Stuart Whitman - Film Career

Film Career

Whitman was a supporting actor in When Worlds Collide (1951), All American (1953), Brigadoon (1954), Silver Lode (1954), Ten North Frederick (1958), The Decks Ran Red (1958) starring Dorothy Dandridge, on whose face Whitman planted Hollywood's first interrracial kiss, These Thousand Hills (1959), and The Sound and the Fury (1959).

When Charlton Heston, who had originally been signed to play the lead in 1958's Darby's Rangers left the movie, James Garner was given the lead and Whitman wound up with Garner's original role in the film.

His first leading man role is in Murder, Inc. in 1960. He was signed on as a contract star with 20th Century Fox.

In 1961, Whitman was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as a child molester in The Mark, a role many other better known actors turned down. He has since appeared in starring and supporting roles in many films, including Francis of Assisi, The Fiercest Heart, The Longest Day, The Comancheros (sharing leading man status with John Wayne), Convicts 4, The Day and the Hour, Signpost to Murder, Shock Treatment, Rio Conchos, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Sands of the Kalahari, The City Beneath the Sea, An American Dream, The Last Escape, The Invincible Six, Night of the Lepus, Shatter, Captain Apache, Strange Shadows in an Empty Room, Guyana: Crime of the Century, Treasure Seekers and The White Buffalo.