The actor Jill Clayburgh, who has died of leukemia aged 66, was one of the brightest female stars of the 1970s, yet was somewhat forgotten in the decade that followed. "If they don't give me good parts in movies, I'm just not going to do them. And there's a time when they just move on to the next person," Clayburgh said prophetically at the height of her fame in 1978. Perhaps conservative Hollywood did not really know how to cope with an independent-minded, intelligent performer who refused to be pigeonholed.
Born in Manhattan, New York, Clayburgh was the daughter of wealthy parents. Her father was the vice-president of two large companies and her mother was a secretary to the Broadway producer David Merrick. As a child, Clayburgh was inspired to become an actor when she saw Jean Arthur as Peter Pan on Broadway in 1950. She was educated in New York, at the exclusive, all-girl Brearley school and then at Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied religion, philosophy and literature.
She began acting as a student in summer stock and, after graduating, joined the Charles Street repertory theatre company in Boston, where she met another up-and-coming actor, Al Pacino, with whom she was to have a five-year relationship. The next step was New York, where she appeared in several off-Broadway productions.
She moved on to Broadway in the musicals The Rothschilds (1970) and Pippin (1972), and Tom Stoppard's philosophical farce, Jumpers (1974). But it was film acting that really excited Clayburgh. "One of the things I like about the movies is the adventure of it," she said. "I like going to different places and I like doing a different scene every day."
In 1963, while still at Sarah Lawrence, Clayburgh had made her screen debut as the bride-to-be in The Wedding Party, co-directed by her fellow student Brian De Palma in 16mm and grainy monochrome. However the film was not released until six years later when Robert De Niro (credited, in his supporting role, as Robert Denero) had made his name.
It took Clayburgh much longer to become a recognisable face. She had an absurd role as a Jewish Marxist in the unfunny Portnoy's Complaint (1972), and had little to do as Ryan O'Neal's ex-wife in The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973) and as the stripper murder-victim of George Segal in The Terminal Man (1974). Then she was unexpectedly cast as Carole Lombard opposite James Brolin's Clark Gable in the stunningly banal Gable and Lombard (1976), from which only she emerged with any dignity.
Clayburgh had the kind of warmth and witty sophistication barely seen in Hollywood since Lombard and Jean Arthur. This was demonstrated in Silver Streak (1976), an entertaining throwback to 1930s comedy-thrillers, where she played the lady on a train who tangles with Gene Wilder; and in Semi-Tough (1977), as the beautiful free-thinking woman living in a platonic threesome with two American football players (Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson) until one of them makes a forward pass.
These carefree, liberated characters led the director Paul Mazursky to give Clayburgh the title role in An Unmarried Woman (1978). Here, in one film, she proved that she was equally adept at drama and comedy. As a woman making herself a new life after being deserted by her husband, she overcame many of the superficial aspects of the script thanks to her ability to show both strength and vulnerability. Her performance earned her the best actress award at Cannes and an Oscar nomination.
The following year, she was nominated for another Oscar, this time for Alan J Pakula's Starting Over (1979), in which she played another unmarried woman, but with a different emphasis. Her character is a schoolteacher who, having been hurt by a relationship, keeps any emotional involvement at bay by remaining deliberately dowdy.
Clayburgh seized the chance to work with the director Bernardo Bertolucci in Italy on La Luna (1979), playing an internationally renowned singer who has an incestuous relationship with her spoiled teenage son. Clayburgh had all the strength and glamour required by this opaque, operatic film. However, in the 80s, she had a singular lack of success, despite luminous performances. She was splendid in It's My Turn (1980), as a mathematics professor who has an affair with an ex-baseball player (Michael Douglas), and as the first female judge appointed to the US supreme court in First Monday in October (1981), alienating and then attracting her shabby liberal colleague (Walter Matthau).
She gave another excellent, yet unappreciated, portrayal in I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can (1982), as a pill-popping film-maker who goes cold turkey. It was adapted, from Barbara Gordon's autobiographical book, by the Tony-award winning playwright David Rabe, whom Clayburgh had married in 1979.
Sadly her powerful performance as a lawyer defending a Palestinian in Costa-Gavras's Hanna K (1983) was little seen, due to pressure from pro-Israeli groups, who deemed it "anti-Israeli" and managed to limit its circulation. Upset by the film's reception, Clayburgh gave up cinema for three years, during which time she was busy bringing up her children and tending the garden of the family's home in Mount Kisco, New York.
