Alan Arkin

1934-

Also known as: Alan Arkin, Alan Wolf Arkin, Roger Short, Robert Short

Nationality: American

Entry updated: 03/29/2007

Birth Date: March 26, 1934

Place of Birth: New York, New York

Award(s):

Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award from League of New York Theatres and Producers for best supporting actor, Theatre World Award, and winner of Variety New York Drama Critics Poll, all 1963, all for "Enter Laughing"; Golden Globe Award from Hollywood Foreign Press Association for best actor in a musical or comedy and Academy Award nomination for best actor from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, both 1967, both for "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming"; Obie Award from Village Voice for distinguished directing and Drama Desk Award for outstanding director, both 1970, both for "The White House Murder Case"; Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award nomination for best director, 1973, for "The Sunshine Boys;" Oscar for best supporting Actor, 2007, for "Little Miss Sunshine."

Table of Contents:

Awards

Career

Further Readings About the Author

Personal Information

Sidelights

Source Citation

Writings by the Author

Personal Information: Born March 26, 1934, in New York, NY; son of David (an artist and teacher) and Beatrice (a teacher; maiden name, Wortis) Arkin; married second wife, Barbara Dana (an actress and author), June 16, 1964; children: (first marriage) Adam, Matthew; (second marriage) Anthony. Education: Attended Los Angeles City College, 1951-52, Los Angeles State College, 1952-53, and Bennington College, 1953-55; studied with Benjamin Zemach, 1952-55. Memberships: American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, American Federation of Musicians, American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, Actors Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild. Addresses: Home: Chappaqua, NY. Office: c/o United Artists, 729 Seventh Ave., New York, NY 10019. Agent: Robinson & Associates, 132 Rodeo Dr., Beverly Hills, CA 90212.

Career: Actor, director, composer, and author. Member of the Tarriers, a folksinging group, 1957-59. Actor in improvisational theatre with Compass Players, St. Louis, Mo., 1959, and with Second City, Chicago, Ill., 1960. Actor in stage productions, including Heloise, 1958, From the Second City, 1961, Man Out Loud, Girl Quiet, 1962, Enter Laughing, 1963-64, A View From Under the Bridge, 1964, Luv, 1964, and The Opening, 1972. Director of stage productions, including revues during the early 1960's, Eh? (under the pseudonym Roger Short), 1966, Hail Scrawdyke!,1966, Little Murders, 1969, The White House Murder Case, 1970, The Sunshine Boys, 1972, Molly, 1973, Joan of Lorraine, 1974 and 1976, The Soft Touch, 1975, Rubbers, 1975, and Yanks 3 Detroit 0 Top of the Seventh, 1975. Actor in films, including "That's Me" (short motion picture), 1963, "The Last Mohican" (short motion picture), 1965, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, 1966, Woman Times Seven, 1967, Wait Until Dark, 1967, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, 1968, Inspector Clousseau, 1968, Popi, 1969, Catch-22, 1970, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, 1972, Freebie and the Bean, 1975, (and director) Hearts of the West, 1975, Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins, 1975, (and director) Seven Percent Solution, 1976, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, 1976, The Magician of Lublin, 1979, (and director and producer) The In-Laws, 1979, Simon, 1980, Chu Chu and the Philly Flash, 1981, Edward Scissorhands, 1990, The Rocketeer, 1991, Glengarry Glen Ross, 1992, So I Married an Axe Murderer, 1993, The Jerky Boys, 1995, Grosse Pointe Blank, 1997, and Jakob the Liar, 1999, and Little Miss Sunshine, 2006. Director of films, including "Thank God It's Friday" (short motion picture), "People Soup" (short motion picture)and Little Murders, 1971. Appeared on television programs, including David Susskind Show, 1962, The Beatnik and the Politician, 1964, Les Crane Show, 1964- 65, The Love Song of Barney Kempinski for "ABC Stage 67," 1966, "Natasha Kovolina Pipishinsky, 1976, To America, 1976, The Defection of Simas Kudirka, 1978, and Captain Kangaroo. Director of television productions, including Twigs, 1975.

WRITINGS:

* (Contributor of sketches, music, lyrics, and photographic slides) " A View From Under the Bridge," first produced in New York City at Square East Theatre, August 5, 1964.

* Tony's Hard Work Day (juvenile), illustrated by James Stevenson, Harper (New York, NY), 1972, revised edition illustrated by AnnMarie Infanger, Gibbs Smith (Salt Lake City, UT), 2002.

* The Lemming Condition (juvenile), illustrated by Joan Sandin, Harper (New York, NY), 1976.

* Halfway Through the Door: An Actor's Journey Toward the Self (autobiography), Harper (New York, NY), 1979.

* Halfway Through the Door: First Steps on a Path Toward Enlightenment, Harper and Row (New York, NY), 1984.

* The Clearing, Harper and Row (New York, NY), 1986.

* Some Fine Grampa! (juvenile), illustrated by Dirk Zimmer, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995.

* One Present from Flekman's, illustrated by Richard Egielski, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1999.

* Cassie Loves Beethoven (juvenile), illustrated by Hala Wittwer, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2000.

* Cosmo (juvenile), illustrated by Jon Richards, Azro Press (Santa Fe, NM), 2005.

Recordings include "The Babysitters," 1958, "Songs and Fun With the Babysitters," 1960, "The Family Album," 1965, "Luv: A New Comedy," Columbia, 1965, "The Babysitters Menagerie," 1968, and "The Banana Boat Song." Composer for "Man Out Loud, Girl Quiet," first produced in New York City at Cricket Theatre, April 3, 1962. Also composer of more than one hundred songs, including "Cuddle Bug," "That's Me," and "Best Time of the Year." Contributor of science fiction stories toGalaxy.

