Night, stalker…
Above: Darren McGavin’s Carl Kolchak vs. Barry Atwater’s Janos Skorzeny (click to enlarge).
Darren McGavin: 1922-2006
Though I’d probably seen him before in movies or TV shows, Darren McGavin made an indelible impression on me in 1972 when The Night Stalker ran on ABC’s Movie of the Week. It aired in the midst of an unprecedented resurgence of horror films and thrillers shot especially for television, many of them produced by Dan (Dark Shadows) Curtis: Daughter of the Mind (1969), Steven Spielberg’s Something Evil (also with McGavin; 1972), Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (little people under the stairs; 1973), the pilot for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (1969), and the remarkable Welcome Home, Johnny Bristol (Martin Landau searching for Charles, Vermont; 1972) were personal favorites. But The Night Stalker’s adventure of a vampire sucking the life out women in Las Vegas had a loose, flippant aura juxtaposed with an intense, believable menace, while a wide range of excellent character actors — Simon Oakland, Kent Smith, Carol Lynley, Elisha Cook, Ralph Meeker, Claude Akins, Charles McGraw — contrasted McGavin’s whimsical newspaper reporter, Carl Kolchak…a remnant of an age when men wore hats, ties and sports jackets, drank highballs and whistled at broads. (It netted a short-lived weekly series for the actor.) As teenagers, my friends and I seized the rumor that The Night Stalker had been based on a true incident, and that its author (Jeff Rice) couldn’t get proper work because of his run-in with a bloodsucker. This came just a year or two after we were playing our Beatles albums backward to find out how and why Paul had died.
Examining his filmography at the IMDb, it’s evident that McGavin had no problem finding work, dating back to 1945 and A Song to Remember, in which Cornel Wilde would have us believe he was Frederic Chopin. Most of McGavin’s parts were for television, though my heart sank at the mention of Mrs. Pollifax — Spy (1971) among his movie credits…arriving at the heels of the James Bond craze (of which I was an ardent participant), this was particularly embarrassing schlock. Did leading man Darren have love scenes with its sixty-four-year-old star, Ros Russell? I’d hate to revisit it to find out. He found new fans in the ‘80s, thanks to the popularity of A Christmas Story (1983), a funny and nostalgic bit of business from Jean Shepherd; and as Candice Bergen’s delinquent father on Murphy Brown.
Though I’d probably seen him before in movies or TV shows, Darren McGavin made an indelible impression on me in 1972 when The Night Stalker ran on ABC’s Movie of the Week. It aired in the midst of an unprecedented resurgence of horror films and thrillers shot especially for television, many of them produced by Dan (Dark Shadows) Curtis: Daughter of the Mind (1969), Steven Spielberg’s Something Evil (also with McGavin; 1972), Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (little people under the stairs; 1973), the pilot for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (1969), and the remarkable Welcome Home, Johnny Bristol (Martin Landau searching for Charles, Vermont; 1972) were personal favorites. But The Night Stalker’s adventure of a vampire sucking the life out women in Las Vegas had a loose, flippant aura juxtaposed with an intense, believable menace, while a wide range of excellent character actors — Simon Oakland, Kent Smith, Carol Lynley, Elisha Cook, Ralph Meeker, Claude Akins, Charles McGraw — contrasted McGavin’s whimsical newspaper reporter, Carl Kolchak…a remnant of an age when men wore hats, ties and sports jackets, drank highballs and whistled at broads. (It netted a short-lived weekly series for the actor.) As teenagers, my friends and I seized the rumor that The Night Stalker had been based on a true incident, and that its author (Jeff Rice) couldn’t get proper work because of his run-in with a bloodsucker. This came just a year or two after we were playing our Beatles albums backward to find out how and why Paul had died.
Examining his filmography at the IMDb, it’s evident that McGavin had no problem finding work, dating back to 1945 and A Song to Remember, in which Cornel Wilde would have us believe he was Frederic Chopin. Most of McGavin’s parts were for television, though my heart sank at the mention of Mrs. Pollifax — Spy (1971) among his movie credits…arriving at the heels of the James Bond craze (of which I was an ardent participant), this was particularly embarrassing schlock. Did leading man Darren have love scenes with its sixty-four-year-old star, Ros Russell? I’d hate to revisit it to find out. He found new fans in the ‘80s, thanks to the popularity of A Christmas Story (1983), a funny and nostalgic bit of business from Jean Shepherd; and as Candice Bergen’s delinquent father on Murphy Brown.
posted by Ray Young at
12:09 PM
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