Anthony Caruso

Popular and versatile screen villain

Anthony Caruso, actor: born Frankfort, Indiana 7 April 1916; married 1940 Tonia Valente (one son); died Brentwood, California 4 April 2003.

Anthony Caruso was one of the cinema screen's notable villains and one of the most versatile, portraying not only Italians but many ethnic figures including Native American, Greek, Mexican, Spaniard or Slav. His ruggedly handsome looks, gravelly voice and skills as both boxer and horseman made him a convincing tough guy in both westerns and gangster movies.

Unlike such actors as Lee Marvin or Lee Van Cleef who, after years playing heavies, found stardom, Caruso never found such a career-defining role, but he was a popular actor who etched memorable cameos in such films as The Asphalt Jungle and The Iron Mistress.

Born in 1916 in Frankfort, Indiana, to Italian American parents, he initially studied music (mindful of his famous surname) before taking up acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. He made his screen début as a mobster's henchman in Johnny Apollo (1940) starring Tyrone Power, the first of over 120 screen roles, and he followed this with roles in North West Mounted Police (1940) and Tall, Dark and Handsome (1941). In 1942 he was given the role of a hired killer in the comedy thriller Lucky Jordan at the request of the film's star Alan Ladd, Paramount's most rapidly rising personality and an actor known for his loyalty.

Caruso recalled:

I went to Long Beach Poly High and Alan went to high school out in the San Fernando Valley. When we were both trying out for scholarships at the Pasadena Playhouse, he and I sat waiting together and commenting on others who were doing auditions. When lunchtime came he said he was broke, so I said, "Come with me and we'll have lunch" – with 15 cents for a hamburger then and five cents for a Coke, it was no big deal. Well, I bought him his lunch, and we came back and our ways parted. Later on I'd forgotten who Alan Ladd was – he did This Gun for Hire [1942] and it still didn't ring a bell with me. Then he asked for me in a picture. He called me into his dressing room and said, "Do you remember who I am?", and I said, "No, you're Mr Ladd", and he said, "I'm the kid who sat with you . . .", and he reminded me of the whole incident. From then on, he wouldn't do a picture

without me, or at least try to get me into the picture. And he became a very dear, very close friend of mine.

Caruso appeared in 11 films with Ladd, including And Now Tomorrow (1944), The Blue Dahlia (1946) and Wild Harvest (1947). He had one of his finest roles in The Iron Mistress (1952), which starred Ladd as Jim Bowie, frontier legend and inventor of the Bowie knife. As the villainous gambler Jack Sturdevant, Caruso shared with Ladd a lethal knife fight which was one of the film's highlights.

When Ladd formed his own production company, Jaguar Films, in 1954, Caruso became part of his stock company. In Drum Beat (1954) he was the friendly chief of the Modoc tribe trying to negotiate peace with a former Indian fighter (Ladd) despite opposition from a rebellious member of the tribe (Charles Bronson). He was a gangster again in Hell on Frisco Bay (1955), which co-starred Ladd with Edward G. Robinson, and he had a prime role as an unscrupulous cattle dealer in The Big Land (1957), cheating and murdering his way to become boss of a western town until finally gunned down by a peace-loving herder (Ladd).

His final film with Ladd was Delmer Daves's The Badlanders (1958), a western remake of John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle (1950), in which Caruso had also appeared. In the Huston classic he was the "box man" – an expert at blowing safes open – who is recruited to take part in an elaborately planned jewel robbery. Mortally wounded when a watchman interrupts the heist, he is taken home, where he dies surrounded by his large Italian family. "The Asphalt Jungle became a cult film and helped my career a lot," Caruso told the interviewer Ray Nielsen:

John Huston was one of the best directors I ever worked with. He could pull things out of you without your knowing it.

Caruso's other early films included Richard Thorpe's delightful spy adventure Above Suspicion (1943), in which he played a border guard, and Raoul Walsh's fine though controversial war epic Objective Burma! (1945), which had to be withdrawn from its initial British release because it depicted Americans as the sole fighters in the Burmese war. Caruso had a small but telling part in the film as a nervous newcomer to a task force of paratroopers.

He was in several Bob Hope comedies at Paramount, including Monsieur Beaucaire (1946), My Favourite Brunette (1947) and Where There's Life (1947). His other films included Pride of the Marines (1945), Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (1946), Tarzan and the Slave Girl (1950), His Kind of Woman (1952, unbilled as a sadistic gangster), Allan Dwan's pictorially impressive Cattle Queen of Montana (1954), in which he was the renegade Indian chief Natchakoa, Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954, as "Jacques the One-Eyed") and Don Siegel's Baby Face Nelson (1956), which starred Mickey Rooney as the famous criminal. The actor had a prominent role in the action tale Zebra Force (1977), in which a bunch of Vietnam veterans use military tactics to defeat the perpetrators of organised crime. His last film was The Legend of Grizzly Adams (1990).

Caruso was in great demand for television roles, appearing in over a hundred shows including episodes of such western series as The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, Laramie, Wagon Train, Rawhide and Bonanza, and he played the recurring role of the villainous El Lobo in The High Chaparral. He also appeared in Perry Mason, The Untouchables, Ironside and Hawaiian Eye. He made his final television appearance in The Roseanne Barr Show (1987).

An adept gardener and Italian cook as well as actor, he is survived by his wife of 63 years, the actress Tonia Valente, and a son, Tonio.

Tom Vallance