RIP TORN: 1931-2019
There are times, and they’re more rare than you would think, when an actor is simply perfect for a role, so perfect that you will associate them with that part forever.
That’s how it was with Rip Torn, so unbelievably brilliant as Artie, the producer of a floridly dysfunctional talk show on “The Larry Sanders Show,” simply one of the greatest shows that’s ever been on television.
Torn died Tuesday. He was 88. Torn, of course, had a long and terrific career (check him out in “Defending Your Life” as the lawyer kind-of, sort-of fighting for Albert Brooks’ immortal soul), of which Artie just scratches the surface. But he was just so drop-dead perfect as the mostly unflappable Artie, who kept the talk-show host Larry (the late, so-great Garry Shandling in another career-defining role) in line, usually, that for me it’s hard to think of him as any other character.
Torn was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Tony Award, and he won the Emmy (he was nominated for six).
In an interview before receiving a career-achievement award at the Sedona Film Festival, Torn talked about his long and varied career.
“Did you ever try to paint?” he asked. “You wouldn’t paint the same painting all over (again). It’s what you see and what you feel about life and what you’re looking at.”
Torn wasn’t a particularly easy interview, but he was refreshingly honest.
“I look, and I won’t mention any names, but I see their names all the time — they’re big, big names — (and) they’re basically playing the same character,” he said.
Torn didn’t do that. This is an actor, after all, who twice played Walt Whitman, as well as Lyndon Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant and Richard Nixon.
He earned his Oscar nomination for “Cross Creek,” a 1983 film in which he played he played Mary Steenburgen’s alcoholic father. He got his Tony nomination for Tennessee Williams’ “Sweet Bird of Youth” in 1960. He was pretty funny in “Men in Black” and its first sequel, playing the offbeat, intense kind of character he portrayed so well. And so much more.
But it was Artie, the ex-Marine who had seen it all in Hollywood (and everywhere else), and mostly had the patience of Job (though not always) while dealing with the insanity of running a late-night talk show while keeping it on the tracks and delivering some of the funniest lines in the history of TV that will always define Torn for me.
“Your fly is undone,” he once said to Shandling’s Larry. “Oh, thanks,” Larry replies. “Just doing my job,” Artie says. “It’s your job to look at my crotch?” Larry asks.
“I consider it one of my perks,” Artie says.
However, simply quoting Torn’s line readings does not do him justice. You can’t see his arched eyebrows and devilish grin. It was the lived-in way he delivered his lines that made him so special. You believed he was the characters he played, and what greater measure of an actor can there be?
When I spoke to him, he treated “The Larry Sanders Show” as just another role, which actors sometimes do, even with their landmark achievements. I asked if he had a favorite character, but he wouldn’t take the bait.
“You have any children?” he asked. Yes.
“I’ve got six. Which one do you like best?”
Hmm. Uh, none?
“See what I mean?”
Yes. But if it’s all the same to Torn, I’ll miss him most as Artie.
RIP.