Hume Cronyn is dead of cancer. He was 91 years old.
Oops, here’s the link.
Looks like we spotted the same thing, pugluvr.
For those who are interested in the long career of this fine actor, here is his IMDB entry. (Somehow, it feels cheap to reduce his career to this list.)
He was No. 4, if you count David Brinkley, Gregory Peck and William Marshall (see my “Blacula” thread).
FAIRFIELD, Conn. (AP) – Hume Cronyn, the versatile stage and screen actor who charmed audiences with his portrayals of irascible old men and frequently paired up with his wife, Jessica Tandy, has died of cancer. He was 91. Cronyn died of prostate cancer Sunday at his home in Fairfield, Conn., family spokeswoman Karen Connelly said Monday. He and Tandy were married for nearly 52 years at the time of her death from ovarian cancer in September 1994.
Cronyn, known to modern audiences for his roles in the 1980s “Cocoon” movies, was a seasoned stage actor, making his theater debut in 1931 as a paperboy in “Up Pops the Devil.” He was known for his versatility as an actor, playing a wide variety of characters on stage, including a janitor in “Hippers’ Holiday,” in his Broadway debut in 1934; the gangster Elkus in “There’s Always a Breeze,” in 1938; and Andrei Prozoroff, the brother in Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” in 1939. He made his film debut in 1943 as the detective story addict Herbie Hawkins in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Shadow of a Doubt.”
After Cronyn appeared in Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat” in 1944, a critic in the New York World-Telegram wrote: “Hume Cronyn is one of the most vivid young character actors to come along in Hollywood in quite a time.” Cronyn went on to take other film parts, both major and minor, appearing in numerous movies over the next 50 years, including: “Phantom of the Opera” (1943); “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1946); “People Will Talk” (1951); “Cleopatra” (1963); “There Was a Crooked Man” (1970); and “The World According to Garp” (1982).
Cronyn frequently worked with his wife - on Broadway in “The Gin Game” (1978), on television, in “Foxfire” (1987); and in movies, as a married couple, in “Cocoon” (1985) and “Cocoon: The Return” (1988). Both he and Tandy were Emmy Award nominees in 1994 for their performances in “Hallmark Hall of Fame: To Dance With the White Dog.” Cronyn won the award for best actor in a miniseries or special for the CBS movie about an elderly man whose dead wife’s spirit returns in the form of a dog. He won two other Emmys as well.
I was certain he died several years ago, and Jessica Tandy survived him.