Donald Dewey - Lee J. Cobb: Characters of an Actor

Lee J. Cobb

Lee J. Cobb

Characters of an Actor

Donald Dewey

Rowman & Littlefield

Lanham Boulder New York Toronto Plymouth, UK

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

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Copyright 2014 by Rowman & Littlefield

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

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., 19111976. 2. ActorsUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.

PN2287.C55D49 2014

792.02'8092dc23

[B] 2013035464

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

For Joe Mancini

Contents

Acknowledgments

Scores of people in several countries contributed to the writing of this book. 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 werent 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 Cobbs 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 fathers 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 well say it anyway, that all four of the Cobbs were also incredibly patient and informative when besieged with questions covering everything from their fathers 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

There is no more ridiculed term among actors than character actor . It bellows a 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 actors 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 dont 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 casts 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 stars, play characters completely divorced from themselves. The presumption of knowing what those true selves are is just the first of the numerous arrogances in such a distinction.