Notebook -- Tom Titus

They say that deaths of famous people usually happen in threes. That

adage certainly held true over the past week, when we lost baseball

legend Ted Williams, director John Frankenheimer and, most recently,

actor Rod Steiger. They don’t come much greater.

Over the years since the Oscars first were telecast in 1952, I’ve

watched the ceremonies faithfully, and on three occasions I’ve been moved

to astonished profanity over the results. Two of those occasions involved

our recent decedents in the world of entertainment (the third being the

failure of “The Last Picture Show” to win the best picture award in

1971).

The first such shock occurred in 1963, when Angela Lansbury didn’t win

the best supporting actress Oscar for her brilliant performance in “The

Manchurian Candidate,” a powerful movie directed by Frankenheimer, who

had long since carved out a memorable directing career in television.

The picture featured Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Janet Leigh at

the top of their form, and a wonderful interpretation of a political

doofus by James Gregory. But for me the most electric performance came

from Lansbury as Harvey’s evil incarnate mother -- leagues removed from

TV’s Jessica Fletcher. Why she didn’t win the best supporting actress

Oscar that year is one of the mysteries of all time in the entertainment

industry.

I’ve watched “The Manchurian Candidate” many times since, and it now

occupies an honored place in my home film library. Frankenheimer, along

with Peter Bogdanovich, has long earned my personal reverence as a master

of the art of movie directing.

The second Oscar night shock occurred a few years later, when Steiger

was up for the best actor award for what was clearly the performance of

his career in “The Pawnbroker.” Being bested by Lee Marvin for “Cat

Ballou” was a travesty only partially salved by his win for “In the Heat

of the Night” two years later.

Steiger was one of Hollywood’s elite actors, capable of immersing

himself thoroughly in his characters. He first caught filmgoers’

attention as the prosecutor in “The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell,”

then solidified his presence as Marlon Brando’s brother in “On the

Waterfront.” He was the recipient of Brando’s “I coulda been a contender”

speech.

Rent “Dr. Zhivago” or “The Sergeant” or even the early potboiler “The

Big Knife” for a glimpse of this exceptionally powerful and versatile

actor who also toyed gleefully with audiences in “No Way to Treat a Lady”

or “The Loved One.” Steiger, Jack Lemmon and George C. Scott were the

giants of their genre, and now all have departed within a year’s time.

As for Ted Williams, he was simply the finest hitter I’ve ever seen --

and I was no fan of the Boston Red Sox. However, when I was a youngster,

my father and I would travel from northwestern Pennsylvania to Cleveland

a few times a year to watch the Indians play. This was back when nearly

every Sunday offered a doubleheader, and those in Cleveland would pack

the old Municipal Stadium to its 81,000-person saturation point.

The Boston twin bills were the most memorable, and one of the reasons

was Williams, then in his prime, the last player to hit .400 for a season

(.406 in 1941). Had he not been called into action as a fighter pilot

both in World War II and the Korean conflict, his statistics would have

dwarfed them all.

I vividly remember, as a boy, watching those Red Sox doubleheaders in

the mid-1950s, when Williams would play the first game and sit out the

second, since he was nearing the end of his remarkable career. But if the

game got tight in the late innings, you’d hear a rousing murmur of

anticipation from the crowd behind the visitors’ dugout as No. 9 strode

to the plate as a pitch hitter. No PA announcement was necessary.

To lose three giants in their field in the space of a few days makes

this planet a little more barren.

* TOM TITUS writes about and reviews local theater for the Daily

Pilot. His stories appear Thursdays and Saturdays.