Voting is still underway at Your Favorite Character Actor – Final Poll (This poll will close on 04-22-2013 at 01:32 AM). But it may be soon enough to use the names on that list to help locate your favorite performances by these and other character actors. If you need to refresh your memory on roles these people have had, visit Internet Movie Database and check out what they’ve done.
Sarah Hunley’s role as blowsy drunk Juanita in Del Shores’s “Sordid Lives” (and more of same in the short-lived television series of the same name) cracks me up to pieces every time I watch it.
Timothy Spall as Mr. Venus, The Articulator, in the BBC production of Our Mutual Friend. It was a great character in the book, and his performance was spot-on and even better. “If you was brought to me loose in a bag…”
Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein. I think I’ve said before: every time I watch, I truly believe he is a reanimated corpse that has recently learned to tap dance.
Edmund Gwenn in just about anything, but I’ll go with the obvious: Miracle on 34th Street, though Mr. 880 and Them! are close.
Jay Tarses in Teen Wolf. The only thing in the movie worth watching; every line he says is a gem. I assume he wrote them himself – he wrote TV shows for Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett.
Dwight Frye in both Frankenstein (and Bride of Frankenstein). He created the concept of Igor, the mad scientist’s assistant (though his characters were named Fritz and Karl).
Jack Oakie in The Great Dictator. It takes a lot to upstage Chaplin in his own film.
Claude Rains in Casablanca. He got all the good lines. At the same time, the movie is character actor paradise; S. Z. Sakall is also wonderful.
I’d better mention this one before it gets swept aside in the flood: Strother Martin in Cool Hand Luke. Another playground for character actors, including Dennis Hopper, Harry Dean Stanton and one we have yet to mention (that I saw): J.D. Cannon (1922–2005)
Strother was also instrumental in the success of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
I wouldn’t consider them character actors. They’re A-listers, and that movie made them so. They were character actors in Quick Change, and quite amazing.
Jack Elam as “Jake” in* Support Your Local Sheriff *, as demonstrated by the following exchange between him and Jason McCullough (James Garner) as they panned for gold in a stream:
Jason McCullough: Well, do you see anything?
Jake: No. What are we lookin’ for?
Jason McCullough: What are we lookin’ for? We’re lookin’ for nuggets, a vein, the mother lode!
Jake: What’s the mother lode?
Jason McCullough: I’m beginning to get the horrible feelin’ you know even less about gold mining than I do, Jake.
Jake: Course I don’t know anything about gold mining!
Jason McCullough: Well, what do you think I brought you along for? I thought everyone around here knew about mining.
Jake: Well I don’t! I might be able to give you a few tips about shoveling horse… working around the stable, but I don’t know nothing about huntin’ gold.
Also, Warren Oates and Ben Johnson in The Wild Bunch (along with Bo Hopkins, Strother Martin, Dub Taylor, and L. Q. Jones). The Wild Bunch may have the greatest collection of character actors ever!
