Upon hearing news of the death of Donald Sutherland, I decided to watch Ordinary People. It had been the first time in over a decade since I saw it. But I always thought his performance as Chicago-area lawyer Calvin Jarrett was one of the best of his career, quite possibly the best. And for that, he didn’t even get an Oscar nomination.
A friend of mine felt like I did that he was overshadowed by the phenomenal performance of Timothy Hutton, who’d win an Oscar in the Best Supporting Actor category. Then, there’s also Mary Tyler Moore playing against type as a WASP suburban housewife who may be cold-hearted but she’s more concerned about keeping up appearances. There might also be some resentment that the older son, Buck (Scott Doebler), died in a boating accident.
Hutton plays the younger son, Conrad, who feels guilty and attempts suicide. He’s sent to a mental hospital for four months and is just returning to the family house in the rich suburb of Lake Forrest. From the beginning, you can see Sutherland’s Calvin trying his hardest to make everything pleasant. But when we first see him and his wife, Beth (Moore), at a community play with other suburban rich WASPs, Calvin is asleep. It’s almost like he’s gotten bored with his life and trying to maintain.
But he still kinda goes with the flow trying not to make any waves. He’s the glue trying to keep the family together and with each passing day, it’s getting weaker and weaker. Directed by Robert Redford based on the book by Judith Guest, the death of Buck and attempted suicide of Conrad was just the catalyst for a family that had problems already. Mainly, it’s because of how the parents are expected to act around everyone else. Beth didn’t even visit Conrad when he was in the hospital while Calvin did. It’s almost like going to visit a child in a mental hospital would knock her down a peg if people found out.
Calvin, on the other hand, has the difficult task of being the ring-leader between Conrad and Beth unable to pick a side between his son and his wife. Originally, Gene Hackman was in talks to play the role but the production couldn’t come to an agreement on his salary. Sutherland had become a leading man in the 1970s thanks to roles in movies like Klute and MASH. And maybe it was because he played a grieving father in Don’t Look Now, he was able to take on this role as perfectly.
It’s nothing against Hackman, but I think Sutherland knows this role requires him to remain somewhat in the background for the first half. When Conrad says he’s catching a ride with some friends to school, Calvin lets out a jovial laugh to offer encouragement that Conrad is getting back into the groove, which is what Beth wants. But you can sense behind the laughter and the picturesque life, he’s trying so hard not to snap himself.
After he goes and meets with his son’s therapist, Tyrone Berger (Judd Hirsch in an equally wonderful supporting role), he confronts Beth when he gets home because she suggested he wear a white shirt instead of a blue shirt to Buck’s funeral. Sutherland stuttered when saying his lines but kept going. Looking at the dailies later, Redford decided it was the best one. It seems more natural as Calvin is almost afraid to finally bring this up to Beth months later.
There’s a sadness to his role as he realizes everything is failing apart. He is losing his wife but doesn’t want to lose another son. In the end, he confronts her because of the way she reacts to Conrad expressing his love for her. The movie ends with Beth leaving him possibly for good. When screenwriter Alvin Sargent discussed what happened to the characters after the book ended, she told him that Calvin would never remarry and Beth was the love of his life.
The way Sutherland smiles foolishly as he stands outside the house in his pajamas after Beth left commenting about how the yard looks without leaves is a person in denial of what is happening. But then when Conrad blames himself for Beth leaving, Calvin quickly corrects him. Calvin knew this day would come eventually. It took the death of Buck and Conrad’s problems to finally see that.
Sutherland may not have received an Oscar nomination for People but he did receive an honorary Academy Award in 2017. He was never nominated for an Oscar. However, he was nominated for a Golden Globe for People. Robert DeNiro won his second Oscar that year for his role as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull. Ten years later, he would share the scene with DeNiro in Backdraft as a psychotic arsonist/murderer Ronald Bartel. It was a glorified cameo really and some people drew comparisons with Sir Anthony Hopkins role as Dr. Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, which had been released earlier that year.
Oh, well. Maybe it was because of his similar roles that some voters didn’t feel he was stretching out. He was a grieving father trying to stabilize his marriage in both Ordinary People and Don’t Look Now. He was a government official caught up in an alien invasion in both The Puppet Masters and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which has a great ending I won’t spoil for anyone who hasn’t seen it.) In 1970, he would appear as Capt. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce in MASH and as the scruffy “Oddball” in Kelly’s Heroes. The movies were set during the Korean War and World War II, respectively, and Sutherland would play military officials who played by their own set of rules.
