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(1897–1984). Canadian actor.
So, when assigned to Forbidden Planet, Pidgeon must
have lamented: once, I co-starred with the biggest names in Hollywood. Now, I
will be co-starring with a cast of unknowns, a stunt man in a robot suit, and
an invisible monster animated by Walt Disney Studios. As a trouper if nothing
else, Pidgeon did endeavor to play the unhinged Dr. Morbius with as much energy
and conviction that he could muster, which is to say, with not enough energy and
conviction; yet his palpable displeasure with his surroundings oddly harmonized
with the character of a man who wants to avoid the annoying company of other
people, and when he politely informs Leslie NIELSEN and his crewmates that he
wants them to just go away, he momentarily seems quite sincere. It could also
be argued that his strange, stentorian manner of speaking accurately reflected
the peculiar mental state of a man who has spent too much time having his mind
altered by alien technology. If not one of the great performances in science
fiction film, it is at least one of its most striking performances, and one
must credit Pidgeon for some of the film's success.
Once an actor goes slumming, people expect him to do it
again, so he soon found himself starring in Irwin
ALLEN's Voyage to the
Bottom of the Sea. But this time, there were no fortuitous circumstances to
make Pidgeon's acting memorable. In fact, his performance as Admiral Harriman
Nelson was so stunningly vacuous, and the work of his successor Richard
BASEHART so vastly superior, as to have these unusual results: today, his film
is forgotten and never seen, while the television series based on the film is
fondly remembered and still occasionally surfaces on cable television.
In his subsequent ventures into the fantastic, Pidgeon
seemed happy only when playing the king in a television production of Cinderella,
which perhaps served as a pleasant reminder that he had once been a member
of Hollywood royalty. As his declining health forced him into retirement, one wonders if he
was beginning to realize that people no longer cared about Mrs. Miniver
(1942), and that the only reason Pidgeon would likely be remembered was for his
performance in a science fiction film he had never wanted to make. For, with
its infinite generosity, science fiction is always capable of cherishing
performers who had never cherished science fiction.
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