BRADFORD DILLMAN

(14 April 1930 - 16 January 2018)

The American actor Bradford Dillman has died aged 87 from complications following pneumonia. After leaving the Marine Corps, he studied at the Actors Studio and made his stage debut in 1953. His Broadway debut was playing Edmund in O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956), with Fredric March, Florence Eldridge, Jason Robards Jr and Katharine Ross. After three years of television from 1955, Dillman secured a contract with 20th Century Fox. He appeared in A Certain Smile (for which he won the ‘New Star of the Year’ Golden Globe), based on the Françoise Sagan novel. Then came In Love and War with Robert Wagner. Compulsion was Richard Fleischer’s take on the Leopold and Loeb murder case, in which Dillman co-starred with Dean Stockwell and Orson Welles. All three actors won awards at Cannes. Dillman filmed Circle of Deception in London, where he met his second wife, actress and model Suzy Parker. He joined Welles again for Crack in the Mirror, then did Tony Richardson’s Sanctuary and Michael Curtiz’s Francis of Assisi. Dillman usually gave the impression of there being something deep behind the eyes, but most films failed to live up to his talent. He moved back into television before filming A Rage to Live, The Plainsman, Jigsaw and The Bridge at Remagen, but it was always television that kept him busy. Later films included The Mephisto Waltz, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, The Way We Were and John Frankenheimer’s film of O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, in which he played Willie Oban. Other features interrupted Dillman’s TV career (Gold, Bug, The Enforcer and Sudden Impact among them), but the work was mainly routine and unworthy of his gifts. He retired in 1995 after several appearances on Murder, She Wrote. His first wife was Frieda Harding with whom he had two children, while Suzy Parker bore him three more plus a stepdaughter. His daughter Pamela Dillman is an actress and appears mostly on television.

MICHAEL DARVELL