Richard Widmark, The Gunslinging Western Star Who Hated Violence ...

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Richard Widmark, the gunslinging Western star who hated violence, dies at 9311 April 2012 The Weekender

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Richard Widmark, who made a sensational film debut as the giggling killer in Kiss of Death and became a Hollywood leading man in 40 other films, has died after a long illness. He was 93.

Widmark's wife, Susan Blanchard, says the actor died at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, on Monday. She would not provide details of his illness and said funeral arrangements are private.

"It was a big shock, but he was 93," Blanchard said.

A quiet, inordinately shy man, Widmark often portrayed killers, cops and Western gunslingers, but famously said he hated guns and violence.

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Western star: Richard Windmark , left, with John Wayne, has died at the age of 93

After a career in radio drama and theater, Widmark moved to films as Tommy Udo, who delighted in pushing an old lady in a wheelchair to her death down a flight of stairs in the 1947 thriller Kiss of Death.

The performance won him an Academy Award nomination as supporting actor; it was his only mention for an Oscar.

"That damned laugh of mine!" he told a reporter in 1961. "For two years after that picture, you couldn't get me to smile. I played the part the way I did because the script struck me as funny and the part I played made me laugh. The guy was such a ridiculous beast."

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Peaceful: despite his many turns as a deadly gunslinger, Widmark, picutured here in 1991, said he hated violence

"He was a down-to-earth guy, and I respected him for that," Jones said in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "He was a real guy, but he was such a wonderful actor."

A.C. Lyles, a producer with Paramount Pictures, worked with Widmark on the 1975 western "The Last Day."

"Dick was just one of the nicest guys I ever worked with: very, very professional, very, very prepared and he couldn't have been more cooperative," Lyles said.

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Leading man: the actor with Lauren Bacall in the 1955 film The Cobweb

Two years out of college, Widmark reached New York in 1938 during the heyday of radio. His mellow Midwest voice made him a favorite in soap operas, and he found himself racing from studio to studio.

Rejected by the Army because of a punctured eardrum, Widmark began appearing in theater productions in 1943. His first was a comedy hit on Broadway, Kiss and Tell.

He was appearing in the Chicago company of Dream Girl with June Havoc when 20th Century Fox signed him to a seven-year contract. He almost missed out on the Kiss of Death role.

"The director, Henry Hathaway, didn't want me," the actor recalled. "I have a high forehead; he thought I looked too intellectual." The director was overruled by studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck, and Hathaway "gave me kind of a bad time."

An immediate star, Widmark appeared in 20 Fox films from 1957 to 1964.

After leaving Fox, Widmark's career continued to flourish. He starred as Jim Bowie with John Wayne in The Alamo, with James Stewart in John Ford's "Two Rode Together," as the U.S. prosecutor in "Judgment at Nuremberg," and with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas in "The Way West."

In later years, Widmark appeared sparingly in films and TV. He explained to Parade magazine in 1987: "I've discovered in my dotage that I now find the whole moviemaking process irritating. I don't have the patience anymore. I've got a few more years to live, and I don't want to spend them sitting around a movie set for 12 hours to do two minutes of film."

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