Remembering Brian Dennehy: The Best Willy Loman to Ever Take the Stage
The actor died at 81 years old.
Brian Dennehy, an actor known onscreen for movies like First Blood, Cocoon, and Tommy Boy, died yesterday in New Haven, Connecticut, of cardiac arrest at 81 years old. His family says his death was not related to COVID-19.
Dennehy was a Broadway mainstay for decades, earning two Tony awards for Best Actor over the course of his career. In 1999, Dennehy stunned audiences and critics alike with his searing portrayal of Willy Loman in a revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, earning him the first of his Tonys. He once again made Broadway history in 2003 for his portrayal of James Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's Long Days Journey into Night. When accepting his second Tony, the actor was characteristically humble, saying, "The words of Eugene O'Neill — they've got to be heard," he said. "They've got to be heard, and heard and heard. And thank you so much for giving us the chance to enunciate them." He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2010 and received six Emmy nominations over the course of his career.
Dennehy brought a level of passion to the craft of acting that so few actors manage to maintain. Growing up in Long Island, Dennehy was quickly pigeon holed into the role of high school jock, given his formidable size and Irish Catholic roots. But his heart was never in sports, and he saw a way out of Long Island when he saw Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront in 1954. In an interview with WHYY's Fresh Air in 1999, Dennehy said, "For the first time when I saw that picture, I realized there were people in the business who looked like me, and who sounded like me. And who came from places I came from. Before that time, acting was like ballet — something I could appreciate but never consider myself a part of."
Dennehy's Willy Loman is considered by many to be the defining portrayal of the role. The New York Times wrote that Dennehy played the role "with majestic, unnerving transparency." The unsettling, almost scarring aspect of his performance is best captured by the writer's later thought: "Mr. Dennehy's performance will probably be the most debated aspect of this production. It is not in the idiosyncratic, finely detailed vein so memorably provided by Dustin Hoffman in 1984. What this actor goes for is close to an everyman quality, with a grand emotional expansiveness that matches his monumental physique. Yet these emotions ring so unerringly true that Mr. Dennehy seems to kidnap you by force, trapping you inside Willy's psyche."
His daughter, Elizabeth Dennehy, tweeted a moving tribute to her late father, saying, "Larger than life, generous to a fault, a proud and devoted father and grandfather, he will be missed by his wife Jennifer, family and many friends."
Other online tributes to the actor include Lin Manuel Miranda, Mia Farrow, and Sylvester Stallone.
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