(9 July 1938 - 15 April 2020)
The American actor Brian Dennehy, who has died at age 81 from a cardiac arrest following sepsis, was a much lauded performer, winning many awards including a Tony, an Olivier, a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for playing Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. A tall, imposing and charismatic figure, Dennehy found fame and glory on stage, in films and on television in a wide-ranging acting career of some fifty-five years. Born in Connecticut he studied at a school on Long Island and subsequently Columbia University. After national service in the US Marine Corps he graduated in history in 1965 but started acting in regional theatre, whilst taking on jobs as a truck driver. He worked in theatre in Chicago, notably in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, and in Dublin before reaching New York in 1999 in Brian Friel’s Translations. Other Broadway performances included Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s Inherit the Wind and O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms and he also played seasons at Stratford, Ontario. In 2010 he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
From 1977 he appeared in many television series such as Kojak, Police Woman, M*A*S*H, Lou Grant etc until his first film part in Richard Brooks’ Looking for Mr Goodbar with Diane Keaton, then Michael Ritchie’s Semi-Tough with Burt Reynolds, Norman Jewison’s F.I.S.T with Sylvester Stallone, Colin Higgins’ Foul Play with Goldie Hawn, Blake Edwards’ 10 with Dudley Moore and Little Miss Marker with Walter Matthau. In 1981 came Dynasty on TV and then First Blood, the initial Rambo film, giving Dennehy his first major cinema role. After that the movies generally got better and they included Michael Apted’s Gorky Park with William Hurt, Ron Howard’s Cocoon (and its sequel), Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado with Kevin Kline, Bud Yorkin’s Twice in a Lifetime with Gene Hackman, F/X and its sequel F/X2 with Bryan Brown, and Ivan Reitman’s Legal Eagles starring Robert Redford.
Taking a break from Hollywood, Dennehy went to Italy to play the lead role in Peter Greenaway’s The Belly of an Architect, and in Germany he made Klaus Maria Brandauer’s Seven Minutes. He continued working in the theatre, films and television, including some producing and directing for TV. Arguably Alan J. Pakula’s Presumed Innocent with Harrison Ford, Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (as Ted Montague), Spike Lee’s She Hate Me, Jon Avnet’s Righteous Kill with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, The Next Three Days with Russell Crowe, Tom Hines’ Alleged (as Clarence Darrow), Barry Avrich’s Twelfth Night (as Sir Toby Belch), Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups with Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett, Michael Mayer’s The Seagull, Chekhov with Dennehy as Sorin, and Larry Clarke’s 3 Days With Dad with Lesley Ann Warren are the most interesting among the later films that Dennehy made. Son of the South with Julia Ormond, Long Day Journey with Danny Glover and The Adventures of Buddy Thunder with Angela Lansbury are still in production with Driveways just released online. Brian Dennehy was married first to Judith Scheff and then Jennifer Arnott. He is father to five children, Elizabeth, Kathleen and Deirdre from his first marriage, and two adopted daughters, Cormac and Sarah, from his second.
MICHAEL DARVELL
