Perhaps no Hollywood actor continually stirs up more of a gleeful admixture of feelings in his viewers than Danny DeVito. Singlehandedly portraying characters with mile-long, obnoxious jerk streaks that are nonetheless somehow loveable, DeVito — with his diminutive stature, balding head, and broad Jersey accent — recalls a line that he himself used (about a character) in his big-screen directorial debut, Throw Momma From the Train: “Maybe [he] would be someone you’d like to kill.” No question about it: DeVito has made an art form out of playing endearingly loathsome little men.
Born November 17, 1944, in Neptune, NJ, Daniel Michael DeVito Jr. survived a Catholic school upbringing and started his career from the ground up, laboring as a cosmetician in his sister’s beauty parlor. Working under the name “Mr. Danny,” DeVito decided to enter New York’s American Academy of Dramatic Arts for the purpose of acquiring additional makeup expertise. However, he soon discovered his true theatrical calling and made his screen debut with a small part in the 1968 drama Dreams of Glass. After a few discouraging experiences within the film industry, DeVito decided to concentrate on stage work. During this time, he met actress Rhea Perlman, whom he later married in 1982.
In 1972, the actor made his way back into films with a role in Lady Liberty, a comedy starring Sophia Loren. His first notable film part came three years later, when he reprised his stage role of Martini, a sweet-natured mental patient, in Milos Forman’s screen version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Produced by DeVito’s old friend Michael Douglas (the two roomed together when DeVito was starting out) and co-scripted by Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman, the film won wide acclaim and nine Oscar nominations, eventually gleaning five statuettes (including Best Picture). Despite the adulation surrounding the film, DeVito’s screen career remained lackluster, but he skyrocketed to fame three years later with his role as the obnoxious dispatcher Louie on the long-running television sitcom Taxi. According to legend, the actor walked into the audition, script in hand, and yelled, “Who wrote this sh*t?!” Jim Brooks hired him on the spot.
From there, DeVito’s career swung upward and he spent the next decade playing similarly repugnant characters with enormous success. He reunited with Douglas for Romancing the Stone (1984) and its 1985 sequel, Jewel of the Nile, teamed up with co-star Joe Piscopo and director Brian De Palma (as a scam artist on the run) in Wise Guys (1986), and signed with Disney’s R-rated offshoot, Touchstone, for two comedies, the 1986 Ruthless People (as a wealthy husband overjoyed to discover that his obnoxious wife has been kidnapped) and the 1987 Barry Levinson-directed Tin Men (in which he plays one of two conniving Cadillac salesmen, opposite Richard Dreyfuss).
As mentioned, Throw Momma from the Train (1987) marked DeVito’s premier directorial outing. (His premier cinematic outing: he had previously helmed numerous episodes of Taxi and the 1984 cable telemovie The Ratings Game.) A madcap farce directed from a script by Benson and Soap scribe Stu Silver, Momma cast DeVito as Owen, a dim-bulb student living under the castrating thumb of his loudmouthed mother, who is enrolled in a writing course taught by failing novelist Larry Donner (Billy Crystal). Stumbling into a repertory screening of Strangers on a Train one night, Owen has the not-so-bright idea of emulating the film, by bumping off Larry’s conniving ex-wife in exchange for having Larry rub out his momma — without asking Larry first.
DeVito immediately established his own signature authorial stamp on the film, with what became a trademark use of bizarre, almost absurdly expressionistic camera angles. Throw Momma from the Train opened during the Christmas season of December 1987 and received mixed reviews. (Roger Ebert complained, “Momma is a series of missed opportunities and unexploited situations, a movie that wants to have genuine nastiness at its heart, but never quite works up the energy or the nerve to be truly heartless.”) The picture nonetheless became a massive hit — a real crowd-pleaser — grossing upwards of 57 million dollars, and thus paving the way for future DeVito-directed efforts. The War of the Roses (1989) — marked by the same stylistic approach — recast DeVito with his Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile co-stars, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, but could not have been any more different in terms of theme, content, tone, or intended audience. Co-adapted by Warren Adler and Michael Leeson (from Adler’s novel), this acerbic, black-as-coal comedy tells the story of Oliver and Barbara Rose, a seemingly happy and well-adjusted married couple whose nuptials descend into a violent hell when Barbara announces that she wants a divorce — and Oliver refuses to give her one. DeVito plays the cherubic lawyer who relays their story to another client, and famously reflects, “If love is blind, then marriage must be like having a stroke.” The picture instantly grossed dollar one, garnered legions of fans, and delighted critics across the board.
