The tough guy from Brooklyn also starred in ‘The Appaloosa’, ‘The Unguarded Moment’ and ‘Black Christmas’.
John Saxon, the robust actor who kicked with Bruce Lee in Enter the dragon and it appeared in three Nightmare on Elm Street Films for director Wes Craven died Saturday. He was 83 years old.
Saxon died of pneumonia in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, said his wife, Gloria. Hollywood reporter.
Italian-American from Brooklyn, Saxon played characters of various ethnicities during his long career.
His portrayal of a brutal Mexican bandit in front of Marlon Brando in The Appaloosa (1966) earned him a Golden Globe, and he had a recurring role on ABC. Dynasty as Rashid Ahmed, a powerful Middle Eastern magnate who fell in love with Alexis Colby (Joan Collins). And in another primetime ’80s soap, CBS’ Falcon crest, played the father of Lorenzo Lamas’ character.
Years earlier, Saxon starred from 1969 to 1972 as surgeon Theodore Stuart in the “The New Doctors” rotating segment of the NBC drama series The Braves.
Discovered by the same agent who launched the Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter races, Saxon was first noted for his performance as a disturbed high school soccer star teasing Esther Williams in The moment without surveillance (1956) In the film credits, he is considered “John Saxon’s exciting new personality.”
He played a police chief who made a fatal mistake in the Canadian cult classic. Black christmas (1974), with Margot Kidder and Keir Dullea, and her horror resume also includes two films for Roger Corman: Blood queen (1966) and Battle beyond the stars (1980), playing a tyrannical warlord.
At Warner Bros. Enter the dragon (1973), Lee’s first dominant American film and the last before his death at age 32, Saxon played Roper, a degenerate gamer participating in a martial arts tournament. In real life, his fighting skills were not close to those of Lee and another co-star, karate champion Jim Kelly.
However, Saxon said Lee “took me seriously. I would tell him that I would rather do it this way, and he would say, ‘OK, try it that way,'” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2012.
Saxon played cop Donald Thompson in the first and third movies in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, where he is finally killed by the skeleton of Freddy Krueger. Then he played a version of himself again in New nightmare (1994)
Carmine Orrico was born on August 5, 1936, the oldest of three children of an Italian immigrant house painter. While in high school, he worked as a spieler at a Coney Island archery dealership, and became adept at bow and arrow.
“Brooklyn was a difficult place to grow, but it taught you how to survive, and if you were ambitious, it taught you to want better things,” he once said.
Upon leaving a movie theater after missing classes at New Utrecht High School, he was seen by a male modeling agent and later appeared in magazines such as True romances.
A photo shoot, which he said depicted him as a “Puerto Rican boy” leaning against a trash can after he was shot, caught the attention of Henry Willson, the legendary Hollywood agent who had discovered Hudson and Hunter.
Then, at just 17 years old, Saxon signed with Willson, studied drama for six months with Betty Cashman at Carnegie Hall, and flew to Hollywood, where Universal quickly signed him. He attended the studio workshop for 18 months and then worked with Mamie Van Doren on Running wild (1955)
After Unguarded momentSaxon appeared as young rock ‘n’ roll musicians in Rock, Pretty Baby (1956) and Summer Love (1958) and played alongside Sandra Dee in The reluctant debutante (1958), directed by Vincente Minnelli and Debbie Reynolds in Blake Edwards’ This happy feeling (1958)
In Cry loud (1959), Saxon portrayed a tough Puerto Rican boy from New York, and in War hunt (1962), was considered as a psychotic soldier. (Robert Redford and Sydney Pollack were also in the cast, and the three would meet in 1979 to The electric rider.)
Without hesitation in showing his machismo, Saxon also co-starred with Clint Eastwood in Joe Kidd (1972) and played a dirty union attorney at Andrew McLaglen’s Mitchell (1975)
His resume also included Mario Bava’s To eye (1963), Otto Preminger’s The cardinal (1963) Blood beast from outer space (1965), The Swiss conspiracy (1976) The bad is good (1982) Richard Brooks Passing fever (1985) Beverly Hills Cop III (1994) and God’s ears (2008)
He was married three times, to screenwriter Mary Ann Murphy, airline-turned-actress Elizabeth Saxon, and, since 2008, beautician Gloria Martel. Survivors also include his son, Antonio, and his sister, Dolores.
Commemorative contributions can be made on your behalf to the Film and Television Fund.
Duane Byrge contributed to this report.
