CLIFF ROBERTSON, OSCAR-WINNING REBEL
Cliff Robertson starred as Lt. John F. Kennedy in the 1962 film “PT 109.” Less memorable was “Too Late the Hero,” in 1970.
By PETER KEEPNEWS and RICHARD SEVERO
Published: September 10, 2011
Cliff Robertson, the ruggedly handsome actor who won an Oscar for “Charly” but found himself frozen out of jobs for almost four years after he exposed a prominent Hollywood studio boss as a forger and embezzler, died Saturday on Long Island. He was 88 and lived in Water Mill, N.Y.
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Tina Fineberg/Associated Press
Mr. Robertson, in 2004, won an Academy Award for his performance in “Charly.
A son-in-law, Donald Saunders, said Mr. Robertson died at Stony Brook University Medical Center a day after his birthday.
His long movie career began with “Picnic” in 1955 and continued through “Spider-Man” and its two sequels in the 21st century. Also a familiar face in television dramas from the earliest days of the medium, he was consistently praised by critics, but never quite reached the top echelon of movie stardom.
Mr. Robertson, a frequent critic of the movie industry who once said he went to Hollywood only to work and never to live, blew the whistle on David Begelman, the president of Columbia Pictures, in 1977 after he discovered that Mr. Begelman had forged his name to a $10,000 studio check. Mr. Begelman was subsequently accused of embezzling more than $61,000 from the studio.
He pressed his complaint against the advice of many in Hollywood who did not want Mr. Begelman to become a liability to the movie industry. Mr. Begelman pleaded no contest to charges of grand theft and was fined $5,000 and sentenced to three years’ probation. He was first suspended and then fired. His legal problems notwithstanding, he was hired to run Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1980.
Mr. Robertson, on the other hand, temporarily became a nonperson in Hollywood — essentially blacklisted, he said, by forces within his own industry.
“People told me I set a dangerous precedent,” he said in 1994. “My ex-wife said that if I had played the game I would have owned the town, but I was always too independent.”
Mr. Robertson eventually found his way back into Hollywood’s good graces, probably because his talent was impossible to ignore. An actor who was often more compelling than the movies he made, he won the Academy Award in 1969 for his performance in one of the better ones, “Charly,” in which he played a lovable bakery worker with the I.Q. of a 5-year-old whose intelligence is raised to genius level by an experiment, only to inexorably regress to what it had been.
“Charly” was a hit. Mr. Robertson’s directorial debut, “J. W. Coop” (1972), in which he played an aging rodeo performer who regains his freedom after spending almost a decade in jail for writing a bad check and assaulting a sheriff, was not. But like “Charly,” it was a labor of love — Mr. Robertson also had a hand in writing the screenplay — and like “Charly,” it was widely praised.
While he worked on that film, he said in a 1972 interview, he turned down lucrative offers for others, including “Dirty Harry.” He was already almost as well known for the movies he did not make as for the ones he did. He starred in “Days of Wine and Roses” on television, but Jack Lemmon starred in the movie. And when Tennessee Williams’s “Orpheus Descending,” in which he had appeared on Broadway, was made into the movie “The Fugitive Kind,” his part was played by Marlon Brando.
Of the movie roles he did play, he told The New York Times in 1972, “Nobody made more mediocre films than I did.” His early credits included forgettable entries like “Autumn Leaves” (1956), a vehicle for Joan Crawford; “Gidget,” the original teenage surfing movie (1959); and “Sunday in New York” (1963), in which Peter Nero’s theme song was quite possibly more memorable than the script.
He also starred in numerous war movies — including, memorably, “PT 109” (1963), in which he played John F. Kennedy, and, less memorably, “Too Late the Hero” (1970), which he described as “a bunch of junk.”
He earned good reviews when he had good scripts, as he did in the political drama “The Best Man” (1964), written by Gore Vidal and based on his play. In the 1975 film “Three Days of the Condor” he played another sinister figure — an amoral finagler for a federal spy agency — and got more good notices.
Clifford Parker Robertson III was born on Sept. 9, 1923, in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, the son of Clifford Parker Robertson II, the idle heir to a tidy sum of ranching money, and the former Audrey Winningham. His parents were divorced when he was a year old, and his mother died when he was 2. He was never close to his father and was raised by his maternal grandmother and an aunt.
In high school he acted in student plays, mostly to avoid classes that bored him. After serving in the merchant marine, he went to Antioch College in Ohio. He became interested in journalism there and worked briefly for a local newspaper and radio station, but the dean encouraged him to pursue acting.
