He was OUTSTANDING in this movie, glad to see he was nominated for a well deserved Academy Award.
shareI just saw the movie today. I agree completely that he deserved his Oscar nomination.
Matter of fact, I'm convinced that there won't be a single moment in the remake that will be a fraction as hilarious as Albert's scenes in this film.
[deleted]
I agree that Eddie Albert stole every seen he was in with the deadpan delivery, which was no small feat. The scenes with Charles Grodin were tense and hilarious. It's too bad Eddie Albert is pretty much known only for his role on "Green Acres" (which was very good, but just a start) and didn't have more of a career in films.
shareit's a pity they haven't given him more daring roles
eddie albert was a star in the dark
I agree Dotel. He was excellent. The scene where Charles Grodin is confessing the truth to him while Cybil and Audra Lindley look on is hysterical in large part to the slow burn that Eddie does that culminates with, "Not if they dragged me by my tongue..."
shareI couldn't agree with you more. Eddie Albert was brilliant!! The movie was great, as was Charles Grodin and the underappreciated Jennie Berlin, but Eddie Albert was perfect in this part - just made the movie. Definitely a well deserved Oscar nomination.
share[deleted]
Eddie Albert was a genius actor, no question.
shareHe certainly did.
shareAbsolutely.
shareNearly every line he uttered was perfect. I love Charles Grodin, but Eddie Albert's delivery had me laughing the most of all.
When he pulls Charles Grodin in to talk in private after dinner, I KNEW just by looking at him that he was about to tell Grodin he was completely full of *beep* It was perfect.
This was a landmark acheievement for Eddie Albert, though maybe we didn't see it at the time.
He'd been a somewhat goofy-looking supporting guy in the 40's and 50's(notably to Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday), but as he aged and his hair whitened in the '60s, he suddenly became a very distinguished and handsome looking man, with an air of physical strength and fitness to him. Around this time, Eddie Albert became famous as the macho husband(a well-off lawyer who ditches NYC for for farm country) of gorgeous Hungarian ditz Eva Gabor on Green Acres.
Green Acres was a hit, but it could have buried Eddie Albert's career when it ended. Instead, he found a new home in the 70s as...a great villain.
The "warm up" for The Heartbreak Kid in 1972 was an episode of Columbo in 1971(one of the first) in which Albert played a macho U.S. Army general who was fit and dashing, and able to romance the witness(Suzanne Pleshette) to a killing he committed. Columbo got him in the end, but Albert was imperious along the way.
I'm guessing that the Columbo killer helped get Albert the key role of a non-murderous "potential father in law from hell" in The Heartbreak Kid.
Albert is great in that scene at the end where he tells Grodin of his dinner conversation: "I have to tell you in all honesty that I was impressed..I've never heard such a crock of BLANK in my life" ...
...but, I thought he was at his best in that key one-shot/four-person scene in Miami in which he just watches and listens and nods and gets more and more angry as Grodin reveals not only that he wants Albert's beautiful daughter but is about to annul his Honeymoon marriage to do so. Its about three or four minutes of Albert just holding the screen as Grodin talks and the two actresses in the scene -- Audra Lindley perfectly cast as the oh-so-polite wife and mother and the gorgeous Shepard as the out-of-her-depth Minnesota flirt -- just watch things unfold.
---
The slots for the 1972 Best Supporting Actor nominations were tight. Five slots and THREE of them went to Godfather actors -- Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall. The next slot was a "gimme" -- Joel Grey for Cabaret(he would be the winner.)
That left only one "open slot" for Best Supporting Actor and Eddie Albert -- heretofore a TV actor with "Green Acres" as his calling card -- got it. Deservedly.
---
Albert milked that villainy in two more movies of the 70's both for Robert Aldrich. One was a very big hit -- "The Longest Yard," in which Albert was the sadistic prison warden who uses football to crush his charges and break NFL star Burt Reynolds. The next wasn't a very big hit, but Albert was even nastier in that -- its called "Hustle," and Burt Reynolds is again in it. Burt's a cop trying to have a relationship with call girl Catherine Denueve; Albert is a nasty rich guy who makes clear to Burt that he is having paid sex with Denueve and ends up revealed as part of a porn-making operation.
Columbo, The Heartbreak Kid, The Longest Yard, Hustle...Eddie Albert was one bad dude in the seventies.
But at least in The Heartbreak Kid, he was pretty justified in being such a badass.
Fascinating stuff. Thanks for sharing.
share