Remembering Alan Arkin

Following hard on the deaths of Julian Sands and Frederic Forrest, Hollywood lost another fine actor in Alan Arkin. Cinema Paradiso looks back on a remarkable career.

As we said in our tribute to Julian Sands and Frederic Forrest, where would cinema be without character actors? They might not get the headlines, but it's the ensemble players populating screen story worlds who enable the leads to exude their particular brand of star quality. Like Sands and Forrest, Alan Arkin was much more than jobbing actors. Each had his moment in the spotlight. Yet they took roles for the creative challenges they posed rather than merely for the kudos or the pay cheque they offered. Some of Arkin's choices could seem quixotic. But, during the course of a long and varied careers, he delivered some truly memorable performances.

The Boy From Brooklyn

The oldest of three children, Alan Wolf Arkin was born in Brooklyn on 26 March 1934. Parents David and Beatrice hailed from Russian and German immigrant stock and were committed socialists. Although money was tight, David painted and wrote poetry, while Beatrice played the piano. Influenced by such family friends as Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, and Leadbelly, Alan learned to play the guitar, piano, vibraphone, and flute.

He would later attempt the saxophone, but he knew from an early age that he wanted to act. His father used to take him to see foreign films and Arkin joked that he learned to read through subtitles. Among his heroes was the French director Jean Renoir and he claimed meeting him was one of the highlights of his long life. 'I basically threw myself at his feet,' he recalled 'and told him how much his work meant to me and that he was a genius.'

When Arkin was 11, the family moved to Los Angeles, where David sought work as a set designer. However, his refusal to sign a declaration about his political affiliations during a studio strike cost him his job. Moreover, he couldn't find employment as a teacher because of the blacklist that existed during the McCarthyite witch-hunt that is explored in films like Martin Ritt's The Front (1976) and Jay Roach's Trumbo (2015).

Despite being 'dirt poor', the Arkins found money for Alan to take acting classes and, having graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School, he studied drama at Los Angeles State College of Applied Arts and Sciences. Eventually, he won a scholarship to become one of the first male students admitted to Bennington College in Vermont. While he took the leads in a number of productions, however, he left without completing his degree.

In 1955, Arkin married 18 year-old campus sweetheart Jeremy Yaffe, who was pregnant with their first son, Adam. Needing money, he did odd jobs and sold a few science fiction stories to magazines. He also fronted a folk group called The Tarriers and surprised himself when their reworking of 'The Banana Boat Song' reached No.4 in the Billboard charts. Future actor Harry Belafonte also had a hit with the calypso, but it was Arkin who got to sing it in Fred F. Sear's Calypso Heat Wave (1957).

Arkin left to form his own children's folk group, The Babysitters, and continued to perform for another decade. He and bassist brother Bob would also write over 100 songs together. Yet, when asked about this phase in later years, Arkin would grumble that it was 'a waste of time' that merely kept him 'in underwear and burritos'. Acting was always his primary focus, however, and he joined a repertory company in the Adirondacks before making his off-Broadway debut in Abelard and Heloise.

Early Stages

Struggling to break through, he relocated to St Louis to join The Compass Players. However, he was spotted performing in an cabaret revue and invited to Chicago to become part of the newly formed Second City improvisational comedy troupe in 1960. It took Arkin six months to pay off his debts, during which time second son, Matthew, was born. But he was divorced by the time he made his Broadway bow in From the Second City (1961), which he helped write.

'I was afraid I was going to get fired for the first month or two,' he confided decades later. 'I couldn't be funny. I didn't know how to be funny. I didn't think I was going to make it. There was no place I thought of I could go if I didn't make it there, so I worked and I worked and I worked, and I finally came up with a character that got laughs. And I hung onto that character like a lifeline. Then I got secure enough with that, so I started developing a library of characters around him. And when I played them, I got laughs. I finally reached the point where I could do it not with extreme characters, but closer and closer to myself. But it took a long time.'

