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Jaws actor Roy Scheider dead at 75
Roy Scheider, a two-time Academy Award nominee best remembered as the reluctant, shark-hunting police chief in "Jaws," died yesterday. He was 75 years old and lived in Sag Harbor.
Scheider had suffered from multiple myeloma for years and died in Little Rock, Ark., from a staph infection, according to his wife, Brenda Seimer.
Outside of his film career, Scheider was active in East End causes, helping co-found the Hayground School in Bridgehampton, which is dedicated to creating a progressive, culturally diverse educational environment for local children. Scheider "was deeply committed to the school in every way," said Jonathan Snow, another of the school's founders.
He was also a regular participant in the annual Artists and Writers Softball Game, a star-studded event peopled by summering celebrities in East Hampton that raised money for a variety of local charities.
Born in Orange, N.J., Scheider was athletically gifted, specializing in organized baseball and boxing. He studied drama at both Rutgers and Franklin and Marshall College. After a stint in the U.S. Air Force, he made his mark on Off-Broadway and in TV roles.
Scheider's taut physique, authoritative speaking voice and openhearted demeanor combined to make him a welcome presence on stage and screen, whether in lead or supporting roles. Mostly, he was known for playing tough, honorable cops, such as the beleaguered Martin Brody, chief of police for a Massachusetts island community terrorized by a great white shark in the 1975 blockbuster "Jaws."
He repeated the role in the inevitable, far less successful 1978 sequel, "Jaws 2."
He was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar in 1971 for "The French Connection," in which he played New York police detective Buddy Russo, cocky partner to Gene Hackman's high-strung Popeye Doyle. His second nomination was for best actor in the offbeat role as the dying, dream-haunted choreographer Joe Gideon in Bob Fosse's 1979 autobiographical musical, "All That Jazz."
Scheider brought grit, grace and a modicum of hard-won worldliness to his heroic roles, whether he was a high-tech chopper pilot in "Blue Thunder" (1984), a space scientist in "2010" (1984) or a blackmail victim in "52 Pickup" (1986). Later roles, such as the sinister Dr. Benway in 1991's "Naked Lunch," were less stalwart.
His witty turn as an East End lawman in this year's "If I Didn't Care" proved he could serve up a good, quirky cop role.
Scheider is also survived by his children, Maximilla, Christian and Molly.
Most actors aren't appreciated properly until they are dead. Roy Scheider is the latest addition to that category.
Sure, he got two Oscar nominations - first for playing Gene Hackman's sidekick in The French Connection from 1971 (a breakthough year for Scheider, who also starred in Klute, another attention-grabbing era-defining film); and then for his eyecatching performance, a career high in fact, as the Bob Fosse surrogate in All That Jazz (1980). But he was best known for playing the tense, twitchy Chief Brody in Jaws, a film in which his vital contribution is usually overlooked.
Steven Spielberg's 1975 commercial breakthrough hit is acknowledged as the first example of the blockbuster as we know it today, though that's not quite right. The carpet-bombing release pattern on thousands of screens, and the aggressive marketing campaign, have been adopted by the studios ever since for their summer or Christmas "tentpole" releases. But the quality that distinguishes Jaws from its modern-day counterparts is patience. Good heavens, it takes its time getting to the crunch. In milking its suspense from what we can't see (the shark), Spielberg placed the lion's share of responsibility on what we can see - and that, for the most part, is Scheider, who dominates the first half of the film, and spends the second half cooped up on a boat with Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw.
Scheider delivers the picture's most famous line - "You're gonna need a bigger boat" - which is cherishable not only because of its understatement, but because it embodies the sense of claustrophobia on which the picture thrives. Jaws isn't just about fear of sharks. It's about fear of other people. And no one ever looked more authentically uncomfortable than Scheider, squashed in with the hairy, over-emphatic Dreyfuss and that smelly old seadog Shaw. Scheider sometimes looks like he's ready to throw himself off that boat and take his chances with the shark.
It's a subtle, undervalued performance, all the more skilful because it is essentially a two-hour-long reaction shot. But without it, we wouldn't feel one jot of impending horror. He was called upon to play knotted again in Jonathan Demme's witty Hitchcock homage Last Embrace (1979). Demme was of the opinion that Scheider "could be the Humphrey Bogart of the 1970s." But while Scheider had the right material in Last Embrace (you can just imagine a disgruntled, put-upon Bogart delivering lines such as: "It's like a string of bad jokes, only I don't get the punchline"), I don't think he had the reserves of warmth accessible to Bogart.
There was something reptilian in Scheider that clashed intriguingly with his willingness to play weak. But that is the kind of pungent mixture that can fox a casting director. So, with the exception of All That Jazz, which was an aria of vulnerability, his roles were confined mostly to thrillers (Still of the Night, 52 Pick-Up, Cohen and Tate, Romeo Is Bleeding) in which he could play patsy or tough-guy alike. What he didn't play well was action hero. In the 1983 high-tech thriller Blue Thunder, Scheider suffered the indignity of competing for close-ups with an armoured helicopter; the New Yorker critic Pauline Kael noted acidly: "If he seems a stand-in rather than a star, it's because when Roy Scheider is imperilled, there just isn't much at stake."
Some performers can be too unconventional for their own good. And though Scheider was the right actor to be working in US cinema in the 1970s, he was left behind somewhat by the gung-ho tendencies that overtook filmmaking in the Reagan era. He gave a genuinely unsettling performance as the creepy father at a family reunion in the 1997 US indie drama The Myth of Fingerprints. You needed a good shower after watching him in that. It gave every indication that, had the role of Chief Brody been taken in Jaws, he could just as easily have played the shark.
