Oscar Profile #229: Keir Dullea

Born May 30, 1936 in Cleveland, Ohio, Keir Dullea was raised in New York’s Greenwich Village, the son of book store owners and educated in Pennsylvania’s George School, and later Rutgers University and San Francisco State University before making his acting debut at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse in 1956. He made his TV debut as the German pilot opposite Maureen O’Hara in the 1960 adaptation of Mrs. Miniver the year he married first wife, actress Margot Bennett.

Dullea made his film debut in an acclaimed performance in 1961’s The Hoodlum Priest and followed it with an even more acclaimed performance in 1962’s David and Lisa while continuing his lucrative career as a popular guest star in numerous TV shows. He had big screen starring roles in 1964’s Mail Order Bride and the first film version of The Thin Red Line while still making guest star appearances on TV. For the next five years, however, he was seen exclusively on the big screen one film per year in Bunny Lake Is Missing as Carol Lynley’s incestuous brother, Madame X as Lana Turner’s son, The Fox, as the man between lesbian lovers Sandy Dennis and Anne Heywood, 2001: A Space Odyssey opposite HAL the Computer and De Sade as the infamous Marquis De Sade.

The actor made his Broadway debut in 1967’s Dr. Cook’s Garden opposite Burl Ives, followed by 1969’s Butterflies Are Free opposite Blythe Danner, the 1974 revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opposite Elizabeth Ashley and 1975’s P.S. Your Cat Is Dead opposite Tony Musante. He was in rehearsal for the Los Angeles version of that play with Sal Mineo when Mineo was murdered on his way home in 1976. Divorced from Bennett in 1968, he was married to Susan Lessans from 1969 to 1970 and married third wife Susan Fuller in 1972 to whom he remained married until her death in 1998.

Dullea’s later screen career did not sustain the momentum it had during the 1960s. His best known subsequent role was in the 1974 cult classic, Black Christmas, but he has remained a visible presence in supporting roles both on screen and television as well as in the theater. In 2010 he starred in an off-Broadway production of I Never Sang My Father opposite Marsha Mason. He more recently got to play Big Daddy in yet another stage production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, nearly fifty years after starring opposite the original Big Daddy, Burl Ives, in Dr. Cook’s Garden.

His highest profile screen roles in the last few years have been in 2006’s The Good Shepherd and the 2013 festival hit, Isn’t It Delicious in which fourth wife Mia Dillon, whom he married in 1999, plays his sister-in-law. The two are also on screen together in the upcoming April Flowers.

Keir Dullea remains as interesting and busy as ever as he approaches his 79th birthday. A long-time Academy member, it’s a shame he himself has never been nominated for an Oscar or a Tony or an Emmy either, for that matter.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE HOODLUM PRIEST (1961), directed by Irvin Kershner

Don Murray plays Father Charles Dismas Clark, the Jesuit priest who founded the first hallway house for parolees and former prisoners in the United States in St. Louis in 1959. Dullea plays a parolee who is fired by his boss at a produce market for a crime he did not commit and subsequently attempts to rob the market when he is caught by one of the owners and cornered with a crowbar. He kills the guy and is subsequently tried, convicted and sent to the gas chamber in one of the most grueling scenes ever filmed.

Dullea’s performance is one of the most haunting screen debuts of any actor and richly deserved the Oscar nomination he failed to get in in a category in which he outshone all the actual nominees including winner George Chakiris and early favorite Montgomery Clift who had been nominated ten years earlier for playing a similar role in A Place in the Sun.

DAVID AND LISA (1962), directed by Frank Perry

Eleanor Perry’s Oscar nominated screenplay for the film was based on the book by Theodore Isaac Rubin, the psychiatrist who treated the real-life mental patients played by Dullea and Janet Margolin in the film. Her husband Frank was also nominated for his direction while Dullea, Margolin and Howard Da Silva who played a fictionalized version of Rubin had to be content with BAFTA nominations for their performances.

Dullea, who was married at the time and unable to act on his feelings, has said that he fell in love with Margolin on the film and she him and it shows in their performances. Both are outstanding, he as a young man who is afraid any touch by another human being could lead to death and she as a young woman with dissociative identity disorder. The film is a beautifully textured examination of human frailty.

BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING (1965), directed by Otto Preminger

Based on a hugely popular best-seller, this thriller starred Laurence Olivier as the police inspector looking into the disappearance of Carol Lynley’s daughter. Dullea plays her incestuous brother, Martita Hunt the dotty head mistress at the school and Noel Coward her creepy landlord. Dullea, who is excellent as usual, had no scenes with Coward but came to the studio on his day off to meet the celebrated wit upon which Coward uttered his famous quote, “Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow.”

Dullea hated working with Preminger, whom he called a bully. He has said that going from working with Preminger to working with Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey was like going from Hell to Heaven. In the meantime he also worked with David Lowell Rich on Madame X and Mark Rydell on The Fox.

BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974), directed by Bob Clark

A flop on its initial release, this is the cult classic that inspired Halloween and numerous other horror films made in its wake. Genuinely creepy and terrifying, Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder are among the sorority girls being stalked by an unseen killer. Dullea plays Hussey’s boyfriend, who is the main suspect most of the way through the film. Andrea Martin, Doug McGrath and Art Hindle have featured roles.

Director Clark later directed such hits as Porky’s and A Chirstmas Story, but to many, this remains his best film.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD (2006), directed by Robert De Niro

A mostly by-the-numbers look at the life of a CIA agent from Eric Roth’s novel, this is one of only two films De Niro has thus far directed, the other being 1993’s A Bronx Tale.

Matt Damon stars as the dedicated agent with Angelina Jolie as his dutiful wife and a major league supporting cast that includes Alec Baldwin, Tammy Blanchard, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon, William Hurt, Timothy Hutton, Lee Pace, Joe Pesci, Eddie Redmayne, John Turturro and De Niro himself. Dullea stands out as Jolie’s father, a U.S. Senator.