He influenced hundreds of films and started the careers of strangers, including Dustin Hoffman, Christopher Reeve, LaVar Burton and Ned Beatty.
Lynn Stalmaster, the savvy casting director who pushed relative strangers to Dustin Hoffman The graduate, Christopher Reeve for Superman and John Travolta for Welcome back, Cutter, has passed away. He was 93.
Stalmaster, who became the first casting director in history to receive an Academy Award at the Governors Awards in November 2016, died Friday morning at his home in Los Angeles, said Laura Adler of the Casting Society of America The Hollywood Reporter
After accepting his honorary Oscar, Stalmaster said the key to his success was an open mind. “’Open’ is one of my favorite words,” he noted. Because, as I have said so many times, you never know where or when you will find the answer [to casting a part]And I’ve found the answer in some really strange places. “
To Norman Jewison’s The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), the robbery classic starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway Stalmaster became the first casting director to receive a single-card credit in the titles.
“In the main titles, my name was on a separate card: ‘Casting by Lynn Stalmaster ‘ … It was one of the most moving moments of my life, ”the one-time actor recalled Selection by …, the 2012 documentary directed by Tom Donahue.
Hollywood for years refused to recognize the integral role of casting directors Stalmaster and its legendary east coast counterpart, Marion Dougherty. Said director Taylor Hackford in the documentary: “The reality is that you are not a director; you’re a casting, uh, person, you ‘cast by’ …
Nicknamed ‘The Master Caster’, Stalmaster has listed over 400 casting credits on IMDb, with too many highlights to list, including I want to live! (1958), Taking over the wind (1960), The great escape (1963), The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming (1966), In the middle of the night (1967), They shoot horses, don’t they? (1969), Harold and Maude (1971), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The onion field (1979), Tootsie (1982), Nine 1/2 weeks (1986), The bonfire of the vanities (1990) and Battlefield Earth (2000).
Over the course of his remarkable six-decade career, the lovable Stalmaster Found new faces and thrown against the type consistently. “Never compromise,” he said at the Governors Awards, “regardless of the size of a role, even if it is just a response.”
For John Boorman’s Salvation (1972), Stalmaster put on a casting at a Georgia elementary school and found Billy Redden to play the wayward boy in the movie’s famous banjo scene. And he suggested that Ned Beatty (who is making his screen debut) play one of the businessmen who take that fateful canoe trip down the river.
Stalmaster also played an important role in William’s career Shatner Judgment in NurembergDiscovered Take Burton, then a sophomore at USC, for ABC’s signature miniseries RootsCast country singer Mac Davis to play a professional quarterback North Dallas Forty (1979); and insisted that eventual Oscar nominee Sam Shepard play Chuck Yeager in 1983 The good stuff (“It’s the only time I thought the movie couldn’t be made without a specific actor,” he once said). He cast more than 100 roles for that movie alone.
Stalmaster saw “an innate sense of truth” in Jeff Bridges and cast the in your twenties actor (and youngest son of Lloyd Bridges) in his first movie, Halls of Anger (1970). He came back to him The Iceman is coming (1973), and Bridges’ experience with that film convinced him to make acting his career.
“I must thank you, man, for guiding me down that road, ”Bridges said at the Governors Awards.
Stalmaster took notes of every actor he saw and saved them, knowing there might be a more appropriate part one day. ‘I want to look into their eyes. That’s the key, ”he said THR‘s Scott Feinberg in 2014. He frequently visited New York stages in search of new talent; there he met a skinny Reeve for the first time.
“I saw him in a New York play with Katharine Hepburn,” he said Back Stage magazine in 2013. “I got him out of the closet [to Los Angeles] to play a small role Gray lady downThen, of course, he popped into my mind when [director] Richard Donner said, “We can’t find Superman.” ”
Stalmaster Have Travolta try out for Hal Ashby’s The last detail (1973), but then Randy Quaid got the role of young Navy inmate Meadows (on his way to an Oscar nomination), arranged for Travolta to audition for the ABC sitcom Welcome back, Cutter, which kick-started his career.
“Lynn gave me the support that I could play anything,” said Travolta.
Stalmaster brought the unknown theater actor Hoffman to the attention of director Mike Nichols The graduate (1967), and he got Richard Dreyfuss a line (headed for the lead in 1974 The apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz) also in the movie.
“You feel an elusive quality in some actors. You cannot explain it. You just feel that there is something special here, something magical, ” Stalmaster said.
The son of a lawyer, Stalmaster was born on November 17, 1927 in Omaha, Nebraska. After he and his family moved to LA, he attended Beverly Hills High School and UCLA, where he earned a master’s degree in theater arts. He started out as an actor and appeared in such films as The steel helmet (1951) written and directed by Samuel Fuller, ed Flying Leathernecks (1951), starring John Wayne.
As a backup plan, Stalmaster worked as an assistant to a few producers and was asked to cast their shows after their casting director retired. He became independent a few years later and cast the detective series The lonely wolf and the legendary CBS Western GunsmokeHe would be listed as the casting director of over 300 episodes from the latter to 1964.
Stalmaster also cast the director for TV shows like My living doll The untouchables Have Gun – will travel Ben Casey My favorite Martian Hogan’s Heroes Three’s Company Family and Heart to Heart
“Lynn has given me and my entire generation the chance to dream that we can make a difference or matter,” actor Bruce Dern said at the Governors Awards. “He saw some kind of light in our eyes or something. He dared us to go to the edge, dared us to take parts that no one else would take.
“I remember John Frankenheimer telling me while we were at it [1977’s] Black Sunday, ‘If you have Lynn Stalmaster to cast your movie, you have a damn good chance at a good movie. ”