Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Wilford Brimley, actor in ‘Cocoon’ and ‘The Natural,’ dies at 85
The Los Angeles Times ^ | 8/1/2020

Posted on 08/01/2020 10:08:50 PM PDT by Beave Meister

Wilford Brimley, who worked his way up from stunt performer to starring roles in films such as “Cocoon” and “The Natural,” has died. He was 85.

Brimley’s manager Lynda Bensky said the actor died Saturday morning in a Utah hospital. He was on dialysis and had several medical ailments, she said.

The mustached Brimley was a familiar face for a number of roles, often playing gruff characters like his grizzled baseball manager in “The Natural.”

Brimley’s best-known work was in “Cocoon,” in which he was part of a group of seniors who discover an alien pod that rejuvenates them. The 1985 Ron Howard film won two Oscars, including a supporting actor honor for Don Ameche.

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat
KEYWORDS: actor; brimley; cocoon; thenatrual; wilfordbrimley
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-77 next last
To: rlmorel
I liked him as an actor and as a person. He had a Marine tattoo on one of his upper arms. I get the impression he was pretty conservative.

I'm saddened by his death.

41 posted on 08/02/2020 5:34:48 AM PDT by painter ( Isaiah: �Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 37 | View Replies]

To: supremedoctrine

Great character actors like Wilford Brimley and Robert Duvall are great because they don’t over-act; they just act their part and put everything they have into it no matter the length of time they’re on screen.


42 posted on 08/02/2020 5:36:28 AM PDT by glennaro (Prager: "The Left destroys everything it touches ... the Left creates nothing; it only destroys.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: painter

I like him even more now...

There was something about his face that I liked. There was something that read as wise and good-natured in it to me.


43 posted on 08/02/2020 6:04:21 AM PDT by rlmorel ("Truth is Treason in the Empire of Lies"- George Orwell)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 41 | View Replies]

To: Husker24

Yep. It Diabeetim.


44 posted on 08/02/2020 6:17:34 AM PDT by BradyLS (DO NOT FEED THE BEARS!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: RoosterRedux

Isn’t that what everyone dreams of being? A retiree when they’re 50?


45 posted on 08/02/2020 6:21:06 AM PDT by BradyLS (DO NOT FEED THE BEARS!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

He was only 47 years old when he played Blair in The Thing?
WOW! He looked sixty.


46 posted on 08/02/2020 6:22:40 AM PDT by RandallFlagg (Fact: Gun control laws kill innocents.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ArcadeQuarters

-—He was born old like Don Knotts, Abe Vigoda and Ernest Borgnine.——

Also Victor Buono. Routinely played characters 20 years older than he actually was.


47 posted on 08/02/2020 7:14:27 AM PDT by StoneRainbow68
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies]

To: Beave Meister

RIP.


48 posted on 08/02/2020 8:13:08 AM PDT by EdnaMode
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: RandallFlagg

Watch “The Natural” again, and then realize Brimley is only two years older than Redford.


49 posted on 08/02/2020 8:37:51 AM PDT by StoneRainbow68
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 46 | View Replies]

To: Larry Lucido

So you on the high ground general!


50 posted on 08/02/2020 8:39:10 AM PDT by Gamecock ("O God, break the teeth in their mouths." - Psalm 58:6)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: qam1

Lot’sa ageing makeup maybe?


51 posted on 08/02/2020 8:40:41 AM PDT by moovova
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: NTHockey
Joel Grey’s portrayal of Chiun wouldn’t be allowed in today’s madness.

No kidding! Cultural appropriation!

52 posted on 08/02/2020 1:22:17 PM PDT by JaguarXKE (Liberalism is a cancer on our nation.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 33 | View Replies]

To: Conservinator
One of the great lines in movie history was said by Brimley in the movie Absence of Malice with Paul Newman & Sally Field.

one and one-half minutes of cinematic excellence

You're Fired! The Early Days

I couldn't find my favorite - just before the inquiry there's a scene where he's MARCHING down the hallway with end-of-the-world music and you just KNEW bad things were going to go down. One Helluva actor.

53 posted on 08/02/2020 7:13:02 PM PDT by Oatka
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: Impy; NFHale; fieldmarshaldj

This is fun: https://youtu.be/nN1bmTI5qjg

The old CBS Thursday nights: Magnum PI followed by Simon & Simon. The 80s. Bliss.

“ChargeTV” airs Magnum PI every night starting at 10 PM. The wife has commented that “It was better then.” (meaning the time period).

Yes, dear. In just about every possible way imaginable.

Too bad there’s no way to watch The Wonder Years; that would really be an entertaining eye opener (except for the finale).


54 posted on 08/04/2020 5:13:25 AM PDT by GOPsterinMA (I'm with Steve McQueen: I live my life for myself and answer to nobody.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 23 | View Replies]

To: GOPsterinMA; Impy

I’ve been watching “The Waltons” on MeTV as of late. My soaps have been slowly returning again (B&B started again a earlier in July, GH resumed yesterday and Y&R next Monday). For most of the past months when they weren’t on, I just was watching little or nothing. So much garbage on tv, the new stuff is often wretched. Everything laced with Stalinazi propaganda and degeneracy.


55 posted on 08/04/2020 12:37:26 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (Dear Mr. Kotter, #Epsteindidntkillhimself - Signed, Epstein's Mother)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 54 | View Replies]

To: fieldmarshaldj

I saw part of an ep the other day. Mary Ellen tried to run away with a tramp.

