Roberts Blossom could make an elderly neighbour seem worth worrying about before we knew much about him. We value the unease and dry comedy he brought to small parts, even when the casting kept asking for another difficult old man.
Fi1m perspective
In Home Alone (1990), Marley is the neighbour whose apparent menace gives us a reason to look twice. We were unsettled by him, because Blossom makes an ordinary neighbour seem like someone it would be sensible to avoid. That is useful work in Chris Columbus’s family comedy, where the carefully timed slapstick could otherwise leave little space for a different kind of reaction. Blossom makes us curious about a person who could have been no more than a convenient fright. We recommend the film despite the extra encouragement Columbus gives its sentiment, and Blossom supplies some welcome unease among the laughs.
Blossom had done experimental stage work before his feature debut in The Hospital (1971), but the screen career settled largely into supporting parts. There was an exception in Deranged (1974), which cast him as the killer Ezra Cobb in one of his few leads. The prison artist Doc in Escape from Alcatraz (1979) and George LeBay in John Carpenter’s Christine (1983) belong to the longer run of character roles. Repeated casting as cantankerous or peculiar older men gave him a recognisable place in films, though it could narrow expectations of what he would do. Remembering him only as Marley narrows them further.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) offers a useful corrective, with Blossom playing a farmer in a small comic turn. At the press conference, his contribution brings UFOs and Bigfoot into the same discussion, giving Steven Spielberg’s talk of alien contact a less solemn tone. We rate the film highly for making that contact feel worth the disruption, and the farmer’s eccentricity is a welcome part of its humour. Columbus makes use of Blossom’s capacity to suggest a threat; Spielberg needs him to be funny without taking up much time. Give the farmer your attention when the press conference begins.
Biography
Roberts Blossom was an American character actor and poet. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, he served in the US Army during the Second World War before beginning his acting career in Cleveland and later moving to New York, where he performed in off-Broadway and Broadway productions.
He appeared in numerous films from the 1970s onwards, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Christine (1983), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and The Quick and the Dead (1995). He is best known for playing Old Man Marley in Home Alone (1990). Blossom also received three Obie Awards for his stage work and later devoted himself to writing poetry after retiring from acting.
