Leo Gordon
Birthday:
2 December 1922, New York City, New York, USA
Birth Name:
Leo Vincent Gordon
Height:
188 cm
Big, burly, character actor, one of the toughest of screen heavies, Leo Gordon's powerful physique, combined with his deep, menacing voice, was guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of even the bravest screen hero. Director Don Siegel, who used Gordon in his prison film Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), once said that "Leo Gordon was the s...
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Big, burly, character actor, one of the toughest of screen heavies, Leo Gordon's powerful physique, combined with his deep, menacing voice, was guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of even the bravest screen hero. Director Don Siegel, who used Gordon in his prison film Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), once said that "Leo Gordon was the scariest man I have ever met" - this coming from a man who had directed John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Bette Midler! Siegel wasn't talking about just Gordon's screen presence. Before becoming an actor (he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts), Gordon served 5 years in San Quentin State Prison for armed robbery. "Riot in Cell Block 11" was filmed at Folsom State Prison. The Folsom warden remembered Gordon from his prison stint, when he had a reputation as a troublemaker, and objected to his being in the film, but Siegel was able to convince him that Gordon was no threat to the prison.Contrary to his image, though, Gordon was not just a one-note villain. He did play sympathetic parts on occasion, notably in the western Black Patch (1957)--which he also wrote--and in Roger Corman's civil rights drama The Intruder (1962), and turned in first-rate performances, especially in the latter film. Gordon was also a screenwriter, turning out several screenplays for Corman. He wasn't just limited to writing low-budget sci-fi films, either; he penned the screenplay for the WWII epic Tobruk (1967), writing in a good part for himself as Kruger, a tough sergeant in a platoon of German Jews masquerading as Nazi soldiers to help blow up a German oil storage facility. Show less «
Westerns are fundamental . . . the morality play. There's a good guy and a bad guy. You know which is which. You don't have to go into the p...Show more »
Westerns are fundamental . . . the morality play. There's a good guy and a bad guy. You know which is which. You don't have to go into the psyche to find out his parents were abusive . . . [the heavy is] the guy people remember. You get more recognition. Show less «
[on the "benefits" of playing so many heavies] You get more recognition. After all, I look like a heavy. I'm 6' 2", 200 pounds. Got a craggy...Show more »
[on the "benefits" of playing so many heavies] You get more recognition. After all, I look like a heavy. I'm 6' 2", 200 pounds. Got a craggy-ass face. I was walking down the street in Morocco when a little kid steps out of the alley and looks at me. He runs a few feet ahead of me--turns around and looks again--he puts his hands down like he's drawing two pistols. He goes, "Bip, bip, bip!' Y'know? Like he's shooting. You figure, "Here you are, a world away from anything you're familiar with, and some little kid in an alley in Morocco recognizes you?" Once, coming down the street in Madrid with my wife, a car slides up and these guys jump out. They were a couple of photographers from the Spanish press. They spent the whole afternoon with us. Show less «
[on whether he prefers screenwriting or acting] Writing is more rewarding than acting, but look at my face. Nobody believes I'm a writer. I ...Show more »
[on whether he prefers screenwriting or acting] Writing is more rewarding than acting, but look at my face. Nobody believes I'm a writer. I should be 5' 8", 142 pounds, wear patches on my elbows and horn-rimmed glasses and smoke a pipe. That's a writer. Show less «
[about working with John Wayne in Hondo (1953), in which Gordon played a villain who gets killed by Wayne] In the scene . . . where he kills...Show more »
[about working with John Wayne in Hondo (1953), in which Gordon played a villain who gets killed by Wayne] In the scene . . . where he kills me down by the stream, I reach for my gun and he shoots me. I buckled up and pitched forward. Wayne hollered, "Cut! Cut!", even though John Farrow was directing. Wayne says to me, "What was that? When you get hit in the gut with a slug you go flying backwards". I pulled up my shirt to show him where I'd really been shot in the gut [by police while being arrested for armed robbery many years previously]: "Yeah? I got hit point blank and I went forward". Show less «
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