Bud Cort Dies: ‘Harold And Maude’ Actor Was 77

Bud Cort, whose indelible portrayal of the gawky, death-obsessed young man barely out of his teens who falls in love with a spirited 79-year-old Holocaust survivor played by Ruth Gordon in 1971’s Harold and Maude, died today in Connecticut following a lengthy illness. He was 77.

Deadline has confirmed his passing.

Born Walter Edward Cox on March 29, 1948, in Rye, New York, the young actor, instantly recognizable with his owlish looks and rail-thin frame, was discovered and cast by director Robert Altman in two 1970 hit films M*A*S*H and Brewster McCloud. He would go on to play character roles in such films as Heat (1995), Dogma (1999) and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004), among others, but it was his co-starring role in Hal Ashby’s midnight movie classic Harold And Maude that would establish his place in the cinema of the 1970s.

Set to a soundtrack of Cat Stevens songs and delighting in Cort’s deadpan delivery and Gordon’s eccentric gusto, Harold And Maude, released in 1971 by Paramount Pictures, would not make a profit until more than a decade later – the offbeat humor about suicide and the romantic sexual partnering of a young man and elderly woman kept mainstream success out of reach, at least initially. Cort’s depressed Harold Chasen is so obsessed death he drives a hearse to all the funerals he attends in his spare time, when he’s not staging elaborate fake-suicides that are met by his seen-it-all mother (Vivian Pickles) with bored irritation.

At more than one of those stranger funerals, Harold meets Maude, equally taken with the subject of death but embracing it with a much more generous, compassionate take. It’s only later in the film, when Ashby lets us glimpse, briefly, a concentration camp tattoo on Maude’s forearm, that we understand the depth of her experience and her tenacious love of life.

Tenacious would describe the film’s longevity, as well. Years – and many midnight movie screenings – would pass before the dark, sweet-natured film went from cult favorite to genuine classic, eventually ranking Number 69 on the American Film Institute’s 100 Best Romantic Comedies.

MORE TO COME…