Stuart Whitman, 1928-2020

Stuart Whitman (l.) in his Oscar-nominated performance in The Mark (1961)

Although everybody seems to be freaking out over coronavirus, remember that there are still other things out there that can kill you. Such is the case of Oscar-nominated actor Stuart Whitman, who died yesterday at the age of 92. Whitman started his career in the early 1950s with a bunch of uncredited roles, but came to more prominence in the second half of the decade in movies like Seven Men From Now before getting his best roles in the early 1960s. In addition to the Oscar-nominated role in The Mark, there's also Murder, Inc. and The Comancheros in that era.

Unfortunately, his roles in the second half of the 60s and beyond aren't as good, although Whitman worked steadily in movies and TV up until the end of the 90s. I think the most recent post in which I mentioned Whitman was the lousy An American Dream, which has him opposite Janet Leigh:



And if that's not bad enough, Whitman and Leigh would go on to make another hilariously bad film, Night of the Lepus:



I don't know if TCM has a TCM Remembers piece up yet, or if they're going to be doing any programming in his honor.