Wednesday Minute
No. 14 | January 20, 2010

It Runs in the Family

Our theme this week
Families with three (or more) generations of film actors

Featured this week
Monday         —   The Fondas
Tuesday         —   The Hustons

The Carradines

The essentials
First Generation:  John
Second Generation:  David, Keith, Robert
Third Generation:  Ever (Robert), Martha Plimpton (Keith)

John Carradine appeared in hundreds of movies during his six decades of acting.  In his own words:  “I’ve made some of the greatest films ever made—and a lot of crap, too.”  Accounting for some of the better stuff, he was a frequent player in John Ford films, eleven times in all.  He was Hatfield, the gambler, in Stagecoach (1939), and Casy, the preacher, in The Grapes of Wrath (1940).  He cited his role as a serial killer in Edgar G. Ulmer’s low-budget noir Bluebeard (1944) as a career favorite.  He did a lot of stage work and a fair amount of Shakespeare, but from the ’40s on, he churned out more horror film roles than anything else.

Appearing with his father, among others, David Carradine starred in Martin Scorsese’s early outlaw film Boxcar Bertha (1972), then he had a memorable cameo in Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973).  He was already a TV star (Kung Fu) when he played folksinger Woody Guthrie in the critically acclaimed Bound for Glory (1976).  He was in Ingmar Bergman’s The Serpent’s Egg (1977), and joined brothers Keith and Robert for The Long Riders (1980), a Walter Hill western featuring four sets of actor brothers (with the Keaches, Quaids, and Guests).  Often cast as the villain, he was very effective as Bill in Quentin Tarantino’s two-parter, Kill Bill (2003/2004).  This past June Carradine was found dead in a hotel in Bangkok.  He was 72.

In TV’s Kung Fu, Keith Carradine was the teenage Caine played as an adult by his brother David.  He made three films with Robert Altman:  McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), his debut; Thieves Like Us (1974); and Nashville (1975), where he picked up an Oscar for his song “I’m Easy.”  He and Harvey Keitel were two Americans playing sword-fighting Frenchmen in The Duellists (1977).  As the photographer he took a fancy to a young Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby (1978).  Other notable films include The Moderns (1988) and the Merchant Ivory production of The Ballad of the Sad Café (1991).

Robert Carradine has been making movies since the early ‘70s.  His most popular role has been as Lewis Skolnick in  the Revenge of the Nerds series (1984, 1987, 1991, 1994; the first two were released theatrically).

Other sons of John Carradine are Bruce, who did some acting during the 1970s and ’80s, and Christopher, an architect who became a vice-president at Walt Disney Imagineering.

Ever Carradine, daughter of Robert, is probably the least known of the acting Carradines.  She has done a lot of TV work and performed many small film roles.  She starred in the horror-comedy Dead & Breakfast (2004).  Though she’s two months younger than actor Jason Mewes, she played his mother in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001). 

Martha Plimpton is the daughter of Keith.  Her breakthrough on film was as one of the teens in The Goonies (1985).  She made a couple of movies with her boyfriend of the time, the late River Phoenix:  The Mosquito Coast (1986) and Running on Empty (1988).  Other film work includes Parenthood (1989), Stanley & Iris (1991), and as a friend of radical feminist Valerie Solanas in I Shot Andy Warhol (1996).  She has played many TV roles and been successful on Broadway, with three recent Tony nominations.

Beyond the final credits
The question of which actor appeared in the most movies doesn’t have a definitive answer.  It depends on how you define “movie” and “appearance,” for one thing (e.g., do cartoon voices count?).  Even then, records are incomplete, especially for older films and low-budget indies.  Toward the end of his life, John Carradine claimed to have appeared in more films than any other actor.  We’ll leave the counting to others, and even if he doesn’t have the record (it’s likely he doesn’t, especially if you consider Bollywood actors), he was nevertheless among the most prolific of actors.