The Best Jazz Saxophonist-Actor You Never Heard Of

Hollywood is full of hyphenates, from writer-director and writer-producer-director to actor-director (“What I really want to do is direct!”) and actor-producer-director. One of the more interesting hyphenates is politician-actor. John Lindsay (pictured below), the charismatic but controversial mayor of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s, flirted with acting in a role as a U.S. Senator in director Otto Preminger’s 1975 political thriller “Rosebud,” starring Peter O’Toole, Richard Attenborough, and Peter Lawford. (The following year, Lindsay dabbled in fiction as the author of the novel The Edge, which was dubbed by The New York Times “as dead serious as a $100-a-plate dinner of gray meat and frozen candidates’ smiles.”)

Fred Thompson, currently pitching reverse mortgages on television commercials, was an assistant U.S. attorney in the early 1970s (in 1973, he served as minority counsel to assist Republican senators on the Senate Watergate Committee), a personal injury claims attorney in the 1980s, and a U.S. Senator (Republican) from Tennessee from 1994 to 2003, who launched a shortlived Presidential campaign in 2008. In 1987, he made his screen debut as the CIA director in the paranoid thriller “No Way Out,” starring Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, and Sean Young, followed by several, similarly authoritative roles, including a rear admiral in “”The Hunt for Red October” (1990), the president of NASCAR in “Days of Thunder” (1990), a chief of airport operations in “Die Hard 2” (1990), and the White House chief of staff in “In the Line of Fire” (1993). In 1994, The New York Times noted, “When Hollywood directors need someone who can personify governmental power they often turn to” Thompson. In the 2007 television movie “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” Thompson portrayed no less than President Ulysses S. Grant.

As chief of airport operations at Washington Dulles International Airport in
"Die Hard 2" (1990), Fred Thompson eyes Bruce Willis' toupee with suspicion.

One could probably call Ethan Hawke an actor-novelist. The star of “Training Day” and the acclaimed trilogy “Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset,” and “Before Midnight” has written, to date, two novels. The Oscar-nominated screenplays for “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight” were co-written by Hawke, along with costar Julie Delpy, and director Richard Linklater.

Art imitates life imitating art: Leonard Harris
as Senator Palantine in "Taxi Driver" (1976).

Another intriguing yet infrequent hyphenate is critic-actor. Leonard Harris, a popular arts and theater critic and book reviewer in New York City (not to mention the author of three novels), was cast by his friend, director Martin Scorsese, as a handsome, charming U.S. Senator running for President in “Taxi Driver” (1976). His only other screen role was as the mayor of New York City in the 1980 comedy “Hero at Large,” with John Ritter as a struggling actor who masquerades as a crime-fighting superhero called Captain Avenger.

Gotham urbanite Rex Reed, once a perennial talk show raconteur and celebrity movie critic with an acerbic wit who wrote for The New York Times, New York’s Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, GQ, Women’s Wear Daily, and The New York Observer, made his motion picture debut as, of all things, a farmer, a bit part in director Otto Preminger’s 1967 melodramatic potboiler “Hurry Sundown,” starring Michael Caine and Jane Fonda.

Rex Reed and Raquel Welch try hard to suppress their
joy as costars of "Myra Breckinridge" (1970).

Reed’s big-screen breakthrough came in 1970’s “Myra Breckinridge,” portraying Myron, the alter ego of Raquel Welch’s character, a post-sex change acting teacher (who was Myron before the surgery – follow?) whose mission is to turn sexist Hollywood on its ear. The cast featured John Huston, Mae West (in her first movie in 27 years), Farrah Fawcett, John Carradine, Jim Backus, Andy Devine, and, making his feature film debut, Tom Selleck, as one of Mae West’s studs.

Critic Leonard Maltin deemed it “as bad as any movie ever made,” while Gene Shalit regarded it as “a new low in amateur squalor.” Time magazine called it “some sort of nadir in American cinema…about as funny as a child molester…an insult to intelligence, an affront to sensibility and an abomination to the eye.” Newsweek dubbed it “a horrifying movie” and “unprecedented unpleasantness.” The Wall Street Journal viewed it as “a single monument to sterile fantasies and pathetic impotence.” The New York Times dismissed it as “a junk film…unpleasant…dumb…inane…” Variety noted, “The bad taste is beyond belief.”

