Fred Ward, In Memoriam: The Multi-Talented Actor Was An Onscreen Everyman, But Also A Lot More

How many Hollywood leading men are sufficiently divested of vanity that they would not only play a character who gets his dentures stolen, but then subsquently spend a good portion of their screen time gumming it up trying to retrieve them? Probably not many to begin with, but sadly, that number went down by one today. Hell, who are we kidding? Fred Ward, who died today at age 79, was probably the ONLY Hollywood leading man who has done such a thing. 

The movie in question was 1990’s Miami Blues. The character Ward played was the grizzled, denture-wearing cop Hoke Moseley, and the guy who purloined his dentures was a stone psychopath named Junior. Ward produced the picture, too, having been bowled over by Charles Willeford’s first of four (published) Hoke Moseley novels. (Funny story: after making a big splash with the first Moseley book, Willeford penned a sequel in which the hero turns horrible murderer. His agent talked him down and WIlleford produced three more excellent Moseley yarns, and the unpublished perverse one remains a bootleg lit favorite.) When Ward attained the property, he was of a mind to play the flashily crazy Junior. But the studio, according to Ward, wanted “young blood” for the part, and so the villain role went to the then 32-year-old Alec Baldwin, who indeed delivered a manic, memorable performance. A perfect counter to what Ward brought to the part of Hoke: a laconic but focused demeanor reflective of a character whose fatalism isn’t going to interfere with his tracking down Junior and getting his teeth back. (Ward’s original idea, by the way, was to have Gene Hackman play Hoke to Ward’s Junior.) 

Miami Blues wasn’t a hit, but it ought to have been, and it’s developed a well-earned cult following over the years. Ward was almost 50 when he made it. His road to that movie was a bit off the beaten path. He did time in the Air Force, as a lumberjack, and as a boxer — that lumpy, crooked nose of his was a take-home from that last gig. His acting studies brought him to New York and then to Rome. In Italy he did voice work, dubbing Italian pictures into English, and he acted for the great Roberto Rossellini. He plays a Venetian in Florence in Rossellini’s 1972 docudrama The Age of Medici, the first (and I think only) time he ever portrayed a dandy. Ward spoke his dialogue in English (Italian movies were post-dubbed in this era of filmmaking) but definitely sold his glib character. On return to the States, it took him a while to establish himself as a character actor par excellence. A turn opposite Clint Eastwood, in the superb 1979 Escape From Alcatraz — one of the best prison break films ever — put him on the map, and a slew of supporting roles in mostly excellent pictures by distinctive directors got him into a groove. 

To wit: the intense, brutal Southern Comfort for Walter Hill, in which Ward plays a reluctant warrior in a soldiers-versus-Cajuns standoff. The Right Stuff, based on Tom Wolfe’s groundbreaking book, for Phillip Kaufman, playing blunt astronaut Gus Grissom. Silkwood for Mike Nichols, playing a union activist working with the film’s title whistleblower, played by Meryl Streep. Swing Shift for Jonathan Demme, playing a WWII era nightclub manager.

That latter movie had a rough time in post-production, with star Goldie Hawn clashing with Demme over creative differences. For Ward, though, working with Demme was a great experience, and when he put Miami Blues in motion, Demme was his director of choice, as Ward told the Los Angeles Times. At that point in time, Demme had difficulty in relating to the material, so while overseeing script rewrites he recommended passing the directorial baton to George Armitage, a friend that Demme had come up with through the Roger Corman school of B-pictures. And they made a crime movie masterpiece. 

It should be noted that Ward, at the time, had all his own teeth. He had to wear a gummy prosthetic for the scenes where he’s denture-less. You’d never know it though, such is Ward’s commitment.

Ward had the kind of stardom one imagines a lot of other higher-celebrity-profile actors would envy. He was married three times, but you never read about any of his unions in the gossip columns. He wasn’t stalked by paparazzi; and when he gave interviews, it was to promote a movie, not for the sake of a personality profile. 

In those interviews, he proved consistently thoughtful. Another film he made in 1990, reuniting him with director Philip Kaufman, was Henry and June, a biographical study of roughneck writer Henry Miller and his wife June and mistress Anais Nin. Ward had discovered Miller’s book Tropic of Cancer during his pre-stardom wanderings and was immediately taken with the author’s spontaneity — in writing and in life. “People are burdened down by their futures, their jobs, their accumulating,” Ward told The Washington Post. “Everyone says, ‘I wish I could do that, just take off, experiment with life over and over again.’ [Miller] was 40 when he took that big leap. Most people are digging themselves deeper into their structures. He was a man who knew he had to follow that inner urge, the creativity and the passion. Or he would die bitter.”

Through acting, Ward did experiment with life over and over again, and he was a performer who always understood the assignment. Often in his career the assignment was not too serious, and he met it appropriately. He’s still a delight as a New York cop forced into an International Man of Mystery job in 1985’s Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, which ought to have been a franchise — Popeye Doyle meets Indiana Jones. Another Ward classic is Tremors, also from 1990 (imagine a year in which you appear in this AND Henry and June AND Miami Blues), the unique scary/funny sci-fi horror in which Ward and Kevin Bacon take on giant worms. And don’t forget the overt parody of his broad-shouldered bad guy Rocco Dillon in The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult. Before industry changes steered him to the sort-of pasture of supporting patriarchal roles in studio comedies, romantic or otherwise (Sweet Home Alabama on one hand, Joe Dirt on the other), Ward also did two films with maverick Robert Altman during the latter’s own filmmaking renaissance: The Player (1992) and Short Cuts (’93). The TV work of the 2000s was good — United States of Tara and True Detective. But the fact that the feature film work had dried up said more about the state of Hollywood moviemaking than of Ward’s talent. He will be missed, just as much as the kinds of movies he made are.

Veteran critic Glenn Kenny reviews‎ new releases at RogerEbert.com, the New York Times, and, as befits someone of his advanced age, the AARP magazine. He blogs, very occasionally, at Some Came Running and tweets, mostly in jest, at @glenn__kenny. He is the author of the acclaimed 2020 book Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas, published by Hanover Square Press.