Durning Needled

With more than 200 screen credits on his resume, if you’ve never seen Charles Durning, you’re either Amish, lying or, as his appearances included both The Sting and The Muppet Movie, an idiot. He was one of the first men on the beach at Normandy on D-Day, and the lone member of his unit to survive an ambush. In Belgium, he was stabbed seven times in hand-to-hand combat before beating the German soldier to death with a rock, then was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and marched into the forest at Malmedy, where he was one of the only survivors when the Germans opened fire on 90 POWs. After that, surviving in the rough and tumble streets of Hollywood was a piece of cake. Among his more memorable roles were Lt. Snyder, the crooked cop trying to shake down grifters in The Sting; Doc Hopper, the frog leg cooking restaurateur in The Muppet Movie; Pappy O’Daniel, good ol’ boy governor in O Brother, Where Art Thou?; Les, the widower who finds Dustin Hoffman attractive in Tootsie; and Moretti, the hostage negotiator dealing with the idiot crooks in Dog Day Afternoon. Along the way, he earned supporting Oscar nominations as another slippery governor in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and as a horny Nazi in To Be or Not to Be, and 9 Emmy nominations, most recently as Tommy’s father in Rescue Me, but never won. He had to mollify himself with a Silver Star for valor and three Purple Hearts, and a Tony for playing Big Daddy in a revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.