Richard Weedt Widmark net worth is $1.5 Million. Also know about Richard Weedt Widmark bio, salary, height, age weight, relationship and more …

Richard Weedt Widmark Wiki Biography

Richard Widmark was born on the 26th December 1914, in Sunrise Township, Minnesota USA of part-Swedish origin through his father, and English and Scottish through his mother. He was an actor and film producer, in 1948 winning a Golden Globe as the Best Young Actor, and in 2005 he received the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Career Achievement Award for his work, and was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Widmark was active in the entertainment industry from 1937 to 2001. He passed away in 2008.

How much was the net worth of Richard Widmark? It has been calculated by authoritative sources that the overall size of his wealth was as much as $1.5 million, compared to the present day. Films were the main source of Widmark’s modest fortune.

To begin with, the boy was raised in Sioux Falls. Widmark could read before he went to school and studied acting at Lake Forest College, after his graduation taught acting but went on to study law to become a lawyer. He had been very enthusiastic about acting from an early age.

Concerning his professional career, Widmark debuted on Broadway in George Abbott’s theatre production “Kiss and Tell” in 1943. However, he spent ten years as a radio station spokesman before making his debut as a film actor, in Henry Hathaway’s “Kiss of Death” (1947), playing a criminal who, in the most famous scene of the film, pushed a paralysed woman in her wheelchair coldly down stairs to her death; the film was a box office hit, and with positive reviews of critics made the actor famous overnight, being awarded a Golden Globe for Best Young Actor and was nominated for an Oscar.

After his successful debut, Widmark was cast for years in the role of the bad guy. It was only in the 1950s that the actor managed to get away from this stereotype and establish himself as a versatile actor in all genres. He developed a wide range of roles and appeared, among others, in war films including “The Frogmen” (1951) and adventure films “Red Skies of Montana” (1952). Widmark’s popularity rose from appearances in numerous western films of the 1950s and 1960s, to give examples “The Broken Lance” (1954), “Two Rode Together” (1961) and “Alvarez Kelly” (1966). Widmark also appeared in dramatic films such as “Judgment at Nuremberg” (1961), in which he was seen as a prosecutor of Nazi criminals. He played in war films such as “Destination Gobi” (1953), disaster films like “Roller Coaster” (1977), and thrillers like “Bear Island” (1979).

Richard Widmark was one of the most popular actors in Hollywood for more than three decades, playing in numerous cinema films until the late 1970s. From the 1980s onwards, he was seen less, but in 1987, he was featured in Volker Schlöndorff’s film “A Gathering of Old Men” based on the novel of the same name written by Ernest J. Gaines. In 1991, Richard Widmark was in film “True Colors”, for the last time before the film camera. Afterwards, he was seen in the documentary films “Lincoln” (1992) and “Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick” (1996).

Finally, in the personal life of the actor, Widmark married screenwriter Jean Hazlewood in 1942. In 1945, their only child, Anne Heath Widmark, was born. Widmark spent his life on his farm in Connecticut. Mrs. Jean died in 1997, and after her death, Mr. Richard married Susan Blanchard in 1999. Richard Widmark died after a long illness in 2008 in Roxbury, Connecticut; he was 93 years old.

IMDB Wikipedia $1.5 million 1914 1914-12-26 1960 2008-03-24 5′ 10″ (1.78 m) Academy Awards – Best Actor in a Supporting Role (1948) Actor Anne Heath Widmark Anne Koufax Capricorn Career Achievement Award (2005) December 26 Golden Globe Award – Most Promising Newcomer (1948) I Love Lucy (1955) Jean Hazlewood Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) Kiss of Death (1947) Laurel Awards – Top Action Performance (3rd place Golden Laurel Laurel Awards (1959) Madigan (1972-1973) Minnesota Night and the City Panic in the Streets (1950) Pickup on South Street (1953) Primetime Emmy Awards (1971) producer Richard Weedt Widmark Richard Widmark Net Worth Silver Medallion Award (1983) Soundtrack Star on the Walk of Fame (1960) Sunrise Township Susan Blanchard The Alamo (1960) The Lives of Benjamin Franklin (1975) The Trap (1959) U.S. Vanished (1971) Volker Schlöndorff Warlock (1959) Western Heritage Awards – Bronze Wrangler (1961)