"Sidelights"

Alan Arkin once told Cleveland Amory in a Saturday Review interview that he became an actor to emulate his movie idols. "I wanted to make people laugh like Chaplin," he said. "I wanted to sing like Danny Kaye, and I wanted to sword fight like Louis Hayward." While Arkin has succeeded in most of these areas, he is recognized predominantly for his flexibility as an actor, which influences his style as a director and author.

Amory suggested that Arkin could be "the most versatile of all American movie actors," and many other critics and entertainment professionals believe that he is able to portray any character, from archfiend to romantic leading man. Filmmaker Norman Jewison told a New York Times Magazine reporter that "in script after script I pick up, Alan's face emerges." He added that Arkin "can play almost everything. There's a warmth about him, a marvelous everyman quality that's so rare." For example, in "Enter Laughing" Arkin played a Bronx youth aspiring to an acting career. He thought the boy was "mad, nuts, a baby Pal Joey"--quite unlike himself. Yet Arkin described his character in "Luv" as "more like me than I would like to admit." "He was childish and inept," the actor continued, "and I don't want to talk about it."

Bernard Weinraub also noted in the New York Times Magazine that Arkin can portray anybody of any nationality in any profession. "Depending on his mood and his clothes," the critic said, "he could . . . be a welfare worker, a salesman, a stock clerk, a waiter. He could, quite easily, be Greek, Italian or Puerto Rican instead of Jewish. When he sang with a folk trio, the Tarriers, he was even confused with another Tarrier who was a Negro." Thus Arkin has created a variety of roles, including the psychopath in "Wait Until Dark," the rabbi in "Friday the Rabbi Slept Late," Yossarian in "Catch-22," and the deaf-mute in "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter." According to director Mike Nichols, Arkin "has the ability to become any person he's observed and to make it both real and a comment on the person at the same time. It's not just another accent, another walk, it's a complete new person."

Accordingly the public recognizes Arkin as a master of accent and dialect, as his popularity as the lovable Soviet leader in "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming" and as the Puerto Rican handyman in "Popi" indicate. He finds these characters the easiest to portray, and audiences say he is quite believable as a foreigner. For example, after playing Constantin Mevedenko in "The Russians Are Coming," the actor observed that "everyone thinks I'm a sweet Russian now. Nobody really recognizes me. Of course I don't recognize them either."

Arkin achieves his characterizations by immersing himself in the role he is portraying. "Before a film or play," he explained, "I find myself walking like the character I'm going to be. I find myself looking at clothes that the character would wear and not me. I can't take my mind off the character. I read the script many times and find myself falling into a thought pattern not my own, a speech pattern not my own."

Critics claim that this versatility as an actor carries over into Arkin's work as a director. For example, Larry Cohen noticed in the Saturday Review that Arkin "brings a delight in improvisation, an ability not only to perceive the best take to print but a flexibility also to capitalize on what is unpremeditated in a shot, to encourage and capture it within the frame." According to Cohen, when Arkin directed "Little Murders"--his first effort at directing a feature film--he was both instinctual and consciously methodical.

Critics also suggest that Arkin's appeal as an actor extends to his writings. Janet Maslin, for instance, attributed Arkin's persuasiveness in his autobiography, Halfway Through the Door, to his ability as an actor. "The qualities that make him such an irresistible actor make his book more persuasive than he may have intended it to be," she said. "As a performer, he is someone audiences instinctively understand. As a writer, he unerringly singles out situations that the reader is likely to recognize." For instance, Arkin explained his embrace of yoga in Halfway Through the Door: He revealed that--though he achieved celebrity status by 1969--he was "miserable." So he became involved with a guru who taught Agni yoga, a system of meditation without exercise. Barbara Dana, Arkin's wife, told People reporter Louise Lague that meditation made Arkin less intense. She said he grew and changed. Before yoga, Arkin classified himself as semi-depressed, wary, moody, driven, and suspicious. Afterwards, he said that he became more peaceful, hopeful, and that he found more pleasure in life.

Though reviewers found Arkin's other books lighter than his autobiography, they submitted that the situations are still just as recognizable to readers. Tony's Hard Work Day , for example, is a children's book about a little boy who finds a niche in the adult world. In the book, three-year-old Tony wants to help his family fix up their new, but small and broken-down, house in the country. His father and other relatives tell Tony he is too small to be of service, so he builds his own house--a huge log cabin made from two hundred trees, a thousand stones, and all the grass from a meadow. Tony's house is so impressive that his family moves there instead. Writing in the Saturday Review, Karla Kuskin commented that Tony's Hard Work Day is unpretentious and "awfully nice." It is "simple and quietly funny," she said, "the humor of the words enhanced by the humor of the pictures."

According to other critics, Arkin's The Lemming Condition is an instructive fable of self-discovery for children. In this book a young lemming named Bubber ponders his species' suicidal drive to the sea. Bubber does not like water, and he does not like water, and does not want to go. At first he thinks he is strange; then he thinks the other lemmings are the strange ones. So Bubber abandons his peers on their march to the sea and heads off in the opposite direction. John Leonard noted in the New York Times Book Review that The Lemming Condition illustrates nonconformity. He observed that Arkin "aspires to parable: Look out conformity, here comes free will. He has brought it out efficiently and affectingly."