Alan Arkin, who won the best supporting actor Oscar for his role as the foul-mouthed grandfather with a penchant for snorting heroin in Little Miss Sunshine, died on June 29. He was 89 years old.
Arkin’s career in show business spanned over seven decades, beginning in 1950 as a singer and guitarist in the folk music group The Tarriers. The group had two hits, including “Cindy Oh Cindy” and their version of “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song).”
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He made the shift to acting when he became an early member of the famous Second City comedy troupe in Chicago. In 1961, Arkin made his Broadway debut as a performer in From the Second City. Two years later, he appeared on Broadway as David Kolowitz in Joseph Stein’s comedic play Enter Laughing. While the play received mixed reviews, Arkin’s performance earned him the Tony Award for best featured actor in a play.
Alan Wolf Arkin was born on March 26, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York. His father, David, was a painter, and his mother, Beatrice, was a teacher. Raised in a secular Jewish household, the Arkin family moved to Los Angeles when Alan was 11. In a 2006 interview, he recounted how his family spent much time with folk musicians, including Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, and Leadbelly, who were likely influences on his musical career.
Following a short stint as a set designer, David took on a role as a teacher in the Los Angeles public school system. During the Red Scare, the Los Angeles Board of Education fired David and five other teachers for refusing to answer questions about possible affiliation with the Communist Party. The board did not clear his name for 28 years, by which point the elder Arkin had died. Alan says the experience and his parents’ moral sense became part of his work during his career.
In 1966, Arkin made the move to feature films, starring in the Cold War comedy The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming alongside Carl Reiner and Eva Marie Saint. It earned Arkin one of four Academy Award nominations and a BAFTA nomination for most promising newcomer. In 1969, Arkin received his second Oscar nomination for his role as John Singer, a deaf man in the film The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, Arkin performed in various genres in film and television. He also turned to theater directing, earning a Tony Award nomination for the Broadway production of Neil Simon’s play The Sunshine Boys. In 1992, Arkin starred with Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, and Alec Baldwin in the film adaptation of David Mamet’s play Glengarry Glen Ross. Surrounded by a cast with characters who shouted, snapped, and cursed with abandon, Arkin’s character of George Aaronow was more reserved and quiet, dealing with the inner turmoil of losing his job. Arkin pulls it off deftly, using his comic timing to render very dramatic moments quite funny.
That same comic timing was on display in the 2006 film Little Miss Sunshine. In it, Arkin plays Edwin Hoover, the grandfather who is along for a dysfunctional family road trip on the way to a beauty pageant. Edwin, having been recently evicted from a retirement home for heroin use, has no verbal filter, creating uncomfortable but uproariously funny moments. Arkin earned this third Oscar nomination and first win, taking home the award for best supporting actor. In 2012, he earned his fourth Academy Award nomination for the wise-cracking Hollywood producer Lester Siegel in the movie Argo. Though based on a true story, Siegel’s character was a composite, giving Arkin room to lend levity to a movie about the extraction of six Americans from Iran, controlled by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1980. Arkin’s final significant role was in the Netflix comedy The Kominsky Method, where he starred alongside Michael Douglas as two aging professionals in the acting business.
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Arkin was married three times. He had two sons, Adam and Matthew (both actors). He is survived by his third wife, psychotherapist Suzanne Newlander.
When accepting the Oscar for best supporting actor, Arkin said of his craft, “Acting for me has always been, and will always be, a team sport. I cannot work at all unless I feel a spirit of unity around me.”
Jay Caruso is a writer and editor residing in West Virginia.
