Everyone who last Friday heard about the passing at the age of 89 of stage and screen actor Alan Arkin was reminded of the one or two films, TV shows, or stage appearances of this incredibly versatile performer that captured their hearts over an astonishing seven decades. His first role was in the 1957 film “Calypso Heat Wave,” and his last, “The Smack” is yet to be released.
My two favorites Alan Arkin films featured him as the ultimate outsider, forever struggling to comprehend the clues he perceives from society around him, and inevitably failing miserably. The first was “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,” 1968, in which Arkin, who received an Academy Award nomination for the role of the deaf-mute John Singer whose only friend is a mentally disabled mute, Spiros Antonapoulos, a brawny man who always gets into trouble with the law, with Singer laboring to rescue him.
The other is “Catch 22,” with Arkin in the role of Captain John Yossarian, a US Army Air Force B-25 bombardier stationed on the Mediterranean base in Italy during World War II, who is trying to be discharged from the army on the grounds of his being insane, and is frustrated by the Catch-22 clause that says an airman would have to be crazy to fly more missions, and as such should be declared insane and unfit to fly. However, if an airman refuses to fly more missions, it indicates that he is sane, which means that he is fit to fly more missions.
The NY Times’ Jason Bailey picked Arkin’s appearance as a washed-out real estate salesman in the 1992 film adaptation of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” which I, too, would have included in my top-10 Arkin performances.
Arkin won the Oscar for his deadpan performance in “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming,” as Lt. Rozanov, the captain of the Soviet Navy submarine Octopus who wants to have a look at America and gets too close to the New England coast, running aground on a sandbar near the fictional Gloucester Island. Soon, the locals and the Soviet sailors are entangled in a mini WW3 which is as funny as it is a warning.
Arkin’s last major production was with Michael Douglas in “The Kominsky Method,” a Netflix comedy-drama television series, with Arkin as Norman Newlander, the friend and agent of Sandy Kominsky, a Hollywood has-been who now teaches acting.
Alan Wolf Arkin was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 26, 1934, the son of David I. Arkin, a painter and writer, and Beatrice (née Wortis), a teacher. His Jewish family had “no emphasis on religion,” as he told Interfaith Family in 2018. His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, Russia, and Germany. 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. He was vindicated only after his death.
Alan Arkin died at his home in San Marcos, California, on June 29, 2023, at the age of 89. According to the Times, he had a history of heart problems.
A long one, it appears.