Richard Weedt Widmark Quick Info

Richard Weedt Widmark Quotes

• [on not resigning with Fox after seven years] I didn’t sign a new contract because I was tired of being shot from one movie to another–finishing one on a Saturday and starting another on Monday. I could get more money on the outside and get a wider variety of stuff.
• [in 1986 interview, on Marilyn Monroe] She was a vulnerable kid. Murder to work with because she was scared to death of acting–even when she became a big movie actress. We had a hell of a time getting her out of the dressing room. When it was five o’clock, it got irritating: “C’mon, Marilyn, we want to go home!: She was a movie animal. Something happened between the lens and the film. Nobody knew what the hell it was. On the set, you’d think: “Oh, this is impossible; you can’t print this”. You’d see it, and she’s got everyone backed off the screen. [Laurence Olivier] said the same thing. She had that phenomenal something! Nobody knows what it is, but she had it. She certainly was never a professional actress. She always had a coach with her, lurking in the background, giving her signals. And she could never remember three words in a row–so it was all piece-work. Beyond all the technical deficiencies, she was a nice girl. We got along fine.
• [in 1988, on director William Keighley] Bill Keighley was a very nice man, an elegant gut; he was married to an actress named Genevieve Tobin. He had been with [Darryl F. Zanuck] for years over at Warners. Directed oodles of gangster movies, but he himself was a drawing room type of fellow.
• [in 1986, on Darryl F. Zanuck] We weren’t crazy about each other. He wasn’t my cup of tea; he was a first-rate administrator, but a little Napoleon. He had gemutlich with writers and with directors, but no sympathy at all for actors. Of all the moguls, Zanuck was the only one who could make a film. He was a good utter. I didn’t admire the type of fellow he was. So I was never invited to Palm Springs–or all that nonsense. We had a business relationship, and it worked out very well.
• [in 1985, on Henry Hathaway] Through the years Henry and I became very close friends. We did a few pictures together, and he was always tough as nails. Off the set he was a charmer; on the set, he was Hitler!
• [In a 1971 N.Y. Times interview] I don’t care how well known an actor is – he can still live a normal life, if he wants to. I still believe it. That’s the trouble with actors. If they’re not recognized, they think it’s all over.
• [on Hanky Panky (1982)] That went down the tunnel; but I never had so much fun on a dog.
• [on Movie Madness (1982)] What a disaster! Who directed that? Oh, Henry Jaglom. Enough said!
• [1986 interview, on his Kiss of Death (1947) character Tommy Udo] Ben Hecht wrote the script. I don’t know whether he had indicated the laugh or whether I did it out of nervousness. I think it was probably a combination. [Director Henry Hathaway] liked it and said, “We could use a little more of that”.
• [upon receiving the D.W. Griffith Award for Lifetime Achievment in 1990] It’s my second award. The other was for sight reading in the eighth grade.
• Many of my friends were blacklisted. America should be ashamed forever.
• I won’t have a gun in my house.
• [on Spencer Tracy] What an actor should be is exemplified, for me, by him. I like the reality of his acting. It’s so honest and seems so effortless, even though what Tracy does is the result of damn hard work and extreme concentration. Actually, the ultimate in any art is never to show the wheels grinding. The essence of bad acting, for example, is shouting. Tracy never shouts. He’s the greatest movie actor there ever was.
• When I see people destroying their privacy–what they think, what they feel–by beaming it out to millions of viewers, I think it cheapens them as individuals.
• I could choose the director and my fellow actors. I could carry out projects which I liked but the studios didn’t want. The businessmen who run Hollywood today have no self-respect. What interests them is not movies but the bottom line. Look at Dumb & Dumber (1994), which turns idiocy into something positive, or Forrest Gump (1994), a hymn to stupidity. ‘Intellectual’ has become a dirty word.
• Movie audiences fasten on to one aspect of the actor, and then they decide what they want you to be. They think you’re playing yourself. The truth is that the only person who can ever really play himself is a baby.
• [in 1976] I know I’ve made kind of a half-assed career out of violence, but I abhor violence. I am an ardent supporter of gun control. It seems incredible to me that we are the only civilized nation that does not put some effective control on guns.
• [in 2001] I’m a lifelong liberal. I’ve never been a real activist–I just shoot my mouth off. When I knew Ronald Reagan, he was an affable, boring fellow. Now he’s an icon. It’s incredible. Like half of America, I’m doubly mystified by Reagan’s spiritual heir, our current president.
• Marilyn Monroe wanted to be this great star but acting just scared the hell out of her. That’s why she was always late–couldn’t get her on the set. She had trouble remembering lines. But none of it mattered. With a very few special people, something happens between the lens and the film that is pure magic. And she really had it.
• It’s a bit rough priding oneself that one isn’t too bad an actor and then finding one’s only remembered for a giggle.
• It’s weird, the effect actors have on an audience. With the [bad guy] roles I played in those early movies, I found that quite a few people wanted to have a go at me.
• I suppose I wanted to act in order to have a place in the sun. I’d always lived in small towns, and acting meant having some kind of identity.
• [on his giggling psychopathic killer in his debut film Kiss of Death (1947)] I’d never seen myself on the screen, and when I did, I wanted to shoot myself. That damn laugh of mine! For two years after that picture, you couldn’t get me to smile. I played the part the way I did because the script struck me as funny and the part I played made me laugh, the guy was such a ridiculous beast.
• The more takes I do, the worse I get.
• [speaking in 1976] The heavies in my day were kid’s stuff compared to today. Our villains had no redeeming qualities. But there’s a new morality today. A villain is a guy with a frailty. Heroes are villains.

