Actors in Movies

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

The wealthy American tourist that Humphrey Bogart’s character keeps touching for cash in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is played by the film’s director, John Huston.

Apparently it was B. Traven, author of the original novel, who suggested that Huston play the cameo role: he’d seen the director handing out change during location scouting.

According to one rumour, Bogart took directing duties on these scenes, deliberately demanding repeated retakes in order to wind up Huston.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Watching Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom on the small screen, it’s easy to miss the fact that Dan Aykroyd makes a brief appearance.

He plays Weber, who appears at the airport near the beginning, following the shoot-out at Club Obi-Wan. It’s Weber who arranges for Indiana Jones to leave the country on the ill-fated flight that kicks off the story proper.

Weber is (I think) supposed to be British, and Aykroyd’s accent is a little alarming: part Bridge over the River Kwai, part C-3PO.

Sherlock Holmes: Shoscombe Old Place (1991)

Jude Law may have recently played Watson in Guy Ritchie’s 2009 film Sherlock Holmes, but this wasn’t his first brush with the great detective. Back in 1991, Law appeared in the Granada television series The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes, with Jeremy Brett in the title role.

In the episode ‘Shoscombe Old Place‘, Jude Law plays Joe Barnes, a young man who comes to a stable looking for work, beause he’d “like to be a jockey more than anything in the world”. At first he’s turned away by stable owner Sir Robert Norberton, but before long he’s back, the young innocent drawn into a sinister scheme involving death, spaniels, and cross-dressing.

Tarantula (1955)

In the mid 1950s, the young Clint Eastwood arrived in Hollywood, where he signed a contract with Universal (then known as Universal-International). What followed was a series of bit parts: he played a scientist in Revenge of the Creature (the sequel to The Creature from the Black Lagoon), and again in Never Say Goodbye; and had the promising-sounding role of “First Saxon” in Lady Godiva of Coventry.

Also in 1955, he took to the skies in a brief appearance as a fighter pilot leading a squadron into battle with a giant spider in Tarantula, a take on the giant-creature-on-the-rampage genre that maybe suffers in comparison to the previous year’s Them!, but does have its fans, and some nice FX.

Double Indemnity (1944)

Cameo appearances in films are usually discovered pretty quickly, especially in these days of freeze-frame DVDs, but this one took more than sixty years for people to notice.

Although some people (surely?) must have spotted it before, it was only in 2009 that word really spread about Raymond Chandler’s appearance in Double Indemnity. It first cropped up on Mark Coggins’s blog, before being covered in the Guardian.

As cameos go, it’s a good one. Chandler looks up at Fred MacMurray’s character as he walks past, much as you would imagine one of the film’s writers might want to keep an eye on his characters. (Chandler co-wrote the screenplay with director Billy Wilder, adapting it from a book by James M Cain.)