An eclectic cast if  there ever was one: John Huston, Raquel Welch, Mae West
(who, unsurprisingly, loathed Welch's snide attempts to upstage her), Rex Reed
(who remembered, "This was a film where the lawsuits really flew!"); director
Michael Sarne, appropriately groveling on the floor, gleefully proclaimed,
"I don't want subtlety, I want vulgarity in this film!"

Gore Vidal, author of the 1968 novel upon which “Myra Breckinridge” was based, disowned the film, calling it “an awful joke.” After the movie’s resounding failure, director Michael Sarne (a onetime pop singer, sometime actor, and onetime boyfriend of Brigitte Bardot) was never hired by an American studio to direct another picture. When Vidal heard that Sarne was waiting on tables at a restaurant, he said, “God exists, and there is such a thing as Divine Symmetry.” (As an actor, Sarne recently portrayed elder churchwarden Father Mabeuf in the 2012 film “Les Miserables,” starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, and Amanda Seyfried.)

Rex Reed himself trashed “Myra Breckinridge” in Playboy, declaring it would never be released. Harry Medved and Randy Dreyfuss, authors of The 50 Worst Films of All Time, summed up Reed’s acting prowess: “He manages to carry considerable enthusiasm into his masturbation sequence.” Eight years after “Myra Breckinridge,” the critic-actor returned to the screen in a cameo as himself in “Superman: The Movie.” In 1981, Reed played a New York Herald reporter in “Inchon,” an embarrassing debacle - laughably depicting a pivotal battle in the Korean War - financed by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and featuring 74-year-old Laurence Olivier - practically mummfied in latex and putty makeup - as General Douglas MacArthur.

Undoubtedly, one of the most popular hyphenates in Hollywood is the singer-actor, past – Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Doris Day, Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, to name a mere handful – and present – Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Beyoncé, LL Cool J, Jennifer Hudson, Zooey Deschanel, and, among others, Jared Leto.

As an actor, Frank "Ol' Blue Eyes" Sinatra was never better than in
his Academy Award-winning performance as the cocky but doomed
Private Maggio in "From Here to Eternity" (1953); taking a break
from filming, Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, and Frank Sinatra
watch the skies for any laggard Japanese Zeros.

The Moviehouse, however, isn’t interested in screening the commonplace. Instead, how about the jazz musician-actor? Of course, everyone is familiar with Harry Connick Jr., the three-time Grammy Award-winning (and two-time Emmy Award-winning) jazz pianist and crooner who has sold over 28 million albums worldwide. With the most #1 albums in U.S. jazz history, he is ranked by the Recording Industry Association of America as among the top 60 best-selling male artists in the country.

Harry Connick Jr. sweeps Sandra Bullock off her feet in "Hope Floats" (1998).

Connick first appeared on the screen as a tail gunner in the nostalgic World War II drama “Memphis Belle” in 1990. His memorable performance as a serial killer in the 1995 Sigourney Weaver-Holly Hunter thriller “Copycat” garnered praise from The Hollywood Reporter, which noted, “The ultimate in creative casting, Harry Connick makes for an intensely creepy psycho.” Connick landed a romantic leading role, opposite Sandra Bullock, in 1998’s “Hope Floats.” That same year, he told Vogue magazine, “I don’t want anybody else to be able to sing or play or act better than me. I did five movies. Learned as much as I could. I didn’t even know if I would enjoy the process. Having a huge ego like I do, the concept of being a movie star is extremely appealing.” Although the anticipated movie stardom has never actually blossomed, Connick has, at best, continued to exercise his acting chops, more recently in the 2011 family film “Dolphin Tale” and its upcoming sequel, “Dolphin Tale 2.” Still, according to Connick, “When I fill out the form when I’m going overseas, and it says ‘occupation,’ I always put down ‘musician.’ “

But there was another jazz musician, “one of Hollywood’s most unusual hyphenates,” in the words of Don Heckman, of the Los Angeles Times, who “was successful in two creatively demanding arenas.” Med Flory (above), who died March 12, 2014, at age 87, was an alto saxophonist and founder of the Grammy Award-winning jazz group Supersax. As a busy character actor, he established an enduring presence as “That guy!” – easily recognizable but difficult to place, much less name.

