In Which We Raise a Glass to William Hickey

September 19 was the birthday of acting legend William Hickey (1927-1997).

Coincidentally, Hickey is the name of the character at the heart of Eugene O’Neill’sThe Iceman Cometh. I’m not sure William Hickey would have been right for that role, but he certainly would be for one of the other characters in that play, for he was virtually defined by a kind of pale, weak, sickly look of the sort you might see in a Bowery bar room. A small Irish guy, in real life he was an alcoholic and a heavy smoker whose emphysema killed him before he reached 70. On top of it, he had a creepy, grim quality. When he was cheerful, it was as though Death himself were mocking you. In the casting department, Hickey seemed to have this lane all to himself. This, and the fact that he was a great actor, allowed him to work constantly in major projects for decades, in spite of a booze problem that sometimes got in the way.

Hickey grew up in Brooklyn (Flatbush) and Queens (Richmond Hill). It is commonly given out that he started out as a child performer on “the variety stage”. I am very curious to know what this consisted of, since the major vaudeville circuits were gone by the time he is supposed to have started out at age ten (1937). There were undoubtedly individual venues still around that offered live variety shows then, but I’d love to know the specifics. He studied acting at HB Studios in New York, where he went on to be a legendary teacher for the rest of his life. One of Travalanche’s biggest supporters studied with him, as did George Segal, Barbra Streisand, and Sandy Dennis.

Hickey was about 25 when he began to get roles in live television dramas, Broadway plays (Tovarich, 1952) and Hollywood movies (A Hatful of Rain, also 1952). Youth didn’t really suit him however, and it wasn’t until the late 1960s that he began to find his niche. One of the earliest of his high profile films remains a favorite of lovers of classic comedy. He’s that drunk guy who inexplicably forms a trio with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder as they celebrate their successful failure in Mel Brooks’The Producers (1967).

From here, it’s a fairly charmed and distinctive career. Hickey had small supporting roles in The Boston Strangler (1968) and Little Big Man (1970). Elaine May cast him in A New Leaf (1971), and later in Mikey and Nicky (1976), the first of several mob boss roles he would be known for. Kurt Vonnegut was clearly a fan as well; Hickey was in both the stage and screen versions of Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970, 1971), and had the starring role in his TV movie Between Time and Timbuktu (1972). During this same period he was in the original 1972 off-Broadway production of Tennessee Williams‘ Small Craft Warnings (along with Candy Darling), followed by a Broadway revival of O’Neill’s Mounring Becomes Electra (1972). In 1974 he was in the original Broadway production of Herb Gardner’s Thieves, directed by Charles Grodin, with Richard Mulligan,Marlo Thomas, Dick Van Patten, and Irwin Corey.

Hickey went on to play a shifty locksmith in the modern horror classic The Sentinel (1977). John Huston cast him as a Preacher in Wise Blood (1979), which proved so satisfactory that he gave him the plum role of Don Corrado Prizzi in Prizzi’s Honor (1985), Hickey’s best known performance, and one that earned him an Oscar nomination. He was to play similar characters in Mob Boss (1990) and The Jerky Boys: The Movie (1995). Immediately after Prizzi, Hickey was very intelligently cast as Dr. Einstein, the Peter Lorre part, in an all-star 1986 revival of Arsenic and Old Lace I really wish I’d seen, for the cast also included Tony Roberts, Abe Vigoda, Jean Stapleton, and Polly Holliday (RIP — the Alice star passed away just a few days ago).

Other notable movies William Hickey appeared in included The Name of the Rose (1986), Bright Lights Big City (1988), Da (1988), Pink Cadillac (1988), Sea of Love (1989), Puppet Master (1989), National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989), Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), My Blue Heaven (1990), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), and Twisted (1995), among many others. He also did tv guest shots on programs like The Tracey Ullman Show, Moonlighting, L.A. Law, et al. Hickey’s last film, released posthumously and oh-so-appropriately, was Knocking of Death’s Door (1999).