Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Character Actor

  • Edward Everett Horton Birthday Tribute

    Edward Everett Horton Birthday Tribute

    I note that today is the birthday of character actor Edward Everett Horton. Horton’s screen career began in the silents, where he started out as a comic lead. By the time of the talkies, he settled into supporting roles as the Nervous Nellie best friend (playing second banana to Fred Astaire, among others). His characters often appear with self-absorbed smirks on their faces, gliding obliviously through life. But security is fleeting, and time and again their faith in the status quo is abruptly undermined. When the rug is yanked out from under, surprise, anxiety, and frustration are registered in a trademark double-take.

    Earlier experience on the stage, in vaudeville and on Broadway, allowed Horton to hone his comic timing. He was the ne plus ultra of flustered, fidgety fussbudgets. Over a 50-year career, he would appear in some 130 movies.

    To anyone who grew up in the era of classic television or its reruns, Horton will be recognized as the voice of the narrator in Rocky and Bullwinkle’s “Fractured Fairy Tales,” as Roaring Chicken on “F Troop,” or as Chief Screaming Chicken (alongside Vincent Price’s Egghead) on “Batman.” Furthermore, I have seen no confirmation of this, but surely the character of C-3PO owes a thing or two to Horton. Without knowing anything of his romantic proclivities (in real life he sold himself as a bachelor), on screen, alongside Franklin Pangborn and Eric Blore, he was ever the coded “gay” character.

    While Horton was an indispensable presence during the TCM-era of comfort food comedies, the primary reason I mention him is because decades ago I heard a recording of him on the radio, narrating Ernst Bacon’s “Fables.” It was a live performance, likely borrowed from an archive (possibly the Fleisher Collection?) and probably not available commercially. At any rate, I have never been able to locate it. Until now. Or an excerpt anyway, posted on YouTube. Today I share this movement with Horton narrating “The Lion and the Sheep.”

    Bacon, who was awarded three Guggenheim Fellowships and a Pulitzer Scholarship in 1932 for his Symphony No. 2, is remembered primarily for his vast output of art song, having set poetry by Matthew Arnold, William Blake, Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert Burns, Emily Dickinson, Benjamin Franklin, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich Heine, A. E. Housman, Nikolaus Lenau, Herman Melville, Carl Sandburg, William Shakespeare, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sara Teasdale, and Walt Whitman, among others.

    I’m amused to learn that Horton was kicked out of Oberlin College (where he majored in German) after he climbed to the top of a building and, to the horror of a gathering crowd, threw a dummy off the roof. That’s the kind of prank I could really get behind.

    Happy birthday, Edward Everett Horton!

    Horton and Eric Blore in “Shall We Dance” with Fred Astaire

    “Fractured Fairy Tales”

    Ernst Bacon, Symphony No. 2

    Four Poems of Emily Dickinson

  • Remembering William Hootkins Star Wars to Batman

    Remembering William Hootkins Star Wars to Batman

    Does anyone else remember William Hootkins?

    Somehow I wound up on his Wikipedia page, while scrambling down the rabbit hole in search of more information on a Lalo Schifrin piano concerto. Schifrin is the composer of over 100 film and television scores, including those for “Cool Hand Luke,” “Bullitt,” “Dirty Harry,” “Enter the Dragon,” “Rush Hour,” and of course “Mission: Impossible.”

    You know how it is. You look up a recording, then the artist, you click on a link to the composer, glance over his film credits, click on a film, and then take a look at the cast. In this case, while running my eyes down a page devoted to a totally forgotten 1998 film called “Something to Believe In,” I recognized a familiar name in the role of “Car Dealer.”

    Although his parts were generally quite small, William Hootkins was a highly visible character actor to those of us of the “Star Wars” generation. He would have first been imprinted on our consciousness as Rebel pilot Jek Porkins (a.k.a. Red Six) during the climactic dogfight over the first Death Star.

    He was also Major Eaton, who sent Indiana Jones on his quest for the Ark of the Covenant in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” He played a corrupt cop in Tim Burton’s “Batman,” opposite Jack Nicholson. He was Dr. Zarkov’s turncoat assistant in 1980’s “Flash Gordon.” He also appeared in a couple of “Pink Panther” films, “A River Runs Through It,” and the 1996 version of “The Island of Dr. Moreau.”

    The same year as “Star Wars,” 1977, he played Fatty Arbuckle in Ken Russell’s “Valentino.” At the time of his death, he was at work on a screenplay for a projected biopic in which he planned to reprise his role as the disgraced silent comic.

    On stage, Hootkins scored his biggest success as Alfred Hitchcock, in a London production of “Hitchcock Blonde.” With talk of a Broadway opening, it seemed as if he was poised for wider recognition at last. Sadly, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The illness would claim his life in 2005, at the age of 57. “Hitchcock Blonde” was not performed in the United States until a year after his death.

    “Hoot” was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1948. A high school classmate of Tommy Lee Jones, he attended Princeton University, where he pursued astrophysics and oriental studies. It was John Lithgow who recommended he study acting at the London Academy of Music and Arts.

    Hoot’s residence in the UK made him easily accessible to American productions that set up shop at Elstree and Pinewood Studios.

    Although he was rarely onscreen for more than a few minutes, he was always a memorable presence. His prolific film work ensured a kind of cumulative recognition.

    I am posting about him here because of his unexpected Princeton connection, and as one of millions of adolescents who actually gave a hoot about Hootkins.

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