As far as character actors go, if you remember more about them than the leads in the movie, you've found a great one. Robert Shaw has been a favorite of mine even before I realized it. Of course his most famous role was in Jaws as Quint, the salty sea dog hired to help Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss track down and kill the Great White. He's also well remembered for his role in The Sting as a ruthless gangster, and the target of one of the most well-orchestrated snow jobs in the history of film. I first loved him in The Deep, as yet another salty dog, this one a diving treasure hunter who helps Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset dig up a Spanish treasure and blow up thousands of bottles of morphine so the evil drug lord can't get to them. Jav and I happened to catch this movie one night last week, and got hooked all over again, even though it had been about 20 years since either of us had seen it (although Jav pouted the entire movie because we missed the beginning with Bisset diving in only her very see-through white tee shirt and bikini bottoms. God-get over it!). Shaw was the glue that held the movie together, and not only that but he made it classier and much more interesting to watch.
I think the word I'm looking for to describe what he had is "charisma". He had a turbulent personal life - married three times and had twelve kids between the three of them. He seemed to be cut from the same cloth as other great English actors initially trained in the theater like Peter O'Toole and Richard Harris. They were all so talented but drank way, way too much their entire lives. He died at the relatively young age of 51 of a heart attack.
I'm not sure why Shaw doesn't get the same props for his acting as some of those other English actors. I just know I want to try to see everything he's been in, because at least the scenes he's in will be good. I did have the pleasure of seeing his Academy Award nominated performance as Henry the 8th in A Man For All Seasons, which is a wonderful movie if you're in a historical mood. And now Jav tells me that Shaw is in the original The Taking of Pelham One Two Three as the orchestrator of the kidnappings. So it will be going on our Netflix list!
