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The Great Films and Surprising Life of Wilford Brimley
Character actors are the worker bees of movies. They’re also often the movies’ richest treasures. Everyone loves a movie star, and some movie stars do their best work in character actor parts, and very occasionally, a character actor becomes a star (Gene Hackman, Paul Giamatti), but more often than not, the really great character actors have to content themselves with being the best parts of bad movies, and with being value added to great movies, and they rarely get the adoring career retrospectives that stars do. There are upsides, to be sure…
“Character actors! Who gives a fuck if we’re fat!” — Brian Dennehy, as told to Patton Oswalt.
But maybe not all find that to be the freedom it is for some. Being a character actor, as freeing as it might be creatively, can be constricting, in its own way. As Dennehy’s costar in COCOON, Wilford Brimley, said in 1993, “I’m never the leading man. I never get the girl. And I never get to take my shirt off.”
Wilford Brimley was born on September 27, 1934. Happy birthday weekend, Wilford Brimley! Let’s give this fella his due.
Born in Salt Lake City, Brimley was a Marine, who eventually found his way into day-playing on Westerns and doing stunts. He didn’t earn his first screen credit until his mid-thirties, which is relatively late to get started for an actor.
It’s clear he made an impression, at least behind the scenes. Brimley worked repeatedly with the huge stars of the day, like Robert Redford (THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN, THE NATURAL), Jane Fonda (THE CHINA SYNDROME, THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN), and Paul Newman (BRUBAKER, ABSENCE OF MALICE, HARRY & SON). He was pals with Robert Duvall, who got him cast in TENDER MERCIES.
I have to admit, none of these roles are where I know Wilford Brimley from. Most immediately, he’s more known to those in my generation, the one above, and those younger from his work in TV (The Waltons, Ewoks: The Battle For Endor, and the now-forgotten Our House with a young Shannen Doherty) and most of all, his commercials.
When I tell people that my dad was raised Quaker, which I don’t do often for reasons you’ll understand by the time you finish this sentence, people invariably say one of two things: “Like the Oats?” or “Wilford Brimley!” Because Wilford Brimley did ads for Quaker Oats. Didn’t you know they make entire branches of Christianity around breakfast foods? Don’t get me started on those Dino Pebbles people. They think Jesus had a brontosaurus as a housepet. And made cereal about it!
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It’s possible that there is one word that people associate with Wilford Brimley more, less due to his work with the American Diabetes Association, than the TV spots for Liberty Medical, in which Brimley’s Utahn pronunciation of the medical condition in question has become a deathless meme, in the way that the internet (and Family Guy) can often turns such matters into less-than-sensitive objects of play. But in 2008, the ADA honored Brimley for years of advocacy, and there isn’t any disputing that he brought awareness to the cause.
Brimley also endorsed cockfighting, so maybe nobody’s perfect. Sadder still, his rise to stardom began just around the time of release of the movie he would have been perfect for.
But let’s talk about the movies, because Wilford Brimley was in a lot more great ones than most of us remember — though there’s at least one that you’re all thinking of already… In fact, let’s just start there.
JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING (1982)
Wilford Brimley had been in plenty of movies before, and he’d been prominent in them by 1982, but any fan of horror or science-fiction really knows and loves him because of this one. It’s a notable movie for thousands of reasons, but in this context, it’s notable because it is one of the rare instances where Wilford Brimley didn’t have a mustache on screen. It doesn’t happen a lot. You’ll see a lot more movies where Burt Reynolds doesn’t have a mustache than you will where Wilford Brimley doesn’t.
MacReady, Childs, Clark, Bennings, Fuchs, Windows… all have facial hair… Hell… even Garry has them big bushy eyebrows! But Blair? Face is vacant, brother.
What does it mean?
It means you can’t trust him, of course. But he’s tired… he’s cold… he he just wants to come inside… No! Trust Wilford Brimley everywhere else, but not here.
THE NATURAL (1984)
THE THING is the Wilford Brimley movie that is most important to me, without question, but most likely, the first Wilford Brimley movie that I ever saw was THE NATURAL, since I was into baseball before I really got all the way into horror and this is a pretty classic baseball movie. Brimley reteams with Redford to play “Pop,” manager of the fictional New York Knights and sort-of mentor to Redford’s Roy Hobbs. What’s strangest about this movie now, and I’ll get into it more on the next entry, is that if you watch this movie, as I did some time in the 1980s, you will have little trouble buying Wilford Brimley as grizzled old-timer to Redford’s fresh-faced rookie. Movie magic!
In reality, Redford and Brimley were contemporaries! Brimley, as we established, was born in 1934. Redford was born in 1936. Which means, in THE NATURAL, Redford is 48, playing a not-so-young for baseball 35. Who is this guy, Julio Franco?
Meanwhile, Brimley was just 50, looking like this
That’s what a character actor does, baby. He is gonna age up and out and let you movie stars go ahead and glow!
