It had to happen sometime, but the news of Richard Widmark’s death on March 24 in Connecticut threw me for a loop, for I guess I thought he would always be there, just under the surface, one of the last troubling memories of my childhood, and not to mention a great star largely in eclipse for the past 40 years. His film debut, the part that made him a star, came before I was born, when he played the gangster Tommy Udo in Henry Hathaway’s Kiss of Death (1947). Tommy was demented, manic, with big saucer eyes and beautiful soft blond hair—a little bit like Tommy by the Who (but more like Cousin Kevin from the same “rock opera”)—and Widmark made movie history by tying up an old lady in a wheelchair and pushing her down a flight of shadowy stairs just for kicks, while his voice soared in a high pitched giggle like a girl’s. I suppose moviegoers had never seen anything like this and Widmark was nominated for an Oscar. “Tommy Udo” became a blessing and a curse for our hero, for it was such a strong performance that it overshadowed his later, more subtle work, the same way that playing Norman Bates was at once the apex and ruin of Tony Perkins’ career—although Perkins actually never gave us any later, more subtle work. But anyhow, the name of Tommy Udo was known around the world. In Cologne the parents of baby Kier looked down at their newborn, giggling maniacally, and in a moment of German precognition they said, “Let’s call him Udo,” and another star was born.