Stuart Whitman
Actor who shone in Westerns, starred in The Longest Day and was Oscar-nominated for The Mark
STUART WHITMAN, who has died aged 92, was a craggily handsome actor who was best known for Westerns, notably the John Wayne vehicle The Comancheros and the television series Cimarron Strip, but found some of his most rewarding parts in British films.
He was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award for The Mark (1961), in which he played a man who falls in love with a young girl, is sentenced to prison for intent to commit child molestation and emerges wanting to conquer his urges and build a normal life. Although it shied away from the darker complexities of the issue, the film was sensitive and daring for its time, and Whitman brought humanity to an unsympathetic part.
A last-minute replacement for Richard Burton, he arrived in London seriously doubting whether he could handle the role: “I was even thinking, well, OK, I’ll get an attack of something, have to go home and not do this film” – and recalled that the shockingly warm English beer did not help to assuage his nerves. But before filming started in Dublin, Rod Steiger, who played his character’s psychiatrist, suggested that they work through their scenes, and proved a steadying influence.
Whitman went on to be top-billed in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), a period farce on an epic scale about a London-toparis air race, with a huge cast of distinguished international actors and British comedians. Whitman played Orvil Newton, a homespun Arizona cowboy-turned-aviator; his most memorable scene comes when he loses his trousers while using his belt to fix the wing of his Bristol Boxkite in mid-flight.
Of his American films, his best part was in The Comancheros (1961), an exuberantly over-the-top Western which was the Casablanca director Michael Curtiz’s last film; Whitman played an effete, patrician character who is pursued by John Wayne’s Texas Ranger after killing a man in a duel, and is then forced to team up with him to tackle a murderous gang of gun runners.
Whitman secured the part after persuading Wayne – very much the dominant figure in the production – that he would do a better job than an actor who had already been cast, and the two men became regular chess partners in between filming.
Other notable films included the Western Rio Conchos (1964), the allstar D-day epic The Longest Day (1962), and Sands of the Kalahari (1964), in which he was a big-game hunter who survives a plane crash in the desert; in one memorable scene he fights and kills a baboon with his bare hands.
Despite his success, in 1964 Whitman was dropped by 20th Century Fox, to whom he had been contracted in 1958. He went on to do fine work as Marshal Jim Brown in the innovative Western television series Cimarron Strip (1967), which lasted for only one season owing to the large budgets needed for its 90-minute episodes, but remains highly regarded.
There were, however, low points, and Night of the Lepus (1972), a risible horror film in which he was a scientist responsible for setting mutant rabbits on the rampage, proved to be the nail in the coffin of his movie career.
Stuart Maxwell Whitman was born in San Francisco on February 1 1928, the son of Joseph Whitman, a property developer, and his wife Cecilia (née Gold). His childhood was peripatetic and, as a self-confessed juvenile delinquent, he attended more than 25 schools before eventually graduating from Hollywood High School.
He enlisted in the US Army in 1945, serving for three years in the Corps of Engineers at Fort Lewis, Washington, and proving a proficient boxer. He then used the GI Bill to enrol at Los Angeles City College to study law but found it boring and, having enjoyed amateur dramatics since he was 12, switched to the Ben Bard Drama School.
His film debut came in 1951 with non-speaking roles in When Worlds Collide and The Day the Earth Stood Still. He made an impression in a recurring role as Sergeant Walters in the police series Highway Patrol on television, resulting in lead roles in films such as Johnny Trouble (1957), The Decks Ran Red (1958, in which he and Dorothy Dandridge enjoyed one of Hollywood’s early interracial kisses), The Sound and the Fury (1959), The Story of Ruth and Murder, Inc (both 1960).
In later life he continued to play supporting roles on television, with occasional film and stage work, but he could afford to be choosy, having made a fortune from his partnership in his father’s property development business. “I didn’t need to act to make a living, but had a real passion for it – I just loved to act,” he recalled after his retirement in 2000.
Twice divorced, Stuart Whitman is survived by his third wife, Julia Paradiz, and by a daughter and four sons.
Stuart Whitman, born February 1 1928, died March 16 2020