George Kennedy was born on 18 February 1925.
I’ll be honest. I’m not a fan of Kennedy. If I come upon a film he’s in, I am less likely to watch it. But this is not a dig at him. He was a great actor. And he was in a lot of great films. But as far as I could tell, he’d act in anything! And even if the films were okay, he usually played a pretty boring character. He was like Donald Pleasence in that way. But Pleasence got better roles.
George Kennedy was a big guy. He was 6-foot and 4-inches tall at a time when that was pretty good for the NBA. As a result, he usually played roles with authority. But they were rarely heroic. Had he been smaller, he likely would have been cast in more varied roles.
We remember him for his Academy Award-winning performance in Cool Hand Luke. I don’t generally think much of awards, but this happens to be the best performance I’ve seen from him. But I don’t think that was him. I think that was the kind of roles he was given. But on the plus side, he was in more psychotronic films than he would have been in otherwise.
It’s a bit weird, but the film I most associate with George Kennedy is Death Ship. This may be because Kennedy plays an unlikeable ship captain. But later in the film, he is taken over by the ghost of a Nazi captain. And he really isn’t that much worse! If you’d rather watch Cool Hand Luke, I’m providing a link. But Death Ship is our official choice!
George Kennedy via Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.
