Until days before his death on Aug. 16 due to complications from complications from a fall earlier in the week, actor Jeff Corey, 88, would walk from his home on Bluewater Drive to the headland of Point Dume in Malibu.
Corey and his wife of 64 years, Hope, created an ocean-view home that was as close as Malibu has come to a salon, where creative friends-writers, actors, directors, musicians, academics-often met for conversation and reminiscence.
Corey survived the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950s, taking the Fifth Amendment during a hearing in 1951, to return to his career as an actor in major motion pictures such as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “In Cold Blood” and “Little Big Man.”
But during the long years when the blacklist kept him from working in Hollywood, Corey earned a degree in speech therapy from UCLA, built a stage in his garage and began to teach other actors. Among his students were James Dean, Jane and Peter Fonda, Robin Williams, Robert Blake, Rob Reiner and Jack Nicholson, many of whom remained his friends. Corey continued teaching young actors at a studio in his home right up until his death.
Ironically, many of the studios that were afraid to hire Corey himself would send their most promising young actors to him for training. But when the Coreys came to Malibu 23 years ago, all of that was in the past-but not forgotten.
New Year’s Day was the high point of the Coreys’ social calendar. Visitors from many walks of life and of many ages-including their three daughters, Eve, Jane and Emily and their families-flocked to Malibu for the traditional morning walk along the sea and a bowl of his chili.
In the early years, the marathon walk would end with Corey leading the pack up a precipitous slope to his yard. But gradually, guests would deliberately arrive late, just in time for lunch, to avoid the final assault on the summit.
But lately, we would straggle along a fairly level stretch of Birdview Drive to the Point Dume headland, and Corey, as always, led the way.
A week before his death, my wife, Vivian and I, saw Corey walking, alone and more slowly, and with the aid of a cane, through the expanse of yellow coreopsis toward the sea. It was our last glimpse of our longtime friend.
The tall, gaunt man walks alone
Through coreopsis to the sea.
A hundred other paths he’s trod
On stages fraught with history.
He was Abe Lincoln of Illinois,
A sailor on the Yorktown,
An American of conscience,
And an actor of renown.