It's chilling, now, to watch Richard Farnsworth's performance
as Dodger in 1977's Comes a Horseman. In his first major role,
as a cattleman near the end of his days, Farnsworth is the embodiment
of that rare man at peace with the world and himself: surrounded
by beauty and violence, strumming songs on an out-of-tune guitar,
conveying in the simple ease with which he rides his mount that
he's never stopped to consider any other way of life. It takes
a bad fall from his horse to bring him face-to-face with the one
thing he cannot handle: the end of his roping and riding days.
With the certainty of a man who knows his own fate, Dodger acts
not out of choice but out of acceptance, and calmly goes off to
die.
 |
In October, 2000, Richard Farnsworth took his
own life, one month after his 80th birthday. The circumstances of
his death of a self-inflicted gunshot wound following years of struggling
with painful bone cancer seem out of step with the image he portrayed
in films: the folksy gentleman with a tender smile, forgiving eyes
and a pancakes-for-breakfast voice. But his death brings home a
truth about Farnsworth that was evident in his films all along:
It wasn't an image, but Farnsworth himself his gentility, his courage,
his unassuming humanity that we saw on the screen.
As with the best of actors, Farnsworth didn't inhabit roles so much
as he allowed them to inhabit him. Shocking and sad as the news
of his suicide was, it's understandable that he would be unwilling
to endure the role of a dying man when, in fact, the thing he did
best the only thing he knew how to do was to show us the truth of
living.
It's remarkable that an actor known for his peaceful manner, his
ability to communicate so much in scenes that called for him to
remain quietly still, started his movie life as a stuntman. As a
stableboy at a Los Angeles polo barn frequented by actors in the
1930s, the teenage Farnsworth was initially recruited to play one
of 500 Mongolian horsemen in The Adventures of Marco Polo. His agility
in the saddle got him plenty of work in westerns and cavalry pics,
commanding a chariot in The Ten Commandments, and riding a thoroughbred
in the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races. In 35 years as a stunt
man, Farnsworth worked with such legendary directors as Cecil B.
DeMille, Howard Hawks, John Ford and Sam Peckinpah, and doubled
for actors including Gary Cooper, Roy Rogers and Henry Fonda. Somewhere
along the line, he even learned to wield a sword convincingly enough
to stand in for Kirk Douglas in Stanley Kubrick's 1960 gladiator
epic, Spartacus.
Though he got to say a few words here and there as an extra, it
wasn't until Farnsworth was in his 50s and finding it tougher to
recover from the physical rigors of his job that he was offered
small speaking parts in some of the revisionist westerns of the
'70s, including Ulzana's Raid, Rooster Cogburn and The Outlaw Josey
Wales. Farnsworth's first substantial role, in Comes a Horseman,
earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. But it
was his portrayal of Ògentleman bandit" Bill Miner,
in 1982's The Grey Fox, that made his reputation. As a stagecoach
robber released into the 20th century after 33 years in San Quentin,
Farnsworth's Miner has a certain refinement, and an endearing awe
for the wonders of the new era, that provide perfect cover for the
toughness and determination within. His courtly demeanor suggests
a man who would rather lose an argument than be forced to raise
his voice. Yet, when he shyly asks to try out a Colt revolver in
a gunsmith's shop, then raises the gun to his sights with studied
precision, we see that he is in fact a man capable of doing whatever
he believes is necessary to remain free.
In 1990's The Two Jakes, Farnsworth has a cameo as a plain-spoken
but ruthless oil baron who, private investigator Jake Gittes quips,
isn't fooling anyone with his Roy Rogers act." But Farnsworth's
homespun appeal was no put-on. He always suggested a visitor from
another time an artifact, it seemed, from the very days he helped
turn into celluloid myth when he was merely a stunt man. Farnsworth
once told an interviewer, ÒI'm really disappointed in what
the people seem to want nowadays action, sex, violence. I've turned
down quite a bit of work because there's too many four-letter words."
 |
Given these standards, it seems the last person
Farnsworth should have been comfortable working with was David Lynch,
whose Lost Highway alone is an encyclopedia of everything Farnsworth
found objectionable in film. But when Lynch asked him to star in
1999's The Straight Story and explained that the film would have
a G rating and contain absolutely no profanity Farnsworth took the
job. His last role, for which he won an Academy Award nomination
and an Independent Spirit Award, would prove to be his most heralded.
One can't watch The Straight Story and fail to be moved in two ways:
by the gentle humor and dignity Farnsworth brings to Alvin Straight's
eccentric, true-life mission; and by the knowledge of how much he
had to struggle in order to play the role. The character called
for the actor playing Straight to use two canes, which was a welcome
relief for Farnsworth, who already needed one cane just to get around
the set. In order to accommodate the shooting schedule, Farnsworth
postponed hip-replacement surgery. Though he was in considerable
pain throughout the filming, Farnsworth never made his own discomfort
an issue. But you can see it with each tentative step he takes.
It is visible in the effort he has to summon to get on and off the
lawnmower which, aside from Farnsworth himself, is the centerpiece
of the movie. It's there, too, in his eyes. They still radiate the
warmth and sincerity he brought to all of his characters. But along
with those qualities is an awareness of fatigue, a plaintive understanding
of where he knows he is headed.
In a film marked by long passages of stillness, Farnsworth makes
each moment of silence another page from the chapters of Alvin Straight's
heart. In embracing the story of a man who did what he had to do
simply because it wasn't in him to do anything else, Richard Farnsworth
let us in on the secret of his own life, and of his own death, as
well. MM