Robert Ginty; Independent obit (actor)
Hyfler/Rosner
Exterminator'
Monday, 9 November 2009
The actor Robert Ginty became a leading star of action
movies after he played the title role in the low-budget hit
The Exterminator (1980). For the next decade he was the
cut-price equivalent of Schwarzenegger or Stallone, making
violent thrillers that invariably went straight to video but
built him a large following of action fans. Ginty was
usually the hero, often a war veteran using his skills to
clean up the city streets, or a mercenary fighting
corruption in the far corners of the world (where hordes of
extras could be hired cheaply for scenes of mayhem). He was
a man of many talents, however, and later found favour as an
activist for experiment in the arts, a champion of human
rights, a writer, a theatre and opera director, curator,
artist and photographer.
Born Robert Winthrop Ginty in 1948 in Brooklyn, New York,
where his father worked as a construction engineer and his
mother worked for the government, he was of Irish ancestry
and a direct descendent of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, member of
Parliament and disciple of Thomas Paine, who died in the
Irish Rebellion of 1798. Ginty's first love was rock music,
and at the age of 16 he was touring with bands, playing
drums with Carlos Santana, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and
John Lee Hooker.
He was educated at Yale and the City College of New York,
then studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse, the
Actor's Studio, and with Robert Lewis at the Yale School of
Drama. He starred in Tennessee Williams's Orpheus Descending
and Eugene O'Neill's More Stately Mansions at the
Provincetown Playhouse, and at the New Hampshire Shakespeare
Festival he played Hotspur in Henry IV, Part One and Bottom
in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The producer Harold Prince saw these performances and hired
him as both an assistant and actor for his Broadway
productions of The Great John Brown (1972), Don Juan (1973)
and The Government Inspector (1974). After returning to New
Hampshire to star in Israel Horovitz's one-act play The
Indian Wants the Bronx, he moved to California, where he
developed a reputation as a rugged player who could fill
television roles that demanded physical action.
He was in episodes of Police Woman and The Rockford Files,
and he had small roles in the films Bound for Glory (1976),
and Two-Minute Warning (1976). His first notable role was in
the TV series Baa Baa Black Sheep (1976-78), about the
exploits of a Second World War flying ace and his squadron
of misfits. Ginty was Lt. T. J. Wiley, one of what he later
described as "a bunch of gung-ho young kid pilots". The
series prompted him to take up flying, a lifelong passion
that culminated in his becoming in 2004 an honorary captain
in the United States Navy's Blue Angels.
Hal Ashby, director of Bound for Glory, then gave Ginty a
strong supporting role in the powerful Vietnam war-drama
Coming Home (1978), starring Jane Fonda. Ginty was the best
friend of a marine (Bruce Dern) whose wife falls in love
with a paraplegic while her husband is overseas.
Ginty next acted in the acclaimed television series The
Paper Chase (1978-9), based on the movie about student life
in a competitive law school. Ginty portrayed one of the
students; another was played by Francine Tacker, who became
the second of his three wives. Despite being hailed as the
best new series of the year, The Paper Chase was cancelled
after one season.
Ginty was on the verge, however, of his major breakthrough.
He was cast in The Exterminator as a Vietnam veteran out for
revenge on the gang who beat up his comrade. Deploying his
most brutal combat skills, he battles the police and CIA as
well as various criminals, at one point thrusting a villain
through a meat grinder. Cheaply produced, the film made a
huge profit, and though Ginty was billed third to
Christopher George (as chief villain) and Samantha Eggar, he
stole the film, and would often be billed afterwards as
Robert "Exterminator" Ginty.
The image would carry him through a decade of low-budget,
violent thrillers, shot in France, Italy, Mexico and
Thailand, with such titles as Gold Raiders (1983), Maniac
Killer, Programmed to Kill, Mission: Kill, Code Name
Vengeance (all 1987), and Cop Target (1990). He also both
starred in and produced Exterminator 2, an inevitable sequel
to his biggest hit. He wrote and directed The Bounty Hunter
(1989), and he also produced, directed and acted in Vietnam,
Texas (1990), about a priest (Ginty) who discovers he
fathered a son while on a tour of duty in Vietnam, though
few priests would be as handy with a gun or their fists as
Ginty proved to be. The film won him Best Director awards at
the Houston International Film Festival and the Taormina
Film Festival in Italy.
As his phase as an action star waned, he worked more
frequently in television as both an actor and director. He
appeared in seven episodes of Falcon Crest (1989-90) and
such shows as Father Dowling Mysteries and Murder, She
Wrote, and he directed episodes of Nash Bridges, Charmed and
Tracker.
In 1994 Ginty responded to his heritage by becoming artistic
director of the Irish Theatre Arts Center in Hollywood,
whose goal is to sponsor stage, film and music projects
dealing with the Irish experience, as well as allowing
playwrights to hear their works read by actors in front of
an audience. He lectured regularly at Trinity College,
Dublin, and with film-makers Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan he
founded the Director's Guild of Ireland.
Ginty also became noted as a champion of experimental
theatre. In 2004 he directed a hip-hop version of A
Clockwork Orange in Toronto, and in 2005 at the Edinburgh
Festival he directed Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her
Children, set in Iraq. As a stage director, Ginty favoured
modern playwrights, staging revivals of Sam Shepherd's True
West, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia and David Mamet's Glengarry
Glen Ross.
An exhibition of his paintings and photographs was presented
at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2006. He was also a
Unesco Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Global
Market Place and a member of the International Centre for
Human Rights. A staunch advocate of preserving classical
American architecture, in 2005 he was appointed as
ambassador for the Prince's Trust by Prince Charles.
He and his family, who lived in Toronto for several years,
were also patrons of several arts bodies, including the
Royal Ontario Museum, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the
National Ballet of Canada. When asked how he felt about his
period as a top action hero, he replied that he had no
regrets. "I've played a very violent repertory of movies,
and what they've done for me is given me an economically
viable career."
Tom Vallance
Robert Winthrop Ginty, actor and director: born Brooklyn,
New York 14 November 1948; three times married (one son);
died Los Angeles, California 21 September 2009.
Matthew Kruk
news:hd88hc$k98$1...@reader1.panix.com...
> Robert Ginty: Actor best known for his action role as 'The
> Exterminator'
>
>
> Monday, 9 November 2009
Wow, kinda late. But good.