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Obituaries

Sydney Pollack movies

By Susan King, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Sydney Pollack, who died Monday of pancreatic cancer, was not an auteur director. He never left his personal stamp on a film. Some critics even said he didn't have much of a visual style. But Pollack, 73, was a brilliant storyteller who was comfortable working in genres from dramas to comedies to political thrillers to westerns. A former acting teacher -- Pollack married former pupil Claire Griswold in 1958 -- who returned to acting in his 1982 hit, "Tootsie," Pollack's major strength as a director was his extraordinary ability to work with actors to bring out perfectly nuanced performances. His collaboration with Robert Redford led to some of Pollack's best films, including 1985's "Out of Africa," which won him the best director Oscar. Pollack also had a strong track record as an executive producer and producer of such films as "Iris," "The Quiet American," "Cold Mountain" and "Michael Clayton," for which he received a best picture Oscar nomination. Pollack also appeared in the film as Clayton's high-powered boss. Here's a look back at Pollack's work both behind and in front of the camera.

By Susan King, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Sydney Pollack, who died Monday of pancreatic cancer, was not an auteur director. He never left his personal stamp on a film. Some critics even said he didn’t have much of a visual style. But Pollack, 73, was a brilliant storyteller who was comfortable working in genres from dramas to comedies to political thrillers to westerns.

A former acting teacher -- Pollack married former pupil Claire Griswold in 1958 -- who returned to acting in his 1982 hit, “Tootsie,” Pollack’s major strength as a director was his extraordinary ability to work with actors to bring out perfectly nuanced performances. His collaboration with Robert Redford led to some of Pollack’s best films, including 1985’s “Out of Africa,” which won him the best director Oscar.

Pollack also had a strong track record as an executive producer and producer of such films as “Iris,” “The Quiet American,” “Cold Mountain” and “Michael Clayton,” for which he received a best picture Oscar nomination. Pollack also appeared in the film as Clayton’s high-powered boss.

Here’s a look back at Pollack’s work both behind and in front of the camera.  (Stephen Shugerman / Getty Images)

Sydney Pollack

“The Slender Thread”

Lancaster was so impressed with Pollack’s work on “The Young Savages” that he called his friend Universal Studios kingpin Lew Wasserman to see if he could give the young man some directing work. He did. For six months, Pollack earned $75 a week to watch and learn the craft on the sets of TV productions.

Finally, he was given his chance to direct an episode of “Shotgun Slade,” a syndicated Western that was about to fade into the sunset. And the TV work just flowed in. During a five-year period, he directed episodic TV series, earning three Emmy nominations and winning for an episode of “Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater” in 1966.

Even before winning his Emmy, Pollack made his theatrical debut with this taut 1965 suspense drama starring Sidney Poitier as a student volunteer at a medical clinical who receives a call from a suicidal woman (Anne Bancroft) dying from an overdose of sleeping pills she took after her husband discovered that he is not the father of their son.  (Jim Mendenhall / Los Angeles Times)

Sydney Pollack

“This Property is Condemned”

Though reviews were mixed for Pollack’s second film as a director, this 1966 romantic melo-drama, “suggested” from an early Tennessee Williams one-act play, has a lot going for it. The film, set in the Depression-era South, is beautifully shot by the legendary James Wong Howe and features Natalie Wood in her Golden Globe-nominated performance as a young woman whose sleazy mother (Kate Reid) runs a boardinghouse for railroad workers. The movie also marks the first time Pollack directed his pal Redford in his role as a railroad efficiency expert who has arrived to fire most of the workers but finds himself fired up over Wood.  (Tiziana Fabi AFP / Getty Images)

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