Monday, July 16, 2007

lovely sadistic appearances


strother martin in john huston's the asphalt jungle, 1950, in his second film appearance (uncredited)

i didn't realize this was strother martin, the classic sadist, until i did an image search on him the other day.
one of my favourite actors, making lovely sadistic appearances in:
john ford's the man who shot liberty valance 1962
stuart rosenberg's cool hand luke 1967, and pocket money 1972
"what we have here is...failure to communicate." (cool hand luke)
sam peckinpah's the wild bunch 1969, and the ballad of cable hogue 1970
george roy hill's butch cassidy and the sundance kid 1969

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I watched The Asphalt Jungle earlier this summer. Though I was disappointed with the film, I also didn't realize this was Strother Martin.

Incidentally, which of the two stills do you find more magnetic? For me, it's surely the bottom one. The staring eyes in the first pale to the hand gesture in the second, in terms of making me uncomfortable!

the art of memory said...

the second image is great, evening seeing it as a still it tells such a story.
the film has always been one of my alltime most watched films, if i had a dollar for each time, i could buy that leather couch i have been dreaming about.
and i could watch it a hundred times more, so much beauty and darkness, it is such a dark film.
looks like you have a very nice blog, with all the westerns, i look forward to looking closer.