Mark Rydell, the film director behind Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda’s Oscar-winning performances in “On Golden Pond,” who also inspired gripping work from actors in other acclaimed movies of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 97.
His death, at a nursing facility, was confirmed by his daughter, Amy Rydell.
After starting his career as an actor and pivoting to directing for television, Mr. Rydell seemed to come largely out of nowhere to lead a string of high-profile films, beginning with “The Fox” in 1968 and going on to “The Reivers” (1969), “Cinderella Liberty” (1973) and “The Rose” (1979) before “On Golden Pond,” released in 1981.
“He was the actor’s whisperer,” Bette Midler, who earned Oscar nominations for “The Rose” and another Rydell film, “For the Boys” (1991), said on Instagram after his death. “Just a few words was all it took to understand what was needed.”
Ms. Hepburn and Mr. Fonda, both in their 70s at the time, won lead-acting Oscars for “On Golden Pond,” Ernest Thompson’s adaptation of his play about a curmudgeon, his serenely supportive wife, his estranged daughter and intimations of mortality at a summer cottage.
“If ever there was a situation where life fed the art, that was it,” Mr. Rydell said, referring to the infamously distant relationship between Mr. Fonda and Jane Fonda, his daughter, who also received an Oscar nomination for acting in the film and had acquired the rights to adapt the play specifically so that her father could play the cranky Norman Thayer.
“Every day she reached out to him,” Mr. Rydell added. “Every day he rejected her.”
Mr. Rydell, who had trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater and the Actors Studio in New York, was often referred to as an “actor’s director” who facilitated performances rather than imposing a grand vision. Unlike his contemporaries Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick, he was certainly no auteur — and the films he chose to do were vastly different in theme and tone.
“The Fox” was an intense romantic drama based on a D.H. Lawrence novella. It starred Keir Dullea, Sandy Dennis and Anne Heywood as the members of a romantic triangle in rural Canada; its lesbian bedroom scenes were shocking at the time. “Cinderella Liberty,” about a sailor (James Caan) and a prostitute (Marsha Mason, who earned an Oscar nomination for her performance), was also considered risqué for its moment, albeit in a very different setting.
But two of Mr. Rydell’s best-known films were somewhat rowdy and funny. “The Reivers,” an offbeat Steve McQueen comic drama, was based on a William Faulkner novel and set in turn-of-the-century Mississippi. “Harry and Walter Go to New York” (1976) was a period bank-heist comedy with Mr. Caan and Elliott Gould. It was a box office disappointment, but Mr. Rydell considered it one of his favorites.
“The Cowboys” (1972) was, of all things, a John Wayne western, with a plot involving young boys running a cattle drive. “The Rose” starred Ms. Midler, in her screen debut, as a Janis Joplin-like rock star recklessly hurtling toward her own destruction; in “For the Boys,” she played a U.S.O. performer opposite Mr. Caan.
“The common thread in my work,” Mr. Rydell told The Boston Globe in 1983, “is a reverence for people.”
Though he received an Oscar nomination for directing “On Golden Pond,” more often than not his actors seemed to get much of the credit for the success of his films. The critic Vincent Canby, reviewing “Cinderella Liberty” for The New York Times in 1973, judged it an “aggressively false and sentimental comedy,” but deemed it “nicely acted.” Mr. Canby worshiped Mr. Fonda in “On Golden Pond,” saying his was “film acting of the highest order,” but ridiculed the direction.
“One more drop of dew,” Mr. Canby wrote, “and this movie would have drowned.”
In all, eight actors directed by Mr. Rydell were honored with Oscar nominations, including Ms. Midler’s “Rose” co-star, Frederic Forrest; Sissy Spacek (“The River”); and Rupert Crosse (“The Reivers”).
He had little explanation for how he elicited such emotionally charged performances. “I don’t know how you teach somebody to be sensitive and compassionate and understanding of another human being,” Mr. Rydell said in a 2003 video interview for the Directors Guild of America. “You either have that — you’re inclined to that — or you’re not.”
Mortimer H. Rydell was born on March 23, 1929, in New York City and grew up in the Bronx, the son of Sidney Rydell, a stockbroker, and Evelyn Rydell.
Young Mortimer was, by his own account, a notorious truant. His father was determined that he attend the prestigious Bronx High School of Science and reportedly pulled strings to get him in. Mortimer repaid him by sneaking out of school regularly and taking the subway to 42nd Street to attend live performances.
He also liked sneaking away from home (a first-floor apartment on the Grand Concourse) at night to go to music clubs to see his heroes, among them Art Tatum, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Having learned to play the piano as a young boy, he began getting jobs as a jazz pianist in his early teens.
Early in his professional career, Mortimer changed his name to Mark. He attended a few schools, including New York University, the University of Chicago and Juilliard, before studying acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse with Sanford Meisner, the renowned pedagogue who cultivated a fresh, responsive acting style.
A member of the Actors Studio, he befriended another member, James Dean, and the two appeared together in 1953 in “Glory in the Flower,” a television play by William Inge broadcast on the cultural program “Omnibus.” (In 2001, Mr. Rydell directed — and cast himself as the gruff movie-studio mogul Jack L. Warner in — the TV biopic “James Dean,” which introduced many viewers to the very young James Franco.)
In 1956, Mr. Rydell was cast on the soap opera “As the World Turns” as Jeff Baker, the handsome young love interest of Penny Hughes (Rosemary Prinz). TV Guide referred to Penny and Jeff as “soap’s first superstars.” After six years of steady paychecks, Mr. Rydell felt secure enough to take a risk and try a career change, so Jeff was killed off in a stormy-night car accident. Mr. Rydell then moved behind the camera.
He later said that if he seemed to be a pro on the very first film he directed (“The Fox”), it was because he had learned what not to do while directing TV, including episodes of the medical drama “Ben Casey” and “Gunsmoke,” the western.
Over the years, he took occasional acting jobs. He was a sadistic gangster in Mr. Altman’s “The Long Goodbye” (1973), with a memorable scene in which he viciously smashes an empty Coca-Cola bottle across his mistress’s face to prove to the detective Philip Marlowe how tough he is. He was the mobster Meyer Lansky in Sydney Pollack’s “Havana” (1990) and Woody Allen’s loyal showbiz agent in Mr. Allen’s “Hollywood Ending” (2002).
The last film he directed was “Even Money,” first released in 2006, an ensemble-cast crime drama about gambling addiction.
Mr. Rydell was married and divorced twice. In addition to his daughter, an actress, he is survived by two sons, Christopher, also an actor, including in his father’s films, and Alexander, an editor and filmmaker; three grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and a sister, Judy Wagner.
Asked during the Directors Guild interview if he had advice for young directors, he suggested that they learn about acting.
“Learn how difficult it is to stand in front of a camera and to live a life in public solitude,” Mr. Rydell said. “Learn how to do that and respect it.”
Ash Wu contributed reporting.
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