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George Kennedy's Scary Work as Willard

posted 13 years ago by ecarle
8 replies | jump to latest

In the 60's, George Kennedy was on call as a "big guy villain" for several studios, but he settled in nicely for a few memorable movies at Universal:

Lonely are the Brave 1962: He's a New Mexico desert town jailer who beats up star Kirk Douglas(whom he sneeringly calls "John W. Burns")...and is later beaten up by Douglas in return.

Charade 1963: Of a trio of crooks menacing heroine Audrey Hepburn, he's the MOST menacing, a big guy named Herman Scobie who has a hook for a hand and an alternating scary-buffoonish air about him. He has a memorable rooftop fight with star Cary Grant.

Mirage 1965: A mysterious mogul called "The Major" sends various henchmen after hero Gregory Peck, but the biggest and toughest and meanest and most merciless of them all is "Willard," played by George Kennedy. As he fought with stars Kirk Douglas and Cary Grant before, Kennedy fights with Gregory Peck here, too -- and loses.

The first time.

George Kennedy is good and mean and memorable in "Lonely are the Brave," "Charade" and "Mirage,"(and co-starred with Walter Matthau in all three, which furthers the "linkage")...but his "Mirage" villain is particularly scary and intense, very good at making sure that "Mirage" stays scary and nightmarish all the way through.

Willard has no last name. His trademark is the pair of tight wirerim glasses he wears on his head, which seem to squeeze it and only makes him more irritable. He has no hook for hand like Herman Scobie. And he's never to be taken lightly as Scobie sometimes in in "Charade."

Interesting: when first we meet Willard, he is in a uniform and working in the noisy basement of the skyscraper. Here, "playing a regular employee," Kennedy's pissed-off tone makes sure that Willard is barely civil to Gregory Peck as Peck asks questions. Given how murderous we will learn that Willard will be later, its amazing Willard can hold his temper at all while facing a man he will later be sent to capture or kill. Still, he can't hold it for long, and pretty much tells Peck to get the hell out and stop bothering him.

As the movie moves on and Willard becomes a lethal force, we see him do the following things:

1. Willard confronts Gregory Peck and Peck's new "pal," detective Walter Matthau. Willard starts shooting...exclusively at Matthau. It is clear: his orders are to capture Peck, but kill the troublesome and unnecessary private eye Peck has hired. Doesn't work out. Peck uses a combination of wooden board and fist to put Kennedy down...and Kennedy quite nicely acts the "slow reality" of losing consciousness, trying to rise(like a fallen boxer), collapsing. Very realistic fight...and obviously painful for Kennedy, who will seek vengeful reciprocation in the pain department from Peck later.

2. Willard holds a gun on Peck from in front of him while chubby co-henchmanLester( Jack Weston )holds a gun on Peck from behind.

First Willard offers a nasty joke(but maybe's he's not kidding):

Willard: Hey, Lester. Why don't we tell the Major he tried to escape and just kill him anyway?

Then, when Peck gets the jump and a stranglehold on Lester(Weston), this:

Peck: Drop your gun or I'll kill him(Weston)
Kennedy: I'll save you the trouble.

And Kennedy shoots WESTON.

(I always figured taht the Major told Willard if Lester bumbled the job again -- and Lester did bumble a capture of Peck earlier -- that Willard could fire Lester on the spot with a bullet.)

3. Willard, while shooting at Peck in a Central Park tunnel, almost hits his colleague Josephson(Kevin McCarthy). This exchange, as Kennedy races past McCarthy:

McCarthy: You almost shot ME!
Kennedy(running by): So?

4. The Big Kahuna: In a really nicely choreographed scene of "small movements," Gregory Peck invades the penthouse of the Major and is confronted by a very scared looking Kevin McCarthy:

McCarthy: You shouldn't have come here. A big mistake.

And then Kennedy appears from the nocturnal penthouse balcony and slowly approaches:

Kennedy: And then some.

It is nifty to watch how McCarthy strokes Pecks sleeve in fright of what Kennedy is about to do to Peck, and scary as Kennedy takes off his wire-rimmed glasses, and unnerving as even Gregory Peck slowly turns and backs away in some despair, and realizes he HAS made a big mistake as Kennedy says:

Kennedy: I owe you some pain, mister.

The beating that Kennedy administers to Peck is quite brutal and realistic for 1965, and sickeningly continuous...all the better to start "knocking the flashback memories" out of Peck's head that solve the mystery. And Kennedy keeps beating him in a possessed mania, knocking away the ineffectual McCarthy and only stopping when the Major(stolid All-American looking Leif Erickson, quite good) fires a shot as if trying to whip a rabid dog.

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I collected all these moments because in watching "Mirage" recently, I was struck by how, in this movie, George Kennedy pretty much threw out any "buffoonery" or sympathy, or humanity, and pretty much gave us a killing machine stuck on the "rage" button. Kennedy's mean and monstrous performance keeps the suspense in "Mirage" very suspenseful.