In 1984 she returned to Broadway in Noël Coward's Design for Living, alongside Raul Julia and Frank Langella. Her return to cinema was unpropitious: in the silly whodunnit Where Are the Children? (1986) she was required to cry a lot. But she was amusing as a snooty New York journalist researching an article in the Louisiana bayou in Andrey Konchalovsky's comedy-melodrama, Shy People (1987), which flopped. There followed a series of minor roles in best-forgotten movies. Parallel to her film career, she appeared regularly on television, including five episodes (from 1999 to 2001) of the legal comedy Ally McBeal, as Ally's mother; and as the wealthy socialite Letitia Darling in all 23 episodes of Dirty Sexy Money (2007-09).
In her last Broadway performance, Clayburgh played the mother in a 2006 revival of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park. The New York Times critic Ben Brantley praised her "winning way with dialogue that can make synthetic one-liners sound like filigree epigrams".
She is survived by David, her children Michael and Lily (who is also an actor), her stepson, Jason, and her brother, James.
• Jill Clayburgh, actor, born 30 April 1944; died 5 November 2010
November 07, 2010
October 29, 2010
Tom Bosley obit
The actor Tom Bosley, who has died of lung cancer aged 83, played Howard Cunningham, the tolerant, unflappable paterfamilias, in all 255 episodes of the nostalgic American sitcom Happy Days, from 1974 to 1984.
Set in Milwaukee during the 1950s, Happy Days, as the title suggests, was a rosy view of an earlier era. Mr C, as Bosley's character was called by "the Fonz" (Henry Winkler) – the cool, leather-jacketed ladies' man – was the ideal middle-class TV father, a hardware store owner, lodge member and member of a bowling team. The stocky Bosley, often seen behind his newspaper, imbued the character with a certain amount of humorous cynicism towards his homemaker wife (Marion Ross), who sometimes called him "Fatso", and his teenage children, naive Richie (Ron Howard) and pesky Joanie (Erin Moran).
This was in contrast to the weak or tyrannical fathers seen in the rebel teen movies of the 1950s, and to the grumpy, conservative father in That '70s Show (1998-2006) – of which Happy Days was the model – who keeps calling his son a "dumb ass". Any sign of rebellion in Happy Days was either satirised or sanitised.
Bosley will also be remembered for playing another sympathetic father – the Catholic priest and amateur sleuth in the series The Father Dowling Mysteries (1987-91). Actually, the Chicago-born Bosley was Jewish, the son of Benjamin and Dora Bosley. His father worked in real estate; his mother was a concert pianist before bringing up her two sons. After high school, as the second world war neared its end, Bosley joined the navy. He went on to study law at DePaul University in Chicago, but decided, halfway through his studies, to pursue an acting career, despite having "looked in the mirror and realised that I was short and kind of heavy".
In fact, it was his build that helped him land the lead role of the New York City mayor Fiorello H La Guardia in the Broadway musical Fiorello! (1959), for which Bosley won a Tony. Though not a singer, he stopped the show each night with the energetic number The Name's La Guardia. After a few years of bit parts on stage and on television, and odd jobs, Fiorello! made sure Bosley would never have to struggle again.
His first film role was in Robert Mulligan's Love With the Proper Stranger (1963), as a shy, clumsy Italian-American courting Natalie Wood, who doesn't hear the "bells and banjos" she associates with romantic love. In The World of Henry Orient (1964), Bosley offered a foretaste of Howard Cunningham as the understanding father of a teenage girl who has a crush on a concert pianist (Peter Sellers). When reminded of his wife's infidelity, he remarks: "The less said about that the better."
But it was television that took up most of Bosley's time and charm. He made significant appearances in a multitude of shows before Happy Days claimed him. He was offered the role of Mr C only when Harold Gould had to turn it down because of another commitment. Bosley initially rejected it himself, but, "after rereading the pilot script, I changed my mind, because of a scene between Howard Cunningham and Richie. The father/son situation was written so movingly, I fell in love with the project," he recalled.
It was Bosley who had the last word at the end of the final series: "Marion and I have not climbed Mount Everest or written a great American novel. But we've had the joy of raising two wonderful kids, and watching them and their friends grow up into loving adults. And I guess no man or woman could ask for anything more. So thank you all for being part of our family."
