CDA: Noonan, van Dam, and Vreeland
- ladiesvoices
- 23 hours ago
- 2 min read
My brother Howard alerted to me to death of Tom Noonan. I asked him to write about him:
Tom Noonan died on Valentine's Day. He was 74 years old.
Tom played Tilden in the original Off Broadway cast of Sam Shepard's Pulitzer winning play Buried Child. His tall, wiry frame, intense gaze and quiet, menacing style garnered dozens of remarkable roles in the following decades. Heaven's Gate, F/X, Manhunter, Last Action Hero... he was even in Gloria and Mystery Train. In 1994 he turned his play What Happened Was... into a film which he not only starred in but also directed and scored. It won the Grand Jury Prize that year at Sundance. It is a small marvel, imagine My Dinner With Andre as an awkward date.
He became a favorite of Charlie Kaufman and played Sammy in Synecdoche, New York (2008) and voiced all of the characters in Anomalisa (2015) except for Jennifer Jason Leigh's and David Thewlis' parts.
Not many remember his name, but most will remember his work and that face. An actor's actor, as they say. I always smiled when I saw him pop up in a TV show, most recently in the criminally overlooked 2016 series, Quarry.
Here is his audition from Synecdoche:
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I read in The New York Times about the deaths of Jose van Dam and Frederick Vreeland. Jose van Dam (age 85) was a Belgian baritone with a major career. His singing was elegant, insightful, and dramatically compelling. Never anything cheap or showy with him, just an illuminating expression of the music and the role. I feel very lucky to have heard him in one of his signature roles at the Met, Golaud in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. He was extraordinary.
I first encountered him in the 1988 movie The Music Teacher. I saw it at the Majestic Theater in Madison, remember that place? Heavy sigh. Here he is in that movie singing one of Schubert's most beloved songs, "An die Musik."
Of course the name Frederick Vreeland leapt out at me from the Obit page on my phone. He was the younger son of my beloved Diana Vreeland, he died at the age of 98. I recognized him from one or more of the documentaries I've seen about his mother. This is the advice she gave him at age 10: “Be at the top of your class. Or at the bottom. Never in the middle.”
I had no idea he had such a fascinating life - - he was a spy! Check out his Times obit, if you're able. He wrote a self-published memoir called either Mr. Ambassador or The Spy Has To Travel (har har, a take-off on the doc about his mama) that doesn't appear to be available. I will continue to search.
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