There’s one elderly actor who could have had a great comeback when he got to star in an episode of Seinfeld named ‘the Jacket’. His name? Lawrence Tierney. It did help, to a degree — the year after the episode, Tierney was able to land a role in Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Playing a gangster.
It all seemed perfect, but for one minor issue… Lawrence Tierney was a gangster, known for being violent in his private life, a drunk, a brawler and a been in trouble with the law many times. This was to be his first comedic role, and as it turns out, his only one. He played the father of Seinfeld character Elaine. And he played it well enough — terribly intense, intimidating, sinister, brooding. And he was exactly that way off-screen as well. It terrified his Seinfeld co-stars. He played the part extremely well, mind you. But when the cameras went off, he was still exactly that way.
The actors were playing characters being scared of their friends’ intimidating father. Only they weren’t playing — the actors themselves were scared shitless of Tierney, who at one point stole a knife from the kitchen block of Seinfeld’s apartment. Jerry Seinfeld tried to turn the thing into a joke, asking him, “Hey Lawrence, whaddayagothere?”
After which Tierney tried to play a joke back and did a re-enactment of Hitchcock’s Psycho, waving the knife above Seinfeld’s head. They finished filming as if nothing was amiss, but decided not to re-hire Tierney. He could have been a regular feature, the way Jerry Stiller became a regular as George Constanza’s dad, which revived his career.
But no, Lawrence Tierney didn’t get to pull a Jerry Stiller, his appearance was a one-time thing, he did one more major picture after it aired and then his career dried up as he was simply too scary for movie casts to deal with… Tierney suffered a stroke in 1995 which ended his career, four years after starring on Seinfeld.
0 Comments