Albert Salmi

At 62 years old, Albert Salmi has this physical status:

Albert Salmi (March 11, 1928 – April 22, 1990) was an American actor of stage, film, and television.

He was best known for his role as a character actor in over 150 film and television series.

Early life

Salmi was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, as the son of Finnish immigrant parents. He attended Haaren High School in Manhattan. Salmi took up acting as a career after a stint in the United States Army during World War II, investigating methods of acting at the Actors Studio in Manhattan with Lee Strasberg.

Personal life

Peggy Ann Garner appeared in the National Company touring production of Bus Stop in 1955. They were married in New York City on May 18, 1956. Catherine Ann "Cas" Salmi's only child was born on March 30, 1957; Catherine died of heart disease in 1995 at the age of 38.

Salmi married Roberta Pollock Taper in 1964. Elizabeth and Jennifer had two children. Salmi's family moved from Los Angeles to Spokane, Washington, where Salmi went back to semi-retirement, acting in occasional roles. Salmi earned a degree in acting and appeared in professional and regional theaters.

Albert and Roberta Salmi became separated in February 1990. Roberta and John were both in their Idaho apartment, while Roberta remained in the family's Spokane home. On February 6, she applied for divorce. Roberta Salmi said that her husband was an alcoholic who physically assaulted her while he drank. Salmi assaulted her on several occasions, and she was afraid of her life, according to her. Roberta also served a restraining order against her husband. Salmi denied physically insulting Roberta in the court documents, blaming their distainment on their emotional conditions.

Albert Salmi and his estranged wife Roberta were discovered dead in their Spokane home by a friend who stopped by to check on her on April 23, 1990. Salmi fatally shot Roberta in the kitchen of her house before shooting himself in an upstairs room, according to newspaper reports.

Salmi's funeral took place at Henness-Smith Funeral Home on April 26, after which he was cremated and placed in a niche at the Greenwood Memorial Terrace cemetery in Spokane.

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Career

In 1955, Salmi starred as Bo Decker in the play Bus Stop on Broadway, and also performed in the touring production of the play. His performance was praised by critics, and Salmi was offered the chance to reprise the role in the film Bus Stop (1956) starring Marilyn Monroe. Salmi turned down the offer because he did not enjoy film work. (Don Murray was later cast as Bo and earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance.) Salmi turned down several other offers to make films before he finally accepted a role as Smerdjakov in the film The Brothers Karamazov (1958), with Yul Brynner, Lee J. Cobb, William Shatner, and Richard Basehart. Salmi's next film was The Bravados (1958), in which he played one of the villains who is hunted down by hero Gregory Peck. The National Board of Review presented Salmi with the NBR Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in both of these films.

Despite his numerous appearances in the medium, Salmi shared the opinion of many Actors Studio alumni that roles in film and television were "inferior" to stage work. One of his first television appearances was in the live, televised adaptation of the novel Bang the Drum Slowly (1956), featured on the anthology series The United States Steel Hour opposite Paul Newman and George Peppard. He also had several memorable roles on CBS's The Twilight Zone, including "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville", "A Quality of Mercy", and "Execution". In 1963, he portrayed John Day and Rivers in the episode "Incident of the Pale Rider" on the CBS series Rawhide. In 1964–65, he appeared with Fess Parker as Yadkin in the first season of the Daniel Boone TV series. He later appeared twice as the incorrigible pirate Alonzo P. Tucker on Lost in Space. He appeared in a 1967 episode of Gunsmoke as a killer who comes to an ironic end. For that performance, Salmi was awarded a Western Heritage Award.

From 1974 to 1976, Salmi co-starred in the NBC legal drama Petrocelli as local investigator Pete Ritter. A high point of Salmi's career came in 1968, when he was cast in the Arthur Miller play The Price. He played the lead on Broadway and in London.

Salmi's film career included roles in The Unforgiven (1960), The Outrage (1964), Lawman (1971), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Viva Knievel! (1977), Empire of the Ants (1977), Love and Bullets (1979), Caddyshack (1980), and the Robert Redford prison film Brubaker (1980). He played Greil in Dragonslayer (1981), Geraldine Page's husband in I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can (1982), and the hard-drinking but loving father of character Diana Lawson in Hard to Hold (1984). His final role in a theatrical film was in Breaking In (1989), starring Burt Reynolds.

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