Despite Arkin's misgivings, he counted Groucho Marx among his admirers. But he quit Second City in 1963 to join second wife, Barbara Dana, in the Broadway production of Carl Reiner's Enter Laughing. Quickly being promoted to the leading role, Arkin won a Tony Award. He also wrote, directed, and starred in That's Me (1963), the story of a Puerto Rican musician trying to make it in New York that was nominated for Best Live-Action Short at the Oscars.

Moving on to Mike Nichols's stage hit, Luv (1964), Arkin caught the eye of Hollywood director Norman Jewison. However, he was first committed to directing the play, Eh? (1966), which made a star of Dustin Hoffman, who would sufficiently impress Nichols to take the lead in The Graduate (1967). Jewison cast Arkin as Lieutenant Rozanov, the Soviet submariner who causes a storm when he runs aground on Gloucester Island off the coast of New England in the Cold War comedy, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966). Making the most of a role written for Peter Ustinov, Arkin received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

However, Jewison believed the perfectionism Arkin exhibited in order to master a role prevented him from becoming a major star. 'Alan's never had an identifiable screen personality because he just disappears into his characters,' he told one reporter. 'His accents are impeccable, and he's even able to change his look. But, oddly enough, this gift has worked against him. He's always been underestimated.' Comparisons were made with Peter Sellers and they found themselves in separate vignettes alongside Shirley MacLaine in Vittorio De Sica's Woman Times Seven (1967). Yet, when Sellers refused Bud Yorkin's Inspector Clouseau (1968), Arkin struggled to step into his shoes.

Jack of All Trades

Arkin was far more effective as the menacing Harry Roat in Terence Young's Wait Until Dark (1967), as he manages to convince the blind Suzy Hendrix (Audrey Hepburn) that he's various different people, as he attempts to infiltrate her apartment in search of some stashed drugs. Writing in Danse Macabre, Stephen King wondered whether this was 'maybe the greatest evocation of screen villainy ever'. Unlike Hepburn, Arkin missed out on an Oscar nod, but he drew a nomination for playing deaf-mute engraver John Singer in Robert Ellis Miller's adaptation of Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), which really should be on disc. As should Arthur Hiller's Popi (1969), in which Arkin played a Puerto Rican trying to pass himself off as a political refugee from Cuba.

Having earned a second Oscar nomination for Best Live-Action Short in directing his sons in People Soup (1969), Arkin won an Obie Award for his off-Broadway direction of Jules Feiffer's Little Murders. Two years later, he would join forces with Elliott Gould in a film version, in which they respectively played oddball photographer Alfred Chamberlain, and short-fused NYPD detective, Miles Practice. The following year, Arkin directed the original Broadway run of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys, which would be filmed with George Burns and Walter Matthau by Herbert Ross in 1975 and with Peter Falk and Woody Allen by John Erman in 1995.

Despite this success calling the shots, Arkin preferred acting and he landed one of the roles of his career when Mike Nichols cast him as Lieutenant John Yossarian in the 1970 adaptation of Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Arkin excels as the USAF pilot who discovers the only way he can become unfit for active duty is to prove himself insane by continuing to fly missions. However, the eight-month shoot proved arduous and Arkin later opined, 'If they had shot footage of the making of the film it would've been a hell of a lot closer to the book than the movie was.'

Indeed, he later refused to discuss the film in interviews. 'I'm not happy with my work as Yossarian, I'll tell you that. That picture almost took down the whole studio. And something of that magnitude, it rubs off on everybody. For four or five years after that, everything I did just tanked. Even when I would get scripts that I thought were imaginative, that could be good, they'd end up getting the wrong director and he'd make a mess of it. I suffered terribly.'

He has a point, as none of Deadhead Miles, Last of the Red Hot Lovers (both 1972), Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins, or Hearts of the West (both 1975) is currently available on disc. Cinema Paradiso users can see Richard Rush's Freebie and the Bean (1974), in which Arkin plays San Francisco cop Dan Delgado alongside James Caan's Tim Walker. Yet, while this spawned numerous buddy cop movies, its racism, sexism, and homophobia are very much of their time. As is the brownface make-up that Arkin wore to play a corrupt Mexican.

