above: de Corsia as a crooked cop in Kubrick's THE KILLING
Sometimes I think Ted de Corsia is my favorite actor. He was good in everything. More to the point, I just smile whenever he shows up onscreen. In noir, he mostly played scumbags. One thing all his characters had in common was an almost pathological narcissism--Ted always knew what he wanted, and he wanted it now, consequences be damned. He was a man with a plan, but the plan was always halfassed and based entirely on a comically inflated sense of his own abilities. I'd estimate that he spent roughly two-thirds of his career being gunned down by various leading men.
Check out my new essay on Terrible Ted over at Criminal Element.
No comments:
Post a Comment