Robert Loggia (1930-2015) ...and 80s Oscar Movies.
Saturday, December 5, 2015 at 10:48AM 
The enduring character actor's career began on the Broadway stage in the 1950s but he quickly began mixing it up on television where he starred in a few short lived TV shows and made numerous guest appearances over the past five decades (!). His first big screen role (uncredited) was as "Frankie Peppo" in the Paul Newman classic Somebody Up There Likes Me but his film career didn't hit its peak until the 1980s with a string of hits including An Officer and a Gentleman, Scarface, Prizzi's Honor, and the comedy Big with Tom Hanks.
Though the earliest Oscar ceremony memory I have is Shirley Maclaine winning (1983), the first Oscar race I actively followed was in 1985, the year Robert Loggia was nominated for the courtroom thriller Jagged Edge. Now in the paleozoic pre-internet era "actively following" the race was much different. It required 1) going to movies that adults thought were great and 2) reading a few articles in weekly and monthly magazines about who might be nominated. That's it! [More...]
with Glenn Close in JAGGED EDGE (1985)
I had seen Jagged Edge in movie theaters solely for Star Man Jeff Bridges (♥) and curiousity about 'this Glenn Close person' who was suddenly famous as an Oscar darling for reasons I didn't understand. At the time I was most definitely not allowed to see R rated movies but 1985 was the year I started sneaking into them. Since Glenn Close was only in R rated movies I had only seen her once before in The Natural (1984) -- Robert Redford was mom-approved and the baseball drama was PG. I was confused by Glenn Close's Oscar nomination months later; budding actressexual me thought Barbara Hershey and especially Kim Basinger were the main attractions. Then came Robert Loggia's nomination which was also a head scratcher. In short: my first two Glenn Close movies were altogether mystifying Oscar experiences. Actually all of Glenn Close's movies have been mystifying Oscar experiences -- how did she lose for Fatal Attraction AND Dangerous Liaisons again?
(Let us never again speak of Albert Nobbs.)
But we were talking about Robert Loggia! I remember literally nothing about The Jagged Edge except a weird obsession with its literally jagged edged poster so I can't vouch for an opinion about it or my non-response to Loggia.
F Murray Abraham (a year before his Oscar win) and Robert Loggia (two years before his Oscar nomination) in SCARFACE (1983)
Surely Robert Loggia's best remembered movie scene. BIG (1988) with Tom Hanks
I hadn't yet clocked the grand and/or aggravating (depending on the movie/performer) Academy tradition of giving enduring character actors a thank you nomination for both a job well done and their entire career to date even if nobody much cared about the movie itself otherwise (Jagged Edge received no other nominations).
Later of course it became more obvious that Robert Loggia had the goods. RIP
Reader Comments (19)
Tom Hanks in Big <3
SO good!
I LOVE the movie Return to Me. In my Catholic circle of friends, it is a favorite. RIP, Mr. Loggia.
I LOVE Loggia in Big. An Oscar nomination AND an iconic scene: that's a pretty great legacy to leave.
(And two memories re: "actively following" the race pre-Internet. 1. Knowing EXACTLY when the Entertainment Weekly predictions issue would come out, and getting to the store ASAP. 2. Finding a phone number of the National Board of Review and phoning them up from a pay phone when I was about 15 because of no long-distance calls from the house to learn that they'd gone wild for Tom & Viv.)
I'll remember Robert L best for two movies: Over the Top which I saw theatrically because my mom is a Stallone-sexual and David Lynch's best movie Lost Highway.
/3rtful: And he's SO good in Lost Highway, too. The tailgating scene should be mandatory screening in driver's ed classes.
I got Independence Day on VHS as a Christmas gift in 1996. I was nine at the time, and I must have watched it about 50 times over the next few years; for a while, I thought it was the best movie ever made (I now know better; it is, of course, the sixth-best movie ever made). Anyway, that's my enduring image of Loggia.
he was phenomenal in Lost Highway - and that movie is such a masterpiece!
how do you remember 1983?
I didn't really catch on to Robert Loggia until later with his television roles (like "The Sopranos" and "Malcolm in the Middle"), but I'd seen much of his 80s film roles like "Big," "Prizzi's Honor," and "An Officer and a Gentleman." Curiously though, I've never seen "Jagged Edge." I don't think it's even in print anymore, and I've never seen it on cable. I see it's on Netflix, but not streaming. As far as character actors/"oh, that guy!" go, he was a memorable one. It's too bad he went out like this (Alzheimer's is such a nasty disease), but at least he had a long life. His IMDB page is crazy! He did what he loved doing for a very long time. Most of us will never be that lucky. RIP.
papa andy --- i remember it because i lived through it. i am now officially an "old" being in my 40s.
everyone -- i have never seen Lost Highway. can you believe it?
Glenn Close!!
Prizzi's Honor!
Praise be to the casting gods for putting him across Cloris Leachman as Jane Kaczmarek's terrible parents on Malcolm in the Middle. Their old-world, boorish antics still make me chuckle.
"i have never seen Lost Highway."
The fuck!
A great character actor- he was terrific in "Jagged Edge"
Fucking love that guy. Scarface, Big, ID4, JaggedEdge, and his pep talk in Necessary Roughness. How can anyone not love that scene? "Now, let's see what's been working for us? NOT A GODDAMN THING IS WORKING FOR THIS. NOT EVEN THIS SUIT, THIS TIE, OR EVEN THIS SHIRT! DO YOU GUYS KNOW HOW TO PLAY HARD-NOSED FOOTBALL? YOU PLAY FOOTBALL LIKE A GENNARO WOULD PLAY FOOTBALL! HE PLAYED LIKE A WILDMAN, NO. LIKE A WILD BEAST. WHO GAVE HIS LIFE FOR HIS TEAM. AND THAT IS WHAT YOU SHOULD DO!!! YOU TAKE THEIR FUCKIN' HEADS OFF AND SHIT DOWN THEIR THROATS! Let's pray"
Actor's careers are roller-coasters. He did all these great movies in the 80s and then he vanished into B films. It always makes me sad.
P.S. I always enjoy when you write about being a pre-Internet Oscar fanatic.
I first saw him in An Officer and a Gentleman....what a brief but memorable performance - he was all drunk and sexed-up, and everything about his character screamed I-don't-give-a-shit! And he was brilliant too in Jagged Edge. Whatever happened to him in the 90s and aughts?
Am I wrong if I vindicate "Innocent Blood" and Loggia's performance there? One of this actors who just wouldn't give a bad performance.