norman lloyd

Norman Lloyd
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Norman Lloyd
Born November 8, 1914 (1914-11-08) (age 93)
Jersey City, New Jersey
Norman Lloyd (born November 8, 1914) is an American veteran actor, producer and director with a career in entertainment spanning more than seven decades. Lloyd has appeared in over 60 films and television shows. Lloyd is married and resides in Los Angeles.

Contents
1 Career
1.1 Theatre
1.2 Film acting
1.3 Postwar career
2 Filmography
3 External links



[edit] Career

[edit] Theatre
Lloyd was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. He attended high school and college in New York City and began his acting career in theater, first at Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre in New York then joining the original company of the Orson Welles-John Houseman Mercury Theatre. Lloyd had a significant role with the first Mercury Theatre production as Cinna the poet, in Julius Caesar (1937). The death of Cinna had great resonance with the audience because of the political events of the day combined with the set, lighting and costume design referencing the fascist threats of the time. The audience applauded for an astounding three minutes after the mob descends on Cinna for no reason other than his name is Cinna. [1] The 1938 Broadway role, playing Johnny Appleseed in "Everywhere I Roam," was selected as one of the ten best Broadway performances of the year.


[edit] Film acting
Lloyd came to Hollywood to play a supporting part in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942), starting a long friendship and professional association with Hitchcock. As the villainous Nazi spy "Fry", Lloyd got to fall off the Statue of Liberty in the film's climactic ending.

After a few more villainous film roles, Lloyd also worked behind the camera as an assistant on Lewis Milestone's Arch of Triumph (1948). A friend of John Garfield, he appeared with him in He Ran All the Way, Garfield's last film before the Hollywood blacklist ended his film career.


[edit] Postwar career
A marginal victim of the blacklist, Lloyd was rescued professionally by Hitchcock, who had previously used the actor in Saboteur and Spellbound. Hitchcock made Lloyd an associate producer and a director on the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1958.

He continued directing and producing episodic television throughout the 1960s and 1970s, being the first-season producer of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected in 1979. In the 1980s, Lloyd played Dr. Auschlander in the TV drama St. Elsewhere (1982) for six seasons. His numerous TV guest-star appearances include Murder, She Wrote, The Twilight Zone, Wiseguy, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Wings, The Practice, Seven Days and Civil Wars.

Lloyd's most recent part was in the film In Her Shoes (2005). He is the subject of the documentary, Who is Norman Lloyd?,released
Who are these guys?
Two guys from Brooklyn, two movies, two similar titles, two bare-bones releases.

You've seen Norman Lloyd. He played Dr. Auschlander in the 1980s series "St. Elsewhere" and, for those who remember farther back, the villain in the 1942 Alfred Hitchcock film "Saboteur."

You've heard Harry Nilsson. He hit No. 1 in 1972 with his song "Without You," and had a few other hits, including a version of Fred Neil's "Everybody's Talkin' " and his own "Coconut," which was later borrowed for a soft drink commercial.

Neither Lloyd, who's still kicking at 93, nor Nilsson, who died in 1994 at age 53, are the kinds of people who pop up in everyday conversation, but both had fascinating lives -- and both have been celebrated in movies. If you can find those movies, that is.

The Nilsson film, "Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him)?," actually came out in 2006 but is still awaiting a distributor. It's only been shown at a handful of festivals, though it would seem a natural for DVD or cable (or both). (More information can be found at whoisharrynilsson.com; an e-mail to the filmmakers is awaiting a response.)

Nilsson had a beautiful voice and was a brilliant, eclectic songwriter ... which probably prevented his albums from reaching a wider audience. (One of his funniest songs, "You're Breaking My Heart," uses the F-word so casually I do a double take every time I hear it.) But despite his rich life, he's too often a footnote to other people's biographies: he was often with John Lennon during Lennon's "lost weekend" around 1974, and it was in his apartment that both Mama Cass Elliot and Keith Moon died. He deserves more recognition than that.