He left Antioch without getting a degree and moved to New York, where he studied at the Actors Studio. His presence and his soft sandpaper voice soon won him roles: he appeared in a production of “Three Men on a Horse” that made the rounds of Catskill hotels, toured with the national company of “Mister Roberts” and made his Broadway debut in 1953 in the play “Late Love.”
His film debut came two years later, shortly after he appeared onstage with Helen Hayes in Joshua Logan’s play “The Wisteria Trees,” when Mr. Logan cast him in “Picnic.” But in those years, Mr. Robertson was primarily a television actor. He appeared on “The United States Steel Hour,” “The Chrysler Theater,” “Playhouse 90” and other mainstays of quality repertory programming in what came to be called television’s golden age. He won an Emmy in 1966 for a “Chrysler Theater” performance.
He returned to series television as a regular on “Falcon Crest” in the 1983-84 season and played Henry Ford in the 1987 mini-series “Ford: The Man and the Machine.” His later movies included “Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken” (1991), “Renaissance Man” (1994) and “Spider-Man” and its two sequels, in which he played the title character’s uncle (killed in the first movie, he was seen in flashback in the later installments). He was also a television spokesman for AT&T for 10 years.
Mr. Robertson was twice married, to the actresses Cynthia Stone and Dina Merrill. Both marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by a daughter, Stephanie Saunders of Charleston, S.C., and one grandchild. Another daughter, Heather Robertson, died in 2007.
Late in life, Mr. Robertson spent several years trying in vain to get backing for a sequel to “Charly,” going so far as to shoot 15 minutes of material on his own. “You don’t have to be a 17-year-old zealot to wage guerrilla warfare,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1998. “Some of us, by nature, are intrigued by the challenge.”
In that same interview, he reflected on his role in the Begelman scandal, two decades earlier. “I never intended to play Don Quixote,” he said, “and I don’t intend to go out looking for more windmills, I can tell you. I love making movies too much.”
Sarah Maslin Nir contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 11, 2011
An earlier version of this obituary misstated Cliff Robertson’s date of birth. He was born on Sept. 9, 1923, not 1925.
Cliff Robertson.
A talented and beautifully handsome actor who will be missed.
Yes, Mr . Robertson was an Oscar-winner for the film Charly, but, I remember him best in the classic Twilight Zone series. He starred in “One Hundred Yards Over the Rim”, and my favourite episode “The Dummy”which aired May 4, 1962. In that episode he gave a tour-de-force performance that to this day stays in my mind.
Mr. Cliff Robertson—pilot, aircraft collector, columnist, and actor.
Rest in peace, Mr. Robertson.
Rest in peace.
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EVE BRENT, PLAYED JANE IN TARZAN MOVIES
By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK
Published: September 7, 2011
Eve Brent, a longtime character actress whose most recognizable role was Jane to Gordon Scott’s Tarzan, died on Aug. 27 in Sun Valley, Calif. She was 81.
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MGM, via Photofest
Eve Brent in Tarzan’s Fight for Life (1958).
Her death was confirmed by a representative of Pacifica Hospital of the Valley.
Ms. Brent rebooted the character of Jane, Tarzan’s civilized love interest, in the 1958 films “Tarzan and the Trappers” and “Tarzan’s Fight for Life,” after the role had been left out of the two previous Tarzan movies. She said she took the part of Jane to please her son, who was around 6 at the time. Though it raised her profile, she later concluded that playing Jane had been a disastrous career move.
“I really couldn’t get work as an actress because of Jane,” Ms. Brent told a Tarzan fan site in 2007. “You get stereotyped, at least in the business at that time.”
She spent the next 10 years or so acting in theater and playing bit parts in films like the comedy “A Guide for the Married Man” (1967), in which her character was Blowsy Blonde, and the Clint Eastwood movie “Coogan’s Bluff” (1968), in which she played a prostitute.
She started landing more varied movie roles in the 1970s and won a best supporting actress award from the Academy of Science Fiction Fantasy and Horror Films for “Fade to Black” (1980), in which she played a victim of a murderous film buff.
Her later movies included “The Green Mile” (1999), with Tom Hanks; and “Garfield” (2004), with Bill Murray. She also acted on television, most recently on popular sitcoms like “Community” and “Scrubs.”
Her final film, “Hit List,” is scheduled for release in early 2012.
Eve Brent was born Jean Ewers in Texas in 1930. She grew up in Fort Worth and began acting on the radio as a child.
She changed her name to Eve Brent at the director Sam Fuller’s urging for the western “Forty Guns” (1957).
Survivors include a son, James Lewis.
Despite the career drawbacks of playing Jane, Ms. Brent told the Tarzan fan site that the role had its rewards.
“The memory of being Jane, and the fact of being Jane, has allowed me to be a part of motion picture history, and a part of all the lives of all the people who have enjoyed Tarzan,” she said. “I am so grateful for that.”
