MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > "RIP Rip" -- Rip Torn Passes Away

"RIP Rip" -- Rip Torn Passes Away

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
18 replies | jump to latest

I cannot tell a lie. I've seen the heading "RIP Rip" a few places on the internet since Rip Torn died a few days ago. But it still makes sense to join the crowd.

His real name was Elmore Torn, which was cool enough, but his nickname was Rip and so he stuck by it. As someone wrote this week, perhaps only Slim Pickens had a more descriptive name.

I have sometimes written around here about my high regard for 50s/60s/70s character star Richard Boone(well, its only in the 60s and 70's that he really got "fun" as an actor.) I've rather despaired in not finding a "Boone substitute" since he left us in 1981 (at 63, too young). Tommy Lee Jones came a bit close, but he's too quiet. Samuel L. Jackson is closer, but he is a bigger star than Boone was.

But one who came damn close -- if in a different way -- was Rip Torn. He'd been around since the 50's in movies and TV, usually in very serious roles. He was married (to her death?) to the Method Lady Geraldine Page(who seemed older than Torn; I dunno). He had a reputation in art films and serious roles.

And then, in the 80's, Rip Torn found a new career as a middle-aged character guy who good play good guys, bad guys, or somewhere in between, with a strong deep voice and a commanding manner. Like Richard Boone.

Except Rip Torn didn't really have Richard Boone's success. He didn't have a hit TV series to make him rich(Have Gun, Will Travel for Boone.) He didn't get above-the-title billing in movies, like Boone did -- usually second or third (The War Lord, Hombre, Big Jake, The Arrangement) sometimes first(Rio Conchos, some seventies foreign westerns -- and though he's second in the alphabet after Bibi Anderson, Boone is really the lead of The Kremlin Letter.)

No, Rip Torn didn't have THAT career. But he was memorable, nonetheless.

I clock Rip Torn as a crack character guy from 1987 (six years after we lost Boone.)

Two movies that year. In Extreme Prejudice, Torn wore a Stetson and went clean-shaven to play a Texas good guy -- Nick Nolte's Texas Ranger boss. In Nadine, Torn wore a Stetson and a goatee to play a Texas bad guy -- the adversary to stars Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger, a mob boss who gets a great memorable line near the end, spoken in Torn's great resonant voice: "You spend your whole life building up a business, and it takes two idiots ten minutes to bring it all down." Torn basically played the same Texas guy in both movies: one good, one bad, both delightfully charismatic and sonorous of voice. (In Extreme Prejudice, he says to Nolte: "Only thing lower than a state legislator is a child molester, in my opinion.")

In 1991, I saw Rip Torn in the role I like him in best. He's in Albert Brooks "Defending Your Life," a bit of self-help spirituality(with a selfish core) that says: when you die, before you can go to heaven, you go to a beautiful village with a courthouse. And in that court, you "defend your life" --- did you put your needs first? did you have proper self-esteem? did you do good for others? If you DID, off to Heaven you go. If you did NOT...back to earth you go. Earth...where humans usely only 10% of their brain power and where people sometimes go back five times..."but you wouldn't want to know any of them."

Those words are Rip Torn's who is the defense attorney assigned to neurotic nebbish Albert Brooks, dead too young in a car crash and on trial for having spent too timid a life on earth. (Meanwhile Brooks meets the Lovely Meryl Streep, whose trial is a formality because she did nothing on earth but help people, nuture her family and herself...and save puppies and children from a house fire. Both the lives of Brooks and Streep are broken down into film clips shown in court.)

Torn uses his commanding authority to TRY to win for Brooks at trial. But the ruthless prosecutor, Lee Grant, keeps showing film clips of Brooks being a timid nebbish.

Its all rather philosophical, if the message is ultimately: push for yourself more on this earth.

Torn is about the only "friend" Brooks has in the movie, though Streep unaccountably falls in love with him.

We realize how important Torn is to the tale when Brooks comes into the courtroom one day and finds a "substitute defense attorney for one day": mousy, quiet, bureaucratic Buck Henry, who doesn't fight nearly as hard for Brooks as Torn does. We hope: get Rip Torn back in this courtroom! He's Brooks' only chance.