A documentary on Lloyd, "Who Is Norman Lloyd?", recently opened in New York. Lloyd's career stretches back to the 1930s, when he acted with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre company. He passed on a role in "Citizen Kane" and instead joined up with Hitchcock, who cast him in "Saboteur" and "Spellbound." Hitchcock also rescued him from the blacklist, making him the producer of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." Lloyd's still acting in his 90s, having appeared as a professor in 2005's "In Her Shoes."

With everything else out there, it would be nice if both films could find a wider audience. Their subjects deserve no less.hard to know where to begin admiring the subject of "Who Is Norman Lloyd?," a documentary about the veteran actor, director and producer.


More About This Movie
Overview Tickets & Showtimes New York Times Review Cast, Credits & Awards Readers' Reviews Skip to next paragraph
For starters there's the résumé. Mr. Lloyd, who was born in 1914, has been a member of Orson Welles and John Houseman's Mercury Theater company, the producer of the American stage production of Bertolt Brecht's "Galileo" (starring Charles Laughton), a friend and tennis partner of Charlie Chaplin, a star of Alfred Hitchcock's thriller "Saboteur" and the show runner for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," a resister of the Hollywood blacklist and a regular on television's "St. Elsewhere."



On top of that Mr. Lloyd has been happily married to the same woman, the actress Peggy Lloyd, since 1936, still acts in everything from Hollywood features to student films and is a tennis fanatic. (He plays singles and doubles on screen with much younger partners; when he serves, the ball goes "thwop.")



The documentary's director, Matthew Sussman, has made a valentine to a show business legend. But luckily this is a rare case in which the subject is, by consensus, such an accomplished man and decent fellow that the director can't be accused of overdoing it.



Mr. Lloyd played Cinna the poet in the Mercury Theater's 1937 version of "Julius Caesar" so movingly that he all but defined that production. In 1940 he followed Welles out to Los Angeles to act in his version of "Heart of Darkness," which collapsed before filming could begin. Wary of being disappointed twice, Mr. Lloyd declined to participate in Welles's next project, "Citizen Kane," but rebounded with the title role in "Saboteur" (which is being shown by Film Forum on a double bill with this documentary). He went on to act in Hitchcock's "Spellbound," then took a job with the production company of the director Lewis Milestone ("All Quiet on the Western Front").



Mr. Lloyd admits that although he was grateful to Milestone for giving him filmmaking experience and elevating him and Ms. Lloyd on Hollywood's social ladder, the best thing about knowing Milestone was that it let him get close to Chaplin, Jean Renoir and, most of all, Hitchcock.



After Mr. Lloyd landed on the blacklist for refusing to identify alleged Communists, he was unemployed for many years, dependent on the kindness of friends like Mr. Houseman, who let the Lloyds stay at one of his homes virtually rent free. Hitchcock returned him to employability, insisting in 1957 that Mr. Lloyd be hired as a producer on his CBS series. When Mr. Lloyd speaks on camera of his blacklist experience, his voice quakes and his eyes well up.



One of the documentary's intriguing aspects is its subtle depiction of a man building and sustaining his image over a lifetime.



Mr. Lloyd, who is interviewed throughout and serves as the movie's de facto storyteller, has a fairy tale narrator's voice, with an East Coast "society" cadence one rarely hears anymore except in old movies. He was actually born in Jersey City and raised in Brooklyn; at one point he lets the accent slip so we can hear what he sounded like before the elocution studies took hold.



Here and there, though, we get the sense of a Norman Lloyd who is earthier and scrappier than the sweet raconteur showcased on screen, as when Mr. Lloyd goes to visit his old friend Karl Malden, 95, and stops just short of affectionately calling Mr. Malden an unprintable epithet on camera.



The short documentary (just over an hour) opens with the television producer Tom Fontana, who was a writer on "St. Elsewhere," describing Mr. Lloyd as a combination of Peter Pan and Father Time, and it's hard to disagree. Above all else "Who Is Norman Lloyd?" is an inspiring film about growing old, emphasis on "growing."



WHO IS NORMAN LLOYD?



Opens today in Manhattan.



Directed by Matthew Sussman; director of photography, Arthur S. Africano; edited by Ray Hubley; produced by Joseph Scarpinito and Michael Badalucco; released by Journeymen Films. At the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of the Avenue of the