About Us

Richard Widmark '36 Film Retrospective - November 22 & 23

All of the events are free and open to the public and will be held in Lily Reid Holt Memorial Chapel and Meyer Auditorium. For more information, please call 847-234-3100.

View the printed schedule (pdf).

Widmark, who received an Academy-Award nomination for his performance in Kiss of Death, passed away earlier this year on March 24. Read more about his life, as reported in his The New York Times obituary.

The presentations have been organized as part of the Richard Widmark Practicum, taught by Dr. Leslie Abramson in the Department of Communication, with work by Melika Mansouri '09, Karen Larson '11, CC Hayne '11, Kelly Crook '09, and Alex Fisher '10. These same students have produced a documentary, titled From Lake Forest College to Hollywood: The Life and Career of Richard Widmark, that will be shown several times throughout the weekend.

Full Schedule of Events

Opening Night
Saturday, November 22

NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950)
7 p.m.
Lily Holt Reid Chapel
Preceded by student documentary: From Lake Forest College to Hollywood: The Life and Career of Richard Widmark
Speakers: Dr. Janet McCracken, Provost & Dean of Faculty;
Dr. Leslie Abramson, Department of Communication;
Arthur Miller, College Archivist/Librarian for Special Collections

Starring in what has been called “the definitive film noir,” Widmark gives a virtuouso performance in this tour de force as a hustler chasing fame and fortune through the backstreets of London. Pursuing his latest in a series of grandiose schemes to extract himself from a life of conning for a sleazy nightclub proprietor and his duplicitous wife, Widmark’s character becomes a corrupt wrestling promoter, ignoring the entreaties of the woman who loves him as he races toward a dark destiny.

Sunday, November 23

PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953)
11 a.m.
Meyer Auditorium
Followed by “I Love Lucy” episode: “The Tour” guest starring Richard Widmark (1955)

Widmark stars as a cynical pickpocket who steals more than he counted on while riding the New York subway, inadvertently becoming entangled in a Communist plot involving stolen government secrets and an alluring woman. In this Samuel Fuller film, Widmark is at his magnetic, insolent best.

NO WAY OUT (1950) 
Co-starring Sidney Poitier   
1 p.m.       
Meyer Auditorium
Preceded by student documentary: From Lake Forest College to Hollywood: The Life and Career of Richard Widmark

Paired with Sidney Poitier, who co-stars as a young doctor in his first credited screen performance, Widmark plays a hardened, virulently racist criminal who lands in the hospital under medical care that he fiercely resents. Widmark’s intensity reaches its peak in this early exploration of racial tensions and anxieties as his character, who eventually escapes, incites a riot and raises havoc among a former flame, the insecure physician, and the community at large.

PANIC IN THE STREETS (1950)
Co-starring Jack Palance
1 p.m.
Lily Holt Reid Chapel

In a heroic early role and one of his few portrayals of a family man, Widmark plays a Public Health Service doctor tracking down the source of a threatened bubonic plague through the underworld of New Orleans. A dark thriller by Elia Kazan, “the best actor’s director there ever was,” according to Widmark, the doctor operates against the police and close-knit criminal culture under intense time constraints.

KISS OF DEATH (1947)
3 p.m.
Meyer Auditorium
Preceded by student documentary: From Lake Forest College to Hollywood: The Life and Career of Richard Widmark

Widmark makes his screen debut as Tommy Udo, a petty criminal-turned-gangster with a taste for sadism and a menacing laugh. This gripping performance earned Widmark an Oscar nomination and wide renown as a psychotic noir villain.

DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952)
Co-starring Marilyn Monroe
3 p.m.
Lily Holt Reid Chapel

Widmark and Marilyn Monroe star in this compelling, suspenseful hotel drama about a jilted pilot who tries to reunite with his lounge-singer girlfriend, yet discovers he has checked in for something unexpected. The pilot finds himself both attracted and repelled by a seductive, yet dangerously disturbed babysitter who ultimately evokes his sensitive side as this initially cynical, cold-hearted character undergoes a striking transformation.

JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG (1961)
Co-starring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich, Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland, Maximillian Schell, and William Shatner
6 p.m., Lily Holt Reid Chapel
Speakers: Stephen Schutt, President of Lake Forest College; Dr. Abba Lessing, Department of Philosophy;
Dr. Dan LeMahieu, Hotchkiss Presidential Professor of History, Chair of Communication Department;
Dr. Chad McCracken, Department of Philosophy, Department of Politics

In this intensely powerful, star-studded film centering on the Nazi war crime trials held in Germany after World War II, Widmark delivers one of his most forceful performances, as the U.S. Army’s fervent prosecuting attorney. Teeming with moral and legal complexities and rivetting portrayals of victims, transgressors, and Americans determined to restore justice, this top-grossing drama directed by Stanley Kramer was awarded Oscars for Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor.