BAD GUYS GONE GOOD
Here is the flip side of a recent article about actors who generally played good guy parts suddenly showing up as villains. This column is the opposite- it’s about actors who were almost always bad guys and who suddenly appear as nice men. And yeah, it’s kinda short because I couldn’t think of any more!
Ernest Borgnine just looks like a bad guy, and for years he was one. He was especially hateful as the murderous Fatso in From Here To Eternity. But then in 1955 he broke our hearts as Marty, unlikely hero of a very quiet little jewel of a film. His phone call to Betsy Blair and his comments about her to a buddy are just simply wonderful. He won the Oscar, as did director Delbert Mann, screenwriter Paddy Chayfesky and the film itself won Best Movie.
Vincent Price made quite a career as countless villains in countless horror movies. He diced and sliced many a fair maiden and his appearance alone generated hisses from the audience. But in 1987 he is the nicest of guys in The Whales Of August. He is Mr. Maranov, who befriends Lillian Gish and Bette Davis, movie icons, as sisters on holiday in Maine. 
James Cagney’s career consisted mainly of playing a hateful thug in lots of movies about gangsters. His most famous scene involved shoving a grapefruit into the face of his wife in White Heat (1949). So- who to get to play George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)? Why Cagney, of course! And he is just superb as the legendary song and dance man, doing his own singing and dancing.
Jack Elam was probably in more westerns than John Wayne, and in almost all of them was a villain. But he is just right as the sidekick for good guy James Garner in both Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) and Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971). Elam is the really laid-back sheriff’s excitable deputy and perfectly sets the stage for Garner’s easy-going portrayal.
All of the films in this column are available on DVD. All are okay for any age.