Three Faces of Larry Tucker

Between 1961 and 1963, one Larry Tucker racked up a cinematic trifecta not to be sneezed at, essaying three unforgettable portraits of three deeply creepy characters in three exceptional films.

The first was in Blast of Silence, the once ultra-obscure 1961 thriller directed by and starring Allen Baron. Baron plays hitman Frankie Bono, "from Cleveland," in New York for a job, where he requires the services of a fellow named Ralphie. "Now to do business with Ralphie, and he turns your stomach," narrator Lionel Stander growls (the second-person narration of the picture is one of its many distinctive and completely fantastic features); and Ralphie, as played by the mountainous, hirsute Tucker, seems to revel in his stomach-turning abilities, as you might note from the screen cap above. If that wasn't enough for you, Ralphie also keeps...rats. As pets. Here he's showing Frankie his special bond with a vermin specimen he calls "Nancy."

Ugh. Ralphie's no picnic to do business with, either. Frankie's looking for a gun and a silencer, and Ralphie goes all wheedling: "Oh…a silencer…that, uh, that may be a little problem. You know, I got a worry about a machinist…but, uh, we’ll work something out…" Uh-huh. Once Frankie thinks he's got a deal, he's out of there like a shot, as Ralphie whines that he should stick around to talk over old times. Frankie will be back, but not for that.

1962 sees Tucker as Manuel in Otto Preminger's Advise and Consent. The actor only appears in two shots—the first is of him showing Don Murray's Senator Brigham Anderson into his apartment, and the second is one of Preminger's patented long takes. One of Preminger's most indelible long takes, as it happens.

Anderson, you may recall, has flown up to New York and cabbed it to Greenwich Village to track down his male lover from his Navy days. The guy is now a pawn in a blackmail scheme against Anderson. Instead of finding "Ray" at the return address of a letter he received from the former fling, Anderson finds the slightly effeminate, multi-cat-owning, tea-brewing Manuel, who, we quickly infer, is the guy's quasi-pimp. The somewhat-innocent-in-these-matters Anderson throws some money at Manuel, so as to find out where Ray is right this minute, and Manuel gives him the address of a bar. Tucker's delivery of the scene's final lines is about the ultimate in, "umm, ick?"-ness: "You can come back here with Ray. I mean, you've paid!"

And in 1963 Tucker plays a volatile self-styled Pagliacci in Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor, the director's still-vital portrayal of America as a lunatic asylum. (I might someday write about how one can look at it as a portrayal of the blogosphere as a lunatic asylum.)

There's nothing even vaguely funny about Tucker's portrayals in any of these films...but the dominant mode of Tucker's professional life was, as it happens, comic. Fuller didn't hire Tucker because he saw him in Blast or A & C; he caught Tucker as one-half of a comedy act on the Sunset Strip, the other half being one Paul Mazursky. Tucker went on to co-create the TV series The Monkees with Mazursky; they also cowrote the swinging-sixties oddity I Love You Alice B. Toklas. Their biggest coup came with the Mazursky-directed Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, which Tucker co-wrote and produced. He cameos in the two films, and also did a turn as a shrink on one Monkees episode.

I mentioned that Blast of Silence was once ultra-obscure. It will be quite a bit less so on April 15 when its Criterion Collection DVD hits the streets. I'll have much more to say about this old favorite (still one of the most mind-blowing films maudit ever) filling you in on its status as Psychotronic samizdat back in the day, in an upcoming post.

Comments

[swhitty]

Glenn, many thanks on connecting the dots in this man's career. When I first saw him in "Advise and Consent" I thought he might be the mad unclaimed lovechild of Peter Ustinov and Victor Buono; when I then found him in "Shock Corridor" (only to completely lose track of him afterwards) I wondered if perhaps he was some genuine low-life Preminger and Fuller had somehow discovered jointly and briefly brought into the light. Nice to know he had such a busy, eclectic and typically unpredictable career before and after, (and I look forward to reading you on "Blast of Silence").

[Marc]

Blast of Silence sounds awesome--I love that screenshot! IMDB doesn't have it listed as being released on dvd/video anywhere...guess I'll have to keep my eyes peeled over at TCM.

[Marc]

Whoops--didn't read the whole post--can't wait for the Criterion!