Sad Loss: Richard Davalos.

Davalos & Dean still from East of Eden (1955)
Image from Tumblr

I am a huge fan of James Dean and in that it has lead onto other obsessive people and past mediums that are connected to the amazing work he has done and that is how I found the awesome film that is East of Eden (1955). It was a fantastic adaptation of the last few chapters of John Steinbeck's novel of the same name, which I actually ended up reading after seeing the film and even though it isn't the type of book that I usually read, I could not put it down and was in shock at the brutal realism that I seemed to forget everyone goes through.

Davalos still from East of Eden (1955)
Image from Cinemagay.it

In speaking of this glorious part of cinematic history, this piece isn't actually completely about that, this is not a review and it's not even a piece on James Dean, apologies if I misled you; this piece is to talk about the sad loss of actor Richard Davalos who sadly passed on Tuesday, who played the great role in East of Eden of Aron Trask the good brother who broke down into bad.

We have lost a lot of talented actors and musicians this past couple of years and some have got more respect and mention than others and I was surprised to see that Davalos was one of those with very little recognition and remembrance for the great talent he shared with us and so I would like to just take a moment to ramble about his great filmography.

Cool Hand Luke (1967)  was a classic prison film that has been noted in ultimate 100 years of film lists by the AFI,  it's one of the main films we think of when we hear the great name Paul Newman and is also a flick that gave Davalos another great role as Blind Dick. Davalos also had a role in the 1962 film of Cabinet of Caligari which had a script written by Robert Bloch the author of Psycho.

Davalos  starred in films such as: I Died a Thousand Times (1955), All The Young Men (1960)  and Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983). This is just as tiny section of his filmography in his active acting years that began in 1953 right up until 2008, that's 55 years! As great as he was on screen in both movies and television, Davalos won the Theatre World Award for his performance on stage in the play A Tale of Two Monday's, written by legend Arthur Miller, in 1955.

Richard Davalos 
Image from Pinterest

It is sad to see such another talent go and especially one from such a great and pressing generation of actors such as Dean, Monroe and one of my personal favorites Sal Mineo. Their beautiful and brutally honest aura is slowly fading from us and to keep it strong we need to remember these wonderful people, remember the foundations of what we know and love today in the entertainment industry. The group of actors that made their part in the world in 1950's have become cult figures for us to idolize which is fantastic, but I also feel that they should be shown to the younger generation now to remind them what it is to be talented and what it is to be a genuine human being because some of the group held confident beauty and others held an uncomfortable-ness that people couldn't understand, but that was them, they were real.

It is another sad loss for ultimate film fans and I hope the memory of Richard Davalos continues on forever through the industry and the minds of all of us.



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