Richard Widmark

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Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death

Richard Widmark (born December 26, 1914 in Sunrise, Minnesota) is an Academy Award-nominated American film actor.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Richard Widmark has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6800 Hollywood Boulevard. In 2002, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

[edit] Biography

Richard Widmark grew up in Princeton, Illinois, and attended Lake Forest College, where he studied acting. He taught acting at the college after graduation, before debuting on radio in 1938 in Aunt Jenny's Real Life Stories. He appeared on Broadway in 1943 in Kiss and Tell. He was unable to join the military during World War II because of a perforated eardrum.

Widmark's first movie appearance was in 1947's Kiss of Death, as the giggling, sociopathic villain Tommy Udo. His most notorious scene in the film found Udo pushing a wheelchair-bound old woman (played by Mildred Dunnock) down a flight of stairs to her death. Kiss of Death was a commercial and critical success, and started Widmark's seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Udo. Widmark won the Golden Globe Award in 1947 as 'Most Promising Newcomer' for his role as Udo. Widmark's character in this film was the inspiration for the song, "The Ballad of Tommy Udo" by the band Kaleidoscope. In 1950 he co-starred with Gene Tierney in Jules Dassin's Night and the City which is now considered a classic Film Noir.

Widmark became so popular so fast that it was only two years later that he had his handprints cast in cement at Grauman's Chinese Theater. In the intervening two years, he had appeared in Slattery's Hurricane, Down to the Sea in Ships, Yellow Sky, Road House and The Street with No Name.

Widmark was married to his first wife, Jean Hazlewood, a writer, from April 5, 1942, until her death on March 2, 1997. Their daughter, Anne Heath Widmark, an artist and author, married baseball legend Sandy Koufax on January 1, 1969. Anne Widmark and Koufax divorced in 1982. In September of 1999, Widmark married Susan Blanchard, who earlier was Henry Fonda's third wife. Widmark currently is retired and resides in Roxbury, Connecticut, where he has lived since the 1950s.