Rip does figure in the finale of "Defending Your Life," and I think it his best mainstream role. The movie is my second favorite of 1991, after Silence of the Lambs.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And then came "Arthur" (as billed in the credits) aka "Artie," the manager to talk show host Larry Sanders(Garry Shandling) on the hit HBO series "The Larry Sanders Show." This inside showbiz fable made a great showcase for how fame works: Larry Sanders has the talent(comedy), but he NEEDS a manager/bodyguard/protector/bad cop/mean guy -- Artie -- to take care of him. The show had nuance -- Larry isn't a pushover, either, he can be tough, but he prefers Artie to take the heat, and Artie likes taking it. For his part, Artie isn't beneath sucking up to Larry -- after all, his only real boss.

And the two of them have -- as a sparring partner schmuck, Jeffrey Tambor's Ed McMahon type -- much worse than McMahan, an overly sensitive whiner totally in awe of his own celebrity( and he IS a good McMahon type on the air.) This threesome were the centerpiece to a show that had guest movie stars and TV stars playing versions of themselves -- some nice, some nasty -- but Rip Torn's Artie was really the fun character on the show, the tough guy we all WISH we could be. (And equality rule: they brought on a very tough TV woman who, as I recall, bested Larry -- not Artie -- in a fist fight.)

Somewhere in this period, I recall Rip Torn playing a Columbo killer in the new iteration of the series(90's) and he was perfect casting and new to the series, unlike repeaters from the 70's like Patrick McGoohan and William Shatner.

Rather as with Richard Boone -- who only did about six things I REALLY liked (and Have Gun Travel wasn't one of them), so too with Rip Torn. Lemme count 'em:

Defending Your Life(best of all)
Extreme Prejudice
Nadine
The Larry Sanders Show
Columbo

um...that's it? Well, I felt he was underused in "Men In Black" and a terrible, non-charming goonish gangster in the Eastwood/Reynolds flop City Heat. No I go with the five above. Larry Sanders was perhaps his longest running role.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

That's "mainstream" Rip Torn. From my readings, I know he did a lot of independent work, across the 70's and into the 90's and beyond. Payday. That one where he almost bit Norman Mailer's ear off(an improvised mess called "Maidstone" I think.) Something where he was a frontier hermit finding romance. I've seen none of them. I should. I got too fixated on the sweetness of Defending Your Life and the showbiz bloodsport of Larry Sanders.

There's something famous about Rip Torn that led to a bit of a "twist ending":

He was cast as the picked-up-along-the-way lawyer friend of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider(happy 50th!) but lost the part(said Hopper) when he pulled a knife and threatened director Hopper. Torn sued Hopper for defamation and won, but no matter: the lawyer part went to a young guy named Nicholson, who got his first Oscar nom for it...and never looked back. "New stars are made when established stars drop out." (Like Robert Shaw getting The Sting when Boone dropped out; and getting Jaws from The Sting.)

The "twist ending" (to me at least) in his last decade working in films and TV, I thought that Old Rip Torn looked a lot like Old Jack Nicholson. A little thinner, maybe, but the same hair style, face shape, PRESENCE. And both men had sonorous voices that only got richer with age. When Nicholson wore HIS goatee in "The Departed," I felt the Rip Torn vibe immediately.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Some early 60's Rip Torn I only finally saw in the 00s:

The Man From UNCLE.(1965) He played a rich, murderous villain out to break all ten of the Commandments. I saw this on DVD and wondered if some of this plot was cut from the TV broadcast in the 60's. He dishonors his father and mother(by kidnapping them to a cave to die), he sleeps with another man's wife(and we see him walk out of her bedroom with her in bed.) The best gag of this two parter is that this rich maniac who is out to break the commandments and take over the world, is dogged at every turn by : his ex-wife -- sweet Dorothy Provine(Its a Mad World) hellbent on alimony and unafraid to risk death to get it.

