Veteran character actor John Marley was one of those familiar but nameless faces that TV and filmgoers didn't take a shine to until the late 1960s, when he had hit middle age. Distinctive for his craggy mug, dark bushy brows and upswept silvery hair, his life (born in 1907) started out amid tough surroundings in Harlem, New York as the son of Russian immigrants. A high-school dropout headed for tr ...
show all Veteran character actor John Marley was one of those familiar but nameless faces that TV and filmgoers didn't take a shine to until the late 1960s, when he had hit middle age. Distinctive for his craggy mug, dark bushy brows and upswept silvery hair, his life (born in 1907) started out amid tough surroundings in Harlem, New York as the son of Russian immigrants. A high-school dropout headed for trouble, he managed to avoid the gangland trappings by joining a theater group, which eventually led to some Broadway work. World War II interrupted his still lackluster career when he joined the Army Signal Corps. Post-war film credits were comprised mostly of unsympathetic bit roles -- thugs, reporters and other sly, shifty characters -- that were routinely Greek or Italian in origin. In the 60s, Marley appeared to good effect in the film "The Cat Ballou (1965)" as "Jane Fonda"'s father and earned kudos for his work in John Cassavetes' stark, improvisational indie "Faces (1968)", for which he received the Venice Film Festival Ali MacGraw's weary blue-collar dad in "Love Story (1970)" and playing the role of the mouthy movie titan who becomes bedmates with a horse's head after refusing Mafia don Marlon Brando's offer in the epic "Godfather (1972)". Thanks to those two pictures, Marley, at age 50+, evolved into an important and steady fixture for the next decade or so, playing everything from gruff executives to Mafia dons himself. John died in 1984 following open-heart surgery at age 77. He was survived by wife Sandra and four children.
hide 