It was a brilliant stroke on the part of Quentin Tarantino to cast Lawrence Tierney, who has died aged 82, as the old crime boss Joe Cabot in Reservoir Dogs (1992). Film buff Tarantino obviously remembered Tierney from his roles as menacing killers in 1940s' films noirs, notably The Devil Thumbs A Ride (1947) and the title role of Dillinger (1945). In fact, in Reservoir Dogs, Tierney, when asked if one of his henchman is dead, replies, "Dead as Dillinger".
In his book, The Devil Thumbs A Ride And Other Unforgettable Films, Barry Gifford wrote of Tierney, playing another of his classic mean-man roles in Born To Kill (1947): "The big lug is a squinty-eyed killer, a rock-hard devil with women, the big brute fantasy come alive in all of his horrifying glory . . . there's no decency at all in Lawrence Tierney's face, the most cruelly handsome visage on film. Unlike [Robert] Mitchum's face, there's no relief in sight, a man incapable of compromise."
Brooklyn-born Tierney was as tough as his image. He and his two younger brothers, Gerald - who became Scott Brady, the husky hero of many a western - and Edward, were all fine sportsmen. Lawrence attended Manhattan College, where he excelled at athletics. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was frequently arrested on charges of drunken driving and disorderly conduct. In 1973, aged 54, he was stabbed in a bar-room brawl in Manhattan.
After some stage acting, he managed to land a contract with RKO studios, for whom he made a dozen movies. However, he made Dillinger for Monogram, the Poverty Row studio that sometimes turned out a winner.
Dispensing with period detail and using stock footage, the film gave Tierney, as the Chicago gangster, the first chance to demonstrate how effective he was in bad-guy roles. Actually, when Tierney was good, he was bad, but when he was bad, he was better.
It is still hard to believe in him as the liberal ex-con who launches an inmates' welfare league in San Quentin (1947), or as an ex-cop hero trying to clear his name on a murder charge in Bodyguard (1948). More convincing was his Jesse James facing up to Randolph Scott's US marshall in Badman's Territory (1946). However, he was most effective as cold-blooded urban killers in a number of excellent films noirs.
As the bullet-man in Born To Kill, Tierney, in a fit of jealousy, commits a double murder, and says his ambition in life is to "fix it so's I can spit in anybody's eye". The Devil Thumbs A Ride saw him as a "slaphappy bird with a gun", who hitches a ride after murdering a theatre manager, and continues the mayhem.
Shakedown (1950) had him as a mobster being blackmailed by photographer Howard Duff, who snaps him committing a robbery. As usual, Tierney's retribution is nasty. In The Hoodlum (1951), he was a pathological criminal running the lives of his mother and brother, a character played by his real brother, Edward. After Female Jungle (1956), in which he played an alcoholic cop investigating the murder of actor Jayne Mansfield, in her first role, the work dried up because of his reputation as a hellraiser.
Tierney's appearances in the 1960s and 1970s were sporadic and brief. One of his few perceptible roles was as the Injun-hating General Sheridan in Custer Of The West (1967). He was back to his nasty best in the 1980s, as a lecherous policeman lusting after his stepdaughter in Midnight (1982), another corrupt cop in John Huston's Prizzi's Honor (1985), and as loser Ryan O'Neal's rugged father, who wants to "deep-six the heads", in Norman Mailer's Tough Guys Don't Dance (1987).
Tierney put his lifetime experience of being a tough guy - on and off screen - into the role of the racist organiser of the heist in Reservoir Dogs. At turns, horribly sinister and funny, he has some of the best lines. When one of the eight-man gang objects to being called Mr Pink - the boss has named them all from a colour chart - Tierney rasps, "You're lucky you ain't Mr Yellow." In the end, he dies a horrible death, having been shot in the face, but the film revitalised his career at the age of 73, leaving him better known than he ever was in the past.
He is survived by his daughter, Elizabeth.
Ronald Bergan
· Lawrence Tierney, actor, born March 15 1919; died February 26 2002