Burt Young was a big, burly actor from Queens who made a lot of money as a Hollywood tough guy. He starred in movies like “Chinatown,” “Once Upon a Time in America,” and, most famously, “Rocky,” for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Burt Young passed away on October 8 in Los Angeles. 83 years old.
Anne Morea Steingieser, his daughter, confirmed his death.
Mr. Young earned over 160 credits in cinema and television because to his bulldog physique and pensive expression. He often portrayed a disheveled working guy, a streetwise investigator, or a crime leader.
But he was no simple heavyweight, even in his villainous roles. Even though Mr. Young was a professional boxer and a Marine, he added levels of intricacy to his work.
Sam Peckinpah, a Hollywood tough man who directed him in the films “The Killer Elite” (1975), starring James Caan, and “Convoy” (1978), starring Kris Kristofferson and Ali MacGraw, was a kindred spirit to him due to his no-nonsense style.
His daughter described them both as “mavericks and outlaws, with a deep respect for art” during a phone conversation. Because of Peckinpah’s demands for honesty and passion, they were able to understand one another. He would not tolerate anything less than sincerity.
Mr. Young had a number of notable roles in television series during the early 1970s, including “M*A*S*H.” He also starred in films, including the mob comedy “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight” (1971) and the drama “Cinderella Liberty” (1973), which followed a sailor (James Caan) who falls in love with a prostitute (Marsha Mason).
In addition, he had a memorable, if fleeting, cameo as a cuckolded Los Angeles fisherman who becomes caught in a murder and incest story in Roman Polanski’s neo-noir classic “Chinatown” (1974).
Two years later, he had his real breakthrough performance in “Rocky,” which tells the tale of Sylvester Stallone, a low-class club and hood fighter, who unexpectedly faces heavyweight champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers). Mr. Young portrayed the explosive Paulie, Rocky’s butcher buddy and Adrian’s brother (Talia Shire), the shy lady who ends up becoming Rocky’s girlfriend.
Even though Mr. Stallone, who also penned the script for “Rocky,” would go on to become a household celebrity thanks to the film, Mr. Young often claimed that he was already a more well-known figure in Hollywood. He claimed, “I was the only actor that didn’t audition in the first Rocky,” in an interview with the cultural website The Rumpus in 2017. “And I was paid the most for it.”
Mr. Young recalled their first encounter, which took place in a studio commissary. He remembered, “He kneels down next to me.” “Mr. Young, I’m Sylvester Stallone,” he adds. “I wrote Rocky,” Mr. Young responded, adding, “Please, you have to do it.”
“He’s attempting to pull my arm,” Mr. Young said.
The picture, which was directed by John G. Avildsen and featured a gritty and sometimes sad human drama, was quite different from its occasionally comical successors, all of which were directed by Mr. Stallone and featured Mr. Young. He described the first film as “really not a fighting story, it was a love story, about someone standing up” in a 2006 interview with Bright Lights Film Journal. “Just getting up, not even winning.”
“Rocky” rose to fame in the 1970s. It won three Oscars, including best picture, and was nominated for ten Academy Awards, including Mr. Young’s for best supporting actor.
As Mr. Young put it afterwards, “I made him a rough guy with a sensitivity” toward Paulie. “Despite all of his yelling, he’s really a marshmallow.”
Burt Young was born in Queens on April 30, 1940. He took up that name as an actor, however accounts of his real name vary. His father worked as an iceman, sheet metal worker, and later a dean and shop instructor at a high school.
Born and raised in a working-class area in Queens’ Corona sector, Mr. Young experienced life on the streets from a young age. “In an attempt to soften my childhood, my father sent me to Bryant High School in Astoria, far from my Corona friends,” he said in the preface of Jason D. Antos and Constantine E. Theodosiou’s 2015 book “Corona: The Early Years.”
He went on, “But soon I was kicked out, and I went to St. Ann’s Academy in Manhattan, where I was expelled after one term. “In the end, my father lied about my age to get me into the Marines when I was sixteen.”
After beginning boxing in the Marine Corps, he went on to train and manage boxers Floyd Patterson and Mike Tyson under Cus D’Amato, leading to a successful, if short, professional career. When he left the ring, his win-loss record was somewhere around 17-1, albeit his own stories differed.
He was doing odd jobs and laying carpets in his late 20s when he fell in love with a bartender who told him she wanted to pursue acting with Mr. Strasberg. “I was unaware of Lee Strasberg’s identity,” he said to Bright Lights. “I assumed it to be a female.”
Mr. Young arranged a meeting between the two of them and the father of method acting, Mr. Strasberg, with whom they studied for two years. He said, “Acting had everything I was fishing for.” “Up until that point in my life, I had supported myself with stress. Rest was Lee’s greatest gift to me.
His many other film credits included the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield comedy “Back to School” and the terrifying 1989 adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.’s scandalous 1964 book, “Last Exit to Brooklyn,” which told the story of lost souls from the underbelly of midcentury Brooklyn. In addition, Mr. Young authored and acted in the 1978 film “Uncle Joe Shannon,” which tells the tale of a jazz trumpeter whose life falls apart until he discovers forgiveness.
Mr. Young is survived by his grandson and brother, Robert, in addition to his daughter. Gloria, his wife, passed away in 1974.
Mr. Young also had a lengthy career in theater, where he appeared in plays about drug dealers and their sons including “Cuba and His Teddy Bear” with Robert De Niro and Ralph Macchio. The play debuted in Manhattan’s Off Broadway Public Theater in 1986 before making its way to Broadway.
The New York Times’ Mel Gussow commended Mr. Young for his lighthearted portrayal of Mr. De Niro’s lackey and sidekick.
Mr. Young was a passionate painter who made a living from his paintings. His somber portraits were influenced by Matisse and Picasso. In a 2016 video interview, he said, “As an actor or an artist, I don’t think you can put me in a bottle.” Maybe I’m a bit more regimented when it comes to acting.
He said that in order to “fatten up” his characters, he focused on certain emotional indicators in acting, such as those that conveyed rage or avarice.
It makes sense, therefore, that his Paulie from “Rocky” erupted off the screen like a volcano, hurling his sister’s Thanksgiving turkey into an alley and using a baseball bat to destroy her home.
He said, “Paulie was a pretty ugly guy a lot of the time.” But they miscast me, he said.
I’m a charming son of a gun. Simply said, I sometimes make mistakes.
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