A supporting player for five decades, Sidney Blackmer made a trade of men of standing: generals, gangland bosses, Theodore Roosevelt about ten times over, and, late in life, an unusually attentive neighbour in Rosemary's Baby. Small parts, played with more seriousness than they asked for.
Fi1m perspective
In the last twenty minutes of In Old Chicago (1938), when the O'Leary melodrama has finally burnt itself out, a man in a general's uniform stands in a street of wooden houses and orders them blown apart to make a firebreak. That is Sidney Blackmer as Phil Sheridan, and it is a fair sample of what the studios used him for: a figure of authority, arriving late, saying the sensible thing while everything around him is alight. We had spent an hour waiting for the film to matter, and when it did, with Sheridan calmly demolishing his own city, we sat up. Blackmer plays it quietly and lets the fire carry the scene, which is the right call and not the easy one.
He had been at it a long time by then. A bit part in The Perils of Pauline in 1914 while he was still at university, a Broadway debut in 1917, then army service in the First World War, and from 1929 a steady run of supporting parts in more than 120 films. Little Caesar (1931) gave him Big Boy early on. Then came the presidents. Blackmer played Theodore Roosevelt something like ten times on stage and screen, Teddy the Rough Rider (1940) among them, the resemblance helped along with glasses and make-up until producers reached for him whenever a script needed a Roosevelt. It is an odd way to build a career, being the man who looks like someone else, and it tells you what kind of actor the studios thought they had.
His own account was that he preferred the other side of the law. "Any time I had a chance to play the villain, I grabbed it." The bad man, he said, was always the more colourful and interesting part. What he mostly got instead were the unctuous and the solicitous: elderly men whose courtesy is a touch too attentive, heavies who never raise their voices. His stage peak came in 1950 as Doc in Come Back, Little Sheba, opposite Shirley Booth, a part he threw himself into physically, drunk scenes and all. The film was made with a different cast. Supporting men are used to that.
The performance he is remembered for came late. In Rosemary's Baby (1968), for Roman Polanski, he is Roman Castevet, the elderly neighbour across the hall, with Ruth Gordon as his wife, and he brings to it the hospitable manner he had been polishing for thirty years. We have not reviewed it and will not judge it at length here, except to say that the courtesy is what stays with you. Blackmer himself thought it the best work of his career, and he was in a position to know.
If you want to see what forty years of standing politely at the edge of the frame produces, start with the neighbours.
Biography
Sidney Alderman Blackmer (13 July 1895 – 6 October 1973) was an American actor known for supporting roles in more than 120 films and numerous Broadway productions. Born and raised in Salisbury, North Carolina, he made his film debut in the serial The Perils of Pauline (1914) and his Broadway debut in 1917. His early career was interrupted by service in the First World War.
After returning to the stage, Blackmer resumed film work in 1929. He won the 1950 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in Come Back, Little Sheba. He appeared as General Phil Sheridan in In Old Chicago (1938) and played Roman Castevet in Rosemary's Baby (1968). Blackmer was frequently cast as Theodore Roosevelt and received the North Carolina Award for Fine Arts in 1972.
