
What is it that keeps some actors trapped on the small screen only--stars of the medium, series television favorites for decades, skilled performers commanding respect from many and adulation from still more, yet blithely ignored by Hollywood?
Some varied examples... Clint Eastwood started in TV with not much future, but went to Europe to play a silent gunslinger and returned a triple-threat star (actor, director, composer of film music). Clint and the spaghetti Westerns were a perfect match, but most other "oater" actors rode no further than your living room; even wry and steady James Garner is remembered more for his series roles and TV movies than as a comic "Support" actor.

Plum roles, or stereotyping that ignores skills; unexpected audience affection, or inexplicable rejection, or sudden smash-hit fame--these can make or break an actor regardless of talent. What, then, might be held to account for the major stardom and Hollywood credits denied sturdy, steadfast actor Tom Selleck--who just may have been television's top, quietly macho leading man for four decades, bigger and tougher than, say, fave male lead Harrison Ford,


But there are odd bits to acknowledge here. Selleck actually scored a major movie hit in '87 with Three Men and a Baby, and used his subsequent "juice" (Tom's word) to get the green-light for his (also successful)

Selleck back then was close to 6' 4' and in athletic trim, had played college basketball and then national-level volleyball, was handsome and tough, a tireless tower of strength (literally) who could also smolder in anger, becoming more dangerous the quieter he got. So why didn't moviegoers embrace his films? (Even his fun, mock-Indy movie, High Road to China, just barely got off the ground.)

The success of Quigley suggested a way forward--continue making Westerns, even if they were to premiere only on television--projects suited to his size and demeanor, his signature retro mustache and Second Amendment, gun-owner attitude. If dumbed-down, no-attention-span moviegoers had no use for all that Old School stuff, then, fine, he'd stick with the becouched and bemesmered older folks at home. And so, with Selleck starring and also serving as Executive Producer, there appeared at irregular intervals Ruby Jean and Joe, a fine modern-times story of rodeo and race (1996); Last Stand at Saber River, a tough tale dating from Elmore Leonard's early Western novels period (1997); Crossfire Trail, the third or fourth Louis L'Amour book that Tom took on (2001);

During that same period Selleck also tried his hand at Broadway (a new production of A Thousand Clowns, lost in the post-9/11 malaise); took a close-to-villain part in the courtroom drama Reversible Errors; and portrayed a sexy politician in the romantic comedy Running Mates, with Tom the hens-pecked candidate surrounded by ex-lovers with personal and political agendas!

As some of those roles suggest, the inescapable aging had begun. Tom was some thicker and some weighted down by time and circumstance. It was time to get down off the horses... and just then came the right circumstance too. CBS proposed that Selleck do a TV film or two based on the on-going Jesse Stone novels by Robert B. Parker, best known as author of the wiseass private eye series about Spenser and Susan and Hawk. His new character Stone was an older, tireder, hard-drinking ex-cop transplanted from Southern California to coastal Massachusetts--to a small town misnamed Paradise.

The first film, Stone Cold, proved a welcome success, so the network ordered a second, then a third, and so on; the Stone series has continued right up to the present, one film per year more or less, with Selleck also Executive Producing (lately co-scripting too) and the audience growing exponentially.

Just as I was every Friday night these past several months, savoring Selleck as Police Commissioner Frank Reagan, overseeing the massive New York City Police in the new high-ranking series Blue Bloods. The man at age 60 or so exudes decency, dignity, gravitas, ethical strength, perhaps greatness, and the actor portrays as well Frank's expansive love for, and careful attention to, the extended Reagan family, four generations of policemen, lawyers, spouses, grandchildren and others, that come to his house for dinner every Sunday--a Norman Rockwell scene that may be comical or argumentative or saddened by events. Meanwhile, back on the job, pater familias Tom is by turns witty, sometimes cagey, briskly all-business, cautious about political matters--but

Commissioner Reagan is a hell of a part, and the repeating role of Stone a career-maker. Good thing they've been entrusted to quietly extraordinary Tom Selleck... who maybe should stick with television roles after all.
7 comments:
Selleck doesn't have a big screen (& big PA system) voice-too squeaky.
Spoken like a true basso profundo with a falsett o' complaints! But the tenor of your argument strikes me as open to debate. You may represent an important subset of listeners (with proverbial big ears), but I hear an ordinary voice pitched in mid-range and seldom "raised" in anger or otherwise. Chacun a son ecoute. (And if you really want squeaks, try going up against The Sopranos. They've been known to resolve arguments without any hearing.)
I seldom represent an important subset-especially of listeners-and I note that the man is struggling along with a-what-8 figure income, while you can move the decimal point 5 places over for me. Nonetheless, I maintain that a snarl or a mumble seems to work better on the big screen.
No snarls or mumbles over at Su-Provizer Steve's excellent blog, suitably titled Brilliant Corners--enlightening, entertaining, enterprising, enthralling, entrepreneurial, and other en-crowd descriptives (but not encluding ensipid or enjurious). We'll just have to agree to disagree on this matter of Natural (Steve might ensist it's Un-Natural) Sellecktion; he says "Tomato," and I say "Tom matters." So who's got the juice?
Too squeaky? Absolutely not.
Will only kiss so much a.. to get the part? You bet.
He's a little bit too old for the part now, but I bet he could still do a great job of the "Tom Brash" character in my "Partners" novel. Make the character about 10 years older than he is in the book and Selleck could handle it just great.
Dave
www.dmmcgowan.blogspot.com
You've certainly piqued my curiosity; I'll check out your site and novel. Two things: Tom is certainly not known for being Brash (oh no, another pun); and Jesse Stone in Parker's early novels is late 30s, I believe, yet Selleck has no trouble convincing us of his "rightness" for the character and part. So a Tom Brash? Why not?
I think that Tom should continue concentrating on tv roles. We get to see him every week in Blue Bloods and that's good for us TS fans who just can't get enough of him. We can also look forward to another Jesse movie even though it's only one per year. After all, we fell in love with his Thomas Magnum character when we got to see him once a week for eight years.
Post a Comment