Lee J. Cobb: Characters of an Actor

308 Pages·2014·14.33 MB·English

by  Donald Dewey

L J. C
EE OBB
L J. C
EE OBB
Characters of an Actor
Donald Dewey
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-
Publication Data Dewey, Donald, 1940– Lee J. Cobb : characters of an actor / Donald Dewey.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8108-8771-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8108-8772-5 (ebook) 1. Cobb, Lee J., 1911–
1976. 2. Actors—United States—Biography. I. Title.
PN2287.C55D49 2014
792.02'8092—dc23
[B] 2013035464
™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard
for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
For Joe Mancini
Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: The Actor: Characters and Actors
Chapter 2: Pressrooms and Prodigies
Chapter 3: The Actor: Stanislavsky in America
Chapter 4: Group Experiences
Chapter 5: The Actor: How Was School? Fine.
Chapter 6: Golden (and Not So Golden) Opportunities
Chapter 7: Married to More Than the Mob
Chapter 8: The Actor: All in the Family
Chapter 9: Clashes in the East
Chapter 10: Clashes in the West
Chapter 11: The Actor: The Thought That Counts
Chapter 12: Trotting with Fox
Chapter 13: Attention Being Paid
Chapter 14: The Actor: Studio of the Stars
Chapter 15: The Un-American Dream
Chapter 16: Going Door to Door
Chapter 17: On All Fronts
Chapter 18: Matters of the Heart . . . and Head
Chapter 19: All the Guilty Men
Chapter 20: The Actor: Tele-Emoting
Chapter 21: Jewish and Other Kinds of Westerns
Chapter 22: Comedy Is Hard
Chapter 23: Between the Dragon and His Wrath
Chapter 24: Bullies and Connivers
Chapter 25: The Actor: The Journeyman
Chapter 26: Finishing Touches
Chapter 27: The Actor
Filmography
Stageography
Television Appearances
Bibliography
About the Author
Acknowledgments
S contributed to the writing of this book.
CORES OF PEOPLE IN SEVERAL COUNTRIES
Some were gracious in consenting to interviews about their personal and
professional experiences with Lee Cobb; others ferreted through files (okay,
most of them pressed a button) for requested documents; and still others fielded
relentless phone calls for arranging interviews. There were also a couple of
people who weren’t very helpful, but why bother with them?
Among those interviewed for their personal and professional experiences were
(in alphabetical order) Rene Auberjonois, Norma Barzman, Louis Bershad, Tony
Bill, Glen Birchfield, Claire Bloom, Gary Clark, Jimmy Cota, Brian Dennehy,
Tony DiNicola, James Drury, Gerald Freedman, Dean Hargrove, Earl Holliman,
Stacy Keach, Don Keefer, Jeff Kibbee, Meredith Kibbee, Yaphet Kotto, Donald
Kranze, Norman Lear, Mike Livingston, Robert Loggia, Leonard Luizzi, Loring
Mandel, Patty McCormack, Christopher Miles, Roger Moore, Franco Nero,
Nehemiah Persoff, Gene Reynolds, Mark Rydell, Eva Marie Saint, Amy Saltz,
George Segal, William Shatner, Roberta Shore, Robert Stattel, Warren Stevens
(since deceased), Daniel J. Travanti, Robert Walden, Eli Wallach, and Gene
Wilder.
Because so much time has elapsed since Cobb’s death in 1976, many of his
important co-players have also passed on, but in numerous instances they had
spoken of their work with him with their children, and in this regard I am
grateful for the recollections of Stephen Carnovsky, son of Morris Carnovsky;
Mark Conte, son of Richard Conte; Sheila Dehner, daughter of John Dehner;
Julie Garfield, daughter of John Garfield; Emily Hubley, daughter of Faith
Hubley; John Ireland Jr., son of John Ireland; Laurie Kennedy, daughter of
Arthur Kennedy; Karl Kraber, son of Tony Kraber; Cameron Mitchell Jr., son of
Cameron Mitchell; Camille Mitchell, daughter of Cameron Mitchell; Danny
Opatoshu, son of David Opatoshu; Marina Pratt, daughter of Bud Bohnen;
Michael Ward, son of Jane Wyatt; and Martha Wiseman, daughter of Joseph
Wiseman.
The remarks attributed to Rod Steiger, Robert Vaughn, and Shelley Winters
trace from my previous projects.
The small army of people from libraries, agencies, and institutions who
worked in the trenches to dig up documents or set up interviews included Susan
Abler from the Department of Information Studies at the UCLA Graduate
School; Katie Allen; Ellen Bailey from the Pasadena Playhouse; Mike Bartolic
