Jack Sullivan, The East & South Hampton Press
‘TROOPER SHINES MUCH-NEEDED SPOTLIGHT ON IRAQ VETS AND URANIUM POISONING’ By JOSHUA KORS,’
Investigative Reporter, The Nation
PETER CUMMINGS, WRITER/PRODUCER
“Una Vida; A Fable of Music and the Mind,” “Bad Blood,” “Win, Place or Show.”
“Gary Swanson’s performance was stunning as your Dad. There were little moments of irreverence in his performance that bought so much to life about his character, depth of emotion and his own history. In his supporting role, he brought your own character to life Also, I have to say your ins and outs were very sharp and created a very personal, immediate and honest feel to how and why your story unfolded. When you were on the porch raising drinks with your new girlfriend and your Dad says ‘how ’bout my hero son’ – I lost it. Great pacing. Congratulations Chris!”
– Peter Cummings
Click logo for a complete search of the New York Times for Gary Swanson
new york times.
- “Gary Swanson recalls the young Steve McQueen,” New York Times review – VICE SQUAD (Film)
- MATTERS WORTH PONDERING INCLUDING STARDOM AND FLOPS – Vincent Canby
- New York Times Review 1983 – The Caine Mutiny Court Marshall (Theatre)
- New York Times Review 1986 – Triplecross (TV)
- New York Times Review 1988 – Rosenfeld’s War (Theatre)
- New York Times Review 1992 – Greensleeves (Theatre)
- New York Times article 1999
[link to article on NYT.com]
“The cast, too, is unusually good, especially the leads. Gary Swanson, who recalls the young Steve McQueen and is new to theatrical films, who plays a Los Angeles vice cop…”
[link to article on NYT.com]
December 19, 1982
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Eddie Murphy makes a smashing, movie-star debut as Nick Nolte’s cohort in Walter Hill’s breezy and brutal comedy, ”48 Hours.” He’s got class and a wickedly cool sense of humor. Mel Gibson, the American-born, Australian-bred star of George Miller’s ”The Road Warrior,” and Gary Swanson of Gary A. Sherman’s ”Vice Squad,” don’t really look alike but each possesses some of the same quality that made Steve McQueen into a bankable superstar. The year’s most astonishing performance by a new – to American audiences – face is Ben Kingsley’s in the title role of Richard Attenborough’s ”Gandhi.”
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THEATER: SMOOTH MILITARY DRAMA
By ALVIN KLEIN
Published: January 23, 1983, Sunday
AS a bristling courtroom drama, Herman Wouk’s ”The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial,” derived from his 1950 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, ”The Caine Mutiny,” still works…….
……The supporting cast, to a man, is excellent. Gary Swanson is just right as Lieutenant Maryk. He is playing the pawn, but not the fool. J. Kenneth Campbell is a smoothly condescending Lieutenant Keefer. Jonathan Hogan is a straight-on, eloquent and persuasive anti-Queeg spokesman, and Brad Sullivan is tough and convincing on the pro-Queeg side. Leon B. Stevens and Geoffrey Horne are excellent as a pair of double-talking psychiatrists. Edward Alexander is amusingly flustered and ingenuous as a Signalman Third Class.
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PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS IN ‘TRIPLECROSS’
By JOHN J. O’CONNOR
Published: March 17, 1986 [top]
ONE of the few bright spots in ”Triplecross,” the television movie at 9 this evening..
Like Maddie and Dave in ”Moonlighting,” the three key characters in ”Triplecross” are private investigators …
who have come to their calling in an unusual way. Several years earlier, they were police detectives….
Our heroes are: Elliot Taffle (Ted Wass), a kind of smooth wimp with a passion for baseball; Delia Langtree (Markie Post), a fun gal with a talent for magic tricks, and Cole Donovan (Gary Swanson), a bemused brawler with a tendency toward immediate action. Their standard fee for an investigation is $1. The real payoff, presumably, is in the excitement of the chase.
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April 26, 1988, Tuesday
Review/Theater: Ignoring the Holocaust, in Congress’s Own Words
By WALTER GOODMAN
”Rosenfeld’s War,” Gus Weill’s misleadingly titled documentary play now at the Mosaic Theater, works hard to arouse indignation at the failure of Congress in 1939 to pass a bill that would have admitted 20,000 German children to America. The indignation comes easily, but you don’t need a play for that.
Six actors take 150 roles, which consist mainly of very brief descriptions, pleas and exhortations that amount to a survey course on the Nazi campaign against the Jews. The evocation of oppression from the Nuremberg Laws to Crystal Night cannot but move one, yet we sit through the uneven first half of this one-act play wondering where the familiar material is leading. What is Mr. Weill going to add to the grim record?
Gary Swanson, who plays Goebbels, Joe E. Brown (one of the good witnesses) and a concentration camp victim, among many others, manages to put a touch of life into each characterization, but for the most part the actors are as impersonal as figures in a morality pageant. It is no fun having your lines written by the people who prepare testimony for Congressional committees.
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3 One-Acts Showcase Major Writers
August 16, 1992
Greensleeves, by Joyce Carol Oates
In mourning, Tamara (Mira Sorvino), a model, wanders through the park. She strikes up a conversation with Leon (Gary Swanson), a poet resembling her close friend who died of AIDS. She is looking for redemption. Joyce Carol Oates, who wrote the two-character work, calls it “Greensleeves.”
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Savoring Inspiration Amid the Mundane
By NAOMI SERVISS (NYT)
November 14, 1999
A SANCTUARY for the soul. An endless source of inspiration. Is this Long Island, the place so often vilified as a pop cultural wasteland of big hair and exaggerated accents? It is indeed. Just ask the Cold Spring Harbor rabbi, a black belt in aikido, whose Sabbath sermons are enriched each time his martial arts partner is dropped to a sweaty rubber mat in Glen Cove. Or the actor whose work is enlightened by dancing spirits of American Indians on Montauk…
The Peace of the Past
Gary Swanson, an actor who lives in Montauk, also has a love of spirituality and a respect for ancestral divinity. That explains his attachment to an American Indian burial ground in Montauk. His mother, who died last September, is buried there. ”There’s a hill below the Montauk Manor, where in one sweeping view you can see the ocean, the lake, Gardiner’s Bay and, on a clear day, Connecticut,” he said. ”This spot has always meant a lot to me because I would come out here as a young kid and fantasize and dream, and it’s still exactly like that.”
Fifteen years ago there was an effort to turn the area into condominiums. But this was the high ground for the remains of the tribal chieftain, and the area had been an Indian burial ground for the last 6,000 years, he said. Fortunately for Mr. Swanson, the condos were never built. ”You can feel a creative force here, filled with the spirit of the peace-loving Montauk Nation,” he said. The actor, seen in the recently released film ”The Bone Collector” and often recognized as the man in the Irish Spring commercials, runs the Bunkhouse Theater Company in Montauk for fledgling and accomplished actors. A lifetime member of the Actors Studio, he was selected by Paul Newman to jump-start the Actors Studio’s master’s program at New School University.
Mr. Swanson traces much of his acting technique to his boyhood summers on Montauk. ”This hallowed ground has a palpable force felt by everyone I’ve brought here,” he said. ”When my mother died last year, I decided this would be the perfect spot to memorialize her, since she loved this land as much as I did.” Mr. Swanson has placed a bench there as a memorial to his mother. ”Sometimes I’m here at 2 a.m. and swear I could hear a thunderous herd of running deer,” he said. ”It’s an extraordinary place of sanctuary and peace.”
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