Lawrence Tierney

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Lawrence James Tierney (March 15, 1919 – February 26, 2002) was an American actor.

Tierney was known for his numerous film portrayals of mobsters and tough guys, as well as roles that mirrored his own regular encounters with the legislation.

"The hulking Tierney was not so much an actor as a terrifying power of nature," New York Times columnist David Kehr wrote in 2005.

Early life

Lawrence James Tierney was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 15, 1919, the son of Mary Alice (née Crowley) (1895–1964) and Lawrence Hugh Tierney (1891–1964). His father, an Irish-American policeman with the New York aqueduct police force, was a member of the Irish-American police force. Tierney was a popular student at Boys' High School, receiving awards for track and field, and joining Omega Gamma Delta fraternity.

After graduating from high school, he gained an athletic scholarship to Manhattan College but then resigned after two years to work as a laborer constructing a portion of the 85-mile-long Delaware Aqueduct, which supplies nearly half of New York City's water supply. He went from work to job, and then spent a time as a Sears Roebuck & Company catalog model.

Personal life and death

Despite having several short-term friendships with a variety of women in the 1940s, 1950s, and 60s, Tierney continued to be embroiled in legal issues and acute alcoholism. He did, however, give Elizabeth, his mother's child, who was born in 1961.

Edward, Edward, 1985, and Gerard (actor Scott Brady) in 1985. Both of Tierney's younger brothers preceded him in death. Lawrence Tierney died of pneumonia in his sleep in a Los Angeles nursing home, where he had been living for nearly two years.

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Career

Tierney joined the Black Friars theatre company after an acting coach suggested that he try the stage, eventually moving on to the American-Irish Theatre. He was discovered there in 1943 by an RKO talent scout and given a film job in Hollywood, California. Tierney appeared in numerous uncredited roles in RKO films including Gildersleeve on Broadway, Government Girl, The Ghost Ship For Producer Val Lewton, The Falcon Out West, Seven Days Ashore, and Youth Runs Wild, as well as Lewton.

In 1945's Dillinger's Dillinger, Tierney's breakthrough role was played by the King Brothers and Monogram Pictures, which borrowed him from RKO. Dillinger was initially barred from theaters in Chicago and other cities where the gangster had performed, a tale told in bullets, blood, and blondes. Dillinger nevertheless became a low-budget venture that cost $60,000 to produce, with Tierney being described as "memorably menacing" in the film.

Tierney, a former RKO star, has returned to Bataan (1945) in which he portrays Jesse James. However, as ticket sales for Dillinger increased and that the film's financial success became evident at RKO, Tierney was promoted to star status in Step by Step, another film noir that depicts an ex-Marine being wrongly accused of murder. In the 1946 release of San Quentin, he appeared as a reformed prisoner.

In two other RKO films that have since earned cult followings among film noir enthusiasts, The Devil Thumbs a Ride directed by Felix E. Feist and Robert Wise's more well-known Born to Kill. Tierney portrays a violent hitchhiker in Feist's film, while Wise portrays a suave but murderous conman. On its release in 1947, film critic Bosley Crowther of The New York Times condemned Born to Kill, saying that it was "not only morally revolting, but also an offense to a normal intellect." Tierney's "as the smart, bad killer whose aim is to 'fix it so's I spit in anyone's eye,'" he said, who was "given a rabid, nastiness nastiness." Despite such negative contemporary evaluations of the film, more recent commentators and film historians have expressed admiration for Tierney's ferocious role as a classic example of film noir, particularly RKO's take on the subject.

Yet, Tierney himself stated that he did not like being in such violent roles: despite this, he did not enjoy his time as a musician.

Tierney appeared in more sympathetic roles after Born to Kill. Bodyguard, RKO's 1948 film based on a tale co-written by Robert Altman and George W. George, portrays a man wrongfully accused of murder. Bill Williams was later confirmed as the lead role in RKO's That Year.

Tierney was shot by Eagle-Lion Films in 1950, and Max Nosseck had also directed Dillinger. Tierney made second billing in Joseph Pevney's Shakedown in 1988, but the actor starred in another Eagle Lion and directed by Nosseck, The Hoodlum. He then returned to RKO to play a supporting role, as Jesse James in Best of the Badmen (1951). After co-starring in The Bushwhackers (1952), director Cecil B. DeMille portrayed him as the villain who causes a train accident in 1952's Best Picture Oscar winner The Greatest Show on Earth. Tierney's work in the film earned him the director of Paraphrasedoutput to bring him under control, but the actor was turned down by the studio when he was arrested for fighting in a bar.