He donned a beard to play Sigmund Freud in Nicholas Meyer's The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1977), an intriguing insight into the characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that cast Nicol Williamson as Sherlock Holmes, Robert Duvall as Dr Watson, and Laurence Olivier as Professor Moriarty. But the sparsity of worthwhile roles prompted Arkin to return to the director's chair for Fire Sale (1977), in which he also starred as Ezra Fikus, who conspires with brother Russell (Rob Reiner), to burn down the family clothing business to claim on the insurance.

Arkin found another splendid foil in Peter Falk in Arthur Hiller's The In-Laws (1979), as dentist Sheldon S. Kornpett and businessman Vince Ricardo develop a mutual apathy during the preparations for their children's wedding. Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks would assume the role in Andrew Fleming's 2003 remake. Yet, while he drew a Saturn nomination for Marshall Brickman's Simon (1980), Arkin went on an indifferent trot that explains why The Magician of Lublin (1979), Improper Channels, Chu Chu and the Philly Flash (both 1981), The Return of Captain Invincible (1983), Bad Medicine (1985), and Coup de Ville (1990) are all currently unavailable.

Cases could be made for the release of Ted Kotcheff's Joshua Then and Now (1985), John Cassavetes's final feature, Big Trouble (1986), and Jack Gold's Escape From Sobibor (1987), in which Arkin is potently defiant as Leon Fendhendler leading an uprising at the Polish extermination camp. But Cinema Paradiso members can enjoy Alan and Adam Arkin playing off each other in Larry Cohen's werewolf comedy, Full Moon High (1981), catch him guesting in St Elsewhere (1982-88), hear him voicing Schmendrick the bungling magician in Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass's charming animation, The Last Unicorn (1982), and heading back to biblical times for Michael Ray Rhodes's The Fourth Wise Man (1985).

The Bounce-Back Trail

Marshall Brickman has his theories on why Arkin had his struggles. 'Alan does not meet you halfway as an actor,' he suggested. 'He's a very serious actor. I think he's brilliant. But he's not interested in winning you over via personality. The way he photographs has a kind of austerity that's a little hard for an audience to take. You either like Alan or you don't.' Fortunately, as the 1990s dawned, a clutch of directors who did like Arkin offered him a sequence of roles that edged him towards national treasure status.

'I'm a character actor,' Arkin once unequivocably put it, 'and they call if there's a part I'm right for. The nice thing is, I always go on working.' The first to come calling was Tim Burton, who saw Arkin as dull, but decent suburbanite Bill Boggs in Edward Scissorhands, while Sidney Pollack cast him as tough guy Joe Volpi in Havana (both 1990). Joe Johnston recruited him for 1930s inventor Peevy Peabody in Disney's crack at the superhero genre, The Rocketeer (1991).

Demonstrating his worth as an ensemble member, Arkin disappeared into George Aaronow proposing a mutiny at the real estate company in David Mamet's film version of his Pulitzer Prize-winning play,

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). He would later reveal, 'It was the hardest role I ever worked on. The dialogue was murderously difficult. Screenwriter David Mamet is harder than Shakespeare, by far.'

He cameo'd as the police captain in Thomas Schlamme's dark comedy, So I Married an Axe Murderer, and twinkled as the owner of Camp Tamakwa in Mike Binder's rite of passage, Indian Summer (both 1993). Moreover, he bounced back from the misfires North (1994), The Jerky Boys: The Movie (1995), and Steal Big Steal Little (1996) to pick up his third Emmy nomination opposite son Adam in a guest slot on the medical series, Chicago Hope (1994-2000). In fact, 1997 turned out to be a good year, as Arkin also showed well as assassin John Cusack's psychiatrist in George Armitage's Grosse Pointe Blank and as kidnapped Americn Ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick in Bruno Barretto's fact-based thriller, Four Days in September.