It even got me to wondering about Willard. Was he a military guy under the Major's command? A killer solder? A psycho? Beaten continuously by a drunken father as a kid? In any event, the Major depends on Willard to deliver beatings and death with a certain confidence in just how mean this guy will be. (I like how, as Willard holds a gun to Stillwell's head, the Major says: "Nobody's bluffing here. Not you. Not me....and certainly not Willard.")

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Two years after "Mirage," George Kennedy would earn an Oscar for playing "the usual George Kennedy meanie,"...but with a changable heart. "Cool Hand Luke." The chain gang big guy who goes from hating Paul Newman to loving him. And from then on, Kennedy was a utility player. Good guys or bad guys, he did 'em all. He was the ultra-dependable and efficient airline mechanic-executive Joe Patroni in 1970's "Airport"(and the only cast member of that original film to appear in all three sequels). But he was willing to keep playing villains versus John Wayne(Cahill US Marshall) and Clint Eastwood(Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.)

And he is still with us today.

But that gallery of sixties villains is quite a rogue's gallery...and Willard in "Mirage" may just be the scariest rogue of them all.

[–] rorysa 13 years ago

Yes, indeed, Willard is quite a character. Willing to wipe out his own associates ("So?" probably gets the biggest laugh in the film), virtually uncontrollable (he has to get shot at or shot before he relents), almost unstoppable (T-boning his vehicle and smacking him over the head with a two by four don't work--he must be beaten senseless). I doubt, though, that the Major gave him the okay to finish off Lester: Lester had just brutally gotten rid of Joe Turtle for the Major, and Stillwell getting the drop on him a second time couldn't really have been predicted.

[–] ecarle 13 years ago

Hard to say. Its certainly a surprise when Willard shoots Lester; I had to wonder if Willard had "clearance" to go off the reservation like that. Do you think he would just go ahead and shoot Lester WITHOUT thinking about what the Major would think?

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I sometimes compare George Kennedy to another big guy of the era, Richard Boone. Boone and Kennedy would both play Western villains against John Wayne, but Boone had some "Method acting bonafides" and became a major TV star before Kennedy's career got traction(heck, Boone beat up George Kennedy in a few episodes of his "Have Gun, Will Travel" show).

But whereas Boone had a kind of folksy, crackerbarrel wit to his deep voice...Kennedy's baritone could get downright lugubrious and thick. In his early career, Kennedy used that voice for a rather dumb effect, rather creepy. As he aged, he refined the voice so that it could be almost...buffoonish. In both "Cahill US Marshall"(versus John Wayne) and "Thunderbold and Lightfoot"(versus Clint Eastwood), Kennedy seems somewhat stupid and the "butt of the joke" versus the heroes (something Richard Boone NEVER communicated.) But Kennedy in both movies proved to be a very dangerous man.

George Kennedy started to outpace Richard Boone once Kennedy got his Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1968 for 1967's "Cool Hand Luke." In the 70's, Kennedy alternated good guys and bad guys...and found time for TV series like "Sarge"(about a cop priest) and "The Blue Knight"(from Joe Wambaugh's police novel.) And he was in all the Airports and backing up Charlton Heston in one of them AND in "Earthquake"...as heroes both times.

It was a good career. And it peaked yet again for Kennedy in 1988 when he got to play Leslie Nielsen's Deadpan Big Guy partner in "The Naked Gun." Kennedy played it straight...and got plenty of laughs.

Its almost hard to believe that the funny, funny guy of "The Naked Gun" could have been the bone-chillingly brutal Willard all those years ago...

[–] rorysa 13 years ago

And he was a great choice by Ross Hunter and George Seaton to play Joe Patroni, even though he hadn't really been the smart hero previously.

The Abrahams brothers, of course, were known for giving comedy roles to straight dramatic actors.

[–] ecarle 13 years ago

And he was a great choice by Ross Hunter and George Seaton to play Joe Patroni, even though he hadn't really been the smart hero previously.

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I read the book "Airport" before the movie was cast, and I saw the cigar chewing mechanic-genius as Peter Falk. When Kennedy was announced, I was dubious. Then I saw the movie. Kennedy was perfect and probably the most entertaining and reassuring character in the movie(though I know Helen Hayes cutie-pie old lady act was popular and Oscar-winning).

I liked how while Patroni's main "story" was to get the one plane that was stuck in the snow dislodged, he "dropped by" Burt Lancaster's office, cigar in mouth, to offer a matter-of-fact and chilling overview of what would happen if a bomb went off in the OTHER plane in the sky. Patroni could advise on ANY emergency.

Kennedy's Patroni kept getting promoted with each new "Airport" movie. George Kennedy said that people told him when they saw him board their planes in real life as a fellow passenger -- they felt much safer on the flight!

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The Abrahams brothers, of course, were known for giving comedy roles to straight dramatic actors

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Yep, they started with Lloyd Bridges, Robert Stack and Nielsen in "Airplane," and kept finding more to join them.

Three memorable George Kennedy "deadpan serious moments" in the The Naked Gun series:

1. Leslie Nielsen walks down outdoor steps off a plane and is greeted by a crowd that applauds him and photographers flashing photos. Kennedy takes him aside:

"That's not for you, Frank. Weird Al Yankovic is on the plane."

And sure enough, Weird Al comes down the steps behind Nielsen to BIGGER cheers.

