James Tolkan, the character actor whose steely authority and withering contempt for slackers made him one of Hollywood’s most recognizable faces, died peacefully on March 26 in Saranac Lake, New York. He was 94, survived by his wife of 54 years, Parmelee, and three nieces in Des Moines.
His story started as far from Hollywood as you could get. Born in Calumet, Michigan in 1931, Tolkan cycled through Chicago after his parents divorced, landed in Tucson, graduated high school in 1949, served briefly in the Navy during the Korean War before a heart condition ended his service, and eventually got on a bus to New York City with $75 in his pocket. He found a cold water flat where the rent matched his VA check, went to work on the docks, and enrolled with both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg to learn how to act. Twenty-five years of New York theater followed, from off-off-Broadway all the way to the original ensemble cast of David Mamet’s ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ on the Great White Way.
Film work followed while he was still New York-based, including Sidney Lumet’s ‘Prince of the City’ in 1981, before a move to California and Canada in 1983 for ‘WarGames’ shifted his trajectory permanently. What followed was one of the most memorable runs of supporting work in 1980s cinema. As Mr. Strickland in Robert Zemeckis’s ‘Back to the Future’ (1985), he delivered the word “slackers” with such magnificent contempt that fans spent the rest of his life asking him to do it again. As Commander Stinger in ‘Top Gun’ (1986), he dressed down Tom Cruise with equal authority. He had a dual role as Napoleon in Woody Allen’s ‘Love and Death,’ played Big Boy Caprice’s crooked accountant in Warren Beatty’s ‘Dick Tracy,’ and brought the same coiled intensity to everything he touched.
Jim adored animals. Donations in his memory are welcome at your local animal shelter, rescue organization, or Humane Society chapter.