CHARLES DURNING CARREER MOVIE

He won a Golden Globe as best supporting TV actor in 1991 for his portrayal of John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald in the TV film The Kennedys of Massachusetts and a Tony in 1990 as Big Daddy in the Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He also was nominated for a Golden Globe as the harried police lieutenant in 1975’s Dog Day Afternoon. The year after Best Little Whorehouse, Durning received another Oscar nomination, for his portrayal of a bumbling Nazi officer in Mel Brooks’ To Be or Not to Be. Many critics marveled that such a heavyset man could be so nimble in the film’s showstopping song-and-dance number, not realizing Durning had been a dance instructor early in his career.

CHARLES DURNING CARREER MOVIE

“They’re going to carry me out, if I go,” he said.ĭurning’s longtime agent and friend, Judith Moss, said he died of natural causes in his home in Manhattan.Īlthough he portrayed everyone from blustery public officials to comic foils to put-upon everymen, Durning may be best remembered by movie audiences for his Oscar-nominated, over-the-top role as a comically corrupt governor in 1982’s The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

He said in 2008 that he had no plans to stop working. He would recall years later that he was hooked as soon as he heard the audience laughing. When one of the comedians showed up too drunk to go on, Durning took his place. His hard life and wartime trauma provided the basis for a prolific 50-year career as a consummate Oscar-nominated character actor, playing everyone from a Nazi colonel to the pope to Dustin Hoffman’s would-be suitor in Tootsie.ĭurning, who died on Monday at age 89 in New York, got his start as an usher at a burlesque theater in Buffalo, N.Y. LOS ANGELES - Charles Durning grew up in poverty, lost five of his nine siblings to disease, barely lived through D-Day and was taken prisoner at the Battle of the Bulge.

Charles durning carreer