(Sunrise, Minnesota, USA, December 26, 1914 - Roxbury, Connecticut, USA, March 24, 2008)


Widmark is an American actor who over the course of a seventy-year long career acted in almost every medium. He graduated with a degree in acting from the Lake Forest College and at first remained there to teach acting. He began his career on the radio in 1938, then worked in theater and finally became a TV actor. He made his film debut in Kiss of Death (1947) appearing as the psychopathic gangster Tommy and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Even though he had ten years of experience as a radio actor, it was this role that ensured his popularity and a future in film. Over the next seven years he acted in films made at 20th Century Fox: Yellow Sky (1949) by William Wellman, Down to the Sea in Ships (1949) by Henry Hathaway, Night and the City (1950) by Jules Dassin, Panic in the Streets (1950) by Elia Kazan; with Marilyn Monroe in Don’t Bother to Knock (1952) and Pickup on South Street (1953) by Samuel Fuller. Even though he became famous for his portrayal of psychopaths and Mafiosi, Widmark was sweet-natured, pacifistic and a liberal democrat. While playing a racist in the film No Way Out (1950), he kept apologizing to his partner Sidney Poitier after each scene. Two years after his contract with 20th Century Fox expired, he founded his own production house Heath Productions and produced and acted in several relatively unnoticed films Time Limit (1957), The Secret Ways (1960) and The Bedford Incident (1964). His other films include Alamo (1960) by John Wayne, Two Rode Together (1961) by John Ford, Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) by Stanley Kramer and Cheyenne Autumn (1963) by John Ford. In 1968 he starred as a detective in Don Siegel’s film Inspector Madigan, which became so popular that they made it into a TV series Madigan (1972-1973) also starring Widmark. He had first acted for television a year earlier as the president the USA in Vanished (1971) and received a nomination for an Emmy. Afterwards he continued to act in TV films and series. His other important films include Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977), Coma (1978), The Swarm (1978), Blackout (1985), A Gathering of Old Men (1987), Once Upon a Texas Train (1988) and True Colors (1991).