Richard Crenna Body Heat (1981)
Richard Crenna (November 30, 1926 – January 17, 2003) played Edmund Walker in Body Heat (1981) — Matty's wealthy husband and Ned's victim. The performance is a controlled study in friendly menace: Crenna delivers the film's most important warning to Ned, in plain language, and watches Ned not hear it.
Crenna had been working since 1944
Crenna had been a working actor for nearly forty years when Body Heat came out. He started on radio (Our Miss Brooks, The Great Gildersleeve), moved to television (The Real McCoys, 1957–63; Slattery's People, 1964–65), and crossed to film in the 1960s — The Sand Pebbles (1966), Wait Until Dark (1967), The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), Marooned (1969), Catlow (1971). By 1981 he was the kind of actor casting directors call when the part has to be played by someone the audience already trusts. (wikipedia)
The Pinehaven dinner is the warning Ned cannot hear
Edmund Walker has one substantial scene — the dinner at the Pinehaven restaurant where Ned joins him and Matty — and a handful of shorter beats. The dinner scene is the film's structural rhyme. Edmund tells Ned, in plain language, that he would kill any guy he caught with his wife, and segues into a story about people who want to get rich quick but aren't willing "to do what's necessary. Whatever is necessary."b16 The line will return ninety minutes later in Ned's mouth, in a prison library.
Crenna plays the scene with a deliberate friendliness that lets Ned hear it as small talk. The menace is in the cadence and the eye contact, not in the volume. Roger Ebert singled out the choice:
"Crenna's Edmund Walker is the kind of villain you only realize was a villain when the film is over. He tells the lawyer everything he needs to know about his wife at dinner, and the lawyer thinks it's a chat. The performance is built on Crenna trusting that the audience will catch what the lawyer doesn't." — Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com (Great Movies, 2002)
Crenna had to play a man who would die in act two
Edmund is murdered around the 57-minute mark. Crenna's challenge was to make the character vivid enough that the audience misses him — and recognizes him in Matty's later behavior — for the next 56 minutes.
"Richard Crenna gives a performance of contained warmth that sets up the rest of the picture. You spend the second half remembering things he said. That's hard. Most actors playing the husband don't bother." — Vincent Canby, The New York Times (1981)
After Body Heat
Crenna's career continued through three decades after Body Heat. He played Colonel Trautman opposite Sylvester Stallone in the Rambo films (1982, 1985, 1988), won an Emmy for the TV miniseries The Rape of Richard Beck (1985), and worked steadily until shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer in 2003.
| Year | Film | Role | Director |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1966 | The Sand Pebbles | Captain Collins | Robert Wise |
| 1967 | Wait Until Dark | Mike Talman | Terence Young |
| 1981 | Body Heat | Edmund Walker | Lawrence Kasdan |
| 1982 | First Blood | Colonel Sam Trautman | Ted Kotcheff |
| 1985 | Rambo: First Blood Part II | Trautman | George P. Cosmatos |
| 1988 | Rambo III | Trautman | Peter MacDonald |
| 1993 | Hot Shots! Part Deux | Walters | Jim Abrahams |
| 1994 | Jade | Governor Edwards | William Friedkin |