Posted on 02/10/2008 6:00:57 PM PST by lunarbicep
Roy Scheider, a stage actor with a background in the classics who became one of the leading figures in the American film renaissance of the 1970s, died on Sunday afternoon in Little Rock, Ark. He was 75 and lived in Sag Harbor, N.Y.
Mr. Scheider had suffered from multiple myeloma for several years, and died of complications from a staph infection, his wife, Brenda Seimer, said.
Mr. Scheider’s rangy figure, gaunt face and emotional openness made him particularly appealing in everyman roles, most famously as the agonized police chief of “Jaws,” Steven Spielberg’s 1975 breakthrough hit, about a New England resort town haunted by the knowledge that a killer shark is preying on the local beaches.
Mr. Scheider conveyed an accelerated metabolism in movies like “Klute” (1971), his first major film role, in which he played a threatening pimp to Jane Fonda’s New York call girl; and in William Friedkin’s “French Connection” (also 1971), as Buddy Russo, the slightly more restrained partner to Gene Hackman’s marauding police detective, Popeye Doyle. That role earned Mr. Scheider the first of two Oscar nominations.
Born in 1932 in Orange, N.J., Mr. Scheider earned his distinctive broken nose in the New Jersey Diamond Gloves Competition. He studied at Rutgers and at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., where he graduated as a history major with the intention of going to law school. He served three years in the United States Air Force, rising to the rank of first lieutenant. When he was discharged, he returned to Franklin and Marshall to star in a production of “Richard III.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I couldn’t have imagined Dreyfuss in the role. Good thing he didn’t get along with Fosse. The fact that Scheider always kept himself in great physical shape made him absolutely believable in the role.
Dreyfuss would have been a disaster.
Roy looked the part.
I agree the book was great but the movie kept my ass out the water
bet all his work is coming to tv next week
Someone on a related posting said, “We’re gonna need a bigger thread.” Then I found this one...and it is bigger.
Favorite line: at the end, shooting into the shark’s mouth: “Smile you son of a bitch!” BAM!!!
Best short exchange:
Ellen Brody: “What do I tell the kids?”
Martin Brody: “Tell ‘em I’ve gone fishing.”
I had forgotten he was in Naked Lunch. RIP Roy.
Dreyfuss always seems to have a nasty habit of overacting in too many of his roles. His best performance, I think, was one of his earliest leading film roles, which fit his personality to a “T”, and that was “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.”
that role made Dreyfuss.....and Richard made good on the oppurtunity..to bad he is a flaming liberal
He participated in rallies protesting U.S. military action in Iraq, including a massive New York demonstration in March 2003 that police said drew 125,000 chanting activists.
RIP. Thanks to him, I couldn’t swim in the ocean for a year.
Rest In Peace Mr. Scheider. My prayers to your family.
I will always be thankful that the guy sitting behind me in the theater as we were watching Jaws only had a bag of popcorn in his hands. It wasn't long into the movie when in came flying over my head and ended up in my lap!
And now two of the three are gone. (Robert Shaw died in 1978)
"Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies.
Farewell and adieu, you ladies of Spain.
For we've received orders for to sail back to Boston.
And so nevermore shall we see you again.
what’s air jaws ?
"(Click) Catch ya later."
RIPa fine and very underrated actor.
Thanks for the ping, sweety. :)
LOL. We belonged to a local YMCA when I was a kid and whenever we went to their giant indoor swimming pool, I would adamently refuse to go into the deep end (which was 14 feet anyway). Thanks to “Jaws,” I just KNEW there were sharks lurking down in there somewhere. (I guess I thought I would be safe in the shallow end).
So many in Hollywood are, of course. I have to wonder how many aspiring actors, writers, producers, directors, et al, that hold Republican/Conservative views have been shut out of employment because of leftist McCarthyism they’ve practiced for 5 decades now (far worse than anything the right ever did, whom really never did what the left claimed).
about a month after Jaws came out,a woman in Florida was bit in the butt sitting on her toilet by a snake.......after that water just sucked..........lol
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