Critic’s Appreciation: Alan Arkin, King of Comforting Wryness (and That One Terrifying Jump Scare)

Frank Scheck
·4 min read
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The first time I saw Alan Arkin onscreen, he scared the hell out of me.

The veteran Academy Award-winning actor, who died Thursday at the age of 89, is best known these days for his wittily avuncular presence in films like Little Miss Sunshine and such television shows as The Kominsky Method, his last great acting role. But my first exposure to him came in middle school, where for some inexplicable reason the powers that be decided that treating the entire student body to a screening of the film Wait Until Dark was a good idea.

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In that classic 1967 thriller, Arkin played Harry Roat, the most sadistic member of a trio of villains terrorizing a blind Audrey Hepburn because they think she possesses a doll filled with heroin. In a climactic scene set in almost near-darkness, a seemingly dead Roat suddenly jumps into the frame and grabs Hepburn by the leg. The entire auditorium of kids screamed loudly as one in response to what is literally one of the great jump scares in movie history.

That Arkin could be as scary as he was funny is a testament to his consummate skill as an actor. And his versatility didn’t just extend to acting. He had a hit single, “The Banana Boat Song,” as a member of the folk singing group The Tarriers. He was a standout at improv comedy in Chicago’s Second City troupe, that incubator for talented performers. He was a published author, playwright and a director for both stage and screen. Among his directorial triumphs were the screen adaptation of Jules Feiffer’s ahead-of-its-time black comedy Little Murders (sadly forgotten these days, but brilliant) and the original Broadway production of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys. Why in recent years no one thought of casting Arkin in a remake of the film version of that play is a mystery.

Arkin had the kind of talent that was unassuming but undeniable. He won a Tony Award for his first leading turn on Broadway in Enter Laughing and an Oscar nomination for his first leading role on film in The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. He could break your heart, whether playing a deaf man who doesn’t speak in the haunting film of Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter or a widower struggling to raise two sons in Popi. And he could make you laugh hysterically, from his straight-man work opposite Peter Falk in The In-Laws to his hilariously profane supporting performances in Argo and Little Miss Sunshine to his deadpan terrified shrink in Grosse Pointe Blank.

Arkin made lots and lots of films, not all of them good. (Anyone remember Chu Chu and the Philly Flash, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Bad Medicine or Raising Flagg? Didn’t think so.) But he was almost never bad in them. He had a remarkable ability to lift even mediocre material to something worth watching, if only for him.

After his acclaimed 1965 Broadway turn in Murray Schisgal’s Luv, Arkin concentrated on movies and television and didn’t return to the theater except occasionally as a director. But he did make a rare stage appearance in 1998 in off-Broadway’s Power Plays, a trio of one-act plays that he directed, co-wrote and co-starred in opposite Elaine May, with whom he once performed in Second City. I was lucky enough to see it, and even a quarter of a century later it lingers in my memory — not as a great evening of comic plays (they were sporadically funny at best), but as a master class in comedic acting by two of the best of all time.

Arkin’s death hit me harder than usual. I mean, every “In Memoriam” segment in every awards show these days features performers whom I’ve long loved. But Arkin was a more comforting presence than most. He made wryness and sarcasm seem the most natural and intelligent response to a world that increasingly makes little sense. We needed him now more than ever.

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