Oscar Profile #334: Russ Tamblyn

Born December 30, 1934 to actors Sally Triplett and Eddie Tamblyn, Russell Irving Tamblyn known professionally as Rusty, then Russ Tamblyn, was discovered by actor Lloyd Bridges for the play Stone Jungle at the age of ten. He immediately found work on radio and made his film debut in 1948’s The Boy with Green Hair starring fellow child actor Dean Stockwell, who became a lifelong friend, and who later became the godfather of his daughter, actress Amber Tamblyn.

Billed as Rusty until 1953, Tamblyn played his first starring role in only his third film, 1949’s The Kid from Cleveland. Although he did not obtain another starring role as a teenager, he was instantly recognizable in supporting roles in such films as Samson and Delilah, Gun Crazy, Captain Carey, U.S.A. , Father of the Bride, Father’s Little Dividend, As Young as You Feel and The Winning Team. He was first billed as Russ in 1953’s Take the High Ground! .

Tamblyn had his breakout role as the youngest of the brothers in 1954’s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and received a Golden Globe for Best Newcomer for the following year’s Hit the Deck. With his dancing abilities firmly established, he even got to dance an acclaimed shovel dance in the 1956 western, The Fastest Gun Alive and then worked uncredited as choreographer on Elvis Presley’s 1957 hit, Jailhouse Rock.

An Oscar nomination came Tamblyn’s way with 1957’s Peyton Place, after which he alternated dramatic roles in such films as High School Confidential and Cimarron with singing and dancing roles in Tom Thumb and West Side Story, the film for which he is best known.

Tamblyn had minor roles in 1962’s The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm and 1963’s How the West Was Won, after which he played one of the four starring roles in 1963’s The Haunting. Although he kept busy with film and TV roles, he went largely unnoticed until his role in David Lynch’s 1990-1991 TV series, Twin Peaks.

The actor has been married three times. His first, brief marriage in 1956-1957 was to actress Venetia Stevenson, daughter of actress Anna Lee (How Green Was My Valley) and director Robert Stevenson Mary Poppins. His second was to Sheila Kempton from 1960 to 1979, with whom he had two children. He and third wife, actress-composer Bonnie Tamblyn, have been married since 1981 and are the parents of actress Amber Tamblyn, born in 1983.

In more recent years, Tamblyn has resurfaced as a guest star in his daughter’s TV series, Joan of Arcadia and in such films as Drive and Django Unchained. He is currently enjoying renewed success in the revived Twin Peaks series at the age of 82.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

FATHER OF THE BRIDE (1950), directed by Vincente Minnelli

Tamblyn was one of the busiest teen actors during the period in which he was cast as Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett’s son and Elizabeth Taylor’s brother in this still popular comedy and its 1951 sequel, Father’s Little Dividend. That he managed to be noticed in a film filled with such scene-stealers as Billie Burke, Leo G. Carroll, Melville Cooper, Taylor Holmes and Paul Harvey is a tribute to his natural charisma as well as his acting ability. What’s surprising, given his singing and dancing skills, is that director Minnelli never cast him in one of his many film musicals.

SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS (1954), directed by Stanley Donen

One of the most joyful of movie musicals, the Jane Powell-Howard Keel starrer has many memorable moments. Tamblyn, playing the youngest of the brothers, is noteworthy in many of them, none more so than in the film’s centerpiece, the athletic house-raising scene in which his gymnastic abilities are sorely put to the test. Although he didn’t get to sing solo or in duet in this one, he more than made up for with the following year’s remake of Hit the Deck in which he was paired with Debbie Reynolds. He more than holds his own with established singers, Reynolds, Powell, Ann Miller, Tony Martin and Vic Damone.

PEYTON PLACE (1957), directed by Mark Robson

The tagline for the film version of the controversial bestseller was “now all of it is on the screen!” Hardly! With all the shocking parts gone, what we were left with was a high-class soap opera beautifully filmed on location in a small town in Maine. Nominated for nine Academy Awards, it failed to win any which included Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Cinematography, Actress (Lana Turner), Supporting Actress (Hope Lange, Diane Varsi) and Supporting Actor (Arthur Kennedy, Tamblyn). Tamblyn plays Norman Page, the shy boy with an over-protective mother who is love with Turner’s sensitive daughter, played by Varsi.

WEST SIDE STORY (1961), directed by Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins

Tamblyn auditioned for the lead role of Tony, but when that role went to his fellow former child actor, Richard Beymer, he accepted the role of Riff, the Mercutio role in this mid-20th Century take on the legend of Romeo and Juliet with yet another former child actor, Natalie Wood as Maria. Actor-dancer-singer George Chakiris and actress-dancer-singer Rita Moreno who won two of the film’s ten Oscars out of eleven nominations. Audiences of the day were not bothered by the fact that all the principal actors were too old for their parts. It was Tamblyn’s last musical until a guest-starring role on TV’s Fame in the mid-1980s.

TWIN PEAKS (2017), created by David Lynch and Mark Frost

Tamblyn and Beymer were reunited for Lynch’s Golden Globe and Emmy winning series in 1990, although the acting awards went the way of Kyle MacLachlan, Sherilyn Fenn and Piper Laurie, not them. Neither were in the 1992 theatrical film, Twin Peaks: Firewalk with Me, nor were they in the theatrical 2014 prequel, Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces. Both are back for the revived series that begins on Showtime in late May. Beymer is only in the first episode, but Tamblyn has a recurring role as the same doctor character in the sequel set twenty-years after the murder of Laura Palmer