Richard Weedt Widmark Important Facts

• His father, Carl Widmark, ran a general store, and then became a traveling salesman. The family moved around a lot before settling in Princeton, Illinois.
• Stereotyped onscreen as a hot-headed villain, Widmark fought for better roles and went on to give complex performances in such film classics as No Way Out, Night and the City and Madigan.
• Two years out of college, Widmark headed to New York City in 1938 when a friend offered him an audition for a radio soap opera. Widmark won the role and soon became a busy player in broadcasting and on the Broadway stage (debuting in 1943).
• After a turbulent childhood, lightened by his frequent trips to the movies, Widmark became an accomplished high school scholar, a college football star, and eventually a teacher of speech and drama at Lake Forest College in Illinois.
• Stereotyped onscreen as a hot-headed villain, Widmark fought for better roles and went on to give complex performances in such film classics as Panic in the Streets (1950), No Way Out (which introduced him to close friend Sidney Poitier), Night and the City, Broken Lance (co-starring his idol, Spencer Tracy), and Madigan.
• In September 1999, Widmark married Susan Blanchard, who was Henry Fonda’s third wife.
• Despite his rising career, and happy marriage to his college sweetheart, Ora Jean Hazlewood, the 1940s were a time of great stress for the actor. Unable to serve in World War II due to a perforated eardrum, he spent three anxious years fearing for the life of his brother Donald, a bomber pilot who was injured and held as a prisoner-of-war by the Nazis. Although Donald Widmark was freed at the war’s end, his failing health over the next decade would be the most agonizing tragedy in Richard’s life.
• Actor Richard Widmark was offered an audition for a radio soap opera two years after college and soon after made his screen debut as the cackling psychopath Tommy Udo in the crime drama Kiss of Death (1947).
• In 1947, the crime drama Kiss of Death catapulted Widmark to movie stardom. The actor made one of the most shocking film debuts in movie history as his character, the cackling psychopath Tommy Udo, shoved an older wheelchair-bound woman down a flight of stairs to her death. The role earned Widmark an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor and proved to be the beginning of a distinguished five-decade film career.
• Widmark and Jean Hazlewood had a daughter, Anne Heath Widmark, who was married to Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax (1969-82). Hazlewood died in March 1997.
• Director Henry Hathaway thought Widmark’s high forehead looked too intellectual to play Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death (1947), so he had the young actor wear a hairpiece for his screen test.
• Was Frank ‘Lefty’ Rosenthal’s first choice to play the character based on him in Casino (1995). Being that Widmark was 80 years old at the time, the role eventually went to Robert De Niro.
• He appeared in a public service short entitled “Off the Highway”, which was made by USC students and directed by Fred Zinnemann, who talked Widmark–his neighbor at the time–into appearing in it.
• He was the first choice of playwright Robert Anderson for both the stage and film versions of I Never Sang for My Father (1970) in the role eventually played by Gene Hackman.
• Very touched by Sidney Poitier presenting him with the D. W. Griffith Lifetime Achievment Award in 1990, Widmark said to his old friend, “Sid, I can’t believe you came all the way to California to do this for me.” Poitier replied, “For you I would have walked!”.
• From Sidney Poitier’s speech about Widmark at the D. W. Griffith Award for Life Achievment: “… the generosity of spirit that lights his way will also warm your heart…”.
• He was a lifelong liberal Democrat.
• Although 27 years old at the time, Widmark was considered for the role of the cocky young sailor eventually played by Robert Walker in Bataan (1943).
• Good friends with Sidney Poitier. They co-starred in three films together.
• Featured in “Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir” by Karen Burroughs Hannsberry (McFarland, 2003).
