Richard Basehart

ACTOR, DIRECTOR

Richard Basehart Movies or Tv Shows (upto Oct 2024) - Watch Online

29th May 2022 | FlixCatalog Staff

Despite many a powerful performance, this actor's actor never quite achieved the stardom he deserved. Ultimately, Richard Basehart became best-known to television audiences as Admiral Harriman Nelson, commander of the glass-nosed nuclear submarine 'S.S.R.N Seaview' in Irwin Allen's Die Seaview - In geheimer Mission (1964), shown on ABC from 1964 to 1968. Basehart's distinctively deep, resonant voice also provided narrations in feature films, TV mini-series and for documentaries.Born in Zanesville, Ohio, on August 14 1914, Basehart was one of four siblings born to a struggling and soon-to-be widowed editor of a local newspaper. Upon leaving college, he worked briefly as a radio announcer and then attempted to follow in his father's journalistic footsteps as a reporter. Controversy over one of his stories led to his departure from the paper and cleared the path to pursue acting as a career. In 1932, Basehart made his theatrical bow with the Wright Players Stock Company in his home town and subsequently spent five years playing varied and interesting roles at the Hedgerow Theatre in Philadelphia. From 1938, he began to work in New York on and off-Broadway. Seven years later he received the New York Drama Critics Circle Best Newcomer Award for "The Hasty Heart", a drama by John Patrick, in which Basehart played a dying Scottish soldier. In 1945, he received his first film offers. When he heard director Bretaigne Windust was seeking an authentic Scot for the lead role in The Hasty Heart, Basehart not only effected an authentic enough burr to win the part, but won also the 1945 New York Critic's Award as the most promising actor of the year. His accent was so good that a visiting leader of a Scottish clan told the actor he knew his clan.Basehart made his debut on the big screen with Repeat Performance (1947) at Eagle-Lion, a minor film noir with Joan Leslie, followed at Warner Brothers with the Gothic Barbara Stanwyck thriller Der Fluch des Wahnsinns (1947). His third picture finally got him critical plaudits for playing a sociopathic killer, relentlessly hunted through drainage tunnels in Schritte in der Nacht (1948), a procedural police drama shot in a semi-documentary style. Variety gave a positive review, commenting "With this role, Basehart establishes himself as one of Hollywood's most talented finds in recent years. He heavily overshadows the rest of the cast..."It was the first of many charismatic performances in which Basehart would excel at tormented or introverted characters, portraying angst, foreboding or mental anguish. His gallery of characters came to include the notorious Robespierre, chief architect of the Guillotine (1949), set during the French Revolution. He was one of the feuding Hatfields in Roseanna McCoy (1949) and in Vierzehn Stunden (1951) (based on a real 1938 Manhattan suicide) had a tour de force turn as a man perched on the high ledge of an office building threatening to jump. For much of the film's duration, the camera was firmly focused on the actor's face. Basehart later recalled "It was an actor's dream, in which I hogged the camera lens, and the role called on me to act mostly with my eyes, lips and face muscles". The New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther called his performance 'startling and poignant'.Eschewing conventional movie stardom, Basehart meticulously selected and varied his roles, avoiding, as he put it, "stereotyping at the expense of not amassing an impressive bank account.'' In the wake of the sudden death of his first wife, Basehart left the U.S. for Italy. In March 1951, he got married a second time (to the actress Valentina Cortese) and appeared in a succession of European movies, playing the ill-fated clown Il Matto in Federico Fellini's classic Das Lied der Straße (1954); against type, essayed a swashbuckling nobleman reclaiming his titles and estate in Die Rache der schwarzen Maske (1955), and (again for Fellini), played a member of a gang of grifters in Die Schwindler (1955). He was also ideally cast as the mild-mannered Ishmael in John Huston's excellent version of Moby Dick (1956) and as Ivan, one of Die Brüder Karamasov (1958).By 1960, Basehart's second marriage had ended in divorce and the actor returned to America where he found movie opportunities few and far between. The small screen to some extent reinvigorated his career with numerous series guest appearances and his lengthy stint in the popular Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He also received critical praise for his role as Henry Wirtz, commandant of the Confederacy's most infamous prison camp, in the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning television drama The Andersonville Trial (1970).Not only an active human rights campaigner, Basehart was also strongly opposed to the experimental use of animals. With his third wife Diana Lotery he set up the animal welfare charity, Actors and Others for Animals, in 1971. He died after suffering a series of strokes in Los Angeles on September 17 1984 at the age of 70. - IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis

Fan Zone

Streaming Availability

Google Play Movies has the most number of Richard Basehart’s flixes, followed by Amazon Video compared to other streaming platforms. See the full graph below.

Releases by Year

Richard Basehart on average has worked on 2 movies per year from 1970 to 2003. See the full graphs of the number of Richard Basehart movies released per year from 1974 till 2003.

Top Genres

Richard Basehart works mostly in Drama Genre followed by Documentary Genre flixes. 34% of Richard Basehart movies are Drama Genre movies. See Top Genres that Richard Basehart worked on in the graph below.

Average IMDB Score

On average the IMDB score of the movies that Richard Basehart has worked on is 6.8.

6.8 / 10

Richard Basehart's Movies and Tv Series available to Stream now ..

8.6/10116 min

Available in 6 platform(s).

A documentary on how Los Angeles has been used and depicted in the movies.

7.9/10169 min

Available in 6 platform(s).

Action,Crime,Drama
Knight Rider (1982)

A lone crimefighter battles the forces of evil with the help of a virtually indestructible and artificially intelligent supercar.

6.9/1046 min

Available in 11 platform(s).

Drama,Mystery,Thriller
Rage (1972)

An accidental nerve gas leak by the military kills not only a rancher's livestock, but also his son. When he tries to hold the military accountable for their actions, he runs up against a wall of silence.

6.2/10100 min

Available in 8 platform(s).

An insane surgeon finds himself up to his armpits in eyeballs after guilt prompts him to begin removing the eyes of abducted people in hopes of performing transplants on his daughter who ...

5.4/1089 min

Available in 5 platform(s).

The officers of a small town bank discover a huge shortfall just before the bank examiners are due to visit. Not knowing who the crook is, they decide to fix the books and then rob the bank themselves to cover up everything.

5/1087 min

Available in 4 platform(s).