Leo Gordon
Birthday: 2 December 1922, New York City, New York, USA
Birth Name: Leo Vincent Gordon
Height: 188 cm
Big, burly, character actor, one of the toughest of screen heavies, Leo Gordon's powerful physique, combined with his deep, menacing voice, was guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of even th ...Show More
[on whether he prefers screenwriting or acting] Writing is more rewarding than acting, but look at m Show more
[on whether he prefers screenwriting or acting] Writing is more rewarding than acting, but look at my face. Nobody believes I'm a writer. I should be 5' 8", 142 pounds, wear patches on my elbows and horn-rimmed glasses and smoke a pipe. That's a writer. Hide
[on the "benefits" of playing so many heavies] You get more recognition. After all, I look like a he Show more
[on the "benefits" of playing so many heavies] You get more recognition. After all, I look like a heavy. I'm 6' 2", 200 pounds. Got a craggy-ass face. I was walking down the street in Morocco when a little kid steps out of the alley and looks at me. He runs a few feet ahead of me--turns around and looks again--he puts his hands down like he's drawing two pistols. He goes, "Bip, bip, bip!' Y'know? Like he's shooting. You figure, "Here you are, a world away from anything you're familiar with, and some little kid in an alley in Morocco recognizes you?" Once, coming down the street in Madrid with my wife, a car slides up and these guys jump out. They were a couple of photographers from the Spanish press. They spent the whole afternoon with us. Hide
[about working with John Wayne in Hondo (1953), in which Gordon played a villain who gets killed by Show more
[about working with John Wayne in Hondo (1953), in which Gordon played a villain who gets killed by Wayne] In the scene . . . where he kills me down by the stream, I reach for my gun and he shoots me. I buckled up and pitched forward. Wayne hollered, "Cut! Cut!", even though John Farrow was directing. Wayne says to me, "What was that? When you get hit in the gut with a slug you go flying backwards". I pulled up my shirt to show him where I'd really been shot in the gut [by police while being arrested for armed robbery many years previously]: "Yeah? I got hit point blank and I went forward". Hide
Westerns are fundamental . . . the morality play. There's a good guy and a bad guy. You know which i Show more
Westerns are fundamental . . . the morality play. There's a good guy and a bad guy. You know which is which. You don't have to go into the psyche to find out his parents were abusive . . . [the heavy is] the guy people remember. You get more recognition. Hide
Leo Gordon's FILMOGRAPHY
as Actor (294)