• Before he ever became a film actor, Widmark was busy with voice-over work on various radio programs during the 1930s and 1940s.
• His acting idol was Spencer Tracy.
• Born to Carl Widmark, a salesman, and his wife Ethal Mae.
• Was on the first cover of German teen magazine “Bravo” together with Marilyn Monroe (1956).
• Resided on his mansion in Roxbury, Connecticut from the 1950s until his death.
• Activist for strengthening gun control laws in the United States.
• John Wayne/Richard Widmark is the sign/countersign used by soldiers holding the Alamo in Viva Max (1969).
• Spent his later years divided between a ranch in Hidden Valley, California, and a farm in Connecticut.
• Born in Sunrise, Minnesota, his father, Carl, was a general store manager before becoming a traveling salesman. The family eventually settled in Princeton, Illinois, where his father owned a downstairs bakery.
• In high school he wrote for the school newspaper.
• Earned several awards in oratory contests while a pre-law student at Lake Forest College. He was also active in the drama department and played the lead in the play “Counselor-at-Law” as a sophomore.
• Despite playing heartless killers and bigots on film, he personally denounced all kinds of violence and the usage of guns. He admitted that once he went fishing and regretted the fact he caught a trout and took its life. He also apologized profusely to Sidney Poitier during the shoot of the movie No Way Out (1950) after filming scenes together which called for Widmark to spew out racist remarks.
• Was not able to see active duty during WWII due to a perforated eardrum, but did serve as an air raid warden and entertained servicemen as a member of the American Theatre Wing.
• When his contract at Fox expired in 1954 after seven years, he deliberately went independent in order to have more artistic control over his films. He formed his own company, Heath Productions.
• In the fall of 2007 he sustained a fractured vertebrae after a fall. He died about six months later of complications.
• He was the stepfather of Amy Fonda, daughter of Henry Fonda and Susan Blanchard.
• His father was Swedish by descent; his mother was Scottish, English and Irish.
• At 5’10” he was one of the shorter leading men of his era.
• He has significantly contributed to the preservation of land and nature in his adopted hometown of Roxbury, Connecticut. As one of the founding members of the Roxbury Land Trust, he has tenaciously worked to preserve the pristine character of the Litchfield County town which has been the long-time home of celebrities the likes of Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, and artist Alexander Calder. Actor and Widmark’s friend, Walter Matthau also owned property in bucolic Roxbury and at Widmark’s urging, Matthau made a generous contribution of property to the trust shortly before his death.
• His daughter with wife Jean Hazlewood, Anne Heath Widmark, an artist and author, married baseball legend Sandy Koufax on 1 January 1969.
• When Kiss of Death (1947) was released to theaters in 1947, 20th Century Fox’s publicity department encouraged theater owners to “Sell Richard Widmark!” Fox’s publicity manual advised theaters to have a local printer make up “Wanted” with Widmark’s face on them to advertise the film, in which he made his debut. The part was small, but Widmark made it one of the most indelible performances in the history of cinema.
• Was honored with a retrospective of his films by the Museum of Modern Art (New York, New York) in May 2001.
• His sole Academy Awards nomination was for best actor in a supporting role for Kiss of Death (1947) in 1948. Though he had won the Golden Globe for the role, he lost the Oscar to Edmund Gwenn in Miracle on 34th Street (1947).
• Inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 2002.
• President of his high school class.
• Unforgettable in his screen debut in Kiss of Death (1947) as Tommy Udo, a psychopathic mob hit-man, who giggles gleefully even as he shoves a wheelchair-bound old woman, portrayed by Mildred Dunnock, tumbling down a long stairway to her demise.

Richard Weedt Widmark Filmography

Richard Weedt Widmark Awards