Alan Arkin, a Virtuoso Comic Actor with a Serious Side
Total Views | 126
-Siddharth Naik
Versatile Oscar-winning ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ actor, Alan Arkin passed away at the age of 89. Alan Arkin was a prolific American actor who thrived in both comic and dramatic roles and won an Oscar for playing a heroin-using grandfather in the 2006 film “Little Miss Sunshine”.
Versatile Oscar-winning ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ actor, Alan Arkin passed away at the age of 89. Alan Arkin was a prolific American actor who thrived in both comic and dramatic roles and won an Oscar for playing a heroin-using grandfather in the 2006 film “Little Miss Sunshine”.
It is pertinent to mention that Little Miss Sunshine was released in 2007 which was made on a very low budget but went on to earn ten to twelve times more than the budget. Alan Arkin portrayed a grand old man in the movie and his comic character won the best supporting actor award of the 2007 Oscar.
Apart from the Oscar award, he also won various prestigious awards like Bafta, Tony, Emmy, Golden Globe. He was again nominated for an Oscar for Argo (2012).
Alan Arkin's relevance was revealed to the Indian cinema only after the role he played in Little Miss Sunshine. However, even before this movie, he played excellent characters based on theatre and literary references as well as based on various novels.
In his 80's his energetic and eye-catching appearance in Tim Burton's Dumbo was fabulous. In his first significant role in a feature, Arkin received a rare best actor Oscar nomination for work in a comedy when he played a Russian sailor whose submarine is marooned off the coast of a New England fishing village in Norman Jewison’s The Russians Are Coming (1966). Two years later, he moved audiences and earned another Oscar nomination for portraying the lonely deaf-mute John Singer in the poignant The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), Robert Ellis Miller’s adaptation of the Carson McCullers novel that was filmed in Selma, Alabama.
Notably, Arkin hit headlines for Broadway in 1963 for which he won a Tony Award for playing David Kolowitz, a struggling actor under the thumb of his parents, in Enter Laughing, based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Carl Reiner.
Arkin honed his comedy chops during two years with the famed Second City improvisational troupe in Chicago. He was winningly funny on the big screen as seen in the madcap The In-Laws, in which he played a mild-mannered dentist opposite CIA operative Peter Falk; in Rafferty and the Gold-Dust Twins (1975), as an L.A. driving instructor driven to madness; in Freebie and the Bean (1974) as a corrupt Mexican American cop opposite buddy James Caan; and as a B-movie director in the amiable Hearts of the West (1975). Arkin, though, was able to shed his silly side in films like the psychological thriller Wait Until Dark (1967), when he played an evil thug menacing poor Audrey Hepburn, and Catch-22, in which he starred as a pilot struggling to maintain a grip on his sanity in Nichols’ adaptation of Catch-22 (1970). Arkin also portrayed Sigmund Freud in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) and was a bored suburbanite in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990), a wise mentor in The Rocketeer (1991), one of the pressured salesmen in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) and the nimble patriarch in Slums of Beverly Hills(1988). More recently, he starred with Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine in the geezer crime comedy Going in Style (2017) and with Michael Douglas in the Netflix series The Kominsky Method. After two Emmy noms, he bowed out of the latter, before the show’s third and final season, in a move announced in September 2020.
Alan Wolf Arkin was born in Brooklyn on March 26, 1934, the oldest of three kids. His parents were teachers, and he said they were communists. His dad took him to see foreign films at the Thalia in New York, and he “learned how to read by watching the subtitles,” with the help of his father. Arkin often noted that by age 5, he had already determined that he was going to be an actor. In 1945, he and his family moved to Los Angeles, and Arkin studied at L.A. City College and Cal State L.A. He then won a drama scholarship to Bennington College in Vermont as one of the few male students at that school. Arkin then appeared with a repertory company in the Adirondacks and landed a role in an off-Broadway production of Abelard and Heloise. Struggling to make a living, Arkin moved to St. Louis to work with the Compass Players, an improvisational cabaret revue. He was spotted by Paul Sills, who invited him to come to Chicago to join the nascent Second City improv comedy troupe in 1960.
Michael Douglas, who co-starred with Alan Arkin in the Netflix dramedy ‘The Kominsky Method’, honored Arkin, calling him “a wonderful actor whose intelligence, sense of comedy, and consummate professionalism over the past 70 years has left an indelible mark on our industry.” “My experience of working with Alan was some of my most memorable. He will be deeply missed. Sincere condolences to his wife, Suzanne, and his family,” wrote Douglas. Mr. Arkin was also an occasional author. He wrote several children’s books, among them “The Lemming Condition” (1976) and “Cassie Loves Beethoven” (2000). In 2011 he published a memoir, “An Improvised Life”; he followed that in 2020 with “Out of My Mind,” a brief history of his search for meaning in the universe and his embrace of Eastern philosophy.
Alan Arkin leaves behind a rich legacy as an actor of humor, candor, and immense talent. His captivating performances and unforgettable characters will continue to entertain and inspire generations to come. the impact of his contributions to the world of film and television will forever be remembered.
Bharati Web
