Obituaries

Ned Beatty, Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Donner

Ned Beatty

This fine actor played a variety of roles over the years. Of course, Ned Beatty portrayed the bumbling sidekick to the villain in Richard Donner’s culturally transformative film Superman: The Movie in 1978. He also played the lead in his own comedy series for television. In a performance for a part which was ahead of its time, he played a mediocrity in a memorable monologue in Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 satire, Network. He played the unsympathetic river rafter in Deliverance. And he was the title character’s unsympathetic steelworker father in 1993’s excellent Rudy.

In each performance, Ned Beatty is convincing. It’s an actor’s highest compliment: that he plays the part. From a moron in a comic book movie to a knowingly sinister secondhand business executive, Ned Beatty made every second of his performance believable. In terms of range, my favorite role is as Rudy’s dad, who goes from being horrible to supportive father—even if it’s really too late for his son—and he’s equally impressive in Deliverance. Both roles require that Beatty exhibit a major shift in his character after an extremely shocking change of life. It’s best to simply say that the late Ned Beatty pitched the perfect performance.

Donald Rumsfeld

Rumsfeld, who started his career as my congressman in suburban Chicago, represents the ultimate Washington man. He went on to become a pharmaceutical executive in Chicagoland. He was chiefly a government worker in various capacities, including as President Ford’s chief of staff. He became defense secretary twice and part of his record is the abysmal deployment of American troops in the Middle East for mindless military interventions without purpose. Rumsfeld recently died. 

Donald Rumsfeld—affectionately known by his admirers as “Rummy”— projected competence and command when, in fact, he didn’t know what he was doing or why. Nearly everyone in the country accepted the facade. Certainly, including such venerated figures as Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, most Washington types accepted what Rumsfeld did. 

Monstrously and memorably, he was wrong in nearly every decision he made in the wake of the worst attack in American history 20 years ago this fall. I once met him at an event in Southern California. It was a cordial encounter after he delivered a forgettable, equivocal foreign policy themed speech. The event’s audience was friendly. So he had no reason to be especially cautious or guarded. Yet these are the two qualities with which I will always associate him during the encounter.

The squinty-eyed mistrust of everything around him is how I remember him. I can’t think of a single accomplishment during his career that really advanced America’s interest or made America great. But thousands and thousands and thousands of murdered and dead Americans are to his shame. There’s some evidence that he felt bad about the mass death during his defense watch. I can’t say whether he did. I can only say that he should have. Above all, besides the friendly fire death and military coverup of America’s patriotic Army Ranger Pat Tillman, that the third passenger jet struck the Pentagon, the military nerve center for the defense of the United States of America — with military defense as the highest purpose of the American republic’s state — is forever to his discredit. I’ll let historians puzzle out the details.

Richard Donner

This movie director made many films during his career. He directed episodes for television, too, including for such esteemed series as The Rifleman and Kojak. He made good movies which were also entertaining. These include his last film, which I reviewed for a movie website, 16 Blocks starring Bruce Willis. He also directed Conspiracy Theory with Julia Roberts and Mel Gibson, which dramatizes that the much-maligned phrase, conspiracy theory, historically, pivotally and crucially can prove to be true—an idea which is relevant now. He made a beautiful and interesting film (which doesn’t totally succeed) featuring an uncredited narration by Tom Hanks about boyhood called Radio Flyer. It’s an absorbing movie about fantasy, reality and the power of a child’s imagination to overcome trauma.

Richard Donner, who recently died in Los Angeles at the age of 91, probably deserves to be best remembered for his milestone 1978 motion picture, Superman: The Movie. I’ll grant that most reading this have probably seen the movie. It’s long and dramatic. It’s mixed in many respects, alternately bitter and optimistic. It’s bold, colorful and extremely suspenseful and it’s surprisingly emotional, not exclusively due to the outstanding leading performance by Christopher Reeve in the title role. 

But, like 1977’s Star Wars, the movie marks our culture. It was released during one of America’s lowest points in the wake of the Vietnam War defeat, Watergate, inflation, skyrocketing interest rates and long lines at the gas station due to the incompetence of government officials destroying the American economic system, capitalism, with the military-welfare state. Superman was a realistic and romantic injection of Americanism—which is to say optimism, rationality and the conviction that “truth, justice and the American way” are an objective affirmation of life.