The Cincinnati Kid. (1965) This poker showdown(Young Steve McQueen versus Old Eddie G. Robinson) had an "all-star cast" and on the DVD menu, Rip Torn gets one of those all-star slots (along with the two male leads, Ann Margret, Tuesday Weld, and Karl Malden.) He wasn't all-star when he made the movie, he was by the DVD era.

In the movie, Torn is the villain: a rich Southern Gentleman out to destroy Old Eddie Robinson(who beat TORN at cards) in the poker showdown by forcing Karl Malden to deal McQueen winning cards.

Behind the scenes, Rip Torn is part of movie history on The Cincinnati Kid: the first director on the film, a man named Sam Peckinpah, was fired for filming a scene with Torn and his black mistress in bed(we meet Torn's sweet southern belle white wife.) The mistress was partially nude. That was all the producer needed to fire Peckinpah(whom he hated for other reasons) and Sam went into exile until saved by "The Wild Bunch." The replacement director, Norman Jewison, used Cincinnati Kid as a stepping stone from Doris Day movies to In the Heat of the Night and history of his own. By the way, the Torn/Mistress scene is in the movie, but she's not nude.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Young Rip Torn in The Cinncinati Kid has some of Old Rip Torn's charisma and vocal power,but not enough. You need to age into that kind of authority, Young Rip Torn is just mean and nasty. No fun to him.

But I'll add those 1965 items to my list:

Defending Your Life
Extreme Prejudice
Nadine
The Larry Sanders Show
Columbo

The Man From UNCLE two-parter("The Alexander the Greater Affair")
The Cincinatti Kid

...and I'll do two more things:

ONE: Look over Rip Torn's imdb filmography to see what I forgot and

TWO: Make a "bucket list retirement assignment" of tracking down some of Rip Torn's art film indies to watch. I'm sure he's good in them, too.

Yessir...RIP Rip. I was and will remain, a fan.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Excellent summation of a long and storied career.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Thank you!

[–] tsrts (399) 5 years ago

That one where he almost bit Norman Mailer's ear off(an improvised mess called "Maidstone" I think.)

I believe it was Norman Mailer who bit Rip Torn's ear after Rip hit him in the head with a hammer, while the camera was rolling.
He was brilliant as Artie ("R.T.") on Larry Sanders.
Also, he guest starred on Columbo in the 90's series.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

That one where he almost bit Norman Mailer's ear off(an improvised mess called "Maidstone" I think.)

I believe it was Norman Mailer who bit Rip Torn's ear after Rip hit him in the head with a hammer, while the camera was rolling

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Oops? I got it backwards, eh? I recall reading about that when it happened...when I was younger and reading about all the countercultural type movies being made in the 70's...it seemed like the "movie world" was already snapping loose from the boundaries of studio production, and "indies" could practically turn into "home movies."

Also: something about Rip Torn having this big fight with "the Great Norman Mailer" elevated TORN in my vision at the time.

[–] tsrts (399) 5 years ago

Can't say I blame Norman Mailer.
If somebody conked me on the head with a hammer,
I'd be steamed.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Can't say I blame Norman Mailer.
If somebody conked me on the head with a hammer,
I'd be steamed.

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Ha. I gotta find this footage.

I suppose its another reason Rip Torn didn't get a "normal" star career.

People were afraid of him.....

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Rip Torn hasn't really been a character in my world (I never watched Larry Sanders) but the name's been around for sure. Anyhow, as a tribute to Torn I thought I'd watch his two Alfred Hitchcock Presents starring roles in S02E21 'Number 22' (1957) and S06E21 'The Kiss-off' (1961). He's almost the whole ep. in both cases and he's pretty *great*. In #22, playing a wiseguy he's the spitting image of young Harvey Keitel and he's got Keitel's or De Niro's or Caan's or Pacino's or Nicholson's febrile energy 10-15 years before the mainstream cinema screen was ready to use it/show it. In Kiss-off, Torn's playing a guy with a plan two steps ahead of the cops who wrongly convicted him 6 years earlier. The ep. makes you wish for the obvious expansion to movie length where the girl he stiffed for 6 years and with whom he's stashed money now doesn't show in Pensacola.

