In praise of a sardonic scene-stealer
CHARLES GRODIN, who died last month, was rarely a leading man — but his dry wit and subtle comedy was always undeniable
WHEN WE THINK of a scene-stealer, we usually picture someone who grabs attention by force, whether it’s the flamboyant villainy of Alan Rickman’s Sheriff Of Nottingham, or the raw emotion of Viola Davis in Doubt. But Charles Grodin wasn’t that kind of scene-stealer. He operated stealthily, with a silk-gloved subtlety that often meant you’d wind up focusing on him before you’d even realised it, then find it hard to look anywhere else.
Take the scene in Midnight Run where he, as Mob accountant Jonathan ‘The Duke’ Mardukas, and Robert De Niro, as bounty hunter Jack Walsh, arrive at Jack’s ex-wife’s house to borrow money, and unexpectedly meet Jack’s daughter. It’s a key moment for the usually abrasive Jack, who hasn’t seen his kid in years and is stunned into heart-twisting inarticulacy. But for all De Niro’s Method-honed nous, it’s Grodin who sells it, slouching just behind his co-star, without a word spoken. Hanging his head in a sympathetic show of shame, he perfectly encapsulates the sheer awkwardness of the encounter as the outsider caught right in the middle of it.
Awkwardness was a Grodin speciality. Decades before the comedy of discomfort became a thing, he mastered it in his 1972 breakthrough movie, The Heartbreak Kid — one of his rare lead performances. As Lenny Cantrow, he would ditch his wife (Jeannie Berlin) on their honeymoon for another woman (Cybill Shepherd), and somehow still manage to be relatable and charming. (Though he would claim that, for years afterwards, he’d get people threatening to punch him “in the nose” for Lenny’s indiscretions.)
Grodin came to specialise in playing fundamentally flawed men, from uptight white-collar types to downright losers like bespectacled schlub Warren in Steve Martin comedy The Lonely Guy. Sure, it was fun to see Grodin play a full-on villain from time to time — even if it was in the 1976 remake of King Kong — but he made more of an impact in those quieter moments where you’re not sure whether to laugh or cry. Such as the one where Warren tells Martin’s Larry Hubbard, “When I first wake up and get that shock of who I am… I don’t like to do that more than once a day.”
Behind it all was a Sahara-dry wit and an impeccable sense of wry comedy which also came to the fore when Grodin was playing himself. During the ’70s he became a regular on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson, feigning rudeness and irritation at the host’s questions and reflexively satirising the artifice of the chat-show format — before becoming a chat-show host himself, for a time in the ’90s, with CNBC’S The Charles Grodin Show.
Grodin was also resistant to compromise. This may have led to reports he could be difficult to work with, but also speaks to his strength of character. He turned down The
Graduate because it wouldn’t pay him enough compared with a Western TV show he was doing, spurned the character of Hooper in Jaws to direct the play Thieves on Broadway, and later in his life wouldn’t take any job that required him to travel far from his Connecticut home. For years, even during his semi-retirement from acting following the sloppy-dog antics of the Beethoven films, talk persisted of a Midnight Run sequel. There could have been one. But Grodin nixed it, saying, “I didn’t care for the script.”
He was one of those rare talents who was never interested in being the talent. A consummate character actor who effortlessly held his own in scenes with the likes of De Niro, Martin, even Miss Piggy (in The Great Muppet Caper). To respectfully misquote The Duke in Midnight Run, “See ya in the next life, Chuck.”