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Henry Gibson, who has died aged 73 from cancer, first became known as the flower-toting poet on the 1960s television comedy Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In before establishing himself as an often menacing character actor, most notably in several films directed by Robert Altman.
Among these was the Oscar-winning 1975 masterpiece Nashville, an ambitious multi-narrative drama focusing on the country music capital in the days leading up to a convention by an unseen presidential candidate. The film featured two dozen main characters, but Gibson dominated as the white-suited country music patriarch Haven Hamilton, by turns monstrous and compassionate. His performance won him a National Society of Film Critics award for best supporting actor, as well as a Golden Globe nomination in the same category, and made the scarcity in his career of equally memorable roles all the more unfathomable.
Gibson was born James Bateman in Germantown, Pennsylvania. His love of acting began when he joined the Mae Desmond theatre company, in Philadelphia, at eight years old, and continued into his time at the Catholic University of America, Washington, where he studied drama. He would later pick up this passion again when, after serving as an intelligence officer in the US air force between 1957 and 1960, he enrolled at Rada in London.
He moved to New York in the early 1960s and roomed with another future actor, Jon Voight, whom he had met at university. It was with Voight that he came up with his screen name, after the pair began performing as the hillbilly brothers Harold and Henry Gibson (a play on Henrik Ibsen).
A brief spot on The Tonight Show, in which he recited his own offbeat poems, led to small but significant film parts, including roles in Jerry Lewis's The Nutty Professor (1963) and Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid (1964). He became a regular face on US television in the 1960s, appearing in Bewitched, The Beverly Hillbillies and The Dick Van Dyke Show, among others.
But it was as a regular member of the Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In team that Gibson found his biggest, and fondest, audience. The format of the show, a good-natured jamboree bag of punchy sketches and pseudo-psychedelic wackiness, had been rejected by the NBC network when its co-creator, George Schlatter, first pitched it. But after a well-received 1967 pilot episode, in which Gibson appeared, it went on to enormous success, becoming America's No 1 show of 1968-69 (beating Bonanza and Gunsmoke). Amid the general breakneck zaniness, best personified by the series regular Goldie Hawn, Gibson projected an absurdist serenity as he clutched a flower and delivered self-penned poems such as Dogs Are Better Than Ants ("Because you don't have to bend so far to pet them �").
Gibson later called the show "an oasis of laughter and escape". He stayed with it until 1971. Two years later, he was cast by Altman in The Long Goodbye, the director's iconoclastic and controversial take on Raymond Chandler, starring Elliott Gould as a shambolic Philip Marlowe. Gibson was sinisterly effective as Dr Verringer, who holds an alcoholic writer (played by Sterling Hayden) under his spell. The sight of the 5ft 3in Gibson intimidating Hayden, who was more than a foot taller, with a sound slap to the face was weirdly chilling.
Gibson was even better playing another sort of bully in Nashville. We first meet Haven Hamilton in the film's opening minutes, as he belts out his emphatic signature number 200 Years (like his fellow cast members, Gibson co-wrote most of the songs he performs in the movie) before berating a pianist for having shoulder-length hair. He is a toxic little pixie, which makes his show of strength in the picture's final moments all the more striking. After a singer is assassinated on stage, Haven tells the frightened crowd: "This isn't Dallas, this is Nashville! Show 'em what we're made of!"
Altman cast Gibson in two interesting, smaller comedies â?? A Perfect Couple (1979) and Health (1980), the latter featuring the actor in drag, sporting a voluptuous bosom and heavy make-up. He underplayed beautifully as the leader of the Illinois branch of the Nazi party in The Blues Brothers (1980), where his subtlety again provided a neat counterpoint to comic chaos.
For much of the 1980s, Gibson relied on TV work in high-profile series including Magnum PI, The Love Boat, The Fall Guy and Knight Rider. Briefly he joined another director's unofficial stock company when Joe Dante cast him in the cheerful fantasy Innerspace (1987), then as Tom Hanks's creepy neighbour in the underrated comic thriller The 'burbs (1989). He also appeared in Dante's Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990).
In 2004, Gibson became a regular cast member on the TV series Boston Legal, and appeared in the 2005 hit comedy Wedding Crashers. But his last film role of note was in Magnolia (1999), Paul Thomas Anderson's extended homage to Altman's ensemble dramas. Gibson played a camp, crabby barfly competing with another gay customer for the attentions of a muscular young barman. In a few minutes on screen, he invoked an entire turbulent and colourful life, a miniature movie in itself.
Gibson is survived by his sons Jon, Charles and James, and by two grandchildren. Lois, his wife of more than 40 years, died in 2007.
â?¢ Henry Gibson (James Bateman), born 21 September 1935; died 14 September 2009
Source: www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/sep/24/henry-gibson-obituary
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