If you have watched the Alfred Hitchcock movie, Saboteur, set in the war times of World War II, you “have to remember” seeing a “villain, dangling from the Statue of Liberty,” at the climax—and surely you were cheering or grimacing! If you have not seen this movie, YOU ARE MISSING SOMETHING! Lloyd (the villain) does a backflip that leaves him hanging onto and over the edge of the statue, and the star of the movie, Robert Cummings, loses grip of his sports coat as the seams split apart oneby-one until the “bad guy” falls to his death!
Lloyd recalled that, while working on a documentary years and years later down in Battery Park so that the Statue of Liberty would be behind the people being interviewed, he noticed an “old guy” continuing to watch from the edge until finally saying, “Hey, you, didn’t you fall off that thing about 60 years ago?” The point being made by his recollection was that (a little bit in my own words), “Pictures make people and things live on and on.”
Norman Lloyd, who portrayed this villain, passed on in his home at age 106 years early in May of this year, and the world lost a consummate, could do all things, one-of-a-kind actor, who makes many of us viewers say, “Those were the good ‘ol days.” He was also a producer and director.
This actor “ran around with” Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Charlie Chaplin, John Houseman, Robin Williams, Denzel Washington, and many other “wellknowns” just to name a few.
November 8, 1914, to May 11, 2021, marks his life, and his professional career began in approximately 1923, as he went on to work in every major area of the entertainment industry, with a “feature film” debut in Saboteur in 1942. Leading to this had been the role of “Cinna” in the Welles (Mercury Theatre) 1937 production of Julius Caesar, a renowned event. 1945 saw him in Spellbound, and in 1952, he was given a supporting role (Bodalink) in Chaplin’s Limelight, the final American-made film for this legendary director.
The 1950s saw Lloyd, a liberal politically, with his career in jeopardy as a result of the “Hollywood Blacklist Period,” but Hitchcock rescued him by insisting that he become his Associate Producer for Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1957. This led to his eventual job as Executive Producer for a later production, called The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Moving on, he took on an unusual role alongside Sondra Locke in Night Gallery, and in 1978 he had a part in the movie, FM, as the owner of a Los Angeles radio station undergoing a mutiny…..
…..1989 saw Norman Lloyd as Mr. Nolan in Dead Poets Society and Mr. Letterblair in the Age of Innocence in 1993. As an actor, he appeared in more than 60 films and television shows.
And let me not forget to mention that he played the starring role of DR. DANIEL AUSCHLANDER in the television “medical drama” by the title of St. Elsewhere.
Lloyd, deservedly so, was the subject of a 2007 documentary, Who Is Norman Lloyd? In 2010, he gueststarred in the modern television show, Modern Family, and he also did theatre work in the Colony Theatre in Burbank, California.
On October 25th, this “active-to-the-end” phenom attended Game 2 of the World Series in Los Angeles at the age of “102 years young,” and at the age of 11 years, 91 years earlier, he had attended Game 1 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium! He still played tennis past 100 years of age!
I find it appropriate that he died in his sleep, and I hope it was while he was dreaming of those baseball games and those times working with Alfred Hitchcock!
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