Terry Jones (the Welsh Python) has a brilliant article in last Sunday’s Observer on the bellicose tendencies of our “President”. It’s a good read…
Richard Crenna is one of those familiar faces whose name you might not quite remember. Within the industry, he was known as a reliable actor with a strong work ethic and a willingness to pour himself into a part.
Richard Crenna in Rambo
He began his career as a radio actor in Los Angeles at age 11 and performed in hundreds of radio shows through high school, college, and a stint in the army. His most memorable role at that time was as squeaky-voiced Walter Denton in Our Miss Brooks. He continued in that role as the series moved to television in 1952, playing the perpetually adolescent character up to age 29. He then moved on to the more adult role of Luke in The Real McCoys. After 20 years, he finally arrived as a leading man in Slattery’s People as compassionate state legislator James Slattery. That show ran less than two seasons, from 1964 to 1965; Crenna later said that the series may have been ahead of its time in dealing with heavy social issues on TV.
Crenna went on to direct TV shows and continued to act in TV and films, winning an emmy in 1985 for his work in The Rape of Richard Beck. Still, it was an unlikely role that made him a “movie star”: Colonel Samuel Trautman, the growling tough-as-nails commanding officer to Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo in First Blood (and subsequent Rambo films). It was certainly a long way from the adenoidal Walter Denton.
I met Richard Crenna briefly around 1986 an Academy benefit screening. He was standing alone at a reception, looking as though he were about to leave, until I boldly walked up and introduced myself as a fan. He smiled pleasantly and commented that I must have seen all the Rambo movies. “Actually,” I replied, “you’d have to shoot me and drag me into the theater to see one of those films.”
He looked at me for a long moment, shocked, then clapped his hand on my shoulder and laughed out loud. We chatted pleasantly for several minutes about his long career, and I mentioned a number of his radio shows. He seemed very interested to know that this material was still available; he seemed wistful, even grateful, that his early career should be remembered, and wished me well as we parted. I liked him a great deal.
After years as a dramatic actor, Crenna got to show his comic side once again in 1993’s Hot Shots! Part Deux, in which he parodied his Trautman role as a gritty, tough-talking military commando… Colonel Walter Denton!
Richard Crenna died from pancreatic cancer on January 18 at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He was 75.
I always wanted to be a cartoonist. As a child, I spent many hours painstakingly copying the simple lines and flourishes of the illustrators I admired the most: Al Hirschfeld, Jules Feiffer, and Charles Schultz. It was in Peanuts that I first heard the name Bill Mauldin; every year on Veteran’s Day, Schultz would do a Mauldin tribute. As I explored his work, I too became a fan.
For a generation of men who fought in WWII, Bill Mauldin’s cartoons in Stars & Stripes — particularly Willie and Joe, the immortal infantrymen — depicted their own soldiering experience: downtrodden, grubby, often dazed, but always ready to hike into the mud and do their job. Mauldin’s seemingly anti-authoritarian views often got him in trouble with the Army brass. At one point, he was called into a private meeting with General Patton, who is reported to have yelled “What are you trying to do, incite a goddamn mutiny?” Mauldin wrote that he marched out of the room feeling like he had an agreement with the General, and he went right on creating his cartoons his own way. In 1945, he published a collection of his WWII cartoons, Up Front With Mauldin, which garnered him the Pulitzer prize.
After the war, he returned home and created more cartoons attacking the issues that moved him the most, particularly racism and McCarthyism. At the time, his views were too radical for many papers, and he retired from cartooning for nearly ten years. Eventually, the rest of the country caught up with him and he picked up his pen again, going on to win a second Pulitzer prize. He continued his work as a political cartoonist until 1992. Bill Maudlin died of respiratory failure at a nursing home in California on January 22nd. He was 81 years old.
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“I’m losing patience with my neighbours, Mr Bush”