Mark Stevens

(1916-1994, Cleveland, Ohio)

Tight-jawed, anxious, lanky character actor who, as a second-tier leading man, grimaced through noir thrillers and offbeat westerns. The moodiness and bitterness of his cinematic loners, losers and fixers reflected Stevens’s own irascible demeanour. Matinee looks masking a conflicted soul, he was a natural choice to describe the jaded players of post-war thrillers.

 

With Lucille Ball in The Dark Corner

 

After his parents’ divorce, cared for by grandparents in England. Relocated to Canada. Back injuries and surgery kept him out of army service. Developed a love for acting. Bounced between menial jobs, stage plays, musicals and broadcasting work. Returned to Chicago where he found principal roles at the Cleveland Playhouse. A Warner Brothers contract resulted. Briefly billed as Stephen Richards before moving to Fox, where his red hair was darkened and freckles covered to transform him into tough-guy material.

 

The Lost Hours

 

First leading role in prison drama Within These Walls, but it was his tightly wound turn in The Dark Corner that stamped his mark on shadowy thrillers. Cast as edgy, splenetic characters, victims of fate or ordinary Joes with shifty secrets: beat cop alongside Edmond O’Brien in Between Midnight and Dawn, played opposite Richard Widmark in The Street with No Name and was conspicuous among a cast of sherry-drinking Brits in The Lost Hours. Outside of hard-boiled milieus his presence worked to markedly blander effect; overwrought mystery The Snake Pit, where he was Olivia de Havilland’s husband, was more challenging material. Elsewhere found regular gigs in light comedies and musicals.

Between Midnight and Dawn

Despite a string of lead roles, career trajectory faltered. Shrewd and ambitious, he invested in TV series Big Town. Ratings increased and he graduated to director/producer, forming Mark Stevens Productions in 1955. The company’s luck ran out in 1964, making him bankrupt. However Stevens had directed and starred in a brace of must-see noirs: in Cry Vengeance, shot in stark Alaskan locations, he is a scar-faced ex-con bent on revenge; played another grimly cynical character in Time Table, a superior post-heist thriller.

With Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit

Although not physically imposing, his sullen persona changed the complexion of a number of westerns. He worked alongside genre stars Rory Calhoun in Sand, Joel McCrea in Gunsight Ridge and Forrest Tucker in Gunsmoke in Tuscon. His foreboding intensity in noir-western biopic Jack Slade informed perhaps his most forceful role.

Jack Slade

Time Table

Television roles followed – Zane Grey Theatre, Wagon Train, Rawhide, Kojak. Decamped to Europe to make low-budget genre movies: uncredited in Z-grade horror La furia del hombre lobo, for example, and locked horns with Mario Adorf in obscure Spanish western Tierra del Fuego.

With Joel McCrea in Gunsight Ridge

Never a man who thought highly of his talent, he was strongest as men burdened with guilt or a crippling self-doubt, which would, on occasion, crackle ferociously on the screen.

Stevens saw out his last days in Europe, dying of cancer in Spain at 77.

Five standout roles

As Brad Galt in The Dark Corner, the archetype of the capable private eye is upended when he finds himself at the mercy of anonymous forces. His vulnerability is encapsulated in a helpless confession to his secretary: “I’m backed up into a dark corner and I don’t know who’s hitting me.”

As the titular self-loathing gunman in Jack Slade, Stevens walks a bloody path through this noir-drenched biopic. As friends and children die in his wake, Slade’s drunken soliloquies are some of the most fearless scenes in the actor’s career.

As hair-trigger ex-cop Vic Barron in Cry Vengeance, he seeks to settle accounts. Among great supporting performances (especially from Skip Homeir as a peroxide hitman) he still rules the roost. Most chilling scene sees him hand a .38 slug to his intended victim’s daughter: “A present for your daddy.”

As bored insurance investigator turned criminal mastermind Charlie Norman in Time Table. Tijuana-bound, he attempts to pick through the aftermath of the deadly train heist he organised. Brilliant when his middle-class façade crumbles and his doting wife discovers he’s a killer with a senorita south of the border.

As outlaw Chip Coburn trying to go legit in Gunsmoke in Tuscon, he improves a regular range-war western with a characterisation of trademark complexity. Unlike most of his key roles, he’s afforded the opportunity for redemption – but needs a mother lode of persuasion.

Clark Hodgkiss