RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST ARTICLES FROM CINEMA RETRO'S ARCHIVES 

Bradford Dillman: A Compulsively Watchable Actor

By Harvey Chartrand

In a career that has spanned 43 years, Bradford Dillman accumulated more than 500 film and TV credits. The slim, handsome and patrician Dillman may have been the busiest actor in Hollywood during the late sixties and early seventies, working non-stop for years. In 1971 alone, Dillman starred in seven full-length feature films. And this protean output doesn’t include guest appearances on six TV shows that same year.

Yale-educated Dillman first drew good notices in the early 1950s on the Broadway stage and in live TV shows, such as Climax and Kraft Television Theatre. After making theatrical history playing Edmund Tyrone in the first-ever production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night in 1956, Dillman landed the role of blueblood psychopath Artie Straus in the crime-and-punishment thriller Compulsion (1959), for which he won a three-way Best Actor Prize at Cannes (sharing the award with co-stars Dean Stockwell and Orson Welles).

On the And You Call Yourself a Scientist! Web site, Dillman’s Artie Straus is described as “all brag and bravado, contemptuous of everything but himself, with his bridge-and-country-club parents, and his vaguely unwholesome relationship with his mother.”

In the early years of his career, Dillman starred in several major motion pictures, picking and choosing his roles carefully. He was featured in Jean Negulesco’s romance A Certain Smile (1958) with Rossano Brazzi and Joan Fontaine; Philip Dunne’s World War II drama In Love and War (1958) with Robert Wagner and Dana Wynter; and Tony Richardson’s Sanctuary (1961) with Lee Remick and Yves Montand, a rancid slice of Southern Gothic based on the novel by William Faulkner.

Yet in the early sixties, Dillman started taking any part that came along to support his growing family. From 1962 on, he guest starred in dozens of TV series -- among them Espionage, Kraft Suspense Theatre, Twelve O’Clock High, Shane, Felony Squad, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Marcus Welby, M.D., The Streets of San Francisco, Bronk, How the West Was Won and Fantasy Island.

In 1975, Dillman won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Actor in a Daytime Drama Special for his performance as Matt Clifton in Last Bride of Salem (1974), an excellent tale of modern witchcraft. The 90-minute Gothic horror movie aired on ABC Afternoon Playbreak and was so well received that it was rebroadcast during primetime.

Over the years, Dillman appeared in scores of made-for-TV movies and theatrical releases, such as Walter Grauman’s drama A Rage to Live (1965) with the late Suzanne Pleshette; John Guillermin’s war story The Bridge at Remagen (1969) with George Segal; Hy Averback’s satire Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came (1970) starring Tony Curtis; and Jud Taylor’s horror-thriller Revenge (1971), with Shelley Winters. Dillman also played a psychiatrist who goes ape for Natalie Trundy in Don Taylor’s Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) and a scientist battling firestarting cockroaches in Jeannot Szwarc’s Bug (1975) — the final film produced by legendary horror schlockmeister William Castle.

Dillman is now 81. After retiring from acting in 1995, he took up a second career as a writer. He is excellent at his new avocation, requiring no ghostwriters to tweak his prose. Dillman’s autobiography Are You Anybody? is a series of amusing anecdotes about his Hollywood years. He has also written a harrowing adventure tale entitled That Air Forever Dark, set in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. “It’s a terrifying account of the Jet Age meeting the Stone Age – Deliverance in a jungle setting,” the actor-turned-author says.

Dillman’s latest book, published in 2005 by Fithian Press, is a comedy of errors entitled Kissing Kate. “The novel is about an amateur production of Kiss Me Kate,” Dillman relates. “An out-of-work professional actor is hired to play the male lead opposite a wealthy community icon. Ultimately, of course, they end up in bed together, where a ‘catastrophe’ occurs and all hell breaks loose. I assure you that Kissing Kate is not in the least bit autobiographical!”

Fifty-two years after appearing on stage in O’Neill’s landmark theatrical event, Dillman is now a playwright as well. His Seeds in the Wind made its debut in May 2007 at the Rubicon Theatre Company in Ventura, California. The play is set in 1939 in Santa Cruz, California, during a weekend celebrating the 40th birthday of a society hostess' daughter. The interaction of the houseguests is both humorous and dramatic, and all manner of unexpected events occur, Dillman assures us.

The veteran performer spoke to Cinema Retro from his home in Santa Barbara, California.

Bradford Dillman: I had a commitment to Twentieth Century Fox to do two pictures a year and, as fate would have it, the timing of the filming of Compulsion coincided. Nothing to do with the moguls’ belief that I had talent. It was just dumb luck, pure and simple.

Compulsion (1959) with Dean Stockwell and Orson Welles

CR: Following Compulsion, you were often cast in villainous roles. In 1964, you co-starred with B-movie cult figure John Ashley (The Mad Doctor of Blood Island) in an episode of Dr. Kildare with the intriguing title Night of the Beast. What was that one about?