from the California State Archives; Robert Beseda; Charlotte Bonelli; Mark
Ekman of the Paley Center for Media; Tammy Fishman from the California
State Library; Bonnie Foster; Stewart Gillies from the British Library; Ette
Goldwasser from the Jewish Museum; Dennis Goodno; Michael Kinter; Foster
Hirsch; Kristine Krueger from the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Judy Milrad; Gareth Owen; Chana Pollack;
Jeff Sanderson; David Smith from the New York Public Library; and Morgen
Stevens-Gammon from the Museum of the City of New York. Not to be left out
are personal friends who came up with solutions to annoying problems or just
had to hear about the problems in the first place: Michele Gershman, Rebecca
Gribetz, Sidney Gribetz, Grace Kiley, Barbara Mayfield, Odile Pouchol, and
Silvana Silvestri. And then there was Bill Baker, who provided all kinds of
technical assistance from the start to the end of the project. And sometimes his
assistance even paid off.
Despite all the contributions of the aforementioned, even their help would
have lacked context without the Cobb family. I am deeply indebted to Julie Cobb
for our initial contacts in talking about the project, for her involvement of her
brother Vincent, for her suggestions of other people to approach, and for her
general encouragement; to Vincent Cobb for his avalanche of family letters,
photographs, and DVDs of his father’s television appearances, and for the long
hours he spent gathering these materials and other items; to Tony Cobb for his
photographs, other contact recommendations, and overall geniality when that
was more than necessary; and to Jerry Cobb for his recorded conversations with
his uncle Norman Jacob. It goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway, that all
four of the Cobbs were also incredibly patient and informative when besieged
with questions covering everything from their father’s professional outings to his
doughnut eating at home. I can only hope this book reflects the father they knew.
Unless otherwise noted, photos courtesy of Vincent and Jerry Cobb.
Chapter 1
The Actor: Characters and Actors
T among actors than character actor. It bellows a
HERE IS NO MORE RIDICULED TERM
box office system of distinguishing performers billed above the title from those
below it; demeans the former with the implication that they are incapable of
playing anything but a fixed, pampered persona; suggests the latter can be
reduced to mere masters of opportune disguise; and disparages the actor’s craft
as a whole as structurally dependent on makeup and economic formulas. Craft
and range come off as almost incidental to hierarchical appointment. But even
those who disdain the term have been exposed to it long enough to cite without
hesitation performers who meet the guidelines for this fabled “character actor.”
The most prominent names don’t fall within that “who are those guys?” jokiness
that has spawned paperbacks and television shows in recent years, but instead
occupy an autograph zone between those who can help fund projects through
sheer interest in them and those who report to casting directors for work as
members of the jury or the posse. Among those who come readily to mind as
character actors from film and theater are Claude Rains, Donald Crisp, Agnes
Moorehead, Lionel and Ethel Barrymore, Arthur Kennedy, Thelma Ritter, Jack
Warden, Maureen Stapleton, Robert Loggia, Robert Duvall, Judi Dench, James
Earl Jones, and everybody who played the chief villain in a James Bond movie.
And Lee J. Cobb.
There is more at work here than the notion of “supporting players,” those
whose roles extend only through a portion of the playing time of a cast’s leads or
those spurned by celebrity media physical dictates about what leading men and
women should look like. At various points in their careers the most noted
designated character actors themselves had the leading roles in front of a camera
or on the stage, often resoundingly so. Conversely, it is difficult to imagine any
producer who ever accepted the likes of an Edward G. Robinson or Dustin
Hoffman as a classic physical beauty. But these are satellite considerations for
the character actor label habitually stuck on performers who, allegedly unlike