George Kennedy

The Man Who Didn't Need to Be the Lead

George Kennedy stood nearly six feet six inches tall and weighed more than 220 pounds. He was a human mountain whom the film industry didn't quite know how to place during his early years in California. Yet the guy had a gaze that conveyed a strange vulnerability for someone of his size.

He spent sixteen years in the United States Army before stepping onto a real film set. He served in World War II and ended up working for the military's radio service. So his entry into movies was almost a technical accident, advising military productions for television.

He won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1968.

That award came for his role as Dragline in Cool Hand Luke. He had to box against a Paul Newman who looked like a kid next to him. The chemistry between the two worked because Kennedy brought a brutal humanity to a character who, on paper, was just a prison thug.

The Years of the Air Disasters

During the seventies, his face was everywhere. He put on Joe Patroni's uniform in Airport in 1970, and that character became his safety net. He was the only actor to appear in all four films of the disaster franchise.

But not everything was big budgets. In 1974 he appeared in Quake and also worked under Clint Eastwood in Un botín de 500,000 dólares. Kennedy would accept almost any script that offered a decent paycheck and a relaxed shoot.

The industry respected him for his punctuality and his lack of ego.

In 1975 he starred in the series The Blue Knight, playing a veteran cop patrolling the streets of Los Angeles. The show didn't last long, but it proved he could carry the weight of a production on his shoulders. Kennedy preferred the security of a weekly paycheck to the glory of the red carpet.

Parody as a Final Refuge

Many viewers discovered him thanks to his comedic flair in the late eighties. He joined Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! in 1988 to play Captain Ed Hocken. He kept a completely straight face while the biggest nonsense unfolded around him.

Comedy gave him an unexpected second act in his career.

He reprised his role in the two sequels to the franchise in 1991 and 1994. In between, he found time to join the cast of the series Dallas in 1988. There he played Carter McKay for 67 episodes and appeared in several TV movies spun off from the Ewing family storyline.

He kept working steadily until his health began to fail after he turned eighty. In 2011 he published his memoir, Trust Me, in which he looked back on decades in the business without holding grudges against anyone.

His last film appearance came in 2014 with The Gambler. On that shoot he shared scenes with Mark Wahlberg, playing a dying grandfather in a hospital bed. George Kennedy died on February 28, 2016, in Middleton, Idaho, at the age of 91.