Michael Dunn

Yes, he was very good. This is the only movie I have seen him in, and was impressed with his comic timing and likable presence.

"Likable presence and comic timing" are the precise words to describe this wonderful actor. He deserved the Academy Award that year, but Martin Balsam had been in movies longer, so he won (even though his part and his performance in A Thousand Clowns were not Oscar material).

Michale Dunn (Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless in ten episodes of The Wild Wild West) died during the filming of The Abdication (1972) so another small actor was used. However, the producers kept a few of his close-ups in a dream sequence, where he is staring at the Queen (Liv Ullmann). He is also in the Plato's Children episode of Star Trek (the original series).

Stanley Kramer is a gret director of actors (in the same league with William Wyler, George Cukor or Mitchell Leisen, among others). He always let his actors showcase their talents. Tony Curtis and Sydney Poitiers were never better than in the Defiant Ones; Spencer Tracy was wonderful in Inherit the Wind; Judy Garland and Monty Clift in Judgement at Nuremberg gave the best performances of an actor in a supporting role, ever. The fact that his messages were a little bit too obvious hurted his reputation as a great director.

I like to inmagine other actors in certain roles in Kramer's pictures. For example, Richard Widmark as the prosecutor in Judgement... did not convey the personality of a passionate liberal (regardless of his personal beliefs, he always looked on the screen as a man on the right side of the political spectrum). Kirk Douglas would have been perfect for the part.

As for Ship of Fools, as much as I admire Jose Ferrer, Gert Frobe would have been ideal as the racist German entrepreneur. And how about Curt Jurgens as the Captain? The love story between Simone Signoret and Oskar Werner is one of the most touching I have seen on the screen (George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley don't come off as well). Ship of Fools contains la Signoret best performance, but I would have preferred a Hispanic actress on the role (how about the great Maria Felix --a great presence, but not a very good actress).

And how about the Grand Finale with the cast descending the stairs of the ship. Michael Dunn's descent from the stairs is one of the best sequences of its kind in the History of the Movies (together with the first shot of Katherine Hepburn in her very first film -A Bill of Divorcement); James Cageny tap-dancing on the stairs of the White House in Yankee Doodle Dandy; Jerry Lewis at the Princess' ball in Cindefella; Audrey Hepburn at the Louvre in Funny Face; Kim Hunter in a Streetcar Named Desire (Stella!!!!!!); Gloria Swanson at the end of Sunset Boulevard; Lana Turner descending to her death in Ziegfeld Girls...

I think there's an opening for 2 more!!

There's a film that seems to have fallen off the edge of the world, since it's so rare and unavailable - The Last Roman (1968)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063174/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064534/
...which I saw as a child, apparently as one film, and in English, on television, around 1970. Whatever became of this version? I was only six at the time, and don't remember much about it, except Michael Dunn as Narses, "the Last Roman," screaming in impotent rage in the end as his troops abandoned him. It seemed to me, at least the way I remember it, that with this desertion, the dream that was Rome was at an end, and the light had gone out in the West. Heavy stuff for a six year old, and the only thing that made it memorable was Michael Dunn. He was fantastic in everything he did.

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he was a great actor

suzycreamcheese RIP Heath Ledger 1979-2008