COCOON (1985)
COCOON is weird as shit. Basically, aliens return to Earth after thousands of years to retrieve fellow aliens that were left behind in rocky cocoons, which sank to the bottom of the sea when Atlantis (!) did. The aliens, led by the aforementioned Brian Dennehy, charter a boat captained by who else? Steve Guttenberg to go get the cocoons, which they leave in a pool which old people from the retirement community next door like to swim in. The cocoons, which in point of fact look like gigantic turds, somehow restore the old guys’ vitality. It’s basically like that scene in CADDYSHACK where everybody panics when they see the Baby Ruth, but instead of panicking, Don Ameche jumps right in and later brags that it gave him a boner.
I didn’t make any of that up, and I still haven’t even blown your mind yet.
There’s a very funny account online that refers to what has been dubbed by the people who run it “the Brimley/COCOON Line.” They point out that once a person turns fifty, they are the age that Wilford Brimley was when he filmed COCOON. A meme that has branched off from that idea has shown pictures of Paul Rudd at fifty against pictures of Wilford Brimley in COCOON. The idea there, I guess, is that people of Brimley’s generation aged harder than people of Rudd’s (and mine).
In some ways, that’s true. People used to grow up quicker. Usually, they had to. Young people in the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s often had to go to war, or to live in wartime, and while that is also true of young people today, many of us live apart from the wars of our time. We may care about what’s happening, but most of us are not forced on a daily basis to confront the horrors of war. If we’re Paul Rudd, we can star in goofy comedies and have people constantly tell us how handsome and youthful we are. (I love him too, relax.) Wilford Brimley was stationed overseas during the Korean War. He was active-duty. On top of that, he was an outdoorsman. The sun will age you quick, kids. Look at Robert Redford in his later years, and remember he was every bit as dreamy as Paul Rudd. (I love him too!) But there’s another truth to consider, when it comes to Wilford Brimley and COCOON…
He was wearing makeup!
Duh!
I’m not saying Wilford Brimley was a soft fifty. That guy looked like he’d seen some shit! But you’ve got to remember that he was younger than his costars. Don Ameche was born in 1908. He was a huge star in the 1930s. I recommend MIDNIGHT, a romantic comedy from 1939, when Wilford Brimley was five. Don Ameche was sort of the Paul Rudd of his day. Hume Cronyn, born in 1911, was a character actor and also a writer who worked a lot with Hitchcock, and Jessica Tandy, born in 1909, Cronyn’s wife in COCOON and in life, was a stage star in London and then a film actor who also worked with Hitchcock (in THE BIRDS). Maureen Stapleton, who played Brimley’s wife in COCOON, was born in 1925. A little closer to his age, but still, that’s a sugar mama.
So if you take nothing else away from this piece, always remember that the next time some internet weisenheimer puts up a side-by-side of Rudd and Brimley…
Remember that the guy on the right had a crew of professionals helping him look like he was in his eighties. Hollywood doesn’t only make people look younger, you know. They can work in reverse if the script calls for it. Although, again, the script for COCOON called for all kinds of wild shit.
HARD TARGET (1993)
Okay, so Wilford Brimley had to spend the 1980s playing older than his years. So what. Did any member of “The Brat Pack” get to make a movie with John Woo?
Brimley played the heavily-armed uncle to Chance Boudreaux, played by Jean-Claude Van Damme, and while I’d like to talk about the role, I’d also like anyone who hasn’t yet to go see it for themselves.
I’ll just share what is probably one of the greatest still frames in recent American movie history and leave it there. I promise, you’ll only want to see the movie more.
Thank you.
Thank you, John Woo.
Thank you, Wilford Brimley.
Thank you, horse.
Thank you, explosion.
Thank you, cinema.
IN & OUT (1997)
This is a movie that, one way or another, probably couldn’t be made today, but maybe that’s because we progressed just a little? No? Too hopeful? Here Wilford Brimley plays father to Kevin Kline, as the small-town schoolteacher who is outed on national TV. Debbie Reynolds plays the mother. Wilford Brimley was still serving somewhere in the Pacific Ocean when SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN was released, but at least she only two years older than he was. He’s not so much “the younger man” anymore.
I liked this movie. In the 1990s, America was still figuring out how to be more accepting of LGBTQ+ people, and while most of the cast and crew weren’t gay, the screenwriter was, so this film was just a little more honest and a little less patronizing than mainstream movies were at the time. Credit also to Wilford Brimley (and his character) for playing a small role in the battle for tolerance: I’m only assuming, but it’s a slightly educated assumption based on a very simple Google search, that Brimley may have been somewhat of a conservative guy. He didn’t have to take a part where he played approving dad to a middle-aged man newly out of the closet, but he did, and that’s not nothing.
“Not nothing” is maybe not a lot to ask, but that was often a lot better than it got in the 1990s. (Not that it’s all that much better now…)
Wilford Brimley departed this realm on August 1, 2020, a day when many Americans thought, “What the hell? He was only 85? How is that even possible?” I hope today we have solved that mystery, and honored the man’s work, and by all means, explore his filmography, because while it’s not as long as you might expect, it is filled with small gems of performances, from one of the most memorable character actors of the past century.
P.S.
Wilford Brimley got to take his shirt off in COCOON: THE RETURN. Dreams do come true.
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