Kent Broadhurst obit

 

Kent Broadhurst, ‘Silver Bullet’ Actor and ‘Wild Iris’ Screenwriter, Dies at 86

He also penned lots of plays, appeared twice on Broadway and portrayed a real-life postal worker out to assassinate JFK.

He was not on the list.

Kent Broadhurst, the character actor who appeared in films including The Verdict, Silkwood and Silver Bullet and wrote the screenplay that led to Laura Linney’s first Emmy Award, has died. He was 86.

Broadhurst died May 20 at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, according to a paid obituary. He lived for the past 63 years in a building on Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village.

The St. Louis native did lots of theater work during his lengthy career, making it to Broadway in revivals of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial in 1983 and A Doll’s House in 1997, and he wrote many plays as well.

Broadhurst might be best known for playing the anguished father of the murdered best friend of Corey Haim’s Marty Coslaw in the Stephen King-scripted horror film Silver Bullet (1985).

In an interview for the DVD, he said he arrived at a park at about 2 a.m. for the scene in which his character is taken to his dead son. “The prop department had presented [director Dan Attias] with the corpse of the boy that was just embarrassing, it was unusable,” he recalled. “It looked like a window mannequin that had been smashed with a hammer and smeared with cranberry juice.

“I could see [Attias] was in such a quandary, so I said, ‘I think I can give you what you need and you won’t have to show anything of the terrible thing I’m confronted with.’ He was so grateful, he said, ‘Oh, that’s great. I’ll just keep the camera on you.’”

Broadhurst penned the screenplay for the 2001 Showtime telefilm Wild Iris, directed by Daniel Petrie. Linney stars as a widow who lives with her son (Emile Hirsch) and mother (Gena Rowlands) in a home that doubles as a bridal shop.

Linney received the Emmy for outstanding lead actress in a miniseries or a movie — it was the first of her nine Emmy career nominations and first of her four wins — while Rowlands was nominated as well.

Born in St. Louis on Feb. 4, 1940, James Kent Broadhurst graduated from the University of Nebraska and headed to New York, where he appeared off-Broadway opposite Marcia Wallace in The Fourth Wall in 1968, among many other plays.

He made his big-screen debut in Stuart Rosenberg’s Brubaker (1980), starring Robert Redford, then followed with turns in Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict (1982), starring Paul Newman, and Mike Nichols’ Silkwood (1983), starring Meryl Streep.

In the 1983 NBC miniseries Kennedy, starring Martin Sheen, Broadhurst portrayed Richard Paul Pavlick, the postal worker who was arrested after he stalked president-elect John F. Kennedy with the aim of assassinating him.

After appearing in Silver Bullet, which was based on King’s 1983 novella, Cycle of the Werewolf, he worked on another horror film taken from a novel written by King, The Dark Half (1993), directed by George A. Romero.

His résumé also included such films as Marshall Brickman’s Lovesick (1983), John Turturro’s Mac (1992), Luc Besson’s Léon: The Professional (1994), A Couch in New York (1996) and Boys Life 2 (1997) and TV guest spots on The Equalizer, Spenser: For Hire, Reasonable Doubts, Walker, Texas Ranger, Babylon 5, Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU.

In 2000, Broadhurst stepped in to provide the onstage narration as a hypnotherapist for a Dream Theater concert in New York that was recorded for the video album Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory.

His plays included They’re Coming to Make It Brighter, Lemons, The Eye of the Beholder and The Habitual Acceptance of the Near Enough; some bowed at the Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Broadhurst also was a painter who created more than 2,000 canvases, some of which have been exhibited at the Broadhurst Art Gallery (named for him) at the Stissing Center in Pine Plains, New York.

“Friends and colleagues often described him as a Renaissance man — thoughtful, intellectually generous and devoted to the arts in all their forms,” his paid obituary notes.

 

Filmography

Film

Kent Broadhurst film credits

Year     Title     Role     Notes

1980    Brubaker         Whitley           

1982    The Verdict      Joseph Alito   

1983    Lovesick          Gay Patient     

1983    Silkwood         Carl    

1985    Silver Bullet    Herb Kincaid  

1996    Seize the Day  Trader #3        

1988    Stars and Bars Ben Sereno     

1990    A Shock to the System            Executive #1  

1992    Mac     Mr. Tobin       

1993    The Dark Half Mike Donaldson        

1994    Léon: The Professional           1st Policeman 

1996    A Couch in New York Tim     

1997    Boys Life 2     Blondie            (segment "Alkali, Iowa")

Television

Kent Broadhurst television credits

Year     Title     Role     Notes

1985    The Equalizer  Noble  Episode: "The Confirmation Day"

1985    Kane and Abel Tony Simmons            TV miniseries

1988    War and Remembrance           Capt. George Murray (Enterprise)      TV miniseries

1994    Babylon 5        Major Lewis Krantz    Episode: "Babylon Squared"

1996    Babylon 5        Lewis Krantz   Episode: "War Without End: Part Two"

1993–2002      Law & Order   (various)          4 episodes

2000    Law & Order: Special Victims Unit   Larry Holt       Episode: "Nocturne"

2011    Person of Interest        Heinrich Hauffe          1 episode