I suppose talking about Treat Williams’ hair may be an odd way to begin an appreciation of his commendable career, but as I was watching Prince of the City last night to prepare for this obit, it occurred to me that I’ve never seen a man with a thicker coif atop his dome than Williams. I swear, I don’t know how he could use a comb or a brush on his locks without breaking off the teeth of either and having to pick through his voluminous strands to remove them.
Then again, considering his breakout film was in Milos Forman’s adaptation of the musical, Hair, maybe I’m not so off-stride. Of course, if all the multi-talented Williams had going for him was his amazingly lustrous mop, I’d probably have little reason to eulogize him. But the fact is, Williams was a special actor who seldom got his due.
In Forman’s Hair, Williams sings well and proved himself a magnetic screen presence out of the gate. Williams was only five foot ten, but he seemed taller, and while he was certainly fit during his early years on screen, he had a certain masculine heft to him. He looked like a man who could charm your socks off, and take you to the cleaners if you stepped out of line.
While Hair was both modestly reviewed and seen when it was released in its film version in 1979, it definitely put Williams on the map. Shortly after, the offers from fancy directors started hitting his agent’s desk. From 1979 to 1984, Williams was directed by Forman, Spielberg (in 1941), Sidney Lumet (Prince of the City—more on this undervalued gem later), and the great Sergio Leone in Once Upon a Time in America.
The trouble with all these opportunities with the highest of high class filmmakers is all of them underperformed due to various issues. Hair didn’t quite sing for most of the public, 1941 was a rare Spielberg flop, Prince of the City (one of four Lumet films about police corruption) didn’t take like his own Serpico did a few years before, and the initial disastrous studio cut of Once Upon a Time was nearly unwatchable (the nearly four hour Leone cut has since become legendary).
Few actors in the history of film have had such foul luck despite being attached to such quality directors as Williams was at the start of his film career. Of those four films, the one that really hurts is Prince of the City. I watched it again last night in preparation for this piece, and I remain astounded at the lack of critical respect (although the screenplay did earn the film’s only Oscar nomination) and box office success this epic length (at 168 minutes, it’s the second longest film of Lumet’s career after Long Day’s Journey Into Night) take on a detective’s painful descent from being a member of an elite, and largely unsupervised, police unit to becoming a shamed songbird who turns in all his friends while exposing himself and other cops on the take received.
Williams plays that internal stool pigeon, Danny Ciello. A man who wrongfully and tragically believes he can inform on his unit and at the same time protect his closest friends in the group from prosecution. One of the earliest scenes in the film serves as an excellent metaphor for what’s to come for Ciello—he walks into the new makeshift office of the NYC internal affairs division, takes a seat in a wooden chair, which promptly falls apart under him, leaving Ciello on his backside. Things get far worse for the detective from there.
Lumet’s film showcases the slow crumbling of a man who believes he’s in control, but never really is. Williams starts out as cocksure, but over the film’s running time descends into despair, which he treats with alcohol and valium as he comprehends that all of the members of his will be harmed by his actions. It’s no exaggeration to say that by the end of the film, Ciello is truly a nervous wreck. And while he may escape prosecution, and even keeps a job on the force as an instructor, he is, by the end, a lonely broken man.
Williams carries both the weight of his character’s burden and the film itself on his shoulders. Perhaps the most stunning scene in the film is when Ciello realizes that two officers in a diner are on to him, and in a sudden act of violence, he turns over the table, clocks one of the dirty cops in the head, snatches his gun, and takes both of them into the street to be arrested. While the physical aspect of the scene is bracingly realistic (few directed chaos as well as Lumet), it’s the guilt Ciello feels after that is so genuinely heartbreaking. Both officers beg for help, and Ciello promises that which he cannot deliver.
The term tour de force in relation to an actor’s performance is often overused, but I don’t know how you describe Williams’ work in Prince of the City any more accurately. Sadly, the film received a mixed critical response, with many reviewers unfairly comparing Williams to Al Pacino in Serpico. The two films may cover the same large scope subject, but the two characters are distinct, and Williams deserved better. Much better. Prince of the City has since been reappraised and seen as a near-classic film on police corruption and as a character study. While I’m certainly glad that the critical cognoscenti has come around on the film, the new perspective comes far too late to give Williams the boost he deserved.
That’s not to say that Williams never found any good or even great roles after Prince of the City, it’s just that they were few and far between. Perhaps the best part Williams played after Prince was in Joyce Chopra’s remarkable 1985 directorial debut, Smooth Talk.
Playing across from the terrific Laura Dern, Williams stars as Arnold Friend, a man far too old to be coming on to a 15-year-old girl. At first, Friend comes off as charming, but over time becomes increasingly sinister. The film never lays bare what happens between Williams and Dern’s characters, but there is a real sense that Dern’s Connie is forever changed. Williams’ perfectly modulated performance is every bit as key to the film’s artistic success as Dern’s. Seemingly channeling James Dean (but with a wicked underbelly) Williams is transfixing. Sadly, while the film is now seen as an indie classic, few saw it upon its release, despite Smooth Talk receiving rapturous reviews.
After Smooth Talk, Williams seldom got to play a lead in films whether they were good or bad. He often appeared in high profile projects like Mulholland Falls, The Devil’s Own, The Deep End of the Ocean (where he is quite wonderful as a father grieving the loss of his son across from Michelle Pfeiffer), The Phantom, Miss Congeniality 2, and 127 Hours.
Some of his best mid-career work can be found in the Tarantino knock off, Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, which isn’t a classic film (despite cribbing its title from a great Warren Zevon song), but as ‘Critical Bill,’ Williams gets to indulge his wild side as a rage-driven criminal who figures into several of the film’s myriad plot twists. Denver is no masterpiece, but the film does give you a sense of how much range Williams had and how good he could be when given a part with some juice.
Williams found some significant success on television in the latter part of his career. He received an Emmy nod for his performance as the super agent Mike Ovitz in the HBO film The Late Shift about the behind the scenes drama surrounding NBC’s decision to replace Johnny Carson with Jay Leno instead of David Letterman. He was terrific as Ted Kennedy in Confirmation, another HBO film detailing the senate hearings that led to Clarence Thomas’ ascension to the Supreme Court.
The WB series Everwood, about a widower doctor who moves his family to a small town in Colorado, ran for four years and is fondly remembered by many, even if it was a very middle of the road production. He also figured prominently in Chesapeake Shores, a Hallmark series that ran for six years and made Everwood look comparatively edgy.
Speaking of edgy, Williams was terrific in David Simon’s limited series We Own This City, which premiered last April on HBO. Telling the true story of an elite police unit in Baltimore that operated carte blanche for far too long, Simon’s predictably terrific series provided a sort of bookend to Williams’ admirable career. Thematically similar to Prince of the City, Williams may have only appeared in two of the series’ six episodes, but his presence was deeply felt in both.
In the perhaps unintended synergy of Prince of the City and We Own This City (I don’t put it past Simon that he may have engineered this act of serendipity) we are reminded both of what a fine actor Williams was and also how much more he could have been.
Treat Williams died on June 12, 2023. He was 71 years old.
