xredgarnetx — 18 years ago(June 02, 2007 01:43 PM)

For a guy who didn't start out as an actor, Mazurki was surprisingly good. I was watching him in CHEYENNE AUTUMN today, in which he plays a small role. But put him center stage, as some of the best 1940s and 1950s comedies did, some of them Abbott and Costello and Hope and Crosby flicks, as I recall, and he shines as a tough guy or strong man with a very small brain, a sort of latter-day Lon Chaney Jr. He could also be quite menacing, and here I am thinking of a particularly violent Dick Tracy flick where Mazurki stabs and throws one of his victims through a window or skylight.