Ida Random produced Momma, and DeVito’s Taxi collaborator, James L. Brooks, produced War, but by the early ‘90s, DeVito gained additional autonomy by branching out into production duties himself, with the establishment of his own Jersey Films. Some of Jersey’s more successful endeavors were 1994’s Pulp Fiction (on which DeVito served as executive producer), Reality Bites (1994), Get Shorty (1995), Gattaca (1997), Out of Sight (1998), and Living Out Loud (1998).
In the meantime, DeVito continued to act in a number of movies throughout the late ‘80s and ’90s, his most notable being Twins (1988, in which he played the “twin” of Arnold Schwarzenegger), the disappointing Jack the Bear (1993, playing a goofy father attempting to raise his sons in a dark and disturbing world, in the early ’70s), the delightful _Other People’s Money_ (1991, for which he took on the role of corporate monster Larry the Liquidator), Barry Sonnenfeld’s Get Shorty, the screen adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda (1996, which he also directed and produced), L.A. Confidential (1997), and Living Out Loud. For the last of these DeVito won particular acclaim, impressing critics with his touching, sympathetic portrayal of a lonely elevator operator. In 1999, he added to his already impressive resumé with a role in Milos Forman’s biopic of Taxi co-star Andy Kaufman, Man on the Moon, and a supporting turn in Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides.
Despite solid performances in a series of recent high-profile hits and decades of big-screen success, the millennial turnover found DeVito’s star somewhat clouded as such efforts as Screwed (2000), What’s the Worst That Could Happen? (2001), Death to Smoochy (2002), and Duplex (2003) failed to live up to box-office potential. Smoochy dealt a particularly crushing blow. That film stars funnyman Robin Williams as Rainbow Randolph, the sicko host of a kiddie show, who plots to wipe out his Barney-like competitor (Ed Norton). It appeared and disappeared instantly; Maitland McDonough provided one of the kinder reactions, in TV Guide, calling it “a misfire of spectacular proportions.”
DeVito fared only slightly better as producer of the critically acclaimed 2003 television series Karen Sisco and the ugly Get Shorty sequel, Be Cool. He also acted as executive producer for the acclaimed Zach Braff dramedy Garden State and could be spotted in director Tim Burton’s imaginative fable Big Fish. As 2005 rolled around, audiences could spot DeVito in films such as The OH in Ohio, as well as on television as the actor found himself accepting a role in the quirky, Arrested Development-esque series It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
During 2006, DeVito balanced a full plate of work, temporarily retiring from the director’s chair, but juggling small roles in no less than three A-list features. These include Brad Silberling’s 10 Items or Less, a drama about the unlikely friendship that evolves between a has-been Hollywood star (Morgan Freeman) and a supermarket checkout clerk (Paz Vega); Jake Paltrow’s directorial debut, The Good Night, a slice-of-life dramedy starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Penélope Cruz; and the holiday comedy Deck the Halls. The latter stars DeVito and Matthew Broderick as neighbors who go to “war” with competing decorations at Christmastime to see who can be the first to make his house visible from space. The film co-stars Kristin Davis and Kristin Chenoweth. Meanwhile, Jersey Films geared up to produce the 2007 Freedom Writers, directed by Richard LaGravenese — a kind of retread of Stand and Deliver and Dangerous Minds, with Hilary Swank as a teacher determined to break through to her difficult students.
DeVito and wife Rhea Perlman have three children. —allmovie guide
