Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,946

This is the grave of Richard Conte.

Born in 1910 in Jersey City, Nicholas Conte grew up in the Italian-American world there. His parents were immigrants and none too wealthy. His mother worked in the sweatshops and his father was a barber. Conte just worked all the jobs like any working class guy of the era. He drove trucks, he sold shoes. Well, eventually he got a job as a singing waiter. Now, let’s take a second here–what a horrible job. And as customers, who the hell wants to have someone sing to you at the table? Would you want that? It sounds awful to me, but then I am not a big fan of emoting generally. But in this case, he was working in a Connecticut resort and who should wander in but Elia Kazan and John Garfield. They were having dinner, saw this handsome young guy who seemed really good at what he was doing and they were like, have you ever considered doing actual theater?

I’m not sure whether Conte had thought about that or not, but he was most certainly interested in the idea and he started acting and he was good at it. With support from his famous mentors and the people who saw him work, he got a scholarship to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, got professional training, and a career was born. He eventually moved to Hollywood to take his shot in the movies. His first film role was in 1939’s Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence, which is a Dalton Trumbo script that was also Glenn Ford’s first film, though was a Jean Rodgers film primarily. The same year, he also made his Broadway debut in a play called My Heart’s in the Highlands. He was also in the Clifford Odets play Night Music. He was briefly in the Army in World War II, but had an eye issue and so was discharged. Hell of a lot more patriotic than those fake patriotic assholes Ronald Reagan and John Wayne, that’s for sure.

In 1943, Conte signed a contract with 20th Century Fox and they changed his first name to Richard. I don’t know why Richard is better than Nicolas, but these things often seemed random. Evidently Conte wasn’t too Italian for American audiences. I guess Frank Sinatra had made Italian names safe by then or something. Most of his early films for them was in supporting roles, a lot of World War II films, standard material, and often working in films starring Dana Andrews. He finally got a top billing in 1945 with The Spider, a noir I haven’t seen.

This is about where Conte would stay–supporting guy in better films, lead guy in B films. And there’s nothing wrong with that, especially given the limits of the studio system that made it almost impossible for new actors to break through to the top unless they really offered something completely different and I guess Conte didn’t quite do that. But that didn’t mean he had a disappointing career, not at all. Rather, he was just a solid studio guy and what would the golden age of American studio cinema be without people like Richard Conte or 100 other men and women who could deliver a solid performance with a decent script and director? Some of his top supporting roles came in 1946’s Somewhere in the Night, directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, 1946’s 13 Rue Madeline, directed by Henry Hathaway, and Hathaway’s excellent 1948 film Call Northside 777, with Jimmy Stewart. My memory of that film is somewhat filtered now through my father in law liking it and then my wife and I taking him to the movies and him going up to the kid working the ticket booth at the theater and telling him that they should play good movies like Call Northside 777 and the kid looking like “who is this crazy old man?”, a sentiment I also shared.

Now, Conte didn’t like being limited like this but in the studio system, it was what it was. There was almost no way for a veteran B actor to rise to A level. It had almost nothing to do with skill. Unless you had some enormous random hit, it wasn’t really going to happen. The upside of the studio system was quality pictures using reliable and charismatic actors, often without that much acting range, effectively playing themselves over and over. Stewart and Fonda are both great actors, but they were the kings of this. Someone like Conte wasn’t necessarily less talented, but he wasn’t the level of bankable stars. So he got stuck doing a lot of noir in the early 50s. That certainly doesn’t bother me–I like these films. The only time he really broke out to be the star of a bigger film in the 50s was Daniel Mann’s 1955 film I’ll Cry Tomorrow, with Susan Hayward and Eddie Albert. And Hayward had the lead here. Among the very solid films he appeared in during the 50s include Blue Gardenia, Desert Legion, The Raging Tide, The Big Combo, Target Zero–I mean there’s certainly no shame in this.

Not surprisingly, like a lot of actors, television gave Conte a new outlet and had a totally different way of casting. So he was on a lot of TV. He also had one of the smaller roles in Oceans 11. But he was really in that same place he’d always been–a working actor getting quite a bit of work, if not the starring roles he wanted. And hey, film couldn’t survive without those guys.

Now of course the end of the studio system in the late 60s meant new chances and if you know Conte for one thing, it’s him being Barzini in The Godfather. It was a great role, being the rival mob boss trying to take out Don Corleone. In fact, Coppola had briefly considered Conte for the Corleone role, but if you can get Brando, obviously you are going to take Brando.

What it meant for Conte was a whole lot of additional mob roles in crime films, mostly in Europe. This was the great era of the Italian B film and since those films dubbed anyway, they wanted lots of American actors. Many of us today are more familiar with the westerns, which gave work to actors such as Lee Van Cleef, Jack Palance, and Yul Brynner, not to mention launched Clint Eastwood. But if anything there were more crime films and Conte became a staple of them until the end of his life. Fernando di Leo was the Sergio Leone of the poliziotteschi film and he cast Conte in a bunch of them. The Boss is the one I know the best and it’s not bad. Shoot First, Die Later has a title that makes me want to watch it.

Unfortunately, that end for Conte came pretty soon. He had a massive stroke in 1975 and died a few hours later. He was 65 years old.

Richard Conte is buried in Westwood Memorial Park, Los Angeles, California.

If you would like this series to visit other people in The Godfather, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. James Caan is in Mission Hills, California and John Marley is in Paramus, New Jersey. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.