Born Meredith Irwin Flory in Logansport in northern Indiana, he began taking clarinet lessons when he was nine and joined the junior high school concert band when he was twelve. He disliked the name Meredith. In a 2009 interview with JazzWax blogger Marc Myers, Flory said, “When I was a kid, no one could pronounce it, so they called me ‘Mary.’ I’d get the heck kicked out of me. One day my junior high school coach said, “Hey, Med, come here.’ So I grabbed the nickname.”

Flory told Myers, “My mom was a real musician…She had played for the silent movies when she was in high school. She never studied music but could memorize everything. She also could improvise. She was twice the musician I’d ever be.”

Flory served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II and afterward graduated from college with a B.A. in philosophy. He situated himself in New York City, where he started performing with his own small combos, as well as in the big bands of Woody Herman and Claude Thornhill. Moving to Los Angeles in the mid-1950s, he became involved in the burgeoning cool jazz scene on the West Coast, playing with the likes of Art Pepper, Buddy Clark, and Joe Maini, and forming his own group, which performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Marc Myers commented, “Throughout the 1950s, saxophonist Med Flory was known in jazz circles for his aw-shucks demeanor and aggressive ambition.”

In 1972, Flory and bassist Buddy Clark formed Supersax, a nine-piece band - featuring, up front, two alto saxophones, two tenor saxes, and a baritone sax - that paid tribute to the music of legendary bebop saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, marked by classic Parker solos arranged by Flory. “Bird knew what he was doing,” Flory said. “Just when you think he’s going one way, he goes another. He was all about surprise. Not big ones. Little ones…I’d always try to play like him and never could. When you listen to him, you gotta know he’s from somewhere else.”

The 1974 debut album, “Supersax Plays Bird,” won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Performance by a Group. Supersax performed sometimes as its own ensemble, other times as part of Flory’s big band, Jazz Wave. According to Marc Myers, “Med’s big obsession has always been the sound of reeds playing in unison."

Med Flory at the center of Supersax

In a Los Angeles Times review of a 1992 performance by Supersax, Zan Stewart wrote, “You wanted hair-raising thrills, heart-stopping chills? Forget Magic Mountain’s Ninja, Colossus and Psyclone roller coasters. Just listen to Supersax’s version of Parker’s famed ‘alto break’ that precedes his solo in Dizzy Gillespie’s ‘A Night in Tunisia.’ “

Med Flory’s career as a character actor took off in the 1960s as he eventually amassed well over 100 appearances, mostly on television, particularly memorable on such westerns as “Gunsmoke,” “Maverick,” “Wagon Train,” “The Rifleman,” “Bonanza,” “Rawhide,” and “The Virginian.” His first acting job was a role in the TV series “Lawman.” In the aforementioned JazzWax interview with Marc Myers, Flory recalled, “One day I was sitting on the porch of one of those fronts in Warner’s back lot looking at my lines. James Coburn (who was also appearing in the episode) was passing by. He said, ‘Hey, don’t you play tenor sax in Terry Gibbs’ band?...What are you doing here?’…Coburn asked if I had done much acting. I told him I hadn’t. He said, ‘On the wide shots, make big gestures. On the medium shots, make little ones. And on close-ups, don’t do anything. And always hit your mark when you’re supposed to.’ That’s about as much acting advice I ever got (laughs).” Flory admitted, “I seemed to be naturally good at it, and acting was another way to make a few bucks.”

Med Flory portrayed Wyatt Earp in "Dodge City or Bust," a 1960 episode of
"Maverick" - not one of the fun episodes with James Garner but one of the
boring ones with bland game show host Jack Kelly as brother Bart Maverick.

Regarding Flory’s juggling music and acting, Associated Press writer Jay Sharbutt wrote, “Med, who speaks in an easy Indiana drawl, doesn’t mind this split-ticket existence. ‘It makes a nice balance in life,’ he says. ‘The acting lets me spend a lot of time on music and keep the band working.’ “

Along with his prodigious output on the small screen, Med Flory regularly appeared in motion pictures. The Moviehouse offers previews of our favorites…

Henry Fonda and James MacArthur pose against the breathtaking
majesty of the Grand Tetons in "Spencer's Mountain' (1963).

