Alan Arkin etched many indelible performances over his long career in movies.
From heroin-snorting grandfathers (“Little Miss Sunshine”) to ornery movie producers (“Argo”) to harried dentists (“The In-Laws”), Arkin, who died on June 29 at the age of 89, played an extraordinary range of roles with great gusto.But it’s fair to say that none of it would have been possible were it not for 1966’s “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” a Cold War comedy that marked Arkin’s first major screen role.
It’s the film that earned him the first of four Oscar nominations (he’d win for 2006’s “Little Miss Sunshine”) and a part that launched his career as a shape-shifting character actor.And it was Norman Jewison, riding high on the success of “The Cincinnati Kid,” who took a bet that Arkin, a gifted Broadway actor but movie novice, could make the transition from stage to screen.
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