American actor Henry Silva lived from September 15, 1926, to September 14, 2022. Silva was a popular character actor who frequently played criminals or gangsters in genre films from throughout the world. Ocean's 11 (1960), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Johnny Cool (1963), Sharky's Machine (1981), and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai are just a few of his famous film appearances (1999).
Content Details
- Career and early life
- Typecasting in early film roles
- The 1980s-2000s career
- Death
Henry Silva Career and Early Life
Silva, who has Sicilian and Spanish ancestry, was born in Brooklyn, New York City. He was raised in Harlem and dropped out of school at the age of 13 to enroll in acting classes. He then supported himself by working as a dishwasher and waiter in a Manhattan hotel. Silva was prepared to appear in an Actors Studio audition by 1955. He was welcomed. The play A Hatful of Rain by Michael V. Gazzo, which the Studio staged as a class project (and which itself grew out of an earlier improvisation by Silva, Paul Richards, and Anthony Franciosa based on a scene by Gazzo called "Pot"), proved to be so successful that it was presented on Broadway with students Ben Gazzara, Shelley Winters, Harry Guardino, along with Franciosa, Richards, and Silva in key roles. Silva participated in the play's movie adaptation as well.
Henry Silva Typecasting in Early Film Roles
In movies starring Gregory Peck, Gregory Scott, and others, such as The Law and Jake Wade and The Tall T (1957), Silva played a string of villains (1958). He portrayed Kua-Ko, a Venezuelan native who lives in the forest and plots to assassinate Audrey Hepburn's child character, in the 1959 action movie Green Mansions. Silva appeared in Ocean's 11, a 1960 Rat Pack caper movie starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter Lawford, and featuring eleven casino bandits. In addition, he appeared opposite Sinatra as the communist operative Chunjin in the 1962 version of The Manchurian Candidate and portrayed a Native American in the Rat Pack Western Sergeants 3 with Sinatra and Martin.
Silva's roles as mobster, robber, and other criminals came to be seen as typecast. He made a hitman appearance in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "Better Bargain" from 1956. Additionally, he played a mobster in the 1963 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour titled "An Out for Oscar." He did, however, perform a humorous role as one of the stepbrothers in the 1960 Cinderfella movie, a Cinderella parody starring Jerry Lewis. Additionally, he made appearances on episodes of The Untouchables, Rod Serling's Night Gallery, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Mission Impossible, and Boris Karloff's thriller series Thriller, in addition to two episodes of The Outer Limits.
Silva starred as the title character in the United Artists and Chrislaw-produced gangster movie Johnny Cool in 1963. Salvatore "Johnny Cool" Giordano, a hitman employed by Johnny Colini, an exiled gangster, was tasked with assassinating the organized crime figures who had conspired against the mobster. The movie, which had its premiere on October 19, 1963, was warmly received by audiences and critics.
The actor's debut main performance, which is said to have carried the movie, was also well-received by critics. Elizabeth Montgomery, Mort Sahl, Telly Savalas, Jim Backus, Joey Bishop, and Sammy Davis, Jr. make up the supporting cast; however, the most of their characters were killed off by Johnny Cool during the course of the movie. Henry Silva, a Sicilian-born assassin, is at home as the "delivery boy of death," Variety said in a review of his performance. By late November, the movie's box office earnings had decreased (in part because of President John F. Kennedy's passing).
When an Italian film producer offered Silva the chance to play a hero for a change in 1965, he moved his family abroad. The Hills Run Red (1966), a spaghetti western, was Silva's pivotal film and turned him become a sought-after box office draw in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. He appeared in or co-starred in at least 25 films between 1966 and 1977, the most of which were Italian Poliziotteschi productions. He typically portrayed the bad guy or hitman, the dark hero, or a combination of the two. Of these, Manhunt (1972), Il Boss (1973), and Almost Human (1984) are the most well-known (1974).
In the 1965 murder mystery The Return of Mr. Moto as the Japanese detective Mr. Moto and in the 1970 revenge western Five Savage Men as an Apache who helps Michele Carey, a rape survivor, he also made an unusual appearance. When he returned to the nation in the middle of the 1970s, he co-starred in the films Love and Bullets with Charles Bronson and Contract on Cherry Street with Frank Sinatra (1979). Then he became Killer Kane, the antagonist, in the cast of Buck Rogers in the 25th century (1979).
Henry Silva Career
He played the haughty hunter Colonel Brock in Alligator (1980), a drug-addled hitman in Burt Reynolds' Sharky's Machine (1981), a former prison warden turned enforcer in Escape from the Bronx (1983), which was parodied on Mystery Science Theater 3000, a comedic gangster in Cannonball Run II (1984) alongside many of his former Rat Pack friends, the villainous CIA agent Kurt Zagon in Steven Seagal's (1998).
In the comedy Amazon Women on the Moon (1987), Silva also played himself in a parody of In Search of...-style shows for a piece dubbed Henry Silva's "Bullshit, or Not!" He also appeared as a spectator at a boxing event in the 2001 remake of Ocean's Eleven. He made a contribution to Mike Malloy's 2012 feature-length documentary, Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films that Ruled the 1970s.
Henry Silva Death
One day before turning 96, Silva passed away at the Motion Picture & Television Fund residence in Los Angeles on September 14, 2022.
Conclusion
At the peak of his career, Henry Silva acted in films such as Paani Da Masti, Qurbani, and Tragedy. He was also a part of TV shows like Super Dilruba and Kalpana. Due to his immense talent and hard work, Henry Silva has been able to establish himself as one of the most popular actors of all time. Not only that, but he has also won numerous awards for his amazing acting skills including two National Film Awards and four Filmfare Awards. Since then, no other actor can match up to Henry Silva’s success story.
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