Tom Tully - What a Character Blogathon

Tom Tully was an actor of great depth, who exuded grace even in his most snide, sinister, and crusty roles, and yet who could display such unassuming warmth that one could hardly imagine him ever being snide, sinister, or crusty.

Today we join several other blogs in the 9^th “What a Character!” Blogathon celebrating favorite character actors of classic films, sponsored by the blogs Paula’s Cinema Club, Once Upon a Screen, and Outspoken & Freckled. 

We covered some of Tully’s work in previous posts, including his genial, kindly, and somewhat befuddled uncle of Ginger Rogers, who visits him at Christmas here in I’ll Be Seeing You (1944).  He had only been in Hollywood a couple years and it was something like his seventh movie.  Mr. Tully already had worked over a decade in radio and on stage, but seems to have made an effortless transfer to screen, where he exhibits a natural, if not actually a shrewd and canny ability to navigate the intimacy of playing to a movie camera.  Like a lot of character actors of his day, he seemed a lot older than he really was.  He was in his late 30s when he played Ginger Rogers’ middle-aged uncle in I’ll Be Seeing You.  He was only three years older than her.

A couple years later, he straddles the genial as well as the world-weary man of authority as the police detective in Lady in the Lake (1946), breaking off an interrogation in his office when his little daughter calls and he helps her to recite “T’was the Night Before Christmas.”

Here we covered his turn as a gangster in Killer McCoy (1947), where he displays humor, not exactly geniality, and vengeful cruelty.  It is truly an off-beat character that would probably be more cartoonish in a less-skilled, less-intuitive actor.

We recently covered The Turning Point (1952), where Tully, far at the other end of the spectrum from his part in I’ll Be Seeing You, plays a cop on the take, desperate to avoid being investigated by his prosecutor son.  He’s fallen between the cracks, not proud of abetting the corruption he’s supposed to be fighting, but not apologizing either, just a self-aware doomed man awaiting judgment one way or the other.

A movie I love, but have not covered yet, is The Caine Mutiny (1954), for which Tully earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination.  He plays the battle-scarred captain of a minesweeper, part of what he calls “the junkyard Navy” that is the new assignment of the movie’s protagonist, played by Robert Francis.  Tully commands his scenes, riding young Francis over the young officer’s bumbling mistakes.  We first see Tully shirtless, with a wrapping of bandage around his torso, but his wound is not explained, only that his ship has been through many battles.  He will be replaced by Humphrey Bogart, who as the infamous Queeg, will give the performance of his life as a mentally unstable commander.

The crew respects Tully, even if Robert Francis does not, and they give him a parting gift of a watch.  It is a rough crew, and a rough captain, and yet we see blustering tenderness.  At the very end of the film, Tully returns to command a new ship, and forges a new relationship with Robert Francis, who has grown in the Navy and which Tully acknowledges by allowing him to give the first commands to get underway.

Tully is in The Caine Mutiny for only a brief time, and yet he is as memorable in the film as Bogart, who like Tully, received an Oscar nomination for his role.

Tully himself served in the U.S. Navy as a young man.  In 1969, he went on a USO tour of South Vietnam, a so-called “handshake tour” to meet the troops, where he contracted an illness which affected his circulation, requiring that his left leg be amputated. 

He performed in one more film after that (having a couple decades of TV under his belt), Charley Varrick (1973), but his health curtailed his career from that point.  He died in 1982 at 73 years old.  Here is a link to an article about how his grandsons discovered Tully’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and how Tully never knew he had one.

Tom Tully’s portrayals were skillfully genuine. 

Have a look at more wonderful character actors in the great blogs participating in the "What a Character!" Blogathon.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.  Her new book, a collection of posts from this blog - Hollywood Fights Fascism - is available here on Amazon.

Crazy Bogie

Monday’s post which mentioned the movie “In a Lonely Place” (1950) brings to mind one side of Humphrey Bogart’s many film characters for discussion. Crazy Bogie, the man you love to report to the authorities.


In “The Two Mrs. Carrolls” (1947), Mr. Bogart plays an artist, living a quiet life in the English countryside with his second wife, Barbara Stanwyck. He murdered his former wife, and he seems to have similar designs on Miss Stanwyck, but first he has to paint a really ugly picture of her. Were he just a mean guy who wanted the insurance money, we could easily dismiss him as evil, but there is something more intriguing about Bogart’s murderer that makes him hard to dismiss. He manages to affect a loneliness in his psychosis that at times elicits more sympathy than fear. He suffers in his paranoia, and appears physically pained with outbursts. If both Bogie and Stanwyck, and the script, are a little over the top at times, it’s still a thoughtful characterization of trying to make us see things his way.

“In a Lonely Place” (1950) shows Humphrey Bogart as a snide Hollywood screenwriter, quick to anger, who is under investigation for a brutal murder. We follow his budding relationship with his new girlfriend, Gloria Grahame, and navigate the highs and lows of their romance, of the suspicion under which the police hold him, and Miss Grahame’s growing suspicions in the same dizzying way Bogie navigates the winding Los Angeles streets at night in a nearly out of control convertible.

Here again, we see a guy who could be a killer, but whether or not he is, there is still something amiss, something askew in his prickly personality that begs for sympathy. He regrets his outbursts, but cannot stop himself. He is defensive, paranoid, quick to wound, and quick to hurt others. But he’s not a nut we can just dismiss as being a nut. He is intelligent and articulate. There’s so much more to his grand persona that is real and valid and logical, that the nuttiness seems only a quirk, until it brings danger, until it’s almost too late. In true film noir fashion, he brings his own downfall.


“The Caine Mutiny” (1954) is so fine a movie it deserves it own discussion sometime for the many great performances in the ensemble cast. Here Bogart is the mercurial Captain Queeg, whose irrational displays cause his men to revile him and mutiny against him. Bogart is excellent in the role (though I would have loved to have also seen Lloyd Nolan, who played the part on stage). He is fearful and fretful, vengeful and bitter, paranoid and deceptive. Mr. Bogart plays the gamut of emotion, and makes us, as with the other characters, see how it could happen, and see the dismal sadness and lack of confidence in a person’s life that would alter his psyche and remove that under-appreciated but most important aspect of a person’s humanity, his self control.


Bogart is older in this part, and looks it, and at times looks tired, at times looks exactly like a man who knows he looks old and tired and is desperately trying to hide it. One common thread in all three of these “crazy” characterizations his Bogart’s seeming empathy with the character, playing him not as a “type”, but from the inside, somewhere deep, and intimate, and troubled. In one film he touches his forehead in a reflex reaction to accusation. In another, his hands shake when he lights a cigarette. In another, he fumbles with steel marbles to comfort himself. His technique runs to more than just a crazed expression. There is so much going on his eyes as haunted as it is threatening, silently begging for help before he strikes.