Red, White and Unsteady

What would Robert Walker’s life had looked like if he hadn’t made MY SON JOHN (1952)?

I love Walker. I love the way he looks in crowds—–fidgety. I love his chronic underconfidence. I even like the fact that he went crazy after awhile. Actors don’t have poetic lives anymore. They’re given a blank slate with which to work. Working in Walker’s day, the departure from the ‘leading man’ title lay only in what one’s specific oddities and mannerisms could give it.

~ by levantor on November 4, 2008.