He was on my personal creepy old guy list as a kid.  Just a tad on the wound too tight intense side and he seemed like someone who could snap at something really innocuous and beat the crap out of you before you knew the reason.  He appeared to mellow a little as time went by probably not so coincidently at about the same time I began to see the melodrama and humor in many of those roles and old films.  At any rate, he started to seem kind of humorous in the same way so many of the older severe guys did by the time I reached my late teens. 

A sawed-off little runt who shouted his way through each of his pictures.  In this, he was the Al Pacino of his time.  It's hilarious that Hollywood attempts to make macho men out of guys who are like 5-7 and weigh 135 pounds.  What a joke.

Like father, like son ;)