A giant of American theatre
US actor
A VETERAN actor of towering presence, Brian Dennehy (81) was a lover of Chicago theatre and the leading American interpreter of the tragedies of Eugene O’Neill.
Dennehy won two Tony Awards, six Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe. His film career included Cocoon, First Blood, Presumed Innocent, and The Belly of an Architect, for which he won the best actor award at the Chicago International Film Festival in 1997. His television roles were legion and included a memorably intense ESPN movie in which he played the notorious Indiana basketball coach Bobby
Knight.
But he often referred to those TV jobs as necessities to pay his bills and keep working.
Dennehy was an inveterate creature of the stage, a tireless tragedian of the old school. That was where his heart resided. The theatre’s unique rituals were his lifeblood and he carried the greatest roles of the dramatic canon on his back like heavy weights he was honourbound to lift.
His formidable stage career was highlighted by numerous epic O’Neill collaborations with Goodman artistic director Robert Falls, including Desire Under the Elms, The Iceman Cometh, Hughie, and A Touch of the Poet. All began at the Goodman but went on to multiple productions across the nation, often including Broadway.
The two men also worked together on a stunning 1998 production of Death of a Salesman, which starred Dennehy as Willy Loman and forever changed how Arthur Miller’s great drama of the underbelly of allAmerican capitalism was viewed.
‘‘Brian has been my closest collaborator over 40 years,’’ an emotional Falls said recently.
‘‘I am so fortunate to have met him. Our lives have been joined at the hip since then. We had our biggest successes together. And both our lives were changed together.’’
Throughout Chicago theatre, and the American theatre at large, there was a sense of the passing of a huge figure, a link to a quickly vanishing era.
Dennehy was also a favourite, and a marquee name, at the Stratford
Festival of Canada, where he regularly appeared in the works of William Shakespeare.
‘‘No other actor has so defined himself by the greatest roles of the 20th century,’’ Falls said. ‘‘Brian was a giant man and he wanted to take giant risks every time he came up to bat.’’
Dennehy was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1938. He worked in Chicago so often, many in the city thought he lived there, rather than in a farmhouse in Connecticut, not coincidentally the state that most informed the work of O’Neill. Although he slowed down over the years, he was known for his singular enjoyment of his work and the postshow rituals that followed: ‘‘great times, great times,’’ he would often say when describing his latest project.
‘‘Chicago is a great town,’’ he told the Tribune five years ago, with a wistful tone. ‘‘I don’t know if it’s a great town when you’re 76. But it’s a great town when you’re 56. Pretty damn good at 66; 46 is the best.’’
And unlike most actors, Dennehy was never leery of critics and theatre journalists. Indeed, he had a particular understanding of them, in all their neuroses. He often attributed this to his father working for the Associated Press, meaning that his son carried a certain sympathy for the state of newspapers and for ‘‘inkstained wretches,’’ a phrase he liked. Dennehy relished giving interviews, talking about his work and, improbably, even the tension of overnight reviews, probably because he knew he had dived as deep as any human could be expected to submerge himself.
He died on April 15. He is survived by second wife Jennifer Arnott and five children. — Chicago Tribune