Rod Steiger is primarily remembered for his tough guys in such films as “Al Capone,” “The Big Knife” and his Oscar-winning performance in “In the Heat of the Night.” But his performances include such diverse characters as a meek Holocaust survivor in “The Pawnbroker” and a fey embalmer in the satire “The Loved One.”
In addition to his performance in “In the Heat of the Night,” for which Steiger also won a Golden Globe as well, he was Oscar-nominated for “The Pawnbroker” and for his iconic performance as the brother of Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) in the back seat of that car in Elia Kazan‘s “On the Waterfront.”
So let’s raise a glass to the late great man and honor him by counting down his 12 greatest screen performances, ranked from worst to best.
-
12. THE ILLUSTRATED MAN (1969)
Image Credit: Moviestore/Shutterstock Director: Jack Smight. Writer: Howard B. Kreitsek, based on the Ray Bradbury short stories. Starring Rod Steiger, Claire Bloom.
Howard B. Kreitsek’s script weaves together three Ray Bradbury short stories focusing on Carl (Steiger), a heavily tattooed man who serves as the connecting tissue to all three. Carl is a sideshow attraction at a circus who in the book serves as the narrator/ringmaster who uses the various illustrations tattooed on his body as the focal point to introduce the various tales. Critics were torn about the film, with many agreeing that Steiger’s performance was big to say the least, with a few feeling that it tipped over to hamminess. Nonetheless, the film needs a big personality to tie the three stories together, and Steiger more than provides it.
-
11. NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY (1968)
Image Credit: Moviestore/Shutterstock Director: Jack Smight. Writer: John Gay, based on the novel by William Goldman. Starring Rod Steiger, Lee Remick, George Segal, Eileen Heckart.
Steiger had a field day in his first post-Oscar role as Broadway theater owner Christopher Gill who is still obsessed with his stage actress mother and acts out by murdering older women. In order to put his intended victims at ease, Gill dresses up in elaborate disguises — as a plumber, a priest, a hairdresser and even a woman — and Steiger is having an absolute ball doing it. Yes, there’s another movie going on besides Steiger’s antics — George Segal (who was nominated for a BAFTA award for his performance) plays NYPD detective Morris Brummel whose investigation of the case has turned up such heat on Gill that the killer turns to Brummel’s girlfriend Kate (Lee Remick). Playing a serial killer is an unusual way to follow up an Oscar win, but Steiger has proven time and again that he was an unusual actor.
-
10. THE LOVED ONE (1965)
Image Credit: Moviestore/Shutterstock Director: Tony Richardson. Writers: Christopher Isherwood, Terry Southern, based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh. Starring Robert Morse, Jonathan Winters, Liberace, Rod Steiger.
Steiger was known as one of the most macho of actors, so it was a bit of a surprise when he was cast in Tony Richardson’s funeral industry satire as the fey Mr. Joyboy, the chief embalmer at Whispering Glades cemetery and mortuary. Mr. Joyboy loves children, particularly if they’re dead. Reportedly one of Steiger’s own favorite performances, his work in “The Loved One” is a hoot, sending up his macho image while at the same time staying true to this key character in the Evelyn Waugh satire.
-
9. DUCK, YOU SUCKER! (1971)
Image Credit: Courtesty of United Artists Director: Sergio Leone. Writers: Sergio Leone, Luciano Vincenzoni, Sergio Donati. Starring Rod Steiger, James Coburn, Antoine Saint-John.
Steiger got the chance to work with the legendary Sergio Leone in this Western set during the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s. Steiger plays Juan Miranda, the patriarch of a Mexican bandit family who crosses paths with John (Seán) Mallory (James Coburn), an Irish explosives expert whose skills Juan wants to utilize in his raids on Mexican banks. When one bank raid results in the freeing of political prisoners, Juan and John, much to their surprise, are hailed as heroes of the Revolution.It’s not one of the great Leone movies, but it is fun, and the chemistry between Steiger and Coburn helps to sell the film’s premise.
-
8. AL CAPONE (1959)
Image Credit: Snap/Shutterstock Director: Richard Wilson. Writers: Malvin Wald, Henry F. Greenberg. Starring Rod Steiger, Nehemiah Persoff, Fay Spain, James Gregory.
Using a gritty semi-documentary style of filmmaking, “Al Capone” is probably the most thorough screen biography of the legendary Chicago gangster, and a large part of its impact is thanks to Steiger’s tough performance as Capone. He portrays Capone as a man on a mission, business-like in his dealings with rivals until his temper explodes. Despite Capone’s at times flamboyant appearance, Steiger carefully modulates his performance for maximum impact. Until the late 1950s, the Production Code expressly forbade films that glamorized gangsters, and Steiger turned down this script three times until the producers took the glamour out and put the grit back in.
-
7. THE COURT-MARTIAL OF BILLY MITCHELL (1955)
Image Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures Director: Otto Preminger. Writers: Milton Sperling, Emmet Lavery. Starring Gary Cooper, Charles Bickford, Ralph Bellamy, Rod Steiger.
Following his Oscar nomination for “On the Waterfront,” Steiger’s supporting work in “Billy Mitchell” was closely scrutinized, and once again, he came out on top. Based on the real-life story of Brigadier General Billy Mitchell (Gary Cooper) who has been credited as the founder of the U.S. Air Force and is court-martialed for public criticism of the Army’s lax maintenance of aircraft. Anxious to squelch Mitchell’s criticism by the court-martial and to secure a conviction, the Government brings in tough prosecutor Maj. Allen Guillon (Steiger) who lays into Mitchell for disobeying his superior officers. Steiger’s Guillon is one tough nut, and the actor carefully balances being the film’s antagonist with making it clear that Guillon feels that he’s only doing his job.