Bosley's major post-Happy Days role, apart from Father Dowling, was as Sheriff Amos Tupper in 19 episodes of Murder, She Wrote (1984-88). Tupper tries to help the crime novelist Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) solve real murder mysteries, but is mistaken most of the time, often arresting the wrong suspect.
In 1994 Bosley returned to Broadway after a 25-year absence to appear in the long-running musical Beauty and the Beast, in which as Maurice, Belle's loving, eccentric inventor father, he sang No Matter What. In 2002 he took over the role of Herr Schultz, the Jewish fruit-shop owner, in Cabaret.
Bosley is survived by his second wife, Patricia, and a daughter, Amy, from his first marriage.
Set in Milwaukee during the 1950s, Happy Days, as the title suggests, was a rosy view of an earlier era. Mr C, as Bosley's character was called by "the Fonz" (Henry Winkler) – the cool, leather-jacketed ladies' man – was the ideal middle-class TV father, a hardware store owner, lodge member and member of a bowling team. The stocky Bosley, often seen behind his newspaper, imbued the character with a certain amount of humorous cynicism towards his homemaker wife (Marion Ross), who sometimes called him "Fatso", and his teenage children, naive Richie (Ron Howard) and pesky Joanie (Erin Moran).
This was in contrast to the weak or tyrannical fathers seen in the rebel teen movies of the 1950s, and to the grumpy, conservative father in That '70s Show (1998-2006) – of which Happy Days was the model – who keeps calling his son a "dumb ass". Any sign of rebellion in Happy Days was either satirised or sanitised.
Bosley will also be remembered for playing another sympathetic father – the Catholic priest and amateur sleuth in the series The Father Dowling Mysteries (1987-91). Actually, the Chicago-born Bosley was Jewish, the son of Benjamin and Dora Bosley. His father worked in real estate; his mother was a concert pianist before bringing up her two sons. After high school, as the second world war neared its end, Bosley joined the navy. He went on to study law at DePaul University in Chicago, but decided, halfway through his studies, to pursue an acting career, despite having "looked in the mirror and realised that I was short and kind of heavy".
In fact, it was his build that helped him land the lead role of the New York City mayor Fiorello H La Guardia in the Broadway musical Fiorello! (1959), for which Bosley won a Tony. Though not a singer, he stopped the show each night with the energetic number The Name's La Guardia. After a few years of bit parts on stage and on television, and odd jobs, Fiorello! made sure Bosley would never have to struggle again.
His first film role was in Robert Mulligan's Love With the Proper Stranger (1963), as a shy, clumsy Italian-American courting Natalie Wood, who doesn't hear the "bells and banjos" she associates with romantic love. In The World of Henry Orient (1964), Bosley offered a foretaste of Howard Cunningham as the understanding father of a teenage girl who has a crush on a concert pianist (Peter Sellers). When reminded of his wife's infidelity, he remarks: "The less said about that the better."
But it was television that took up most of Bosley's time and charm. He made significant appearances in a multitude of shows before Happy Days claimed him. He was offered the role of Mr C only when Harold Gould had to turn it down because of another commitment. Bosley initially rejected it himself, but, "after rereading the pilot script, I changed my mind, because of a scene between Howard Cunningham and Richie. The father/son situation was written so movingly, I fell in love with the project," he recalled.
It was Bosley who had the last word at the end of the final series: "Marion and I have not climbed Mount Everest or written a great American novel. But we've had the joy of raising two wonderful kids, and watching them and their friends grow up into loving adults. And I guess no man or woman could ask for anything more. So thank you all for being part of our family."
Bosley's major post-Happy Days role, apart from Father Dowling, was as Sheriff Amos Tupper in 19 episodes of Murder, She Wrote (1984-88). Tupper tries to help the crime novelist Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) solve real murder mysteries, but is mistaken most of the time, often arresting the wrong suspect.
In 1994 Bosley returned to Broadway after a 25-year absence to appear in the long-running musical Beauty and the Beast, in which as Maurice, Belle's loving, eccentric inventor father, he sang No Matter What. In 2002 he took over the role of Herr Schultz, the Jewish fruit-shop owner, in Cabaret.
Bosley is survived by his second wife, Patricia, and a daughter, Amy, from his first marriage.
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