Either side of this duo, Arkin gelled well with Nick Nolte as the painter who's also a Soviet agent in Keith Gordon's take on Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night (1996) and gave Ethan Hawke a hard time as the persistent detective in Andrew Niccol's dystopian sci-fi saga, Gattaca (1997). Refusing to mark time, he amused as Natasha Lyonne's Jewish father. Murray Abromowitz, in Tamara Jenkins's teenpic, Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), and drew hisses as the sceptical Max Frankfurter doubting the claims of ghetto shopkeeper Jakob Heym (Robin Williams) in Peter Kassowitz's Jakob the Liar (1999).

America's Sweethearts, Arkin drew solid notices as Gene, the insurance manager seeking therapy in order to cope with his son's drug addiction in Jill Sprecher's Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (both 2001). Three years later, he would play the psychiatrist listening half-heartedly to Robert Downey, Jr.'s weird dream in Steven Soderbergh's 'Equilibrium' section of Eros (2004). In the interim, however, Arkin worked on a couple of interesting TV-movies, as security expert Harry Rowen in Rod Holcomb's Watergate drama, The Pentagon Papers, and as mercenary Sam Dreben in Bruce Beresford's And Starring Pancho Villa As Himself (both 2003), which chronicles how budding film-maker Frank Thayer (Eion Bailey) tried to make a star of the eponymous Mexican revolutionary (Antonio Banderas).

Apart from playing Artie Venizelos, a waiter with a dreadful secret, in Chazz Palminteri's Noel (2004) and a 2005 guest slot in Will & Grace (1998-2006), Arkin was off screen for over three years. However, he returned triumphantly as Edwin Hoover, the heroin-snorting and defiantly eccentric grandfather in Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris's Little Miss Sunshine. 'The two directors didn't want to give me the job because I was too young and vital,' Arkin recalled. 'But after they couldn't find anyone for about six months, they said, "Well, we might as well go back to Alan Arkin." By that time, I had gotten old.'

As Mike Nichols once noted, Arkin had the ability to become 'any person he's observed, and to make it both real and a comment on the person at the same time'. This was certainly true of Grandpa Edwin. 'He's a maniac,' Arkin opined, 'but to me he was absolutely believable.' Back in 1982, he had told a reporter, 'I've studied acting seriously. I'm not the clown who wants to be Hamlet or anything like that. I just think that regarding oneself as comic means that one's primary obligation is to get laughs.'

He certainly got those, as audiences warmed to Edwin and pundits started speculating about awards season. 'I've never met Oscar Buzz,' Arkin joked. 'I've heard a lot about him, but I've never met the man.' However, he followed up a BAFTA triumph with the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Not that this helped some of his other outings in 2006, as few got to see the neighbourly feud between Flagg Purdy (Arkin) and Gus Flak (Austin Pendleton) in Neal Miller's Raising Flagg or Arkin's turn as Fr Behnke, the priest counselling a young Jesuit through crisis of faith in Murray Robinson's The Novice.

He was more widely seen, though, as Arlin Forester, the manager of the Landrock Pacific Bank that Harrison Ford is threatened into robbing by Paul Bettany in Richard Loncraine's Firewall. Similarly, holiday audiences caught him and Ann-Margret as in-laws Bud and Sylvia Newman paying Scott Calvin (Tim Allen) a visit at the North Pole in Michael Lembeck's The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (both 2006). But he was more effective as the senator with an agenda in Gavin Hood's Rendition (2007), a treatise on the War on Terror that co-starred Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Meryl Streep.

National Treasure

There was no escaping Arkin in 2008, however, as Joe Lorkowski encouraged daughters Rose (Amy Adams) and Norah (Emily Blunt) with their crime scene cleansing business in Christine Jeff's Sunshine Cleaning and cropped up as the chief of CONTROL keeping Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell) and Agent 29 (Anne Hathaway) in the fight against KAOS in Peter Segal's reboot of the classic Mel Brooks and Buck Henry sitcom, Get Smart. He proved an easier boss for Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston as Palm Beach Post editor Arnie Klein in David Frankel's shaggy dog story, Marley & Me (all 2008), before rising to the challenge of playing Herb Lee, the publisher who marries a woman 30 years his junior (played by Blake Lively and Robin Wright) in Rebecca Miller's adaptation of her own novel, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009).