-
6. THE BIG KNIFE (1955)
Image Credit: Moviestore/Shutterstock Director: Robert Aldrich. Writer: James Poe, based on the play by Clifford Odets. Starring Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Wendell Corey, Jean Hagen, Rod Steiger.
Steiger was really on a roll with this plum character role in Robert Aldrich’s film version of the Clifford Odets play. In Odets’ behind-the-scenes look at Hollywood, Steiger portrays Stanley Shriner Hoff, the thuggish head of a major Hollywood studio who is anxious to have Hollywood star Charlie Castle (Jack Palance) re-up his contract with Hoff’s studio, but Castle’s wife Marion (Ida Lupino), who has been threatening to leave him because of his womanizing, says she’ll leave him if he does. But Steiger’s Huff has an ace up his sleeve — that Castle was behind the wheel when he struck and killed a woman in a hit-and-run accident. Steiger brings much of the ruthlessness to Hoff that he will display four years later in “Al Capone.”
-
5. OKLAHOMA! (1955)
Image Credit: Magna/Kobal/Shutterstock Director: Fred Zinnemann. Writers: Sonya Levien, William Ludwige, based on the stage musical. Starring Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones, Gloria Grahame, Rod Steiger.
To paraphrase a famous Bette Midler quote, “I never miss a Rod Steiger musical.” Most people think of “Oklahoma!” as a light, fluffy piece of musical theatre, but “Oklahoma! is at times dark — really really dark. And in the film version, that darkness is supplied by Steiger as Judd Fry. It came as a surprise to me that Steiger had training in opera, and in “Pore Jud Is Daid,” he matches star Gordon MacRae note for note. Director Fred Zinnemann had planned to use a dubbed voice for Jud, but, after hearing Steiger’s voice, he went for the real thing. And knowing that it’s Steiger who’s really singing adds extra dimension to his performance.
-
4. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965)
Image Credit: Ken Danvers/Mgm/Kobal/Shutterstock Director: David Lean. Writer: Robert Bolt, based on the novel by Boris Pasternak. Starring Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin, Rod Steiger, Tom Courtenay.
David Lean’s epic film version of the Boris Pasternak novel was an enormous hit, certainly the biggest film with which Steiger had ever been associated. Marlon Brando and James Mason both turned down the role of Victor Ippolitovich Komarovsky, the well-connected man with whom 17 year-old Lara (Julie Christie) has an affair, but Steiger runs with the role and makes it his own. Though playing the film’s antagonist, Steiger never makes Komarovsky a cardboard villain, instead playing him as a man who has deep feelings for Lara, and even when she shoots and wounds him, he is not vindictive against her, declining to press charges. It’s the kind of solid character performances that Steiger regularly turned in during the 1950s and ’60s.
-
3. ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)
Image Credit: SNAP/REX/Shutterstock Director: Elia Kazan. Writer: Budd Schulberg. Starring Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Karl Malden, Rod Steiger, Lee J. Cobb.
Steiger broke into the moviegoing public’s consciousness with his powerful performance in Elia Kazan’s film, the Oscar winner for Best Picture of 1954. Steiger’s Charley Malloy is a key part of the film’s most iconic scene, one of the greatest in all of cinema, in which, in the back seat of a car, he listens to the frustrations of his boxer brother Terry (Marlon Brando), who had to take a fall during a fight on Charley’s orders that kept Terry from becoming a real contender. Watch Steiger during this scene — it’s clearly Brando’s show but watch Steiger listening and subtly reacting to his brother’s bitter disappointment. That is a prime example of subtle acting, one which brought Steiger his first Academy Award nomination.
-
2. THE PAWNBROKER (1964)
Image Credit: Landau-Unger/Kobal/Shutterstock Director: Sidney Lumet. Writers: Morton S. Fine, David Friedkin. Starring Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Brock Peters, Jaime Sánchez.
Steiger’s biggest leap onto Hollywood’s A-list of actors was thanks to his brilliant performance in Sidney Lumet’s 1964 “The Pawnbroker.” The story of Holocaust survivor Sol Nazerman (Steiger) whose body survived but whose spirits were snuffed out in a World War II concentration camp, “The Pawnbroker” is the character study of a man who has basically hidden from the world by running a pawnbroker shop in an upper Manhattan slum. This is not one of Steiger’s big flashy performances. His work here is meticulously detailed and the final silent scream that ends the film is one of the most memorable scenes in Steiger’s distinguished career. For his performance as Nazerman, Steiger received his second Academy Award nomination, as well as his first Golden Globe nod and his first nomination for a BAFTA Award.
-
1. IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967)
Image Credit: Moviestore/REX/Shutterstock Director: Norman Jewison. Writer: Stirling Silliphant. Starring Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant, Beah Richards.
Steiger won the Best Actor Academy Award and Golden Globe for his performance as a small-town Mississippi sheriff in Norman Jewison’s murder mystery, which itself won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Chief Gillespie (Steiger) has a murder to investigate and arrests an African-American at the train station for the crime. That man, Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) happens to be a top homicide detective from Philadelphia who has traveled to Sparta to lead the investigation of the crime. This doesn’t sit well with Gillespie, but with the two men being forced to work with one another, each acquires a grudging respect for the other. In what could have been a stereotypical redneck role, Steiger gradually reveals the humanity inside Gillespie, so that the men’s final nod to one another feels dramatically earned.
