MARK RYDELL

(23 March 1929 - 13 August 2026)

The American film director, producer and actor Mark Rydell, who has died of natural causes at the age of 97, was responsible for many Oscar-nominated films – The Fox (1967), The Reivers (1969), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Rose (1979) and The River (1984). For On Golden Pond (1981) he was also personally nominated as best director. His first love was music and he trained to be a conductor but gave up the idea on account of the proliferation of drugs – in particular heroin – amongst the musicians. He then became a member of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater where he trained as an actor alongside Steve McQueen, enrolled at the Juilliard School of Music (under the great jazz pianist Teddy Wilson) and attended the Actors Studio with James Dean.

As an actor he appeared in Don Siegel’s Crime in the Streets (1956) with John Cassavetes and was particularly good as the charismatic thug Marty Augustine in Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973). He made a few more appearances as an actor but really concentrated on being a director, clocking up episodes of Bilko, Ben Casey, I Spy, The Long Hot Summer, The Fugitive and Gunsmoke. His first film as a director was The Fox, based on the D.H. Lawrence novella about two possibly lesbian women living together in rural Ontario. Anne Heywood and Sandy Dennis were the couple with Keir Dullea as a visiting sailor who upsets the relationship. The Reivers was based on William Faulkner’s novel set in 1905 and starred Steve McQueen as a potential car thief. It was a gentle tale told with compassion and directed by Rydell with an obvious love of the project.

The Cowboys (1972) was a Western with John Wayne, Bruce Dern and Robert Carradine (q.v.). Cinderella Liberty (1973) starred James Caan as a sailor and Vietnam vet who falls for a prostitute played by Marsha Mason, the latter who was nominated for an Oscar and won a Golden Globe. The film itself was also shortlisted for a Golden Globe. The crime comedy Harry and Walter Go to New York (1976) also starred James Caan, along with Elliott Gould, Michael Caine, Diane Keaton and Charles Durning. The Rose was the big deal in Rydell’s life and for Bette Midler, too, playing a rock star based on Janis Joplin. Oscar nominations arrived for Midler, as well as for Frederic Forrest as best supporting actor and for the editing and sound.

Rydell’s next film was also a big deal – On Golden Pond (1981) in which he secured both Henry and Jane Fonda, not the most loving relationship in the world, here playing father and daughter with Katharine Hepburn as referee/mother. A great hit, it received ten nominations at the 1981 Academy Awards ceremony, winning for Henry Fonda and Hepburn and for Ernest Thompson’s best adapted screenplay. After that success Mark Rydell’s next film was a distinct disappointment. For the Boys starred Bette Midler as a 1940s actress-singer entertaining the troops and, although she was excellent and well supported by James Caan and George Segal, the film was not a great success, even though Midler was nominated for an Oscar and won the Golden Globe. He then directed the romantic drama Intersection (1994) with Richard Gere and Sharon Stone and the crime drama Even Money (2006) with Kim Basinger, Ray Liotta, Tim Roth and Forest Whitaker.

Mark Rydell was married to the actress Joanna Linville from 1962 and they had two children, Amy and Christopher. After their divorce in 1973 Rydell married the documentarian Esther Jacobs until their divorce in 2007. They had one son, Alexander.

MICHAEL DARVELL