Scheider had suffered from multiple myeloma for years and died in Little Rock, Ark., from a staph infection, according to his wife, Brenda Seimer.
Outside of his film career, Scheider was active in East End causes, helping co-found the Hayground School in Bridgehampton, which is dedicated to creating a progressive, culturally diverse educational environment for local children. Scheider "was deeply committed to the school in every way," said Jonathan Snow, another of the school's founders.
He was also a regular participant in the annual Artists and Writers Softball Game, a star-studded event peopled by summering celebrities in East Hampton that raised money for a variety of local charities.
Born in Orange, N.J., Scheider was athletically gifted, specializing in organized baseball and boxing. He studied drama at both Rutgers and Franklin and Marshall College. After a stint in the U.S. Air Force, he made his mark on Off-Broadway and in TV roles.
Scheider's taut physique, authoritative speaking voice and openhearted demeanor combined to make him a welcome presence on stage and screen, whether in lead or supporting roles. Mostly, he was known for playing tough, honorable cops, such as the beleaguered Martin Brody, chief of police for a Massachusetts island community terrorized by a great white shark in the 1975 blockbuster "Jaws."
He repeated the role in the inevitable, far less successful 1978 sequel, "Jaws 2."
He was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar in 1971 for "The French Connection," in which he played New York police detective Buddy Russo, cocky partner to Gene Hackman's high-strung Popeye Doyle. His second nomination was for best actor in the offbeat role as the dying, dream-haunted choreographer Joe Gideon in Bob Fosse's 1979 autobiographical musical, "All That Jazz."
Scheider brought grit, grace and a modicum of hard-won worldliness to his heroic roles, whether he was a high-tech chopper pilot in "Blue Thunder" (1984), a space scientist in "2010" (1984) or a blackmail victim in "52 Pickup" (1986). Later roles, such as the sinister Dr. Benway in 1991's "Naked Lunch," were less stalwart.
His witty turn as an East End lawman in this year's "If I Didn't Care" proved he could serve up a good, quirky cop role.
Scheider is also survived by his children, Maximilla, Christian and Molly.
Most actors aren't appreciated properly until they are dead. Roy Scheider is the latest addition to that category.
Sure, he got two Oscar nominations - first for playing Gene Hackman's sidekick in The French Connection from 1971 (a breakthough year for Scheider, who also starred in Klute, another attention-grabbing era-defining film); and then for his eyecatching performance, a career high in fact, as the Bob Fosse surrogate in All That Jazz (1980). But he was best known for playing the tense, twitchy Chief Brody in Jaws, a film in which his vital contribution is usually overlooked.
Steven Spielberg's 1975 commercial breakthrough hit is acknowledged as the first example of the blockbuster as we know it today, though that's not quite right. The carpet-bombing release pattern on thousands of screens, and the aggressive marketing campaign, have been adopted by the studios ever since for their summer or Christmas "tentpole" releases. But the quality that distinguishes Jaws from its modern-day counterparts is patience. Good heavens, it takes its time getting to the crunch. In milking its suspense from what we can't see (the shark), Spielberg placed the lion's share of responsibility on what we can see - and that, for the most part, is Scheider, who dominates the first half of the film, and spends the second half cooped up on a boat with Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw.
Scheider delivers the picture's most famous line - "You're gonna need a bigger boat" - which is cherishable not only because of its understatement, but because it embodies the sense of claustrophobia on which the picture thrives. Jaws isn't just about fear of sharks. It's about fear of other people. And no one ever looked more authentically uncomfortable than Scheider, squashed in with the hairy, over-emphatic Dreyfuss and that smelly old seadog Shaw. Scheider sometimes looks like he's ready to throw himself off that boat and take his chances with the shark.
It's a subtle, undervalued performance, all the more skilful because it is essentially a two-hour-long reaction shot. But without it, we wouldn't feel one jot of impending horror. He was called upon to play knotted again in Jonathan Demme's witty Hitchcock homage Last Embrace (1979). Demme was of the opinion that Scheider "could be the Humphrey Bogart of the 1970s." But while Scheider had the right material in Last Embrace (you can just imagine a disgruntled, put-upon Bogart delivering lines such as: "It's like a string of bad jokes, only I don't get the punchline"), I don't think he had the reserves of warmth accessible to Bogart.
There was something reptilian in Scheider that clashed intriguingly with his willingness to play weak. But that is the kind of pungent mixture that can fox a casting director. So, with the exception of All That Jazz, which was an aria of vulnerability, his roles were confined mostly to thrillers (Still of the Night, 52 Pick-Up, Cohen and Tate, Romeo Is Bleeding) in which he could play patsy or tough-guy alike. What he didn't play well was action hero. In the 1983 high-tech thriller Blue Thunder, Scheider suffered the indignity of competing for close-ups with an armoured helicopter; the New Yorker critic Pauline Kael noted acidly: "If he seems a stand-in rather than a star, it's because when Roy Scheider is imperilled, there just isn't much at stake."
Some performers can be too unconventional for their own good. And though Scheider was the right actor to be working in US cinema in the 1970s, he was left behind somewhat by the gung-ho tendencies that overtook filmmaking in the Reagan era. He gave a genuinely unsettling performance as the creepy father at a family reunion in the 1997 US indie drama The Myth of Fingerprints. You needed a good shower after watching him in that. It gave every indication that, had the role of Chief Brody been taken in Jaws, he could just as easily have played the shark.