2. Sitting in a bar together, Single Guy Leslie Nielsen tells Married Man Kennedy how much he envies him:

Nielsen: "You, you get to go home night after night to the same woman waiting for you."

(Cut to Kennedy, nodding.)

Nielsen: Me, night after night, a different beautiful woman...

(Cut to Kennedy, nodding)

Nielsen: Having sex with me..

(Cut to Kennedy, drooling a little)

Nielsern: All night long

(Cut to Kennedy, foam coming out of his mouth)

Nielsen: Different positions

(Kennedy, mouth foaming up)

Nielsen: Different women, night after night after night

(Kennedy is now foaming like a mad dog.)

Nielsen: While you're sleeping at home with the same woman you've been with for 30 years.

3. During the funny Dodgers baseball game at the end of "Naked Gun 1," scored to Randy Newman's joyous "I Love LA," they keep cutting from all the baseball and other comedy action to Kennedy watching the game and eating and drinking things. Hot dog. Coke. Hamburger. Milk shake. Just ramming them in his mouth and gulping them down. And then...an entire cake, that Kennedy absently mindedly rams into his mouth in one bite that smashes cake all over his deadpan serious face.

George Kennedy: comedian extraordinaire!

[–] rorysa 13 years ago

[–] ecarle 13 years ago

The scene in "Airport" you mention--Patroni sitting at the airplane model and explaining the danger to the others--was of course a great addition to the movie. When I later read the Variety review (the one in which the writer doubted "Airport" could recoup its ten million dollar cost!),

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Ha. It recouped its cost and then some. Universal's biggest hit to date and a direct slap in the face of the "Easy Rider" counterculture.

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I found that George Seaton had actually been dissed for the scene--he was criticized for over-explaining things to the modern film audience. The critic didn't see that the veteran Seaton was building the suspense!

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This is one of my favorite scenes in "Airport." I like how Kennedy -- who up til now has been in the "stuck airplane story" suddenly enters the "bomber on the airplane story" -- like a guest star.

Then he lays out what can/will happen when that bomb goes off and decompression kicks in. So we are prepared.

But the BIG suspense item -- the "Hitchcock special" of "the audience has all the information" -- is when Lancaster and Kennedy have this (paraphrased) exchange about the bomber who is sitting in a window seat(they know).

Lancaster: So when the bomb blows, he'll be sucked out the window?
Kennedy: Yeah, him and whoever is sitting next to him!

And WE know who is sitting next to him -- sweet lil' ol' Helen Hayes!!! Talk about suspense.

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You've pointed out the wide variety of roles that Kennedy performed so well, the very hallmark of an excellent (and in this case underrated) actor.

Underrated, indeed -- but an Oscar winner, after all.

I wanted to mention one more George Kennedy role(for now, at least) that is very relevant to "Mirage":

One year prior, in 1964, "Mirage" stars Diane Baker, Leif Erickson(The Major) and George Kennedy appeared together in William Castle's ax murderess "Psycho" homage/ripoff "Strait-Jacket." Joan Crawford was the star.

The tale is set at a rural ranch operated by Erickson, who is the brother of Crawford, recently released from a mental institution for the axe murders of her husband and his lover years before. Diane Baker is Crawford's daughter.

George Kennedy plays the resident ranchhand and, though not murderous like Willard, Kennedy in this picture is rather gross and appalling...fully willing to look like hell: baggy dirty clothes that look like he slept in them, a body and face that looks like he hasn't bathed in a month, and the capper -- a "comb-over" haircut that seems to be a foot long, all the way over his head to his ears. He looks AWFUL, and he is playing a drooling goon of a ranchhand.

Who is also a blackmailer.

Who gets his head chopped off in a scene featuring the worst dummy in the history of American movies(one second, Kennedy's real head is in the shot, then a cut to the axe falling, then a cut to the dummy head where Kennedy's real head was. Hilarious.)

SPOILER: The killer isn't Joan Crawford -- its her daughter, DIANE BAKER. Baker is "dressing up like her mother" to kill people. Sound familiar? Script by Robert Bloch, who wrote the novel: Psycho.

Anyway, there is something brave and daring and almost "indie 70's" about how awful and unappealing George Kennedy was willing to look in "Strait-Jacket."

And yet, 6 years later, Kennedy got fit, cleaned up, shaved, got good clothes, cut his hair and put a nice blond toupee on his head and voila! -- Joe Patroni.

PS. Oh, heck one more. George Kennedy plays himself -- for an extended period -- in Albert Brooks' hilarious tale of heartbroken love , "Modern Romance." The main story is about Brooks' break-up, but his character is a B-movie sound editor working on a George Kennedy SciFi movie, and Kennedy is quite funny --and quite NICE -- as himself.

[–] rorysa 13 years ago

Yeah, "Airport" took in about 45 million in domestic film rentals (rentals, not box office gross) in its initial release, a huge profit at the time. I see the Kennedy speech about his own experience with decompression as a sort of precursor to the (longer) Indianapolis speech given five years later by Robert Shaw.

I forgot that Kennedy was in "Modern Romance." Never saw "Strait-Jacket."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

8 years later...bump.