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WARDELL QUEZERGUE, HITMAKER OF NEW ORLEANS R&B
Published: September 7, 2011
Wardell Quezergue, a prime mover in New Orleans rhythm and blues since the early 1950s as a producer, arranger and bandleader for a long list of artists including the Dixie Cups, Professor Longhair, the Neville Brothers and Dr. John, died on Tuesday in Metairie, La. He was 81.
Ebet Roberts
Wardell Quezergue
The cause was complications of congestive heart failure, his son Brian said.
As a producer and arranger, Mr. Quezergue (pronounced ka-ZAIR) was associated with a string of local and national hits, many of them propelled by his punchy, syncopated horn arrangements. These included “Big Chief” by Professor Longhair, “Iko Iko” by the Dixie Cups, “Barefootin’ ” by Robert Parker, “Groove Me” by King Floyd, “Mr. Big Stuff” by Jean Knight and “Misty Blue” by Dorothy Moore.
With the drummer Smokey Johnson, he wrote the 1964 instrumental “It Ain’t My Fault,” a New Orleans song later sampled by Mariah Carey, the rapper Silkk the Shocker and others.
“He introduced a new sound, with a richer, fuller horn section, and funky rhythms,” said John Broven, the author of “Rhythm and Blues in New Orleans.” “It gave New Orleans music a whole new dimension.”
“Groove Me” and “Mr. Big Stuff,” recorded at the Malaco Records studios in Jackson, Miss., became Top 10 hits in the early 1970s and helped revive the flagging fortunes of the New Orleans sound. A variety of artists then flocked to Mr. Quezergue, including Paul Simon, who worked with him on the album “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon.”
He later worked as an arranger on the albums “Fiyo on the Bayou” for the Neville Brothers; “Orchid in the Storm” for Aaron Neville; “Goin’ Back to New Orleans” for Dr. John; “Deacon John’s Jump Blues” for Deacon John Moore; and two albums for the blues singer Clarence (Gatemouth) Brown, “Gate Swings” and “American Music, Texas Style.”
“If I hear something, immediately I start arranging,” Mr. Quezergue told the NPR series “American Roots” in 2010. “Arrangement, to me, has to be part of the song itself, as if the two were made for each other at the moment that the writer wrote the song, and it should fit like a glove.”
Wardell Joseph Quezergue was born on March 12, 1930, in New Orleans to a musical family. He took up the trumpet and while still in high school began writing arrangements.
After leaving high school and enlisting in the Army, he continued to arrange for military bands while stationed in Tokyo. When his unit was sent to fight in Korea, he was held back to continue his arranging work. His replacement died in combat, inspiring Mr. Quezergue to write a classical composition, “A Creole Mass,” which he did not complete until 2000.
After returning to New Orleans he formed the Royal Dukes of Rhythm with other ex-servicemen. The group became a fixture, performing at dances and serving as the house band for visiting musical acts.
The bandleader Dave Bartholomew hired him as an arranger for Imperial Records, where he worked with artists like Fats Domino and Earl King and recorded with his own band, Wardell and the Sultans.
At Nola Records, which he helped found in 1964, Mr. Quezergue produced singles for local stars like Willie Tee and Eddie Bo. But despite national chart successes like “Barefootin,’ ” a Top 10 hit in 1966, the label went out of business in 1968.
He struck a deal with Malaco Records to supply artists and his production skills in return for studio time and session musicians. Driving a group of singers to the studio in a borrowed schoolbus, he presided over a marathon recording session in 1970 that yielded “Groove Me” and “Mr. Big Stuff,” both of which Atlantic and Stax Records turned down.
Released on Malaco’s newly created Chimneyville subsidiary, “Groove Me” took off and, after being picked up by a chastened Atlantic, rose to the top of the rhythm-and-blues charts. Stax, in a similar turnaround, decided to distribute “Mr. Big Stuff,” which also rose to the top of the R&B charts and reached No. 2 on the pop charts.
“Wardell delivered those hits at a time when New Orleans really needed them,” Mr. Broven said. “The city’s music scene was dead, but the symbolism of those hits gave New Orleans the impetus to get going again.”
In addition to his son Brian, Mr. Quezergue is survived by four other sons, Donald, Wayne, Victor and Martin; eight daughters, Violetta Johnson, Gaynelle Mitchell, and Iris, Diana, Yoshi, Helen, Ramona and Lesley Quezergue; a brother, Leo; and many grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. His wife of 60 years, the former Yoshi Tamaki, died this year.
In 2009 he released his own album, “Music for Children Ages 3 to 103: The St. Agnes Sessions.”
Ann
BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS 