When news of the passing of Richard Widmark was made public yesterday, fans of film noir knew they had lost one of its greatest actors ever.  Chances are, even if you're not into noir you're familiar with his debut in the Oscar-nominated role of Tommy Udo in Henry Hathaway's original Kiss of Death (1947). The clip of his pushing the elderly woman (the mom of his real target) down the stairs has been endlessly excerpted in docs and TV specials about post-war Hollywood, crime movies, and memorable screen villains in general. Indeed, I remember seeing that clip for years before actually viewing Kiss of Death in its entirety, figuring that that moment had to be some kind of highlight the rest of the film couldn't aspire to.  In a way, I was right--but not where Widmark's performance is concerned.  He pulses with malice every second he's on the screen, his energy driving the film even when he's not present. So in a year in which the Best Supporting Oscar also went to an actor portraying a chilling, single-minded psychopath who anchored his movie, it's worth saluting the man who broke that ground exactly six decades earlier.

But Widmark didn't stop there, didn't repeat himself by constantly playing other hyperkinetic heavies.  His intensity, voice and appearance (i.e., good-looking but also a regular guy) were perfect for the emerging genre of noir, and the top directors took notice, casting him as the lead in their best efforts.  Most notably, Widmark's star turns in Night and the City (1950) and Pickup on South Street (1953) have helped those films reach legendary status.

In the former, his verbal quickness and ragged physicality were the perfect vehicle for Jules Dassin to send his story careening through an expressionistically shadowy London.  I've heard Widmark's lines of dialogue from the film sampled in music tracks and they have a surprising musicality all their own.  His character, Harry Fabian, is charming, ambitious, desperate, sleazy, and ultimately noble--and Widmark makes it all look easy. And of course the final scene, as he screams his accusations at Gene Tierney, is beyond memorable:  I'm getting goose flesh just recalling it and I haven't seen it in years. Pick Up on South Street, on the other hand, is not so stylized, but still represents a quintessential film noir and arguably Samuel Fuller's finest work.  Its storyline is the one you want tell people when they ask, "What was noir all about?" and Widmark is the glue that holds it all together.     

Of course Widmark was not limited to crime thrillers.  Over the years he proved that time and again.  For example, take his performance as Jim Bowie in The Alamo (1960).  He's solid throughout but its in those final doomed moments, as he fights against overpowering odds, that he's electrifying.  As a result, his work becomes the most powerful take-away from that film.  Indeed, The Alamo is not considered a classic, and that was part of a pattern in his career:  to be interesting in material that otherwise wasn't.  He had a knack for making disappointing movies such as Don't Bother to Knock (1952) with Marilyn Monroe, or Madigan (1968--later a TV series) with Henry Fonda, always seem a bit more engaging.  And when he was in a film that was well written and produced, such as when he played the prosecutor in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), he could help make it great.

For his talent, his versatility, his screen persona that blended toughness and intelligence--for all these reasons, Richard Widmark will be remembered by generations of film fans to come.