You can be forgiven if you don’t immediately recognize the actor seen in the photo at left, but I think you could figure it out if you took a good long look. It’s Darren McGavin.
There was something so earnest in McGavin’s work – his personality jumps off the screen – you feel as if you know him. Like Frank Morgan’s unforgettable performance(s) in The Wizard of Oz, McGavin’s turn as “The Old Man” in “A Christmas Story” bestows on him no small degree of immortality.
He was a hard-working guy. His massive credit list in theater, television and film shows he didn’t allow himself much downtime.
This brief excerpt from a Tom Snyder interview (from the collection of Bryan Olson) is an odd little conversation about cancer and life expectancy that’s occasioned by the deaths of Sammy Davis, Jr., Jill Ireland and Jim Henson.
