Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,727

This is the grave of John Cassavetes.

Born in 1929 in New York, Cassavetes grew up in a Greek family. In fact, they moved back to Greece shortly after his birth and didn’t return to the U.S. until 1936, at which time John did not speak English. They moved to Long Island upon their return, where Cassavetes played football in high school. He started at Champlain College in Vermont, but was shortly after kicked out for terrible grades. He was not exactly a great student. What he did want to do was act and so after some time bumming around, he ended up at the American Academy for Dramatic Arts. He graduated in 1950 but hung around for awhile. In fact, it was there, after he graduated, that he met his future wife Gena Rowlands. A note: Rowlands is buried next to him, but I took this picture last year and she just died a couple of months ago, so that will require a return trip.

Cassavetes was working a bit at this time, but hadn’t really made it as an actor. However, he had strong thoughts about acting and they revolved around his belief that Lee Strasberg and his method acting was terrible. Cassavetes didn’t understand–why would you want to bring out pain in people for acting? Acting was fun and joy should be at its center! So he and Burt Lane opened their own competing acting studio to teach acting a different way. In fact, when Cassavetes got an invite to tryout for the Actors Studio, he and Lane devised a prank where he would fake a bit. Strasberg loved it and offered Cassavetes a full scholarship. He rejected it and figured if Strasberg could be fooled by that, he really was dumb. In short, Cassavetes was a dick.

But by the mid-50s, Cassavetes began to get notice. In 1955, he was cast as a killer in The Night Holds Terror, which is definitely a B movie but where he was very scary. The next year, Don Siegel cast him in Crime in the Streets, both in the television and then the film version. People thought this young guy was great. And it’s interesting–one thing you can say about Cassavetes through his career is that he brought a lot of that Method intensity while completely rejecting, well, its methods. He then guest-starred in Decoy, the first cop show that starred a woman. That was Beverly Garland. He had an occasional role in it and also started directing episodes, often casting Rowlands in them.

So by the early 60s, Cassavetes was a guy, but one who was both kind of brilliant and kind of middling through his career. He had a long deal with Paramount and did a lot of different things, all without really breaking through into any kind of stardom. He directed a couple of films, including Too Late Blues with Bobby Darin and Stella Stevens and then A Child is Waiting, with Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland. So he had access to top shelf talent. He was on TV some, including a ABC show called Breaking Point that only lasted the 1963-64 season. He was on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Legend of Jesse James for TV. And then he had great roles in a small number of films. The best of them in my view is the Don Siegel remake of Hemingway’s The Killers. This has one of the greatest weird casts of all time, with Cassavetes as the race car driver who falls for Angie Dickinson, who herself works for the amazingly cast bad guy team of Ronald Reagan and Norman Fell. And of course Lee Marvin is the lead killer. Now THAT’s a cast!!!!! Cassavetes was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his work in The Dirty Dozen and played a key role in Rosemary’s Baby.

Cassavetes could have had a long career as a great character actor. But he only worked as an actor to fund his vision as a director. Now I have to admit here that I respect Cassavetes directed films much more than I actually like them. I get that he got great performances out of Rowlands, Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara, and the other people he liked to use repeatedly. You can’t question the commitment that Cassavetes and Rowlands had to the bit–they mostly shot their films in their own house to save money. That included Faces, which got three Academy Award nominations in 1968, about the slow decline of a marriage. Today it is considered one of the seminal works of the New American Cinema. Then came Husbands in 1970, with himself, Falk, and Gazzara, about three buddies drinking their way through New York after one of their own friends died. Then he went more romantic comedy with Minnie and Moskowitz, with Rowlands and Seymour Cassel. A Woman Under the Influence, with Rowlands and Falk, got more Academy Award nominations, for Best Director and Best Actress. Gazzara dominates the screen in 1976’s The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, about an out of control gambling addict. For 1977’s Opening Night, a Broadway film, Cassavetes and Rowlands star and he cast the always wonderful Joan Blondell too, in one of her last roles. She received a Golden Globe nomination for it too.

The thing about all of these films is that I recognize that they range from solid to quite great, but I don’t think I actually really want to watch any of them again. Cassavetes continued to work in the 80s, though to lesser ends. Rowlands was nominated for another Best Supporting Actress for 1980’s Gloria, his mob moll film. He started writing plays too and those got performed from time to time. His last real film was 1984’s Love Streams, in which he and Rowlands play siblings who come out of a bad family and only have each other. He was brought on to finish Big Trouble, with Falk and Alan Arkin, but that production was a disaster from the outset and Cassavetes disowned his work on it.

Cassavetes did keep working and trying out new projects. The problem was he was an uncontrollable drunk killing himself with the bottle. His final hoped for project was called “She’s Delovely” and he wanted Sean Penn to star, but he couldn’t work the money out. Later, in 1997, his son Nick directed it as She’s So Lovely, which did star Penn and his then wife Robin Wright, as well as John Travolta. It was a bit honorific for these big stars as Cassavetes was now a dead legend, having died of cirrhosis in 1989. He was 59 years old.

John Cassavetes is buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California.

If you would like this series to visit other stars of The Killers, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Ronald Reagan, damn his soul to hell, is on his ranch in Simi Valley, California. Norman Fell is in Hollywood. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.