A00130 - The Curious Case of Tom Sizemore

 

I read about the tragic life and passing of Tom Sizemore over the weekend

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/03/movies/tom-sizemore-dead.html

For the most part, I chalked up this tragedy as just another example of Hollywood excess leading to sad consequences.  Of course, one notable item was that he was on the Celebrity Rehab show with Amherst's own Dr. Drew Pinsky, Class of 1980, but otherwise, it seemed that Mr. Sizemore's life followed an all  too familiar path.

That is what I thought after reading the New York Times obituary, but then I read the Los Angeles Times obituary

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-03-03/tom-sizemore-death-brain-aneurysm-hospitalized-saving-private-ryan

followed by this wikipedia listing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Sizemore

and I had to pause.

What the Los Angeles Times obituary makes clear is that Tom Sizemore was black and that for most of his adult life he appears to have struggled with the admonition given by his grandfather that he should never let anyone know of his African American heritage.

For some reason, reading about Mr. Sizemore's 2011 one man play that explored his bi-racial heritage and his feeling uncomfortable with the audience's reaction to his performance caused me to ponder more about this man ... and perhaps to appreciate him more

There is his play and there are the lines that resonate from Saving Private Ryan which linger in mind tonight.  After all, it was Sizemore as Sgt. Mike Horvath who provides the message for the whole movie.  As the New York Times obituary notes: 

"Mr. Sizemore could be intense, charismatic and manic in roles as soldiers, thugs, cops, killers and, in a television movie, the baseball player Pete Rose.  As Sgt. Mike Horvath in Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" (1998), he was the devoted second in command to Captain Miller (played by Tom Hanks) in a small group of Army Rangers whose mission after the D-Day invasion was to locate a soldier whose three brothers had already died in battle.

"Near the end of the movie, Horvath eloquently lays out the choices facing Miller: Let Private Ryan stay and fight, which he prefers, or send him home, as the unit had been ordered to do.

""Part of me thinks the kid's right -- what's he done to deserve this?"  Mr. Sizemore, as Horvath, says.  "He wants to stay here? Fine, let's leave him and go home.  But then another part of me thinks, what if by some miracle we stay, and actually make it out of here?  Someday we might look back on this and decide that saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we were able to pull out of this."  

"That's what I was thinking, sir," he concludes.  "Like you said, Captain, we do that, we all earn the right to go home.""

*****

Rest in Peace, Tom Sizemore

Rest in 

Peace,

Everett "Skip" Jenkins

Fairfield, California 

March 7, 2023

*****

P.S.  One of my Amherst College classmates sent me the following link to a military publication which highlights the notable military performances of Tom Sizemore.  In many ways, he was our generation's version of John Wayne.

 

https://www.military.com/off-duty/movies/2023/03/06/tom-sizemore-never-served-became-military-movie-icon.html?utm_campaign=dfn-ebb&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sailthru&SToverlay=2002c2d9-c344-4bbb-8610-e5794efcfa7d