Tierney continued to work in support roles in The Man Behind the Badge, The Steel Cage (1954), and Singing in the Dark (1956). In the low-budget film noir Female Jungle (1956), he did share top billing with Kathleen Crowley, John Carradine, and Jayne Mansfield, but as demands for more screen time slowly slowed, he returned to the stage, playing Duke Mantee in a touring version of The Petrified Forest with Franchot Tone and Betsy von Furstenberg.

Tierney appeared in several television series including Naked City, The Detectives, Photographs of a Man, Peter Gunn, Adventures in Paradise, Peter Gunn, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, Follow the Sun, The Lloyd Bridges Exhibition, and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour during the 1950s and 1960s. Among his film appearances were scenes from John Cassavetes' A Child Is Waiting (1963), Naked Evil (1966), Custer of the West (1967), and Killer Without a Face (1968). After Child is Waiting, he went to France. Tierney returned to New York City after many years of French life, but the law continued. He served as a bartender and construction worker in New York City and drove a horse-drawn carriage in Central Park.

Rocky, The Karate Kid, and Other Underdogs, according to the book Avildsen's 1970 hit Joe, Joe Curran was supposed to play Joe Curran. However, he was suspended two days before principal photography was started for assaulting a bartender who refused to offer him any more hard liquor.

He occasionally found film work in Joseph Zito's Bad (1971), as an FBI agent in Joseph Zito's Abduction (1975), as an FBI agent in Joseph Zito's Bad, as well as small roles in Cassavetes' Gloria (1981) and Zito's The Prowler (1981). He was also in The Kirlian Witness (1980), Bloodshed (1980), and Arthur (1981). In the 1982 film Midnight, he was second billed.

Tierney returned to Hollywood in 1983, and over the next 16 years, he has had a fruitful acting career in film and television. He appeared on several television shows, including Remington Steele, Fame, Hunter, Hill Street Blues, Los Angeles, and The Simpsons, where former show runner Josh Weinstein referred to Tierney's appearance as "the craziest guest star experience we've ever had."

Tierney was born in 1984 as part of a national movement for an Excedrin television commercial as a building worker. In 1985, he had a brief appearance in Prizzi's Honor, as the chief of the New York City police. Tierney appeared on many television shows during the last two seasons of the police drama Hill Street Blues, portraying Desk Sergeant Jenkins, who was assisting the precinct's night shifts. He answered the front desk phone and yelled "Hill Street" in the final line of dialogue on the series's last episode.

In Norman Mailer's film version of his own novel Tough Guys Don't Dance (1987), Tierney had a more prominent supporting role as the father of protagonist Ryan O'Neal. In Stephen King's Silver Bullet's film version, he also played a bat-wielding bar owner. Tierney credited Tough Guys Don't Dance in particular with his actor career, and he rated it as some of his best work. Tierney appeared in "The Big Goodbye" in 1988, a tough holodeck gangster. In the Seinfeld episode "The Jacket," he appeared as Elaine Benes' gruff father Alton Benes.

Quentin Tarantino played Joe Cabot, a narcotic in Reservoir Dogs, in 1991. Tierney's career in playing gangsters was fueled by his success in the film. Tierney claims one of his henchmen was "dead as Dillinger" in honor of his first acting role. Tierney's off-screen antics amused and shocked the cast and crew during their filming. Tarantino got into a fist fight with Tierney and fired him at the end of his first week as a director of Reservoir Dogs. Tierney was later referred to as "a complete lunatic" who "need to be sedated."

Despite being feared for as a brawler and being impossible to work with, Tierney maintained his fame as a character actor in Hollywood until he suffered a mild stroke in 1995, which forced him to halt his work. In 1982, he had his first stroke. As his health gradually deteriorated until his death, he began doing voice-over work on animated films and made occasional appearances in film and television (most of which feature him only sitting). In Armageddon (1998), one of Tierney's later appearances was an uncredited cameo appearance as Bruce Willis' invalid father, which was eventually removed from the theatrical version. "I was still bailing him out of jail last year" Don Gerler, Tierney's long-serving agent, recalled the case: "I was certainly bailing him out of jail a few years ago [in 1994] I was still bailing him out of prison." He was 75 years old and still the most brutal guy in the bar" at the time. Lawrence Tierney, then age 80, was forbidden from acting fully in the 1999 independent film Evicted, written and directed by his uncle Michael Tierney.

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