Some years ago, I watched Airport ’79 with friends on fast forward. We actually watched it at normal speed to watch George Kennedy roll down the window of a Concorde in flight to fire a flare gun out the window and save everyone from disaster. This is arguably the low point of his career. Picking the high point is considerably more difficult.

It could be his 1967 Oscar win for Cool Hand Luke, of course, but he did such a wide array of great films that I wouldn’t want to limit him to that one. Not just because I’m an unabashed fan of The Naked Gun, either, though I do love it. For many decades, he was one of Hollywood’s go-to gruff guys, there to be physically domineering whenever you needed him. He definitely scares poor Audrey Hepburn in Charade.

I must confess that, in recent years, he’s been very much a “that guy is still alive?” to me. Several people had suggested him to me for Celebrating the Living, and I just hadn’t gotten to him yet, because I never remembered he was alive when I was brainstorming for the week. It’s not that I can tell you when, specifically, I think he died, but definitely he’s not as vibrant in my head as some of the people we’ve discussed. Maybe it’s because he was a character actor.

He got his start in acting by being a technical adviser for The Phil Silvers Show, probably more thought of as Sergeant Bilko. Silvers encouraged him to act, which may have been one of the best things he ever did. He went from doing a few lines on the show to being an Oscar winner in a scant eleven years. He’d acted as a child, and he both served in combat and worked on Armed Forces Radio, but he’d been in the army for sixteen years at the time.

From what I can tell, George Kennedy mostly lived a quiet life. Wikipedia hints at some unhappiness by telling us that he and his wife adopted their grandchild when their daughter was incarcerated, but he lived in Idaho and flew planes. Ninety-one years is a good run, but he will still be missed.