Kevin McCarthy

Kevin McCarthy, the American actor forever linked to the warning shout of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, died of pneumonia in Hyannis, Massachusetts, on September 11, 2010. He was ninety-six. Born in Seattle on February 15, 1914, and educated in part at the School of Foreign Service and later at the Actors Studio orbit of mid-century New York, he built a career that mixed Broadway, Hollywood, and decades of television. Body Snatchers (1956) made his face synonymous with Cold War paranoia done as pulp poetry; Death of a Salesman on stage and screen showed a different register of American anxiety. He kept working into advanced age, a professional who treated genre and prestige as the same job in different clothes. He was the brother of the writer Mary McCarthy and carried a family talent for clear sentences into a visual medium. Fans stopped him for the highway scene; he answered with the courtesy of someone who knew a cult classic was also a paycheck that had lasted half a century. He died in Hyannis on September 11, 2010. They're here already remains a line; he made it human. McCarthy's Body Snatchers run down the highway is American film language now — panic as public service announcement. He spent the rest of a long career proving he could also be quiet, legalistic, romantic, or wry on television guest turns that paid the mortgage of longevity. Being Mary McCarthy's brother invited literary comparisons he mostly ducked by showing up on time and hitting marks. Ninety-six years is enough for several reputations; he wore the sci-fi one lightly and the craftsman one every day.