The Screengrab

The Brooklyn-born actor Dom DeLuise, who died yesterday at the age of 75, was balding and roundish even in his early thirties, when he started getting roles in movies such as Fail-Safe (1964) and The Glass Bottom Boat (1966) and on such TV series as The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. If DeLuise's career had gone in a different direction, he might have gotten typecast as an urban sad sack, of the "I dunno, what do you want to do tonight, Marty?" variety, which would have been a tragic waste. It turned out that, in comic roles, DeLuise could create his own wild man's force field, capable of tearing into a part and investing it with its own glittering, beady-eyed insanity. A skillful actor yet also a burlesque madman, he was, at the peak of his career, both a modern performer and a throwback to the vaudeville-trained character comics of early talkies. And he had an uncanny gift for taking over a scene and making it all his without coming across as pushy or oppressive. He was so wildly likable that, when Anne Bancroft cast him as the lead in her 1980 directorial debut Fatso, more than one heartless movie critic began his review by writing that he sure hoped that Dom was okay with that title.

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RISKY BUSINESS (1983)



Sex sells...especially here on hooksexup.com, which is why I included the HOT!!!! train sex clip above rather than, say, a clip of Bronson Pinchot counting money in the suburban bordello launched by Tom Cruise’s home-alone upper-middle-class teen wanker Joel and Rebecca De Mornay’s hooker with a heart of coal, Lana, the better to separate Joel’s horny friends from their virginity (not to mention their trust funds). But, in the same way Deadwood’s Machiavellian barkeep Al Swearengen realized the best way to get rich quick during the South Dakota gold rush was simply to bilk the prospectors, Joe Pantoliano -- in his breakthrough role as Guido the Killer Pimp -- is the movie's real schemer, winding up with all the money from Joel’s Young Enterpriser start-up. In a similar way, Tom Cruise wound up reaping most of the benefits from Risky Business, which launched his career into the A-list stratosphere while writer/director Paul Brickman somehow didn’t get to direct another movie until 1990’s Men Don’t Leave, by which point his once seemingly promising career had gone in the drink like Joel’s Porsche (along with the A-list dreams of Mornay and my own personal rooting interest, Curtis “Booger” Armstrong). But that’s capitalism, for ya!  (AO)

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NICOLAS CAGE AS H.I. MCDUNNOUGH IN RAISING ARIZONA (1987)



The Coen brothers have turned out some truly amazing fools over time (Ulysses Everett McGill from O Brother, Where Are Thou? is a standout), but their first full-fisted idiot, H.I. McDunnough from Raising Arizona, was their best. As the above chase sequence shows, H.I. lives in a world of blasé, gun-happy morons who easily compartmentalize the absurdity of their lives. It's cartoonish in the best way, like a live-action Merrie Melody that features lots and lots of guns and ammo and bizarre double-crossing and for some reason all the men resemble Elmer Fudd. One of the nicest touches is that the baby Nathan Jr. generally has a pacifying effect on the idiotic adults around him: H.I.'s prison buddies Gale and Evelle Snoats, the nightmarish Leonard Smalls, and even Nathan Arizona, Sr., who shows no propensity towards compassion until his baby boy comes back to him. It's ultimately a sweet movie about fools who can make a better world for themselves. Because if there's one thing that is true in every movie directed by the Coen brothers, it's that everyone in the world fools themselves and plays the idiot, and somehow, by the grace of luck and sheer numbers, the human race keeps creeping forward for better or for worse. We're all the punchlines in an elaborate joke, so we have to find some way of enjoying it. That's a very particular type of existential gallows humor, but it's my favorite type. (HC)

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In all of our occasional looks back at great character actors of the past, we've never written about anyone as universally beloved as Peter Boyle.  The husky Irish-American with the wry smile worked, during his forty-year career, in everything from quiet, thoughtful little independent films to blockbuster sitcoms, but despite a number of controversial positions in his private life and the friendship of some of the entertainment industry's most despised liberals (he was a close friend to both John Lennon and Jane Fonda), the American public always took him to heart, and it's impossible to find anyone he worked with that doesn't remember him fondly after his death in 2006.  

Originally intending to enter the priesthood, Boyle was bitten by the acting bug early on (his father hosted a children's show in his native Pennsylvania) and after a few minor roles on film and television, hit it big with his lead performance in 1970's Joe.  Although he did a tremendous job as a racist factory worker and the breakthrough role opened doors for him, Boyle was deeply shaken by the role:  attending his first screening of the film, he was disturbed to hear people cheering the character's reactionary lines, and was extremely selective about choosing his parts from then on.  In fact, it's ironic that some of Boyle's most memorable roles have been those of violent, brutal men; the actor himself was, by all accounts, an extremely gentle man, a liberal, and a lifelong pacifist who opposed the war in Vietnam, championed civil rights, and worried constantly about the impact of his performances as brutes, thugs and killers.  But his career was also peppered with some extremely adept comic performances, and his greatest success came as a cast member of the highly successful situation comedy Everybody Loves Raymond.  He also did some top-flight work in other television dramas, including a swell turn as Fatso Judson in the TV movie adaptation of From Here to Eternity and a lead role in the short-lived but extremely well-made cop show Joe Bash.  But it was on the big screen that he had the greatest impact; his odd features and quirky approach ensured that he'd never be a leading man, but he absolutely barnstormed every character role he was given.  Although we'll list our favorites below, everyone remembers Boyle fondly from a different performance, and he's sure to go down in history as not just one of the best, but one of the best-loved, character actors in Hollywood.

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