Mark Rydell, the director who coaxed career-defining performances from Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn, and Bette Midler across a half-century in Hollywood, has died of natural causes at 97.
Rydell died Thursday at a retirement community for the entertainment industry in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles, his daughter Amy Rydell told The Hollywood Reporter. She posted a tribute on Instagram the following day.
Born Mortimer Harold Rydell on March 23, 1929, in New York City, Rydell built a career that spanned jazz, soap operas, Broadway, network television, and some of the most commercially successful films of the late twentieth century. His best-known work, "On Golden Pond," earned over $119 million at the box office in 1981, landed 10 Oscar nominations, and delivered Henry Fonda his only Academy Award, months before Fonda died at 77.
Rydell's path to Hollywood started far from a soundstage. He studied with jazz pianist Teddy Wilson at the Julliard School of Music and majored in English and philosophy at New York University. A scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse, a respected New York acting school, pulled him toward the stage.
He served a stint in the U.S. Army, spending two years in Japan developing entertainment for military personnel, an early taste of producing under pressure. Back stateside, he landed early acting roles on CBS soap operas "The Edge of Night" and "As the World Turns," then made his Broadway debut alongside Rod Steiger in "Seagulls Over Sorrento."
His movie acting debut came in 1956 opposite John Cassavetes and Sal Mineo in Don Siegel's "Crime In The Streets." But Rydell's ambitions ran behind the camera. He cut his teeth directing television episodes of "Gunsmoke," "I Spy," "The Fugitive," "Ben Casey," and "The Wild Wild West" before making his feature-film directorial debut in 1967 with "The Fox," starring Sandy Dennis. That film was a hit and earned Oscar recognition.
Rydell was part of a generation of filmmakers who learned their craft in live television and episodic drama, a training ground that no longer exists in the same form. William Smithers, another veteran of that era, died recently at 98 after six decades on screen, a reminder of how many of that cohort have now passed.
Rydell directed Steve McQueen in "The Reivers" in 1969, John Wayne in "The Cowboys" in 1972, and James Caan and Marsha Mason in "Cinderella Liberty" in 1973, each film earning Oscar nominations. But "On Golden Pond" became his signature.
Adapted by Ernest Thompson from his own play, the 1981 film starred Henry Fonda as Norman Thayer and Katharine Hepburn as his wife Ethel, an aging couple spending a summer at their lakeside cottage. Both Fonda and Hepburn won leading acting Oscars. Thompson won for his screenplay. The film finished as the second-highest grossing movie of the year, behind only "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
Jane Fonda, who appeared in the film alongside her father, later said the experience helped resolve some of their personal issues. For Henry Fonda, it was his final movie role.
Rydell himself received a Best Director nomination but lost to Warren Beatty for "Reds." That remains one of the sharper near-misses in Oscar history: Rydell's film dominated the ceremony in acting and writing categories, yet the directing prize went elsewhere.
Rydell's gift for drawing performances from his actors showed up repeatedly. He directed Bette Midler in "The Rose" in 1979, a major hit in which Midler played a self-destructive rock star loosely based on Janis Joplin, and again in "For the Boys" in 1991. Midler received Oscar nominations for both roles.
In an Instagram tribute, Midler wrote:
"He was an actor of note before he became a director, and I was so lucky to have met him when I did; he taught me so much on The Rose and later on For The Boys. Two Oscars nominations both because of him. He was the actor's whisperer; just a few words was all it took to understand what was needed. Devoted to Meisner. So many happy memories."
That phrase, "the actor's whisperer", captures something real about Rydell's method. He trained in the Meisner technique, one of the foundational approaches to American acting, and spent decades passing it on. He and Oscar-winning actor Martin Landau served as co-artistic directors of The Actors Studio West. In 2009, the two joined screenwriter Lyle Kessler to teach a film workshop at UCLA.
Rydell once told UCLA's student newspaper, The Daily Bruin: "All great art rests on telling the truth. The real pursuit of an artist is to tell the truth."
In 1971, Rydell and fellow director Sydney Pollack co-founded Sanford Productions. The company produced "Jeremiah Johnson," starring Robert Redford, and "Scarecrow," with Al Pacino and Gene Hackman, which won the Palme d'Or, the top honor at the Cannes Film Festival.
Not every project landed. "Harry and Walter Go to New York," a 1976 comedy with James Caan, flopped. "For the Boys" underperformed despite Midler's nominated turn. "Intersection" and "Even Money" came and went without much notice. But Rydell kept working. He directed the pilot of ABC's drama "Family" in 1976. He helmed the TV movie "Crime of the Century" with Isabella Rossellini and Stephen Rea, and the TV movie "James Dean," in which James Franco won a Golden Globe and Rydell himself appeared as Warner Bros. chief Jack Warner.
He also continued acting on screen, with credits in Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye" in 1973 and Woody Allen's "Hollywood Ending" in 2002. That range, from the Altman universe to Woody Allen, from John Wayne westerns to Bette Midler musicals, marked a filmmaker comfortable moving between genres and temperaments. Classic Hollywood has lost many such figures in recent years; Kelly Lee Curtis, actress and sister of Jamie Lee Curtis, died at 69, another thread in the thinning fabric of old studio-system families.
Rydell directed "The River" in 1984 with Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek, adding another Oscar-nominated film to a résumé that included seven such pictures across his career: "The Fox," "The Reivers," "Cinderella Liberty," "The Rose," "On Golden Pond," "The River," and the Best Director nod itself.
Rydell is survived by three children. Amy Rydell and Christopher Rydell, both actors, are from his first marriage to actress Joanne Linville. Alexander Rydell is his son with his second wife, producer Esther Rydell.
Amy Rydell's Instagram tribute was brief and direct:
"Hard to put into words how much I loved my dad. He was truly one of a kind. Funniest and most talented person I've ever known."
Rydell belonged to a Hollywood that prized craft over spectacle, directors who came up through live television, who studied acting technique before they ever called "action," and who built careers on the strength of performances rather than visual effects. The era that produced him, and the vintage film culture he inhabited, grows more distant with each passing year.
Figures like Alan Greenspan and Mark Rydell came from a generation that built American institutions, financial, cultural, artistic, with a seriousness that commands respect even from those who disagreed with their choices.
Ninety-seven years is a full life. Rydell filled his with work that mattered, and the proof is on the screen.