In both cases Torn nails the part but the star movie career that should have built out of these roles didn't exist yet. It seems Torn made a decent living as a character guy but, yikes, it must have killed him to see all these guys just like him hit *really* big a decade or so later.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Rip Torn hasn't really been a character in my world (I never watched Larry Sanders) but the name's been around for sure.

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I looked at his imdb filmography, and he clearly worked all the time, sometimes in high falutin stuff(Alan Alda's "Seduction of Joe Tynan" about US Senators)... to really low grade B stuff(a J. Edgar Hoover expose, Blaxploitation.). All thruogh the 60's, 70's, 80s.

I recall how in the 80's, I thought Rip Torn was HORRIBLE as a goonish thug in "City Heat" -- didn't like the character, (with the goonish name "Primo Pitt") didn't like his performance and then -- almost as if by magic -- in 1987 with those two movies(Extreme Prejudice and Nadine), suddenly he was this commanding, sonorous, entertaining character guy. It was "just like that."

By the way, about those two movies:

Extreme Prejudice was from Walter Hill (48 HRS), starred Nick Nolte at his trimmest(he could do that about every five movies), postulated Powers Boothe(ANOTHER actor with a really great, resonant voice) as the villain...and climaxed with a shoot 'em up that's on my short list of "almost as good as the end of The Wild Bunch." (Scarface is there, too.) A good action movie. And Torn was good in it.

Nadine was from Robert Benton, who despite his "Kramer vs Kramer" Oscar, always had a penchant for small-time crime stories, and wrote them well. As with "Charley Varrick," I liked the idea in "Nadine" that you can have small town, small time criminals all around you in your community...and they can be quite deadly.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Speaking of "Charley Varrick," Rip Torn was in Don Siegel's final film, "Jinxed," with Bette Midler. Irony - Don Siegel, great director of movies with male stars(McQueen, Marvin, Wayne, Matthau, Bronson, Coburn, and especially Eastwood) went out directing a Bette Midler movie, and Midler hated him. Anyway, Torn is in the movie as Midler's crooked husband(he needs to be killed), and much of the film takes place in the same Reno locales as "Charley Varrick"(which was also directed by Don Siegel) and it has a few of the "Charley Varrick" supporting cast in it.

Trivia: Some of Jinxed was filmed at South Lake Tahoe, near Reno. Rip Torn showed up disheveled from a fishing trip and the Harrah's Casino people wouldn't check him in. So he took a room in the Blue Jay Motel across the street -- in the movie's editing room! Lived there for the whole Tahoe part of the shoot. More trivia: Sam Peckinpah, brought low by drink and drugs, was hired by Don Siegel to shoot SECOND UNIT on "Jinxed." Nice gesture of friendship, sad story.

I think what happened with Rip Torn is that eventually, he "matured" into the kind of actor that studios wanted to hire for their character parts. He wasn't a wild man as much, he wasn't a theater guy as much -- he got respectable. (Though he had drinking issues all the way to the end; I rather liked how, he ended up being compared to all those British drinkers like Peter O'Toole and Oliver Reed -- a "hellraiser.")

But I really think "Larry Sanders" made him somewhat of a household name(in HBO households at least.) Artie was the kind of badass, "runs the show" take charge kind of character that is fun to watch.

And oh...Geraldine Page WAS six years Torn's senior, stayed married to him to her death -- even as he had a mistress and a child with that mistress. Its Gwen Verdon and Bob Fosse all over again. Though Torn married the mistress after Page's death. Show biz marriages, I tell ya. Good? Bad? I dunno. Different? YEP.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Anyhow, as a tribute to Torn I thought I'd watch his two Alfred Hitchcock Presents starring roles in S02E21 'Number 22' (1957) and S06E21 'The Kiss-off' (1961).

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Its always been interesting to me that while Hitchcock himself personally directed quite a few stars in his movies(from Donat and Carroll to Newman and Andrews, with everybody in between)...even MORE stars fromthe 50's on appeared on the Hitch TV show, but not under his direction:

Steve McQueen, Walter Matthau, Charles Bronson....Rip Torn.

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He's almost the whole ep. in both cases and he's pretty *great*.

