![]() ![]() ![]() I Walk the Line (1970) Here working alongside Gregory Peck with Johnny Cash singing the famous title tune.ĭealing : Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues (1972) A dirty cop? Say it ain’t so. Stiletto (1969) – Durning is billed as Cop in this early film appearance that one can also spot a young Roy Scheider appearing in. If you know of a title I’ve somehow missed featuring out actor in the spotlight as a member of the police force, let me know and I’ll make the addition. We all know he’s capable of some apocalyptic blow ups on camera. One thing I won’t be counting is just how many times Durning blows a gasket forcing you to wonder if his heart might explode under the force of extra pressure his temper has placed upon it. ![]() Durning carrying a badge and before we get started on compiling a list, I’d like to point out his superb performance as the President of the United States in the 1977 nuclear thriller, Twilight’s Last Gleaming. I’ve got some favorites when it comes to Mr. I purchased it mainly because it had both Durning and the legendary Henry Silva in one of his final roles before retiring from the screen following a brief cameo in the 2001 Ocean’s Eleven remake. What prompted this focus was both my sincere appreciation of this fine actor and taking a flyer on a movie titled Justice (1999) also known by the title Backlash which is what it’s called on the DVD I picked up. His father was unable to work, having lost a leg and been gassed during World War I, so his mother supported the family by washing the uniforms of West Point cadets.Have you ever stopped to wonder just how many times the prolific character actor, Charles Durning, was enlisted as a member of the police force in both theatrical and television movies? Not to mention series TV. He was born into an Irish family of 10 children in 1923, in Highland Falls, New York, a town near West Point. I never turned down anything and never argued with any producer or director.ĭurning's rugged early life provided ample material on which to base his later portrayals. Other films included The Front Page, The Hindenburg, Breakheart Pass, North Dallas Forty, Starting Over, Tough Guys, Home for the Holidays, Spy Hard and O Brother Where Art Thou? "I never turned down anything and never argued with any producer or director," Durning told The Associated Press in 2008, when he was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He played Santa Claus in four different movies made for television and was the pope in the TV film I Would Be Called John: Pope John XXIII. He was the would-be suitor of Dustin Hoffman, posing as a female soap opera star in Tootsie the infamous seller of frog legs in The Muppet Movie and Chief Brandon in Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy. He quickly made an impression on movie audiences the following year as the crooked cop stalking con men Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the Oscar-winning comedy The Sting.ĭozens of notable portrayals followed. He went on to work regularly, if fairly anonymously, through the 1960s until his breakout role as a small-town mayor in the Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning play That Championship Season in 1972. He won a Golden Globe as best supporting TV actor in 1991 for his portrayal of John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald in the TV film The Kennedys of Massachusetts and a Tony in 1990 as Big Daddy in the Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.ĭurning had begun his career on stage, getting his first big break when theatrical producer Joseph Papp hired him for the New York Shakespeare Festival. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe as the harried police lieutenant in the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon. The year after Best Little Whorehouse, Durning received another Oscar nomination, for his portrayal of a bumbling Nazi officer in the Mel Brooks classic To Be or Not to Be. ![]()
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