Hugh Hurd is worth seeking out for Shadows, where his restraint makes a struggling singer funny and affecting. He lets feelings remain difficult to explain without turning that difficulty into a display of acting.
Fi1m perspective
Hugh Hurd does not hurry to make an awkward feeling clear. As Hugh, the older brother and struggling nightclub singer in John Cassavetes’s Shadows (1960), he allows uncertainty to remain visible rather than signalling exactly what we should make of it. The humour benefits from that restraint, too: an uneasy person need not become a solemn one. It is affecting work in a good, uneven film, and a persuasive reason to begin with Hurd here.
Alongside Ben Carruthers as Ben and Lelia Goldoni as Lelia, Hurd makes the lack of polish feel like a fair exchange for more believable people. We were touched by his willingness to seem awkward, because Hugh’s feelings were recognisable before they became easy to explain. His steadiness as the older brother helps hold the family scenes together. The film still wanders, and there are stretches when interest in the actors cannot quite make up for a story that has stalled.
His subsequent screen career largely moved into supporting parts, rather than sustaining the prominence of Shadows. The Catch (1961) offered another substantial early role, as a Black soldier. He returned to Cassavetes for A Woman Under the Influence (1974), playing Willie Johnson, a singing member of Peter Falk’s construction crew. There is room there for his steady ensemble work, though far less space than he has as Hugh. Later came Ben Johnson in The First Deadly Sin (1980), another supporting role.
Hurd described Shadows as a cooperative undertaking in which he helped write the script. That is worth remembering when his acting looks casual: he had helped shape the material rather than simply finding a way to deliver it. We would be wary of crediting all the film’s believable, awkward exchanges to Cassavetes alone. Start with Shadows, on an evening when a few people trying to understand one another will be enough.
Biography
Hugh Hurd (also credited as Hugh L. Hurd) was an American actor and civil rights activist. He was born on 11 February 1925 in New York City and died there on 15 July 1995.
Hurd appeared in numerous stage productions, including Broadway revivals of Four Saints in Three Acts (1952) and Bubbling Brown Sugar (1976–1977). He gained recognition for his leading role as Hugh in John Cassavetes' independent film Shadows (1959). Other film roles include Willie Johnson in A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Ben Johnson in The First Deadly Sin (1980) and Mushmouth in Who's the Man? (1993).
In 1962, with Godfrey Cambridge, he co-founded the Committee for the Employment of Negro Performers, which led to congressional hearings on racial discrimination in entertainment. He also helped organise one of the first New York benefits for Martin Luther King Jr. in the late 1950s.
