Alan Arkin

Alan Wolf Arkin (March 26, 1934 – June 29, 2023) was an American actor, filmmaker and musician. In a career spanning seven decades, he received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Tony Award as well as nominations for six Emmy Awards.

Arkin performed in the sketch comedy group The Second City before acting on the Broadway stage, starring as David Kolowitz in the Joseph Stein play Enter Laughing in 1963, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. He returned to Broadway acting in the comedic play Luv (1964), and directed Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys (1971), for which he received a Tony Award nomination.

Arkin won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a foul-mouthed grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine (2006). He was Oscar-nominated for his roles in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966), The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968), and Argo (2012). He also acted in Wait Until Dark (1967), Inspector Clouseau (1968), Popi (1969), Catch-22 (1970), The In-Laws (1979), Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Rocketeer (1991), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001), Get Smart (2008), Going in Style (2017), Dumbo (2019) and Spenser Confidential (2020). Arkin also directed three films, including the comedies Little Murders (1971) and Fire Sale (1977).

His television roles included Leon Felhendler in Escape from Sobibor (1987), and as Harry Rowen in The Pentagon Papers (2003) for which he earned Emmy nominations, respectively, for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie. Arkin voiced Schmendrick in The Last Unicorn (1982), J. D. Salinger in the animated series BoJack Horseman (2015–16), and Wild Knuckles in Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022). From 2018 to 2019, Arkin starred in the Netflix comedy series The Kominsky Method, earning two consecutive nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.

Early life and education

Alan Wolf Arkin was born in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, on March 26, 1934, the son of teacher, painter, writer and lyricist David I. Arkin (1906–1980) (co-writer of the hit Three Dog Night song "Black and White"), and his wife, Beatrice (née Wortis; 1909–1991), a teacher. The family lived in Crown Heights. He was raised in a Jewish family with "no emphasis on religion". His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, Russia, and Germany. His parents moved to Los Angeles when Alan was 11, but an eight-month Hollywood strike cost his father his job as a set designer. During the 1950s Red Scare, Arkin's parents were accused of being Communists, and his father was fired when he refused to answer questions about his political ideology. David Arkin challenged the dismissal, but he was vindicated only after his death.

Arkin, who had been taking acting lessons since age 10, became a scholarship student at various drama academies, including one run by the Stanislavsky student Benjamin Zemach, who taught Arkin a psychological approach to acting. Arkin attended Los Angeles State College from 1951 to 1953. He also attended Bennington College.

Career

1956–1969

He started his career in the 1950s as a singer and guitarist in the folk group, The Tarriers. They had two hits in 1956–7: "Cindy, Oh Cindy" and "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)". They performed the latter in the 1957 musical movie, Calypso Heat Wave, and sang "Choucoune" in this too. Arkin went on to sing with another folk group, The Baby Sitters. Arkin was an early member of the Second City comedy troupe in the 1960s. In 1957, he made his feature film acting debut in a small role in the musical Calypso Heat Wave. In the early sixties, he appeared in episodes of East Side/West Side (1964) and ABC Stage 67 (1966). He also made his Broadway debut as a performer in From the Second City at the Royale Theatre in 1961.

Arkin starred in 1963 on Broadway as David Kolowitz in Joseph Stein's comedic play Enter Laughing. Critic Howard Taubman of The New York Times gave the play a mixed review but praised Arkin's performance, describing it as "a choice specimen of a shrewd actor ribbing his profession." For his performance, he received the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play, and a Theatre World Award. The following year, he returned to Broadway starring as Harry Berlin in Luv directed by Mike Nichols. Arkin starred opposite Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson.

In 1966, he starred in Norman Jewison's comedy film The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming opposite Carl Reiner and Eva Marie Saint. Robert Alden of The New York Times praised Arkin's performance describing it as his "first full-length film appearance and a particularly wonderful performance." For his performance Arkin received an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination and a BAFTA Award for Most Promising Newcomer nomination. He also received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. The following year he appeared in the Vittorio De Sica sex comedy Woman Times Seven starring Shirley MacLaine, and in Terence Young's psychological thriller film Wait Until Dark starring Audrey Hepburn.

In 1968, he starred as Inspector Jacques Clouseau in the third installment of The Pink Panther franchise, titled Inspector Clouseau, after Peter Sellers dissociated himself from the role. The film was not well-received by Sellers' fans and critics, but Penelope Gilliatt of The New Yorker called it "an incredibly bad film, but Alan Arkin is sometimes very funny in it, especially when he doesn't try to be." That same year, he co-starred with Sondra Locke in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, playing a suicidal deaf mute. For his performance, he received nominations for an Academy Award for Best Actor and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama, and won a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor. In 1969, he starred in Arthur Hiller's comedy Popi opposite Rita Moreno. The film focuses on a Puerto Rican widower struggling to raise his two young sons in the New York City neighborhood of Spanish Harlem. Arkin received another nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama.

In 1969, Arkin's directorial debut was the Oscar-nominated 12-minute children's film titled People Soup, starring his sons Adam Arkin and Matthew Arkin. Based on a story of the same name he published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1958, People Soup is a fantasy about two boys who experiment with various kitchen ingredients until they concoct a magical soup which transforms them into different animals and objects.

1970–1985

In 1970, Arkin starred as Capt. John Yossarian in the Mike Nichols film Catch-22. The film is a satirical black comedy war film adapted from the 1961 novel of the same name by Joseph Heller. Arkin co-starred alongside Bob Balaban, Martin Balsam, Buck Henry, Bob Newhart, Austin Pendleton, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight, and Orson Welles. Arkin received a Laurel Award nomination for his performance. Arkin and his second wife Barbara Dana appeared together on the 1970–1971 season of Sesame Street as a comical couple named Larry and Phyllis who resolve their conflicts when they remember how to pronounce the word "cooperate".

He directed the black comedy film Little Murders, which was released in 1971 and later became a cult classic. Written by cartoonist Jules Feiffer, it is a black comedy film starring Elliott Gould and Marcia Rodd about a girl, Patsy (Rodd), who brings home her boyfriend Alfred (Gould) to meet her dysfunctional family amid a series of random shootings, garbage strikes, and electrical outages ravaging the neighborhood. The film opened to a lukewarm review by Roger Greenspun, and a more positive one by Vincent Canby in The New York Times. Roger Ebert's review in the Chicago Sun-Times was enthusiastic, stating "One of the reasons it works and is indeed a definitive reflection of America's darker moods is that it breaks audiences down into isolated individuals, vulnerable and uncertain." Arkin also directed Fire Sale (1977).