“Spencer’s Mountain” (1963), starring Henry Fonda as Clay Spencer, the ornery patriarch of a large family struggling to make ends meet in the Grand Tetons of Wyoming, was based on the novel of the same name by Earl Hamner Jr., which later inspired the popular TV series “The Waltons.” The book, like the show, was set in Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains during the Depression, but producer-screenwriter-director Delmer Daves scrapped the Depression-era trappings and relocated the story to the more picturesque landscapes of the Teton Range.  Maureen O’Hara played Fonda’s steadfast wife, and, in his last role, Donald Crisp (whose venerable career started in silent films and included a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for director John Ford’s “How Green Was My Valley”), portrayed Grandpa Spencer, the forerunner of Will Geer’s character on “The Waltons.”

...Speaking of John Ford and male chauvinism,
Henry Fonda gives Maureen O'Sullivan a sassy,
Fordian swat in "Spencer's Mountain."

In the early 1960’s, Henry Fonda’s newly acquired agents went behind his back and turned down an offer for the actor to star in a new play by Edward Albee, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (a role Albee had Fonda in mind for when he wrote the play), without telling him, insisting he do “Spencer’s Mountain.” Fonda protested vehemently, calling the script “old-fashioned corn – it will set movies back 25 years.” Later, Fonda would shudder whenever anyone mentioned the film. In his 1981 autobiography, he admitted, “The only two pleasures connected with that picture were the location, Jackson Hole, Wyoming – I swore I’d go back there one day to do some fishing” and phone calls to his future wife, Shirlee Adams.

Med Flory is the chowhound loading up his plate beside the standing James
MacArthur (far right) in "Spencer's Mountain;" Donald Crisp (center)
dominates the table as Grandpa Spencer.

While “The Waltons” had Richard Thomas as John-Boy, “Spencer’s Mountain” featured James MacArthur (best known as “Danno” on the original “Hawaii Five-O” series) as the college-bound Clayboy. Med Flory was cast as one of Clayboy’s eight brothers, as were a young Victor French (Michael Landon’s costar on “Little House on the Prairie” and sidekick in “Highway to Heaven”) and Mike Henry (a former pro football linebacker who played Tarzan in three movies in the mid-1960s but is fondly recalled as Jackie Gleason’s dimwitted son “Junior” in “Smokey and the Bandit”).

Playing dumb in "The Nutty Professor" (1963), Flory threatens Jerry Lewis'
Professor Kelp: "That wasn't very nice calling my football practice stupid!"

Although he may have been lost in the shuffle of siblings in “Spencer’s Mountain,” Med Flory’s most recognizable role – brief as it may have been – was as the hulking college football bully Worfshefski in the 1963 comedy classic “The Nutty Professor,” co-written, co-produced, and directed by star Jerry Lewis as a swinging twist on Robert Louis Stevenson’s 19^th-century novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Author's message: "You might as well like yourself. Just think
about all the time you're going to have to spend with you."

Much has been made of Lewis’ macabre transformation from a buck-toothed, nerdy, bumbling social misfit into an oily, loquacious, narcissistic, utterly obnoxious lounge lizard called Buddy Love as a thinly veiled goof on his former nightclub partner and Hollywood straight man, Dean Martin. However, in his book Cult Movies, Danny Peary adroitly posited, “It’s scary, but it now appears that Buddy Love was actually the alter ego of Jerry Lewis, the part of himself he once tried to suppress,” the Jerry Lewis we used to see on the Labor Day Telethon: “that angry older fellow,” according to Peary, “who tries, unsuccessfully to keep the ‘kid’ character bottled up inside him (the ‘kid’ breaks out in emergencies to get Lewis off the hook when the proceedings become too gloomy); that conceited fellow with the slicked-back hair who is either (you can’t tell which) good-naturedly teasing his guests or insulting them, singing songs he is sure his captive audience is eager to hear (he considers himself a singer)…”

Med Flory macks on Stella Stevens at the off-campus hotspot
The Purple Pit in "The Nutty Professor."

