J.T. Walsh made respectable authority feel dangerous without making it look unusual. We rate him for the weight he gave small parts, though repeated casting as the untrustworthy man could make his presence too easy to read.
Fi1m perspective
J.T. Walsh’s men can sound as though they have every right to tell everyone else what to do. The deep, authoritative voice is part of the trouble: it makes a dubious official sound qualified before we have considered what he is saying. Walsh was particularly good at keeping menace within an ordinary, bureaucratic manner. He did not need to advertise wickedness when the character’s position already gave him the advantage. We rate that restraint, and the unease it could produce.
His breakthrough came on stage as John Williamson in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross (1984), before film parts repeatedly put him in charge of other people. As Sgt. Major Dickerson in Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), he helped establish his place as a film antagonist. A Few Good Men (1992) offered a useful change with Lt. Col. Matthew A. Markinson, a sympathetic military officer. Playing an officer did not always require him to be the villain. That distinction matters for an actor so often employed to make respectability look suspect.
We were unsettled by his Charles Bushman in Sling Blade (1996), because of the intensity he gives a small part as a mental patient. Within Billy Bob Thornton’s patient, darkly funny drama, Walsh makes Bushman difficult to dismiss, however uncomfortable it becomes to attend to him. The performance takes him away from the ranks and offices that so often supplied his authority. Walsh gives the part enough weight that we never feel he is merely filling an interval between the lead’s scenes. Some of the film’s scenes linger too long, but its willingness to spend time with people pays off.
The limitation is partly in the casting: once Walsh appears, we can find ourselves waiting for the reassuring exterior to become a problem. Breakdown (1997) gave him one of his more prominent thriller villains as Warren ‘Red’ Barr, but kept him in familiar employment. There is less surprise in that casting than his skill deserves. For a sense of what he could do without an official title to help him, start with Sling Blade.
Biography
J. T. Walsh (1943–1998) was an American actor. Born in San Francisco, California, he studied at the University of Rhode Island. He began working in theatre in the 1970s, appearing in off-Broadway productions, and made his screen debut in the early 1980s.
Walsh appeared in numerous films of the 1980s and 1990s. His credits include Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), A Few Good Men (1992) as Lt. Col. Matthew A. Markinson, Sling Blade (1996) as Charles Bushman, and Pleasantville (1998). He also had a television role as Warden Leo Brodeur in an episode of The X-Files (1993). He died on 27 February 1998.