In real-life, Sutherland, a native of Canada, joined the anti-war movement of the Vietnam War fairly early on. Along with Jane Fonda, they toured putting on skits and performances as an anti-USO tour movement. FTA was meant to stand for “Free the Army” but the rumor was it really meant “Fuck the Army” and top military officials would court martial anyone who said “FTA.” Director Robert Altman had intended MASH to be a subtle anti-Vietnam War movie, which made Sutherland perfect.
However, Sutherland butted heads with Altman off camera because he was upset with the legendary director’s method. Altman would often have his actors improvise their lines and talk over each other leaving it up to the audience on who to focus on. Sutherland and his co-star Elliott Gould, who played “Trapper John” McIntire, were very critical about this and expressed their opinions. Gould would later apologize in appear in subsequent movies directed by Altman. Sutherland didn’t and never appeared in another Altman movie.
Sutherland and DeNiro had also been in the historical drama epic 1900 as he spent the 1970s building his status. He co-starred with Fonda in Klute, for which she won her first Oscar. The two reportedly had a brief love affair off camera for two years. It’s been long rumored his sex scene with Julie Christie in Don’t Look Now wasn’t simulated. However, this has been denied by Sutherland, Christie and Warren Beatty, who was dating Christie at the time. Sutherland had married his third wife, Francien Racette in 1972 and they remained married until his death. The sex scene would become so controversial it had to be edited to obtain an R-rating. Maybe because it showed things like cunnilingus and their bodies humping together that people suspected they had actually had real intercourse.
As the 1980s came on, Sutherland quickly found himself appearing in more roles as fathers, grandfathers or authority figures. As his hair turned grey and then white, Sutherland found him embarrassing his middle-age and senior citizen status, taking more supporting roles as a younger batch of actors were coming up. Because he could play good characters and bad, serious roles and silly roles, he was able to appear in many movies.
A friendship he began with a young production crew member named John Landis on the set of Kelly’s Heroes led to a goofy cameo in Kentucky Fried Movie as an incompetent waiter. Then, he appeared in Landis’ next movie National Lampoon’s Animal House as a pot-smoking lazy English professor who has an affair with one of his students, Katy (Karen Allen). Also, during one of the movie’s unexpected and funny scenes, he flashed his bare bottom wearing nothing but a sweater and reaching for something out of a kitchen cupboard. It was reportedly done as a compromise as Allen was shy about appearing nude even from behind. So, Sutherland agreed to flash his bum during the same scene.
He would later flash it again in Space Cowboys which reunited him with Kelly’s Heroes co-star Clint Eastwood. Along with James Garner and Tommy Lee Jones, he was an aging astronaut brought back for one last mission. Sutherland’s career who had gone into designing and engineering roller coasters was quite the ladies’ man, dating a woman Eastwood’s character mistakes for his daughter. He also isn’t the only one who gets shy when the woman physician walks in as they’re all naked.
Some other roles would become memorable on TV. He won an Emmy for his role as Col. Mikhail Fetisov in Citizen X which was about the the Soviet Union’s investigating into the killings by Andrei Chikatillo, a serial killer who murdered over 50 people. And he would follow in DeNiro’s footsteps by playing real-life mobster Jimmy Burke in The Big Heist. The made-for-TV movie goes into more details about the infamous 1978 Lufthansa heist which was part of the movie Goodfellas. However, it doesn’t hold a candle to that movie.
But you may remember him most as the ASMR voice on the Simple Orange commercials. He would find a new legion of fans with his roles in the dark comedy Horrible Bosses and as President Snow in The Hunger Games movies. However, despite his filmography, Sutherland and his son, Keifer, only worked together on one movie, Forsaken, a western released in 2015. They had both supporting roles in the movie A Time to Kill, but their characters were never in the same frame together.
Keifer is the only child Sutherland had while married to actress Shirley Douglas, who was also an an actress and activist. Her father was Tommy Douglas, the Canadian official who instituted the universal health care system. Within days of his death, people turned out to support him. Dame Helen Mirren called him one of the smartest actors. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau commented, “We’ve lost one of the greats. Donald Sutherland brought a level of brilliance to his craft few could match. A remarkable, legendary actor — and a great Canadian.” And President Joe Biden said he was “a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and one-of-a-kind actor who inspired and entertained the world for decades.”
What was your favorite Donald Sutherland role? Please comment.
Zane Says 