’t yet given her an honorary Emmy, especially considering her prominence on that platform, mostly for her estimable efforts on Murder, She Wrote, but also on all of the other programs she worked on throughout the years. After that, she did some more jobs on film, including the much lauded vocal performance as Mrs. Potts in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
As one of my all-time favorite actors, it’s hard not to get overly effusive about her skill. She was a tremendous talent and while she might have slowed down a bit, she’s still as sharp and wonderful as ever. I only wish I could get her autograph before she passes, but the opportunities just aren’t there anymore. A shame, really, and a digression. Let’s move onto the next name on the list.
Eva Marie Saint
At 97, Eva Marie Saint is the oldest actor on this list, though she started her career later than most of them. While she got her start on television, it was her feature debut role in Elia Kazan’s union drama On the Waterfront that put her on the map. Starring opposite Marlon Brando as the sister of a dockworker whose death sets in motion the events of the film, Saint was one of five actors from the film nominated for Academy Awards. Brando was the only lead nominated while Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden, and Rod Steiger were all nominated in Best Supporting Actor, a record for a single category at the Oscars that stood unmatched for 20 years until The Godfather Part II did the same. Yet, none of the three won an Oscar while Brando and Saint both did.
She followed up that success with roles in numerous prominent films, most notably as the female lead in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. By the end of the 1960s, her star had faded enough and she had aged out of most of the roles Hollywood directors wanted to fill and her career slowed to a trickle before collapsing entirely in the early-to-mid 1970s. During her time on the big screen, she also made numerous appearances on television with guest appearances all throughout the 1950s. After her big screen career faded, she kept working on television through the 1970s and beyond. While she would have a handful of roles on the big screen, her last major one was that of Superman’s Earth-bound mother in Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. That film ultimately tied back to her first screen co-star with Brando appearing in archival footage as Superman’s alien father Jor-El, a role he took on in the 1978 original and its sequel.
Dick Van Dyke
Dick Van Dyke’s screen debut was in two episodes of The Phil Silvers Show in 1957 and 1958. He made other minor appearances as the decade faded before starring in his successful, self-titled series The Dick Van Dyke Show starting in 1961. The series ran for five seasons and made Van Dyke a household name. That success helped him land the lead role in the screen adaptation of Bye Bye Birdie opposite Janet Leigh, Ann-Margret, and Maureen Stapleton. It was his third film, however, that really sent his star into the stratosphere. Julie Andrews starred as the titular magical nanny Mary Poppins in post-war Britain helping a young family. Van Dyke played the role of a cheerful Cockney chimneysweep who befriends the children and helps Mary take the kids on myriad adventures.
Van Dyke had several other successful films, but his big screen career began to collapse after Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 1968 before slowing to an absolute trickle. It was then that he returned to television in a new self-titled show, The New Dick Van Dyke Show (not a particularly original title), which had nothing to do with his original series. While that show lasted for three seasons, it wasn’t a huge success. He appeared in more than a dozen episodes of The Carol Burnett Show along with a handful of guest roles throughout the 1970s before his third self-titled show, The Van Dyke Show, which didn’t even last a season. More guest appearances followed, but it was his starring role in two TV movies from 1992 as Dr. Mark Sloan that would lead to his late-career success in the same role in the Diagnosis Murder mystery drama series.
Like Lansbury before him, he managed to turn this newest venture into his most successful series ever, lasting a full eight seasons with his son Barry Van Dyke joining him for the ride. During this period, he also had a small part in Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy, which would be his last screen role for more than a decade. Two TV movies followed the series, but his television appearances declined in the mid-00s. It was at that point that he made an appearance in the hugely successful Night at the Museum films, albeit in a minor role. Minor roles would follow him through his wonderful appearance in Mary Poppins Returns, but his last feature film came out four years ago with another film currently in pre-production. At 96, it’s clear he hasn’t lost his step even if he’s being very selective in his role selections. As one of the last actor from the golden age of 1960s television, it’s always a pleasure to see him even if he’s slowing down.
