5 - 11 July 2001
Issue No.541
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 5 - 11 July 2001 Issue No.541 |
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The guy next door
Last Wednesday the death of Hollywood's most famous Everyman, Jack Lemmon, marked the end of a cinematic marathon in which he repeatedly sought new and unfamiliar roles without sacrificing the qualities that first brought him to the attention of the movie-going public in the mid-1950s: mordant irony, blundering charm and effortless comic appeal.
Lemmon was nominated for eight Academy Awards. He won two -- for best supporting actor (Mister Roberts, 1955), and best actor (Save the Tiger, 1973). He had a career-long collaboration with filmmaker-writer Billy Wilder (1959-1972), and made several films with Walter Matthau (1966-1998). They co- starred in Lemmon's unexpected box- office comeback, the 1993 hit Grumpy Old Men, and followed it up with Grumpier Old Men (1995), Out to Sea (a 1997 movie that places the by-now celebrated Odd Couple on a cruiser, recalling the setting of Mister Roberts) and, The Odd Couple II (1998), Lemmon's last film.
Born John Uhler, Lemmon was the only child of an amateur soft-shoe dancer who worked for the Doughnut Corporation of America and his hard-drinking wife. At the age of 14 he became an impromptu pianist, but his interest gradually shifted to acting. After a brief stint in the navy, he graduated from Harvard in 1947 and set off to New York to become an actor. Lemmon obtained work in radio and television shows, planning a career in the theatre. By the time he made his off Broadway debut in 1947, talent scouts had noticed his television performances, and he appeared in It Should Happen To You, his first film, in 1954. He found his way to Broadway only six years later, achieving remarkable success and returning to the stage in 1978 and 1986.
Lemmon is probably best remembered for his early appearances opposite Shirley MacLaine (The Apartment, 1960 and Irma la Douce, 1963) and Marilyn Monroe (Some Like It Hot, 1959) as conniving office worker, policeman turned pimp and musician in drag, pursued by gangsters. In these roles Lemmon expressed the frustrations of postwar urban life so delightfully critics described him as both "demonically funny" and "easily one of the most expert American actors of his generation." He was singled out especially for his ability to portray the common man, "the (ordinary) guy next door," his defining role.
In 1962 Lemmon made his first departure from comedy, appearing in Blake Edward's Days of Wine and Roses, a film he considered among his best work. His career progressed unhindered, despite accusations of sentimentality, to which Lemmon pleaded guilty, declaring himself "a sucker for it." In the 1990s, during his 70s, Lemmon participated in, among other films, Oliver Stone's JFK. and Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet.
Lemmon died of a cancer-related illness in a hospital in Los Angeles not far from his home in Beverly Hills; he was 76 years old. He is survived by his second wife, actress Felicia Farr, a daughter, a step daughter, a son from his first marriage and three grandchildren.
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