Henry Silva

Henry Silva (September 23, 1926 – September 14, 2022) was an American actor and Broadway performer whose career in film, television, and theater spanned more than five decades and encompassed over 140 productions. Born in Brooklyn, New York City, to Jesus Silva, a sailor from Italy, and Angelina Martinez, he was of Sicilian and Spanish descent. His father abandoned the family when Silva was young, and he was raised by his mother in Spanish Harlem. English was not his first language; he did not begin speaking it until age eight. At thirteen he left school to attend drama classes, working as a dishwasher and waiter at a Manhattan hotel to support himself.

Silva's path to Broadway began through the Actors Studio, which he auditioned for and was accepted into by 1955. Michael V. Gazzo's play A Hatful of Rain originated as a classroom project at the Studio, growing out of an earlier improvisation by Silva, Paul Richards, and Tony Franciosa based on a scene Gazzo had written titled "Pot." The project proved successful enough to transfer to Broadway, where Silva appeared alongside Ben Gazzara, Shelley Winters, Harry Guardino, Franciosa, and Richards. He also appeared in the subsequent film adaptation of the play. His Broadway work between 1953 and 1955 additionally included the Tennessee Williams drama Camino Real.

Silva's screen career began with an uncredited appearance in Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata! in 1952. A succession of supporting villain roles followed in films including The Tall T (1957) with Randolph Scott, The Bravados (1958) with Gregory Peck, and The Law and Jake Wade (1958). His dark, brooding physical presence led him to be cast repeatedly as criminals, gangsters, and ethnic villains portraying East Asians, Native Americans, Mexicans, and Italians. In 1956 he appeared as a hitman in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "Better Bargain," and in 1959 he played the Venezuelan forest-dweller Kua-Ko in Green Mansions, a character who attempts to murder a young woman played by Audrey Hepburn.

His association with the Rat Pack produced his breakthrough in Hollywood. Frank Sinatra cast him in the 1960 heist film Ocean's 11 after spotting him in a convertible at a stop light on Doheny Drive and inviting him to the studio the next day. Silva played one of eleven casino robbers alongside Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter Lawford. He followed that with the role of Korean communist agent Chunjin in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), again opposite Sinatra, and portrayed a Native American in the Rat Pack Western Sergeants 3 that same year. In 1963 he took the lead role in the United Artists gangster film Johnny Cool, playing Salvatore "Johnny Cool" Giordano, a Sicilian-born hitman dispatched by an exiled mobster to eliminate underworld rivals. The film premiered on October 19, 1963, and earned critical praise for Silva's performance, with Variety describing him as "at home as the 'delivery boy of death.'" The supporting cast included Elizabeth Montgomery, Telly Savalas, Joey Bishop, and Sammy Davis Jr.

In 1965 an Italian producer offered Silva the opportunity to play a hero, prompting him to relocate his family to Europe. His pivotal film there was the Spaghetti Western The Hills Run Red (1966), which established him as a bankable star in Italy, Spain, Germany, and France. Between 1966 and 1977 he appeared in at least 25 films, the majority of them Italian poliziotteschi productions in which he played villains, hitmen, or morally ambiguous protagonists. Notable titles from this period include Manhunt (1972), Il Boss (1973), and Almost Human (1974). He also appeared against type as Japanese detective Mr. Moto in The Return of Mr. Moto (1965) and as an Apache in the 1970 revenge Western Five Savage Men. Returning to the United States in the mid-1970s, he co-starred with Frank Sinatra in Contract on Cherry Street (1977), with Charles Bronson in Love and Bullets (1979), and took the role of villain Killer Kane in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979).

Throughout the 1980s Silva continued to work steadily as a villain in American action films. He played a drug-addicted hitman in Burt Reynolds' Sharky's Machine (1981), a former prison warden turned enforcer in Escape from the Bronx (1983), a comedy gangster in Cannonball Run II (1984), a drug czar opposite Chuck Norris in Code of Silence (1985), the CIA agent Kurt Zagon in Steven Seagal's debut Above the Law (1988), and the mob hitman Influence in Dick Tracy (1990). He also appeared as himself in a segment of the comedy Amazon Women on the Moon (1987). In voice work, he portrayed the supervillain Bane in Batman: The Animated Series (1994) and The New Batman Adventures (1998) within the DC Animated Universe. One of his final screen roles was as crime boss Ray Vargo in Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999). In 2012 he contributed to the documentary Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films that Ruled the 70s, directed by Mike Malloy.

Silva was married three times. His first marriage, to Mary Ramus, lasted from February 1949 until 1955. He married Cindy Conroy on March 16, 1959. His third marriage, to Ruth Earl, began on September 4, 1966, and ended in divorce in November 1987. Silva and Earl had two sons, Michael Henry Silva, born September 3, 1969, and Scott Stevens Silva, both born in Los Angeles. Silva died on September 14, 2022, nine days before what would have been his ninety-sixth birthday.