Leo Penn, 77, Stage Actor And a Director for Television
By Kathryn Shattuck
Sept. 10, 1998
Leo Penn, an actor whose decade on the Hollywood blacklist in the 1940's and 50's stalled his career and eventually led him to direct, primarily in television, died on Saturday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 77 and lived in Malibu.
The cause was lung cancer, said Mara Buxbaum at PMK Public Relations in Manhattan.
Mr. Penn began his acting career at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he studied drama in hope of teaching. Instead, after performing in a play on campus, Hollywood beckoned and Mr. Penn responded. After a stint as an officer and bombardier in the Army Air Corps during World War II, ‘’’he signed a studio contract with Paramount in 1945, which they refused to renew ‘’’when Mr. Penn was blacklisted after supporting the Hollywood 10, a group of screenwriters, directors and producerswho were ultimately imprisonedfor their refusal to answer the House Un-American Activities Committee's questions concerning Communist sympathies.
Mr. Penn survived the blacklist by acting in television and in the theater, landing leading roles in stage productions like Maya, directed by Sanford Meisner; The School for Scandal, directed by Frank Corsaro; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Elia Kazan, and The Girl on the Via Flaminia and The Iceman Cometh, directed by Jose Quintero.
It was on a street corner outside the Circle in the Square Theater in 1957 that Mr. Penn, playing Hickey in Iceman, the role originated by Jason Robards, met his wife, the actress Eileen Ryan, who was also a member of the cast. Within a week they had moved in together; they married in a matter of months. The union lasted 40 years and produced three sons – the musician Michael and the actors Sean and Chris. Last year, the couple acted together once again in Remembrance, Graham Reid's drama about a former British soldier and a Catholic Irish widow who fall in love in the Belfast cemetery where each has buried a son. Their son Sean produced the play at the Odyssey Theater in Los Angeles.
Mr. Penn's movie career finally recovered when he was offered a role in Clifford Odets's 1959 film Story on Page One. Ironically, Mr. Penn had just learned that it was Odets who turned over his name to the Congressional committees responsible for authoring the blacklist and that guilt may have prompted Odets's call. And there went all my integrity!, Mr. Penn joked in a 1997 profile in The Los Angeles Times. That feature bought us our first house.
Back in the Hollywood mainstream, however, Mr. Penn grew weary of acting. I looked young for my age, and I was tired of being cast as baby-faced killers, he said in the same prfile. I had directed one play, off-Broaday, and thought I might like to direct.
Through a friend, he was able to maneuver his way onto the set of Ben Casey, where he worked his way from jack-of-all trades, rewriting scenes and doing odd jobs, to directing episodes of the show. I've been a happy gypsy ever since, he said.
Mr. Penn directed more than 400 hours of prime-time television, including episodes of Ben Casey, I Spy, Police Story, Kojak, ‘‘Matlock and St. Elsewhere. His two-hour episode of Columbo,'' —‘’Any Port in a Storm,’’— won an Emmy Award.
He also directed the 1966 film A Man Called Adam, and the 1988 film Judgment in Berlin.
Leo was wise, said his longtime friend Ernest Frankel, a retired television producer and writer, of Mr. Penn's directorial abilities. He always insisted on making the most pedestrian material as good as it can be. In their book The American Vein, Christopher Wicking and Tise Vahimagi agreed: It is not absurd to suggest that Penn is 'mainstream' TV at its most excellent and as such, he has made the ballroom a better place.
In addition to his wife and sons, Mr. Penn is survived by three grandchildren.
A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 10, 1998, Section B, Page 12 of the National edition with the headline: Leo Penn, 77, Stage Actor And a Director for Television.
all pb
Dig on Communist Penns
>>15720103 Grandfather Russian Jew from Lithuania. Immigrated to US just before revolution
>>15720254 Penn's father supporting trade unions and Hollywood 10 commies
>>15720340, >>15720361 Sean Penn on his father's holocaust
>>15720702 Sean Penn on His Blacklisted Dad: ‘There Was No Loyalty’
>>15720702 Sean Penn: If you aren't communist, you're a nazi. Especially Ronald Reagan
>>15720818, >>15720872 in true communist style, they pretend like there wasn't a communist issue with Hollywood, while at the same time admitting their membership in the communist party.
>>15721053, >>15721141 House Opens Anti-Communist Committee Documents