A Tribute To The Great Brian Dennehy…

By Erin Free

Famed for his bulky, imposing frame, Brian Dennehy was one of the few true big men of Hollywood, a town populated largely by the short of stature. He was the epitome of authoritative power, and a true mainstay of American film, which makes his passing at the age of 81 from natural causes even more difficult to fathom. Dennehy was part of the cinematic firmament, and it’s disconcerting to think that he’ll no longer be around to steal his scenes from his more well-known and better paid co-stars. “It is with heavy hearts we announce that our father, Brian passed away last night from natural causes, not COVID-related,” his daughter Elizabeth tweeted. “Larger than life, generous to a fault, a proud and devoted father and grandfather, he will be missed by his wife Jennifer, family and many friends.”

Dennehy was born in July 1938 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and attended Columbia University in New York City on a football scholarship, where he majored in history, before moving on to Yale to study dramatic arts. Standing tall at 6”3, he was an easy fit for heavy roles, but a keen and obvious intelligence, coupled with an easily accessed sensitivity, made Dennehy a far more compelling proposition. Though his hawkish features, bullish frame and early-onset silver hair led him out of leading man territory, Dennehy quickly established himself as someone who could do more than crack his knuckles in the background (though he could sure-as-shit do that too).

He started out on episodic television with supporting roles on the likes of Kojak, Police Woman and Lou Grant, and then branched into film with Looking For Mr. Goodbar, Foul Play and Semi-Tough, quickly proving himself a valuable asset on any project. The roles eventually got bigger, and Dennehy became an essential member of the “hey-I-know-than-guy” class of actors. “It took a long time for me to have any impact in the business because I didn’t look like an actor, and I didn’t sound like an actor,” he once said. Dennehy, however, began to snag lead parts on TV with the likes of 1978’s telemovie A Real American Hero (in which he played real life hero sheriff Buford Pusser, first made famous by Joe Don Baker in the hit film, Walking Tall) and the short lived 1979 series Big Shamus, Little Shamus, a much loved childhood memory (for this writer, at least), in which Dennehy played a casino/hotel detective who lives on-site with his thirteen-year-old son.

Major and minor film and TV roles continued before Dennehy nabbed one of his most memorable big screen roles, brilliantly essaying smalltown Sheriff Teasle in the smash hit 1982 action film First Blood, where he unforgettably heavied Sylvester Stallone’s Vietnam vet and then lived to regret it. “We went up in the winter time to frickin’ British Columbia and shot an exterior picture in the woods freezing our asses off in this beautiful little town up there,” Dennehy recalled of the film in 2018. “Nobody really knew what the hell we had.” The film’s major hit status guaranteed Dennehy – whose low-key, menacing but not flat-out villainous performance is one of the film’s many highlights – years and years of character work.

Truly established, Dennehy then embarked on his long, winding journey as an in-demand character actor and occasional lead or co-lead. With so many credits to his name, it’s difficult to pick this hard working actor’s true high water marks, outside of obvious hits like 1985’s gorgeous Cocoon (playing the leader of a group of aliens), the excellent F/X movies (where he starred as a cop opposite Bryan Brown’s embroiled-in-crime movie special effects artist), and the popular Jack Reed television movies, where he headlined as the eponymous real life crusading cop, and also directed and wrote most of the entries. “What makes this movie interesting to me is him, the guy it’s based on,” Dennehy told The Washington Post. “He’s a strong family man, a religious man, an intellectual. He studied for the seminary. My father had done the same thing. In those days, for an Irish kid, the church was a real option. Jack reminds me of my father, he has a very strong sense of right and wrong.”

There are some real lesser known gems in there too, like the 1983 Russia-set thriller Gorky Park (where he played one of the toughest of his tough cops); 1985’s under-appreciated western Silverado; Bud Yorkin’s excellent 1985 working class drama Twice In A Lifetime (in which the rough hewn Dennehy found the perfect on-screen co-star in Gene Hackman); the superb Larry Cohen-scripted 1987 B thriller Best Seller (Dennehy and James Woods are dynamite together); and 1988’s The Man From Snowy River II, in which Dennehy lobbed down under to take on the essential-to-overseas-sales Kirk Douglas-vacated international role.

Dennehy’s most truly interesting leading performances, however, can be found in two unlikely places. Probably the last actor you would ever imagine featuring in a film by British avant garde cult figure Peter Greenaway (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover), Dennehy is brilliant in the director’s 1987 drama The Belly Of An Architect, in which he plays the impressively named Stourley Kracklite, an architect supervising an exhibition who starts to have mysterious stomach pains while his life crumbles around him. “Dennehy gives a wonderfully nimble performance, with a formidable exterior of sanity and health that gives Kracklite’s torment added poignancy,” wrote Michael Wilmington in The LA Times. “He has a virtuoso breakdown scene in the Pantheon Square, thrashing and wailing like a great drunken bear in pinpoint balance.”

Working masterfully against type, Dennehy is equally impressive in the 1992 TV mini-series To Catch A Killer, in which he plays notorious serial killer, John Wayne Gacy, just as infamous for his work as a children’s party entertainer and paintings of clowns as he is for murdering at least 33 young men and boys. Dennehy is sheer brilliance here as The Killer Clown, making the absolute most out of both his intimidating physicality and intellect. He received a well-deserved Emmy nomination for his performance.

Brian Dennehy was also a titan of the stage, winning two Tony Awards, both times for Best Lead Actor in a Play. The first win was for Death Of A Salesman in 1999, and the second was for Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night in 2003. But it was on screen that Dennehy really lived for most of us, and it was there that he so memorably dominated as a performer. “The only thing I do well is loom large,” Dennehy told The Daily Actor. “I do that better than anybody.” Yes, he was big, bulky, commanding and overpowering, but there was always something else at play as well, be it that biting intelligence or an underlying sense of decency.

A true blue collar-style actor, Dennehy was working right until the end, appearing on TV’s The Blacklist. “I’m now 80 and I’m just another actor and that’s fine with me,” Dennehy told The Daily Actor. “I’ve had a hell of a ride. I have a nice house. I haven’t got a palace, a mansion, but a pretty nice, comfortable home. I’ve raised a bunch of kids and sent them all to school, and they’re all doing well. All the people that are close to me are reasonably healthy and happy. Listen, that’s as much as anybody can hope for in life. And this business has kind of given it to me so I have no complaints when it comes to that. I have very few complaints anyway. And I know I’m lucky to be in that position but look, I’ll take it.”

Brian Dennehy was a far more complex performer than he was often given credit for, and he will be truly, sadly, sorely missed. “He simply was a great actor,” Sylvester Stallone has tweeted, and it’s a more than fitting capstone.