Brian Dennehy, Burly Actor in 'First Blood,' 'Cocoon' and
'Death of a Salesman,' Dies at 81
The Hollywood Reporter
By
The two-time Tony winner also starred on TV as basketball
coach Bobby Knight, Chicago cop Jack Reed and serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
Brian Dennehy, the regular-guy actor whose bulldog build,
good-guy demeanor and no-nonsense approach meshed in an array of memorable
roles for film, television and the theater, has died. He was 81.
Dennehy died Wednesday night of natural causes in New Haven, Connecticut.
“It is with heavy hearts we announce that our father, Brian
passed away last night from natural causes, not Covid-related," his oldest
daughter, actress Elizabeth Dennehy, wrote on Twitter. "Larger than life, generous to a
fault, a proud and devoted father and grandfather, he will be missed by his
wife Jennifer, family and many friends."
Dennehy played the sheriff in Washington
state who doggedly pursues Vietnam
veteran John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) in First Blood (1982)
and a district attorney who's out to save his own skin in the Harrison
Ford-starrer Presumed Innocent (1990).
He also portrayed lawmen in Gorky Park (1983), Silverado (1985), F/X (1986)
and its sequel, Best Seller (1987), The Last of the
Finest (1990) and Assault on Precinct 13 (2005)
and starred as hard-charging real-life Chicago detective Jack Reed in five NBC
telefilms from 1993 to 1996, writing and directing four of them.
At 6 foot 3 and 250 pounds, the former college offensive
lineman could also be a gentle giant, as when he portrayed the sympathetic
bartender who counsels Dudley Moore in 10 (1979), the
friendly alien leader Walter in Cocoon (1985) and Chris
Farley's pop in Tommy Boy (1995).
Dennehy won Tony Awards in 1999 and 2003 for playing Willy
Loman in Death of a Salesman — he was the fourth actor to
play the iconic role on Broadway — and Tyrone in Long Day's Journey
Into Night.
In the former, the imposing actor displayed "a grand
emotional expansiveness that matches his monumental physique," Ben
Brantley wrote in his New York Times review. "Yet these
emotions ring so unerringly true that Mr. Dennehy seems to kidnap you by force,
trapping you inside Willy's psyche."
He also starred opposite Christopher Plummer in a 2007
Broadway revival of Inherit the Wind.
Whenever he could, Dennehy retreated to the stage in Chicago, saying he preferred the Midwest
"because I can sit down with rational people who make $50,000 a year and
live in houses and have children and pay their taxes and shop at Sears."
He said he chose to live on a farm in northeast Connecticut because the
biggest celebrity in his town was the guy who played Big Bird.
Brian Manion Dennehy was born on July 9, 1938, in Bridgeport, Connecticut,
the oldest of three boys. His grandparents came to the U.S. from Ireland, and his father, Edward,
worked as a writer and editor for the Associated Press.
Raised in Red Hook in Brooklyn before moving at age 12 to
Long Island, he was an offensive tackle for the football team at Chaminade High School
in Mineola, New York. His coach once mentioned to him
that " ' as a football player, you'd make a great actor.' And we started
doing theater," he told Newsday in 2013.
Dennehy also played football at Columbia
University, spent time in the U.S.
Marine Corps — though he would backtrack on a story he related about serving in
Vietnam
— and attended Yale as a graduate student. Early on, he honed his acting chops
in regional theater, supporting himself as a meat truck driver, a Merrill Lynch
stockbroker and a bartender.
He scored a big break when he was cast in David Rabe's
off-Broadway Vietnam War play Streamers and won acclaim.
After guest-starring roles on shows including Kojak, Police
Woman and M*A*S*H, Dennehy fittingly made his movie
debut in the Burt Reynolds comedy Semi-Tough (1977), playing
a football player who dangles a woman over the ledge of a terrace.
In 1978, he appeared with Stallone in F.I.S.T. and
as a San Francisco
cop in Foul Play, then was given a shot at starring on his own TV
series. He portrayed a hotel house detective on the 1979 CBS crime drama Big
Shamus, Little Shamus, but it lasted just two episodes.
After recurring as D.A. Jake Dunham on ABC's Dynasty,
he played a father and fire captain on ABC's Star of the Family,
but it was axed after 10 episodes in 1982. (His other short-lived shows
included 1994's Birdland, on which he played a hospital chief of
psychiatry, and 2001's The Fighting Fitzgerald — he was a
retired firefighter in the one.)
Dennehy had more television success in one-offs, collecting
five Emmy nominations for his work in telefilms and miniseries. He received one
for Showtime's filmed version of Death of a Salesman and one
in 1992 for starring as serial killer John Wayne Gacy in Fox's To
Catch a Killer.
He also delivered a fiery portrayal of college basketball
coach Bobby Knight in the 2002 ESPN movie A Season on the Brink,
based on the John Feinstein book.
More recently, Dennehy had recurring roles as an Irish mob
boss on Public Morals, a sheriff on Hap and
Leonard and a KGB agent on The Blacklist.
His expansive résumé also included the films Never
Cry Wolf (1983), Legal Eagles (1986), The
Belly of an Architect (1987) — one of his favorite films — Return
to Snowy River (1988), Gladiator (1992), The
Stars Fell on Henrietta (1995), Romeo + Juliet (1996), She
Hate Me (2004), Righteous Kill (2008), The
Next Three Days (2010), Knight of Cups (2015), The
Seagull (2018) and Driveways
(2019).
Survivors include his second wife, a costume designer he wed
in 1989; his children Elizabeth, Kathleen, Dierdre, Cormac and Sarah; and
grandchildren Jack, William, Clementine, Hannah, Molly, Olivia and Lucy.
DENNEHY, Brian (Brian
Manion Dennehy)
Born: 7/9/1938, Bridgeport, Connecticut,
U.S.A.
Died: 4/15/2020, New Haven, Connecticut,
U.S.A.
Brian Dennehy’s
westerns – actor:
Butch and Sundance: The Early Days – 1979 (O.C. Hanks)
Silverado – 1985 (Cobb)
Tall Tales & Legends (TV) – 1985 (Buffalo Bill)
Return to Snowy River – 1988 (Harrison)
Dead Man’s Walk – 1996 (TV) (Major Chevallier)
R.I.P.
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