…who was born exactly 100 years and one day ago.

I know which Steiger performances I’m expected to praise, of course. On The Waterfront’s Charlie, the original lonely butcher in Delbert Mann’s televised Marty, Sergio Leone’s Duck, You Sucker, Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker, the cultured serial killer in No Way To Treat A Lady (my second favorite), and, of course, the Dr. Pepper-sipping bohunk sheriff in Norman Jewison’s In The Heat of the Night.

And yet the Steiger performance that always comes to mind first and foremost is the cynical, perverse, sophisticated and ruthless Victor Kamarovsky in David Lean’s Dr. Zhivago.

I chatted with Steiger during a press schmooze at the ‘97 Montreal Film Festival (late August). A man of vague sorrow, unassuming, meditative, dressed in black. The death of Princess Diana (8.31.97) so upset Steiger that he got up and delivered an impromptu scolding that night about the motorbike paparazzi who had chased her and Dodi Fayed. Hey, man, don’t look at me…I’m Otis Ferguson with a touch of Neal Casady.