Christopher Walken Turns 80

Born this day 80 years ago, Ronald “Christopher” Walken (b. 1943). Pop culture has done Walken a disservice, I think, by making him a sort of punchline, largely due to impressions by comedians like Kevin Pollak and Jay Mohr, and the actor’s own willingness to engage in self-parody, making hay out of his unique voice, visage and personality. But the volume and variety of his accomplishments are impressive when you add them up. He’s done a great deal of theatre in addition to the better known film work, and (rare for someone who’s done that) lots of straight-up show biz, as a song and dance man and sketch comedian. When I learned about his early career as a child star, it tipped the balance in favor of a post here.

Both of Walken’s parents were immigrants, the father from Germany and the mother from Scotland (the same ethnic combo as a certain ex-president who was indicted on 30 counts of business fraud yesterday, but with a much more fortunate result. Sorry, I just had to type that). Walken credits the accented speech of his parents, along with his many immigrant neighbors in Astoria, Queens, for his own strangely, staccato, halting, but musically expressive speech patterns. Later the family moved farther out onto the island to Bayside, just a stone’s throw from where your correspondent resides. Walken and his two brothers Kenneth and Glenn (VERY Scottish names), were baptized into show business by their agressive stage mom. His own given name, Ronald, was in honor of Ronald Colman. As a boy, he appeared in sketches on the Colgate Comedy Hour alongside Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and was cast as a regular in the short-lived sitcom The Wonderful John Acton starring Harry Holcombe (later familiar in Country Time lemonade commercials). In 1958 Walken appeared on Broadway in the U.S. premieres of Archibald MacLiesh’s J.B. and Friedrich Durrenmatt’sThe Visit. In a New York Times interview he claimed that he once worked as a lion tamer in the circus, and I want that to be true so badly, so I’ll just run with it. He also took dance classes as a kid, and had about a year at Hofstra, a school that turned out many a future star, but dropped out because he was already getting work in the theatre.

A lot of Walken’s early work was of the song and dance variety. He was in 1962 Off-Broadway revival of Best Foot Forward with Liza Minnelli, a 1963 tour with West Side Story, the 1964 Broadway premiere of High Spirits (an adaptation of Blithe Spirit with Tammie Grimes and Beatrice Lillie) and a night club act with former ice skater Monique Van Vooren (she’s the one who suggested the name change to Christopher). An Elvis fanatic since his teenage years, Walken would later play the King in a self-penned show called Him in 1995. Other famous showcases for his singing and dancing skills include the Herbert Ross movies Pennies from Heaven (1981) with Steve Martin, and the award winning 2001 Fatboy Slim video for “Weapon of Choice” directed by Spike Jonze. Oh and he was in Hair Spray (2007) and Jersey Boys (2014) and played Captain Hook in that live 2014 tv production of Peter Pan with Alison Williams.

With his casting as the young French King in the original Broadway production of The Lion in Winter (1966), Walken got pulled into serious acting. It’s not well known, but he has done a LOT of Shakespeare, playing major roles in The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, MacBeth, and Coriolanus. He has also starred in revivals of Tennessee Williams’The Rose Tattoo and Sweet Bird of Youth, the original production of David Rabe’sHurlyburly,Chekhov’sThe Seagull, an adaptation of Joyce’s The Dead, and the original 2010 production of Martin MacDonagh’s A Behanding in Spokane (he was also in MacDonaugh’s film Seven Psychopaths 2 years later).

On account of Walken’s odd trout-like mien, he is often relegated to villain roles in the movies, often playing thugs or gangsters. He has also done a good bit of horror and sci fi, and self parody in comedies. Fewer have been the kind of serious dramatic roles he has done on stage, but he did take home an Oscar for his performance in The Deer Hunter (1978), his second Vietnam-themed movie (the first was the 1972 low-budget sci fi thriller The Mind Snatchers). Here are some interesting factoids and high water marks from his screen career:

He has been a Bond villain! (In A View to a Kill, 1985)

He co-starred in Natalie Wood’s last film, Douglas Trumbull’s Brainstorm (1983) and was present on the yacht on the night of her death.

Walken has gotten to work with many great and notable directors twice (though not always as director both times). These include: Michael Cimino (The Deer Hunter, Heaven’s Gate), Tim Burton (Batman Returns, Sleepy Hollow), Quentin Tarantino (True Romance, Pulp Fiction), Paul Schrader (The Comfort of Strangers, Touch), and Woody Allen (Annie Hall, Antz). Has been in four movies directed by Abel Ferrara and three by John Turturro. The list of prestige directors he has worked with is long! Others include Sidney Lumet (The Anderson Tapes, 1971), Paul Mazursky (Next Stop Greenwich Village, (1976), Merchant-Ivory (Roseland, 1977), Jonathan Demme (Last Embrace, 1979), David Cronenberg (Stephen King’sThe Dead Zone, 1983), Mike Nichols (Neil Simon’sBiloxi Blues, 1988), Robert Redford (The Milagro Beanfield War, 1988), Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, 1996), Steven Spielberg (Catch Me If You Can, 2002), et al. He has also starred in three of The Prophecy film series, along with scores of other credits.

Walken appeared on Saturday Night Live for the first of seven times in 1990. His sketches on the show such as “The Continental” and “More Cowbell” have gone down in the annals of the show as memorable high water marks. The latter especially caught on as a minor catchphrase and point of pop cultural reference. Walken’s reputation as a comedian enhanced, and he started to be cast in lots of silly comedies which now form a minor strand of his body of work. They include Wayne’s World 2(1993), Joe Dirt (2001), Scotland PA (2001), The Stepford Wives (Frank Oz comedy remake, 2004), Wedding Crashers (2005), Click (2006), Balls of Fury (2007), and Joe Dirt 2 (2015).

Walken has a part in the upcoming Dune 2 — but how I wish he had been in David Lynch’sDune!

So — 80. I’m thinking back on the 80 year olds of my youth. George Burns was that age in 1976. Milton Berle was 80 in 1988. More to the point, Fred Astaire was that age in 1979. So when, I was a kid, 80 years old meant vaudeville. These days I’m associating that age with the rock musicians of the British Invasion, who, like Walken, were heavily influenced by Elvis. 40 years from now? It’ll be Seth Rogan, Alison Brie, Anne Hathaway, Lil Wayne, Kieran Culkin, Constance Wu, and Ali Wong. Do they hang together as a generation in some cohesive way? I guess that’s for someone younger than me to sort out.

For more on show business history, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous. And please keep an eye out forVaudeville in Your Living Room: A Century of Radio and TV Variety, coming out from Bear Manor Media this November!