Alan Arkin, In Memoriam: The (Possibly) Last Great American Character Actor

I remember seeing him for the first time in the back seat of my folks’ car, at a New Jersey drive-in. The movie was called The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! and it came out in 1966, just a few years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, that stare-down between U.S. President John F. Kennedy and U.S.S.R. Premier Nikita Khrushchev that might have set off World War III had someone not blinked. America’s Cold War fears were now dampened to the extent that Hollywood could make a comedy about a Russian sub that wanders into New England waters and sets off a mini-conflict. The sub commander was played by the ursine Theodore Bikel, mostly known as the warm folk singer you’d see on The Ed Sullivan Show every now and again, while the sub’s political liaison and interpreter, Rozanov, was played by a slight, black-clad guy with a dark mustache and very soulful eyes. He was funny, he was sympathetic, he humanized the “enemy.” Honestly, as imposing as his clothes suggested he wanted to look, you just kinda wanted to hug the guy.

He was played not by a Russian — none of the Russians in the movie were — but by an American actor in his early 30s named Alan Arkin. Arkin, who died today at age 89, would go on to play, more than once, a variant on the person he actually was, which was a quintessential Brooklyn Jewish Guy. He was a great, incredibly versatile actor who never quite became a movie star, which must have been a boon to his personal life. But he’s utterly beloved by at least three generations of movie lovers. 

Arkin had a few years of New York stage work (and a stint as guitarist with a folk group called The Babysitters, which did children’s music and continued into 1968) under his belt when he did Russians, and whether by design or happenstance, he changed things up considerably for the 1967 thriller Wait Until Dark — although he kept the black leather jacket. In that film he plays a sunglass-wearing, tightly-wound psycho who terrorizes poor Audrey Hepburn in a quest to retrieve a children’s doll filled with heroin, as one does. When producer Walter Mirisch wanted to make a third Pink Panther movie, but Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers were on one of their not-speaking breaks from each other, Mirisch got Bud Yorkin to direct Inspector Clouseau, with Arkin in the title role. It flopped, but Arkin’s incredibly strong performance as a deaf-mute in The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter meant his 1968 career damage was minimal. 

He was, arguably, perfectly cast as the relentlessly (and justifiably) neurotic World War II bomber Yossarian in Mike Nichols’ extravagant adaptation of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. The critics were lying in wait for this one, and the film felt like a genuine misfire at the time of its release. Watching it today, it clearly doesn’t get the eventual horror of the novel, but it has a number of successful farcical moments, and Arkin’s harried performance is perfect in every frame.

The film was not going to catapult Arkin to conventional leading man status in any event, but the 1970s wound up being a golden decade for him. He directed, and took a small role in, Little Murders, a blacker-than-black New York comedy starring Elliott Gould. And he was part of three absolutely immortal screen duos. In 1974’s Freebie and the Bean, he and James Caan were like Felix Unger and Oscar Madison, only as San Francisco cops. (Arkin was Bean, the fussy, tetchy one.) In 1976, he played Sigmund Freud, a real-life historical figure transposed to the fictional world of Sherlock Holmes, in which he is charged with curing a drug-addled Holmes of his “delusions.” The Seven-Percent Solution is a still-astoundingly clever comedy-thriller, one of the few good things to come out of a fictional icon going into the public domain. His Freud is confident, with only a light German accent, but with an absurdist undercurrent running underneath, the perfect serene counter to Nicol Williamson’s increasingly flustered Holmes. 

And of course…of course…in 1979 he played the New-Yawk-genteel, sensible dentist Shelley Kompett who is dragged into a world of espionage and possible madness by Peter Falk’s possibly crackpot man of misadventure Vince Ricardo in The In-Laws. The performance is another masterpiece of underplaying. When Vince is recounting a particularly outlandish story involving a robbery of the U.S. Mint, the way Arkin nods sagely at every preposterous clause that Falk adds to his story is pristinely hilarious. His incredulity when Falk puts a twist in the narrative is equally chortlesome. And the movie never lets up with this kind of thing. It’s an almost perfect American comedy. (Falk and Arkin would go on to reteam in the gonzo 1986 comedy Big Trouble, directed — apparently under some duress — by Falk compere and cinema maverick John Cassavetes. The movie’s all over the place, but has some killer moments, as when Falk inveigles Arkin to sample sardine liqueur.)

In one video interview promoting The In-Laws — a clip that beautifully lays out Arkin’s comfort and discomfort zones as a public figure —the interlocuter begins by saying, “I think most people think of you as a comedian, or a comic actor, does that jibe with how you think of yourself?” Arkin deadpans, “I try not to think of myself at all.” But he then goes sincere, saying, “I don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to think of myself.” 

Arkin’s 1980s credits testify, arguably, that after The In-Laws, Hollywood stopped making movies like The In-Laws. When American independent cinema started becoming a thing, Arkin found a new footing in film while of course keeping his hand in Hollywood product when the offers came in. He worked a lot in the 1990s and 2000s. The way he furrows his brow and says “Shelley, who’s the guy” to Jack Lemmon in 1992’s Glengarry Glen Ross before Alec Baldwin enters the scene and delivers a death sentence instantly speaks of a lifetime of worry and frustration. His sparring with Robert Downey, Jr., in “Equilibrium” (in which Arkin again plays a psychiatrist), the Steven Soderbergh segment of the 2004 anthology film Eros is simultaneously dry and robust. In these dynamics it’s the patient who’s supposed to be uncomfortable, but early on Downey stresses Arkin out to the extent that he tries to disappear into his reclining chair; it’s a masterpiece of physical acting.

And, of course, there is his Oscar-winning role as the gonzo grandfather in 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine. In his award acceptance speech, Arkin said “Acting for me has always been and always will be a team sport. I cannot work at all unless I feel a spirit of unity around me.” His exemplary career will be remembered in two ways: he was the ultimate team player, while simultaneously remaining an irreplaceably singular presence.

Veteran critic Glenn Kenny reviews‎ new releases at RogerEbert.com, the New York Times, and, as befits someone of his advanced age, the AARP magazine. He blogs, very occasionally, at Some Came Running and tweets, mostly in jest, at @glenn__kenny. He is the author of the acclaimed 2020 book Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas, published by Hanover Square Press.