Scatman Crothers brought a rasping voice and an unforced friendliness to supporting parts. We rate him for making those characters worth our attention, particularly when the people around them are louder or more alarming.
Fi1m perspective
As Hallorann in The Shining (1980), Scatman Crothers gives us someone we are willing to listen to. Stanley Kubrick's patient tracking shots and oppressive music make the hotel difficult company, and Crothers brings an approachable manner into it. We found his warmth reassuring, which made the surrounding menace harder to bear. Jack Nicholson sometimes makes the danger too obvious; Crothers's less emphatic presence is welcome beside him. His contribution matters because we want the company of this particular person in a place that makes us uneasy.
His increasing voice work and supporting roles in the 1970s made good use of a performer who had begun as a singer, drummer and guitarist. The Aristocats (1970) put that musical background to use in his voice performance as Scat Cat. Chico and the Man (1974–1978) gave him a regular television role as Louie the Garbage Man. His animation work also included the voice of Jazz in The Transformers series and film.
Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) casts him as Orderly Turkle, another supporting part that benefits from his ease. The film's account of mental illness is too simple, but its performances keep the men on the ward from becoming illustrations of a problem. Crothers belongs in that praise: he makes a character feel at home in the film without demanding that it stop to accommodate him. He appeared in four films with Nicholson, and these two offer a useful introduction.
The reservation is how often he was asked to be friendly and avuncular. So much supporting and voice work leaves us with less evidence of what he might have done in a substantial departure from that casting. We would have liked more opportunities to find out. On a return to The Shining, give him some of the attention Nicholson so readily claims.
Biography
Scatman Crothers was an American actor and musician. Born Benjamin Sherman Crothers on 23 May 1910 in Terre Haute, Indiana, he died on 22 November 1986 in Van Nuys, California.
He began performing as a musician in the 1920s and appeared in films from the 1950s. Crothers played Dick Hallorann in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) and Orderly Turkle in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). He voiced Scat Cat in the animated film The Aristocats (1970) and Jazz in The Transformers (1984) and The Transformers: The Movie (1986). He also played Louie the Garbage Man in the television series Chico and the Man.
