The late George Kennedy‘s peak moment (“the greatest of my life”) was winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance as a big-mouthed convict in Cool Hand Luke (’67). He was fine in that Stuart Rosenberg film, but my favorite Kennedy performances are his police detective in The Boston Strangler (’68) and particularly his bullying, sociopathic goon who was brought down by a pack of Dobermans in Clint Eastwood and Michael Cimino‘s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (’74). I understood Kennedy’s willingness to prostitute himself as Joe Petroni in those Godforsaken Airport sequels (Airport 1975, Airport ’77, The Concorde: Airport ’79), but doing these and other crap films diminished what he had going in the late ’60s.
