OT: The Final Day of 2023 -- Tom Smothers and Tom Wilkinson, RIP
A couple of weeks ago, Ryan O'Neal and Norman Lear passed away around the same time, in December of 2023. Ryan O'Neal lived a respectably old life of 82;
Lear lived to the outlandishly old age of 101(with all his faculties apparent in a filmed appearance.)
As it goes with celebrity deaths, O'Neal and Lear got paired together as it never happened in life.
These being December deaths, I wondered aloud: who else would we lose in 2023 with but a few weeks left?
The answer on this final day of December, 2023: two Toms.
Tom Smothers and Tom Wilkinson. Smothers lived 10 years longer than Wilkinson -- 86 versus 76. Smothers is a memory going back many decades to his Smothers Brothers TV show in the 60s. Wilkinson was of more recent vintage -- I recall first seeing him in The Full Monty in 1997
Wilkinson's passing is a bit more of a shock -- I didn't know he was that old and thought he was still a working actor.
.Tom Smothers was famous as part of the Smothers Brothers comedy musical act with his straight man brother Dick. Yes, that had that famous late 60's show that ran afould of the censors(on political, not sex/profanity grounds), but I recall them all through the 60's as variety show guest stars, with ANOTHER series(a sitcom with Tom as an angel to Dick). They were very skilled musicians and very funny guys -- Tom did a "smart dumb guy," somehow.
Trivia popped into my head: (1) They played a pair of "rich hillbilly murder suspects" on a TV show I used to like, the Rat Pack era whodunnit "Burke's Law"; (2) they were funny on the Jack Benny Show, (3) some years past their prime they hosted the Emmies the year that there was an actors strike -- nobody else wanted to host it, and no actors showed up for awards save Powers Boothe, and (4) Dick -- not Tom -- was good as a crooked Nevada Senator in Scorsese's Casino. (WHY did Marty cast Dick, I want to know.)
I always liked this about Tom Smothers: he was very activist in his politics, but he was FUNNY. He was quoted as saying of Jane Fonda and her activist husband Tom Hayden when he met them, "I'm on the same page with them, but those are the two most humorless people I've ever met." Ha.
I'm amazed with myself that i forget the various celebrities I've interacted with unless -- perhaps -- they die and come to my attention.
I wrote this over at the Tom Smothers board:
https://moviechat.org/nm0810691/Tom-Smothers/659189e7d29e0c1e94a3c78c/My-Real-Life-Encounter-with-Tom-Smothers
Tom Wilkinson: His great claim to fame -- in my book -- is that he reminds me that pretty much ALL actors -- from top stars to supporting actors -- seem to get into the business becaus they know this about themselves: they have interesting faces.
The first time I saw Wilkinson, in The Big Monty(which opened in the US the same weekend as LA Confidential; I saw them back to back in lowly September)...I liked his face. It was a NICE face. A rather kindly face. A middle-aged face(he got famous rather at middle age.) And above all, a MEMORABLE face.
Wilkinson generally played good guys, but he played against type as villains, sometimes. He did an American/Italian accent to play gangster Falcone in "Batman Begins"(truly the best villain IN that rather banal movie.) Amusingly, he played the famous Lord Cornwallis in Mel Gibson's American Revolution movie "The Patriot" -- but as a rather NICE opponent( the evil one was Jason Issacs), and had a funny scene with Gibson.
I guess Wilkinson's most major roles were in "Michael Clayton" (he got a Best Supporting Oscar nomination) and "in the Bedroom"(he got a Best Actor Oscar nomination.) And hey, that "In the Bedroom" was directed by Todd FIELDS, who was in "Eyes Wide Shut." (I got that wrong in another thread.) In both films, Wilkinson's kindly face was put to the test as his characters were put to the test in life or death situations that tilted towards death. In one movie, Tom received death. In the other, he delivered death. We were sympathetic to him both times.
It does seem like people "hold on" to the end of the year before passing -- some like to make it through Christmas, but don't.
We also lost Richard Romanus in the last couple of days -- he was Dr. Melfi's ex-husband on The Sopranos and in Mean Streets way back when.
Conversely: some famous folk seem to die at the end of the FISCAL year: June 30 or directly on July 1. As I recall, Walter Matthau died on July 1, 2000, was mourned by Jack Lemmon -- and then Lemmon died a year later in late June of 2001.
Robert Mitchum and James Stewart died around July 1 in 1997 , linking two big names (who had actually appeared together in The Big Sleep of 1978 -- of which Mitchum said "the movie was filled with corpses, and Stewart looked deader than any of them.") Marlon Brando died on July 1, 2004.
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