The roles kept coming, even though the films made little impact at the box office. He popped up as prison guard Andy Garcia's acting coach in Raymond De Felitta's dysfunctional family comedy, City Island (2009), before reuniting with Jill Sprecher on Thin Ice, in which he stole scenes as Gorvy Hauer, the elderly farmer whose valuable violin is targeted by an unscrupulous insurance salesman. Then, prior to a cameo as a tour guide in James Bobin's The Muppets, he provided paternal support as Mitchell Planko, Sr. in David Dobkin's The Change-Up (all 2011), which sees son Ryan Reynolds swap bodies with Jason Bateman after an unusual fountain incident.

In 2012, Arkin was plucked from a retirement home as onetime getaway driver Richard Hirsch by old pals Al Pacino and Christopher Walken in Fisher Stevens's comic caper, Stand Up Guys. However, he gave one of the performances of his career as 1970s Hollywood producer Lester Siegel helping Ben Affleck's CIA agent set up a bogus film project as part of a plan to rescue those trapped in the American embassy in Teheran in the Best Picture winner, Argo (both 2012). Arkin received another Oscar nomination for his work and moved briskly on to play Rance Holloway, the magician who inspires Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi to create a double act that is threatened by street magician Jim Carrey in Don Scardino's The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013).

He took the minor role of Officer Riggs to work with son Adam in Adam and Evan Beamer's comedy, In Security, in which the pair behind a failing home security firm turn to burglary to boost business. But he was more to the fore as ailing trainer Louis 'Lightning' Conlon in Peter Segal's Grudge Match (both 2013), which sees long-retired boxers Henry 'Razor' Sharp (Sylvester Stallone) and Billy 'The Kid' McDonnen (Robert De Niro) return to the ring for a 'Grudgement Day' bout.

Staying in a sporting vein, Arkin essayed grizzled major league scout Ray Poitevint on a trip to see if any promising Indian cricketers could play baseball in Craig Gillespie's fact-based feel-good, Million Dollar Arm (2014). He then played Diane Keaton's father, Bucky Newport, in Jessie Nelson's Christmas With the Coopers (2015), an ensemble festive frolic that features Steve Martin as the voice of the family dog. And speaking of vocal gigs, Arkin revelled in the chance to play reclusive author J.D. Salinger in the cult animation series, BoJack Horseman (2015-16). 'I thought BoJack was gloriously nuts,' Arkin later revealed, 'and I knew J.D. Salinger, so I thought it would be fun to spend some time playing him.'

Arkin believed 'the less work I get, the better my health. The stress in the market place is enormous and my system has a fast reaction. I can't deal with stress anymore.' Despite slowing down, he suffered a minor stroke in November 2016 and third wife Suzanne Newlander (whom he had married in 1996) put him on a strict organic diet. He grew his own vegetables at his Santa Fe home, where he went for long walks in the New Mexican countryside and spent two hours a day meditating.

Returning to the fray, Arkin teamed with Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman as the retirees who decide to rob a bank after losing their pensions in Zach Braff's Going in Style (2017). Money was also key to his cameo as J. Griffin Remington, the tycoon whose Atlas Ford Bank offers to help ringmaster Max Medici (Danny DeVito) with an investment in his circus in Tim Burton's 2019 live-action remake of Disney's 1941 animated gem, Dumbo. This is almost where Cinema Paradiso users have to bid Arkin adieu, as his dual Emmy-nominated teaming with Michael Douglas in the Netflix series, The Kominsky Method, is unavailable to rent and the same is true of Peter Berg's action comedy, Spenser Confidential (2020), and Chris Smith's documentary, Sr. (2022), which pays tribute to film-maker, Robert Downey, Sr.

Fingers crossed that we'll get to see David M. Rosenthal's The Smack, a con trick-cum-heist caper that proved to be Arkin's swan song in teaming him with fellow Oscar winners, Casey Affleck and Kathy Bates. There's plenty to order in the meantime, however, including Kyle Balda's Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022), in which Arkin evidently had fun voicing deposed Vicious 6 leader, Wild Knuckles.