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Yes...I think Rip Torn "had it" for many years. Other actors were in awe of him. Though Burt Reynolds said Torn had quite a temper -- would punch out directors or quit on a moment's notice, etc.

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In #22, playing a wiseguy he's the spitting image of young Harvey Keitel

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THAT's interesting.

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and he's got Keitel's or De Niro's or Caan's or Pacino's or Nicholson's febrile energy 10-15 years before the mainstream cinema screen was ready to use it/show it.

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As you note, elsewhere, swanstep, it must be crazy-making to have that kind of "star charisma" and miss stardom. It usually means not getting the right roles, or taking support work too often. Funny , though: The Godfather seems to have single-handedly made Pacino, DeNiro and Caan stars.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

In Kiss-off, Torn's playing a guy with a plan two steps ahead of the cops who wrongly convicted him 6 years earlier.

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Another reminder: while Hitchcock told somebody that he "never accepted gangster type stories" for his movie plots, he OKed a LOT of Mafia-type episodes on his TV series. Lots of them. The Hitchcock TV show, in its own way, is a precursor of everything from The Godfather to The Sopranos.

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The ep. makes you wish for the obvious expansion to movie length where the girl he stiffed for 6 years and with whom he's stashed money now doesn't show in Pensacola.

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Yeah, a lot of those Hitchcock TV scripts were movie quality. And of course, Hitchcock ALMOST cut Psycho down into a two-part TV episode..

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In both cases Torn nails the part but the star movie career that should have built out of these roles didn't exist yet. It seems Torn made a decent living as a character guy but, yikes, it must have killed him to see all these guys just like him hit *really* big a decade or so late

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One wonders: if he'd kept the "Easy Rider" part, would Rip Torn have finally ascended to stardom? I'm guessing: no. He was a known quantity. Nicholson -- despite 10 years in American International flicks -- was "tailor made for the 70's." Funnier than Torn, more heartfelt. I think(again) what intrigues me is that Torn had to cruise on through the 70's and half of the 80's before "clicking" as a character star. Sometimes agents seek these people out and MAKE them character stars. I am thinking of how, all of a sudden, Jon Voight became a character guy after years as a forgotten star.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

So I'm reading some obits on Rip Torn on the net, and two of them say his role in "Defending Your Life" attracted the attention of Garry Shandling and the Larry Sanders Show people. Funny, they cast "mean" Artie from the "nice" defense attorney in Defending Your Life...but I think its the authority and protectiveness of Torn in both works that is shared. He takes care of Albert Brooks. He takes care of Garry Shandling.

And they noted this line from him as Artie to a guy who wants Larry to make dog food commercials: "I don't mean this as a threat, but I killed a guy like you in Korea, once...hand to hand."

That's my Rip.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

He was married (to her death?) to the Method Lady Geraldine Page(who seemed older than Torn

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Page is so *good* at playing difficult, highly-strung, abrasive, brittle, malevolent, going-crazy, etc. women that it's easy to believe she'd have been hard to live with. I wonder whether she had a sunny side just little seen on screen? For Torn's (and Page's!) sake I hope so.

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I read some article somewhere sometime(hah) that spoke of the "Method Ladies" who were in their own way as quirky and intense as the Method Men. These included Geraldine Page, Julie Harris, and Kim Stanley.

"Method actor" stories always get murky to me. We know that Monty Clift, Marlon Brando, and James Dean (in that order) used "the Method" but I'm not sure that all three of them went to the Actors Studio for training.

Meanwhile, folks like Eva Marie Saint, Martin Balsam, and Martin Landau went to the Actors Studio and never seemed that quirky and/or emotional to me.

And Paul Newman: method? Actors studio? Both?

And Steve McQueen: method? Actors studio? Both?

Anyway, emerging briefly from my confusion over the Actors Studio and Method Actors, it feels to me more like I "feel" who the most methody actors were: Clift, Brando, Dean, Newman....Page, Harris, Stanley.

And thus -- Rip Torn in his marriage to Geraldine Page seems to have been well up for whatever "actorly intensities" she had. And we know he sure had a lot of his own! (Norman Mailer knew.)

BTW, I don't know if Rip Torn went to the Actors Studio..