BD: I was the beast. I was such a bad guy I had my thugs hold Kildare down while I raped his girlfriend in front of his very eyes. When we came to the comeuppance scene, I learned that Richard Chamberlain had obviously never been in a fistfight in his life. The stunt men couldn't teach him how to throw a punch; I couldn't teach him. So we had a gentle comeuppance. He's a nice, sensitive man who has since come out of the closet.

With Carol Lynley, Robert Vaughn and David McCallum in the Man From U.N.C.L.E. feature film The Helicopter Spies (1968)

CR: In 1967, you were the guest villain on The Prince of Darkness Affair, a two-part episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E, later repackaged as a theatrical release – The Helicopter Spies (1968). You were great fun as Luther Sebastian, the Third Way cult leader who steals a rocket. Did you have any scenes with lovely Lola Albright?

BD: The Helicopter Spies has disappeared in the vortex of remaining brain cells. I don’t remember if I exchanged words with Lola Albright.

RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES. (FROM NOVEMBER 2009)

By Nick Thomas

Best known for his swashbuckling roles in films such as The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, and The Sea Hawk, or as the dashing hero in war adventures and westerns, Errol Flynn appeared in some 50 movies during his short 16 year career in Hollywood.

This year is the centenary of Flynn’s birth in Tasmania, the southern island state of Australia. So you can bet Errol Flynn fans are whooping it up big, down under. In fact, a chunk of June and July was set aside in the city of Hobart, Flynn’s home town, to celebrate Tasmania’s most famous Hollywood son. Special guests at the celebrations were Flynn’s daughter, Rory, and grandson Sean.

Rory Flynn was just 12 when her father died which, as it turns out, was exactly 50 years ago this year too. She recently wrote about memories of her dad in “The Baron of Mulholland: A daughter Remembers Errol Flynn.” Rory inherited just a handful of items from her father, as most of Flynn’s estate went to his third wife. But earlier this year, Rory visited Tasmania and gave all her Flynn memorabilia, including love letters from her dad to her mom, to the Tasmanian museum for display.

Since any discussion of the Flynn clan is complicated by three marriages, let’s sort that out first: Errol married three times. First to French actress Lili Damita (one son, Sean, a photojournalist who went missing during the Vietnam war, and was never found); second to Nora Eddington (two daughters, Deirdre and Rory who had one son, also named Sean); third to actress Patrice Wymore (separated from Flynn but never divorced, and lived on Flynn’s old plantation in Jamaica; one daughter Arnella who died in 1998 who had one son, Luke). So the Errol Flynn lineage lies with two grandsons, Sean and Luke.


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CR: How did you get involved in the centenary festivities?

There’s a big fan club down there, the Errol Flynn Society of Tasmania. They started organizing this a couple of years ago and asked me to come down.


CR: Nice to see that Errol Flynn was recognized by the Aussies!

It’s great that Tasmania - and Australia - are honoring their native son this year, because Hollywood isn’t. They’re much more involved in their current stars, whereas Europe and other parts of the world are very considerate towards the older stars.


CR: What did it mean to you to visit Tasmania?

Well, I actually feel like I’ve brought my dad home. That’s where his roots are and they love him and honor him there. I think the people there understand that my father was an extraordinary man. I have also learned more about my roots. My grandfather was a very interesting man and is still well-known down there. There’s a street named after him, he was the curator of the museum for 6 years, and he was a professor of biology. They say my grandmother was a direct descendant of midshipman Edward Young, of the HMS Bounty. So I feel like I’ve come home too.


CR: What are some of your earliest memories of your father?

When I was around five, I used to lie on a bearskin rug in his den and I would fall asleep to the sound of his writing - the scratching of his pen. He was always writing. He was writing his autobiography from a very early age, and other books, documentaries and newspaper articles. I grew up with him until I was about 7, then after my parents separated I would see him several times a year. Those visits became huge. He was really big about spending quality time with us when he could.


CR: Did you know how sick he was towards the end of his life?

No, my mom didn’t tell us about it. We know now that shortly before he died, he told my mother that he was only given a year to live, but he only made it three more months. His liver was shot, he had tuberculosis, malaria, terrible back problems - and there he was, still swashbuckling all over the place to the end.


CR: What do you think made your dad stand out as an actor?

I think he bridged the gap between actors playing the tough American cowboy type who were simple and direct, and the European actors with sophisticated dialogue, like Leslie Howard. My dad was able to be that action hero, and still hold an intelligent conversation. No one had really done that before.


CR: In his 20s, Flynn sailed up the east coast of Australia to New Guinea where he had all sorts of real-life adventures, as recounted in his book, “Beam Ends.” Did that period of his life influence his acting?

Absolutely. This early period formed who he was. He was who he was by the time he got to Hollywood - he was that “Tasmanian Devil” and he brought that to his films.