Brian Dennehy

Adapted from the Twitter feed, Thursday night, April 16, 2020. Posted Sunday morning, April 19.

“Isn’t that a remarkable thing?”: The late Brian Dennehy as Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman” in London in 2005, a performance I hope to snare tickets for when I get to heaven. Ray Tang/Shutterstock via the Guardian.

You probably heard. Brian Dennehy is gone.

I've been trying to think what are my favorites of Dennehy's movies and characters. And I can't come up with one. And I don't mean I can't choose one among many…

It was surprising to realize when I looked at his imdb page that he didn't star in many great movies or play many characters who were fascinating in their own right…

What he did was make movies he was in better for his being in them. He made many movies only worth watching for his scenes…

And he usually played some version of Brian Dennehy. Which was fine because any version of Dennehy was compelling…

I do have a favorite Dennehy performance. It was on television. In the 1989 mini-series “Day One”, which was based on Richard Rhodes’ “The Making of the Atomic Bomb”, he played the boisterous, bullying General Leslie Grove, who oversaw Los Alamos for the military, Robert Oppenheimer’s ostensible boss. There’s a moment at the first successful testing of the bomb, Grove stands up in the dugout where he and Oppenheimer and others are observing the blast and cheers with his arms outstretched almost as if he’s embracing the mushroom cloud, that’s all at once exhilarating, comic, and terrifying moment thanks to the great grin on Dennehy’s face and the roar of triumph he lets out that’s almost as loud as the bomb’s blast. I wish I could find a picture of that moment, but I can’t find any stills from “Day One” online. Best I could come up with for now is this photo of the real Groves and the real Oppenheimer.

I’ll keep looking.

In “Day One”, Oppenheimer was played by David Stathairn. Strathairn is the best Oppenheimer ever put on screen. He was a better Oppenheimer than Sam Waterson, and Waterson was a better Oppenheimer than Oppenheimer.

“The Making of the Atomic Bomb” is one of the books I recommend to anyone who wants to understand America’s history and its character.

Back to Dennehy.

Dennehy was so good that I couldn’t bring myself to see the move “Fat Man and Little Boy” which came out later that year. I figured it would be a let down, even though Grove was played by Paul Newman. I couldn’t bear to feel I’d been let down by Paul Newman.

That’s Dwight Schultz as Oppenheimer to the right of Newman as Grove. I can’t tell you how good an Oppenheimer Schultz was. I can’t imagine, though, he was as good as Strathairn.

The Fatman and Little Boy of the title don’t refer to Grove and Oppenheimer. They’re the codenames for the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. A former student of Oppenheimer came up with the names. He based them on the bombs’ designs. Fat Man's design reminded him of Sydney Greenstreet in the Maltese Falcon. His character was referred to as the the Fat Man. The young scientist originally wanted to call Little Boy Thin Man after the character William Powell played in the Thin Man movie series.

Dennehy did play some great characters in some great productions of some great plays. Willy Loman, Sir John Falstaff, Hickey in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh”. He made O’Neill a specialty. His theatrical home was the Goodman Theater in Chicago. He began to make his mark there in the 1980s. In the 80s, Mrs M and I were living in Fort Wayne, Indiana, three hours west through the corn fields and up into the Rust Belt at the corner of Indiana and Illinois. Every other month or so during the five years we were honorary Hoosiers we made weekend trips to Chicago. A few times we took in plays while we were in town. At least one of them was at the Goodman. Dennehy wasn’t in it.

His triumph at the Goodman during those years was playing Hickey in “The Iceman Cometh” in the fall of 1990. In the fall of 1990 we were still living in Fort Wayne but our attention was focused on Syracuse not Chicago. We were organizing our move back east and the long drives we took were to look for an apartment.

Dennehy’s next big success at the Goodman was as Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman” in 1998. That production eventually traveled to New York City in 1999 and on to London in 2005.

In my dream of heaven, you get to see all the things you missed when you were alive: that includes great World Series, concerts, movies that never got made but would have been wonderful if they had, and plays. So in my dream of heaven I have front row seats to “Death of a Salesman”

Dennehy came back to the Goodman in 2012 to perform in “The Iceman Cometh” again. This time he didn’t play Hickey. He played Larry Slade the bitter former labor organizer. Nathan Lane played Hickey. That production moved to New York in 2015. Lane adored Dennehy and he adored working with him. He credits Dennehy with teaching him how to be more than a musical comedy star.

“Brian Dennehy was a great actor and a great friend to me for over 30 years," the actor Nathan Lane said. “Never more so than when we acted together in ‘The Iceman Cometh.’ He was my biggest supporter and a loving mentor through that whole experience and I will always love him and never forget him for that, as well as his fierce brilliance, wit, and that wild Irish twinkle in his eye.”

I could have gone to see him in “Inherit the Wind” in New York City in 2007. He played Matthew Harrison Brady. That’s the character based on William Jennings Bryan. In 2007 we were living here and making frequent trips into New York City. But for some reason---lack of the money, I’m betting---I don’t remember even thinking about going to see it. The New York Times didn’t think highly of that production, but did rave about Christopher Plummer as the Clarence Darrow stand-in Henry Drummond.

But while the subject of teaching evolution and religion in public schools is even more topical than it was when Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s worthy war horse first galloped onto Broadway more than half a century ago, Mr. Plummer at play is something sacred. If the Bible-quoting fundamentalists in “Inherit the Wind” want to make a case for the spark of divinity that separates man from beast, they need only point to the show’s august star, having the time of his life, as Exhibit A.

About that twinkle in his eye Lane was smitten with. He always had it. I think it should have made him a leading man in the movies. I think he should have graduated quickly from supporting character to leading man. He was that good looking and charismatic when he was younger…

And he had a great voice. Calm and calming. Persuasive. Appealing. It's why he could play such convincing and formidable villains. Same goes for his smile. The smile and the voice should have belonged to good guys. The picture above is of him as the sheriff hunting down Rambo in “First Blood’. Not exactly a good guy.

Funny thing about the voice though. I became a fan when I saw him in "Semi-Tough". That's when most people my age did. And in "Semi-Tough" he didn't have very many lines. Mostly he just growled and grinned manically…

But then he was playing a psychopath. A cheerful and friendly and likable psychopath, but a psychopath…

Another thing that has me scratching my head. Who are the character actors in their 30s and early 40s now who are what Dennehy was, actors who make movies better for their presence and who were immediately recognized for it from the start…

That isn't a "They don't make 'em like that any more" old man's gripe. I'm sure they're out there. I'm just not calling them to mind at the moment. Help me out?

At any rate, here's to him! In his memory I should watch "Semi-Touch" again tonight. Maybe I will...

So sad to think how almost all its stars are now gone. Reynolds, Clayburgh, Robert Preston, now Dennehy. Anyone checking on Kristofferson?

Comments

[Jeff Ryan]

I saw Dennehy do Long Day's Journey into Night at the Goodman in 2001. I went with the love of my life, Judy.

Judy passed in 2016. Now this. Sometimes, things just really suck.

[JohnP]

Always enjoyed watching Dennehy. Michael Shannon is a similarly imposing physical presence who improves every movie he’s in.

[jim, a guy in iowa]

my first memory of Dennehy was in "Gorky Park", back when the parental units would come home from town with the rented VCR and video tapes... while I can't say after thirty five + years it was a great performance, every now and again I re read the novel and I always see Dennehy as the forceful live wire Kirwill, just as I always see Lee Marvin as the sleek, large and dangerous cat Osbourne and William Hurt as Renko