Lawrence Tierney
Lawrence James Tierney (March 15, 1919 – February 26, 2002) was an American film and television actor who is best known for his many screen portrayals of mobsters and "tough-guys" in a career that spanned over fifty years. His roles mirrored his own frequent brushes with the law.[1] In 2005, film critic David Kehr of The New York Times described "the hulking Tierney" as "not so much an actor as a frightening force of nature".[2]
For the footballer, see Lawrie Tierney.
Lawrence Tierney
Early life[edit]
Lawrence James Tierney was born in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn on March 15, 1919, the son of Mary Alice (née Crowley; 1895–1960) and Lawrence Hugh Tierney (1891–1964).[3] His father was an Irish-American policeman with the New York aqueduct police force.[3] Tierney was a star athlete at Boys' High School, winning awards for track and field and joining Omega Gamma Delta fraternity.[4]
After graduating from high school, he earned an athletic scholarship to Manhattan College but quit after two years to work temporarily as a laborer constructing a section of the 85-mile-long Delaware Aqueduct, which supplies nearly half of New York City's water supply. He then drifted around the country from job to job, working for a time as a catalogue model for Sears Roebuck & Company.[3]
Off-screen troubles[edit]
Tierney's numerous arrests for being drunk and disorderly, and jail terms for assault on civilians and police officers alike, took a toll on his career.[1] He was an admitted alcoholic who tried to go sober in 1982 after having a mild stroke, once observing during a 1987 interview that he "threw away about seven careers through drink".[21]
Between 1944 and 1951, Tierney was arrested at least twelve times in Los Angeles for brawling—fistfighting with multiple people—and frequently for drunkenness which included ripping a public telephone off a wall in a bar, hitting a waiter in the face with a sugar bowl for refusing to serve him any more drinks, and attempting to choke a taxi driver.[26] He was jailed for three months for brawling in May 1947[27] and again in June 1949[28] and drunkenness in January 1949[29] and October 1950.[30] His legal troubles included a 90-day jail sentence which he served from August to October 1951 for breaking a New York college student's jaw during another barroom brawl. He served 66 days in the city jail in Chicago, Illinois from March to May 1952 on drunk and disorderly charges.[31][32][33] In October 1951, he was sent to a mental hospital in Chicago after being found in a church in a disheveled state.[34] In New York City, he was arrested for assault and battery of a barroom pianist in August 1953, and in October 1958 for resisting arrest and assaulting two police officers in another barroom brawl.[35][36] At the time of his October 1958 arrest outside a Manhattan bar, The New York Times reported that he had been arrested six times in California and five in New York City on similar charges.[36]
In January 1973, he was stabbed in a bar fight on the West Side of Manhattan.[37] Two years later, Tierney was questioned by New York City police in connection with the apparent suicide of a 24-year-old woman who had jumped from the window of her high-rise apartment. Tierney told police "I had just gotten there, and she just went out the window." He was never arrested or charged with the young woman's death.[3]
In July 1991, during the filming of Reservoir Dogs, Tierney shot at his nephew in a drunken rage at his Hollywood apartment, and was arrested and jailed. He was released for one day to continue filming, as recounted by the film's director Quentin Tarantino in an interview. Tarantino never again worked with or hired Tierney to act in his films.[38]
Tierney’s Reservoir Dogs co-star Chris Penn recounted an incident in which Tierney stole a lamp for no apparent reason and showed it off to Penn while the two drove in Penn’s car.[39]
Wil Wheaton recalled that while filming Star Trek: The Next Generation, Tierney mocked the 15-year-old Wheaton for not playing sports and belittled him with homophobic slurs.[40]
The Simpsons showrunners and writers Josh Weinstein and Bill Oakley stated on Twitter numerous incidents regarding Tierney’s voice recording session for the show, including threatening and bullying the writers and staff, sexually harassing a female casting director and making strange demands for his role, such as insisting he voice the entire performance with a Southern accent.[41]
During the filming of Seinfeld, Jason Alexander and Jerry Seinfeld caught Tierney in the act of stealing knives from the set. When Seinfeld confronted him, Tierney began to laugh nervously and jokingly pretended to stab Seinfeld while imitating the music from the film Psycho. The entire crew was uncomfortable with Tierney following the incident, prompting Seinfeld to not hire Tierney again.[42] Julia Louis-Dreyfus complimented Tierney’s performance on the show but stated he was a “total nutjob.”[43]
Personal life and death[edit]
With much of his career and personal life repeatedly embroiled in legal problems and hampered by chronic alcoholism, Tierney elected to never marry despite having several short-term relationships with a number of women in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. He did, however, father a daughter named Elizabeth who was born in 1961.[1][3][44]
Both of Tierney's younger brothers preceded him in death, Edward dying in 1983 and Gerard (actor Scott Brady) in 1985. Tierney died on February 26, 2002, at age 82, in his sleep of pneumonia in a Los Angeles nursing home. He had been residing there for about a year after suffering another debilitating stroke.[45]
Biography[edit]
The first biography of the actor, Lawrence Tierney: Hollywood's Real-Life Tough Guy, was written by Burt Kearns and published on December 6, 2022, by the University Press of Kentucky.[46][47][48]