Jerry Lewis would cast Med Flory in “The Big Mouth” (1967) and “Which Way to the Front?” (1970). In 1969, Flory played an antagonistic constable in Elvis Presley’s penultimate film, “The Trouble with Girls,” a lighthearted period piece about a traveling medicine show of the 1920s shaking things up in a small Iowa town. Marlyn Mason, Sheree North, John Carradine, Vincent Price, Joyce Van Patten, and Dabney Coleman were featured in “a huge cast, all of whom, down to the last extra,” in the words of The New York Times critic Roger Greenspun, “seem willing to act their fool heads off…The whole cast is so attractive that even the unpleasant characters (Dabney Coleman and Med Flory) please so far as their roles allow.”

Because of his height, barrel chest, and wide, toothy grin, Med Flory was often cast as ingratiating, imposing lawmen and police officers. So it was no surprise for him to turn up as a highway patrolman in the 1976 cult comedy classic “The Gumball Rally,” about an illegal coast-to-coast road race from New York City to Long Beach, California. Roger Ebert declared, “ ‘The Gumball Rally’ is good-spirited and fun” with “a certain amount of class.” There’s not a mean-spirited moment to be found here.

A huge chunk of the visceral thrill in watching "The Gumball Rally" (1976)
is the fact that the ultra-cool actors, including (above) Michael Sarrazin,
Nicholas Pryor, Raul Julia, and Tim McIntire, actually drove their vehicles,
pedal-to-the-metal, on-camera. In particular, the real-time filming of the start
of the race on the eerily silent streets of early morning New York City
gave the picture a thrilling edge since unequaled.

Based on the real, unsanctioned Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash of the early 1970s, the movie – produced, co-written, and directed by Chuck Bail (a stuntman-stunt driver-stunt coordinator who retired to raise horses in Texas) - was ripped off five years later by Burt Reynolds in “Cannonball Run.”

(Above) One of the more spectacular stunts in "The Gumball Rally"...

When two of the Gumball racers, masquerading as cops in a fake patrol car, are pulled over by an Oklahoma trooper (Med Flory), they convince him they’re actually being filmed for a movie and offer him a part right then and there. Flory, whose delivery is a spot-on impression of Henry Fonda (perhaps something he picked up as a costar in “Spencer’s Mountain”), wonders, “Hey, wait a minute, don’t I have to put on makeup?” One of the faux cops comes back with, “Does Charlie Bronson put on makeup?” Frowning, Flory says, “Charlie who? Oh yeah, that little guy, right.” The crestfallen look on Flory’s face when he realizes he’s been had is priceless.

Med Flory trots out his patented, toothsome good ol' boy persona yet again as a
"crude and rude" (Roger Ebert) smalltown sheriff in "The Hearse," an annoyingly
tediious and painfully familiar 1980 chiller starring George C. Scott's widow,
Trish Van Devere, as a tightly wound divorcee forced to suffer through every
spooky, haunted house cliche previously filmed.

From 1987 to 1988, Med Flory had a recurring role as Sheriff McBride in the TV series “High Mountain Rangers,” created by and starring Robert Conrad (of “The Wild Wild West” fame), along with his sons Christian Conrad and Shane Conrad. His final roles were guest appearances on the series “Hunter” (starring Fred Dryer) in 1989 and on the shortlived reboot “The New Adam-12” (starring Ethan Wayne, John Wayne’s youngest son) in 1990.

Med Flory, wife Joan Barbara Fly, Henry Fonda

Before he began to have heart problems, Flory spent several years caring for his wife, Joan Barbara Fry, after she contracted Alzheimer’s disease. She died in 2000. Flory’s son, Rex, said, “As great an alto saxophonist as my dad was, he was an even greater father and husband.”

Recalling his 2009 interview on JazzWax with Med Flory, Marc Myers noted, “He’s as relaxed as some of the Old West characters he has played on TV...There’s also a distinct lilt in his voice, as if all those years deep in the West Coast jazz scene has somehow marinated the vocal chords.”

Myers asked him, “Has the jazz life been fun?” Med Flory said, “A gas.”