I remember not thinking she was attractive (I liked the redhead Erin once she got older) before but she looked pretty good. She pretty much offered herself to the tramp, he was either a really decent gent or gay.


56 posted on 08/04/2020 4:51:12 PM PDT by Impy (Thug Lives Splatter)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 55 | View Replies]

To: Impy

I thought the casting of the kids on the show was off. Both the parents had blue eyes, so not a one of those kids would have brown eyes.

The eldest daughter, played by Judy Norton-Taylor, didn’t remotely resemble the actors. Heavy jaw, dark brown eyes that were too close together. Criticized as a wooden actress by some fans (not entirely false). She got into Scientology (a “minister”, no less) and was married at 18 while on the show. Since gone through 4 husbands. When her career slumped, decided to pose for Playboy in the mid ‘80s. Didn’t help in the least.

“Erin”, Mary-Elizabeth McDonough, the second daughter, was probably way too Irish Catholic-looking, although she at least had the right colored eyes of the parents. A bit of a high forehead, freckle-explosion (which can be cute) and flat-chested (unlike Judy). I think she may have been jealous of Judy and she went out and got implants, which (sadly for her) leaked, and the actress developed lupus as a result. Yikes.

“Elizabeth”, Kami Cotler, was another physical miscast, having that also Irish-Catholic look, but with brown eyes (which always looks bizarre on a redhead). When she got older, she looked like a Kennedy. Apparently “Cotler” is either a Jewish or German last name.


57 posted on 08/04/2020 5:21:21 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (Dear Mr. Kotter, #Epsteindidntkillhimself - Signed, Epstein's Mother)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 56 | View Replies]

To: fieldmarshaldj

I don’t notice eye color a lot of the time but you are absolutely correct. I guess Ike Godsey fathered Mary Ellen? Any ginger bucks on Walton’s Mountain? ;-d

I always thought “Jim-Bob” looked ‘tarded, another one for Godsey?

“Playboy”

Googled of course, wow, Interview with Fidel Castro shared the cover of that issue.

An aside, Nelson County, if indeed that’s where Walton’s Mountain was supposed to be, it pretty nasty politically considering there aren’t that many blacks. Trump couldn’t even clear 50%, though Gillispie for Governor managed to carry it by 5 votes despite a statewide loss of 9 points.


58 posted on 08/04/2020 5:36:56 PM PDT by Impy (Thug Lives Splatter)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 57 | View Replies]

To: Pontiac

“You’ve got a new face, new fingerprints, a new name. A lot of thought went into it.”


59 posted on 08/04/2020 5:46:06 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (And lead us not into hysteria, but deliver us from the handwashers. Amen!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: Impy

Ike’s wife, Corabeth, wasn’t bad looking, kept her self in shape. But she seemed to have an icebox for a vagina. As with “Little House”, the reality of the setting was sanitized a bit (I haven’t seen the source material initially within “Spencer’s Mountain”, which had Henry Fonda as the father, albeit set in the Jackson Hole/Tetons area of Wyoming in what was present-day (1960s)), with apparently more alcoholism and infidelity on display.

The setting of the show (and of the author’s childhood) being during the Depression would’ve been fairly rough. I’m sure alcoholism in the country spiked after FDR legalized it again, a wonderful time for folks to get smashed.

Nelson County is odd politically. Obviously it was voting like so many post-Confederate counties in the South. It hardly moved towards the GOP in the ‘50s and ‘60s as the South began to wake up to the reality that the Dems were rotten. Even in 1960 and 1964 it voted close to how most other Southern counties were in the 1940s. I see Wallace carried it in an almost 3-way tie in 1968, so that attested to its being more like a Deep South county. Broke for Nixon in ‘72 as almost every county in the South did. Ford got just 1/3rd of the vote in ‘76.

Stuck with Carter in ‘80 by a decent margin, though swung hard to Reagan in ‘84 (just 1.5% to the left of his national margin). Went to GHW Bush by a narrow margin (1.8% to the left of the national margin). Bubba the Rapist carrying it in 1992 and 1996 was the last gasp of the Southern Demonrat supporters. Went for Shrub in ‘00 by SIX votes (clearly Nader took the key votes for Manbearpig).

I think leftist Whites began supplanting the older Southern Democrats and sewage from Charlottesville, too, just a county over (which the Waltons made frequent trips to on the show). Lurch’s 4 vote margin(!) win in ‘04 and Zero’s winning it by 54% over McQueeg in ‘08 is testament to that. It’s curious that Trump managed to swing it to just a smidge under 50%, but obviously Hillary rubbed the Dems there the wrong way in shedding a whopping 6% below Zero’s ‘12 performance and almost 10% below 2008. I wondered if there was a leftist bleed to 3rd party candidates, but Jill Stein got less than 1%, so that wouldn’t have mattered. Given that Egg McMuffin got over 1% and Loony Gary got 3%, almost all of that should’ve gone to Trump, so he should’ve received in the vicinity of 54%, which would’ve been the best performance since Reagan in 1984 for a Republican.

Unless more of the Charlottesville sewage spills over, Trump should carry Nelson again, but this time by (at least 53%). Sadly, though, it may not be enough to flip the Commonwealth with the cancer of NoVA and the Richmond area. I still think he may pull off a miracle, though. The GOP needs a super-high turnout in their rural counties and to depress the Karen turnout in the suburbs (or scare them straight).


60 posted on 08/04/2020 6:57:41 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (Dear Mr. Kotter, #Epsteindidntkillhimself - Signed, Epstein's Mother)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 58 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-77 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson