Saturday, February 11, 2012
What the hell is going on at IMDb?
By Edward Copeland
Back in my mobility days, when I had just started working at a newspaper, the Internet had yet to explode into the great reference source it can be. By the time Google appeared and fact-checking became so easy (albeit with possible land mines of misinformation planted everywhere you typed), it became difficult to remember how we looked things up before the Web. The one exception for me was movie trivia — particularly Oscar trivia — because that sort of thing happens if you get exiled to a small Kansas town during your junior high years. You end up accidentally memorizing Oscar facts because instead of buying a book with all the Oscar nominations in it like a normal person (The late Wiley and Bona's Inside Oscar didn't exist yet), you check one out of the library and painstakingly type your own copy of the nominees and winners, building a visual memory without realizing it. (Yes, on a good-old fashioned typewriter no less — even did it with carbon typing paper so I'd have two copies. It's funny, because if I try to recall nominees for best actor in a certain year and get stuck, I remember the list alphabetically so I can narrow the missing actor to a section of the alphabet between the nominees I do remember.) As a result, Oscar errors leap out at me and when I find errors in the Internet Movie Database (of any kind), I try to inform them so they can make the site a better, more accurate resource. However, recently I've discovered something strange has been transpiring at IMDb and I imagine others have noticed this as well.
One gripe I've always had with IMDb is the way they denote the Oscars. For example, let's take last year. The King's Speech was named best picture for 2010, the year it was released. Now, the Oscars, even as they've moved up the ceremony, always bring up the rear, so it received its statuette for best picture of 2010 in 2011. Many an error has been made by people looking for quick Oscar facts who check IMDb because in the awards section for The King's Speech it denotes all its Oscar wins and nominations as being 2011. If you're an Oscar obsessive such as myself or Sasha Stone at Awards Daily or Nathaniel R. at The Film Experience or our own Josh R. here and countless others, you'll recognize that they refer to the ceremony. If you aren't, such as an older entertainment editor in the Midwest, you might put down that it was named best picture of 2011. It was named best picture in 2011 but of or for 2010. If you scroll lower, you'll see that any of the film critic awards the film took tend to say 2010 because they announced them before the calendar year ended. Of course, since we do have the Internet at our fingerprints, they have no excuse for not checking the real authority and looking up things on the Academy's official database which notes that The King's Speech was named best picture 2010 and best picture 2011 won't be handed out until the end of this month.
One early Oscar winner (and in my opinion, still the best of the best picture choices they made), Casablanca proves really problematic, even for movie buffs. The film deservedly holds its designation as a classic and everyone agrees that the movie was a 1942 release, owing to its premiere followed by public exhibition in New York on Nov. 26, 1942. Well, everyone except the Academy that is, It didn't open in Los Angeles for that requisite one week in a L.A. theater until Jan. 23, 1943. Despite the odds against a film opening that early in the year (and competing against nine other films, many fresher in voters' minds), Casablanca, the 1942 release, won the Oscar for best picture of 1943 at the ceremony held in 1944. On the IMDb Awards page for Casablanca. the only two years mentioned are 1942 (at the top as its year of release) and 1944 (as the year it supposedly won best picture, director and writing, screenplay. Oscar itself can have some strange occurrences such as Chaplin's Limelight, which came out in 1952 in most places, such as New York, but such Chaplin was persona non grata in Hollywood at the time, the movie never managed to open in Los Angeles until 1972, but the Academy ruled it eligible and Chaplin, Ray Rasch and Larry Russell won original dramatic score for the 20-year-old film (listed as 1973 on IMDb) — the same touching night that Chaplin received an honorary Oscar from the Academy for lifetime achievement and apologizing to him for being such an asshole to him for having opinions.
The most recent IMDb incident that prompted this post concerned an error I noted in its listing of awards for the movie Pariah. I had just finished watching the film so I made a point of seeing who had done the cinematography, which I thought was exceptionally well done for a low budget film. The credit clearly said (it was the second credit after written and directed by Dee Rees) Bradford Young. As I went to IMDb to check its awards page, it said that Pariah won the Grand Jury Prize for best cinematography in a dramatic film, only it credited the win to Dee Rees. Never mind that on its full cast and credit list for Pariah it properly names Young as cinematographer as does the movie's Web site in crediting him the Sundance prize.
Always trying to correct errors, I went in to try to edit the awards listing but no matter how I tried, it kept being rejected and referred me to a comment thread. The thread was led with a not by a site administrator explaining why they didn't allow updating of the awards section because of a job opening — dating back to late 2010. Of course, someone is updating them since new awards are going in. Here is the letter's text which leads to its thread. It was posted March 14, 2011.
Hi,
This message is to provide an update on the current status of the Awards List.
As many of you will know, we closed down the Awards submissions pipeline in Spring 2010, to completely overhaul the internal systems that we use for Awards data.
We very gradually started re-opening the Awards pipeline in October/November 2010 - using the new system.
This has proven challenging, and we have attempted to make improvements to our internal tools post-launch.
In addition to this, and perhaps more significantly, the individual previously responsible for for the Awards list left IMDb in mid December. This has resulted in us being understaffed within the Database Content Team.
Those of you who regularly monitor the processing times page http://www.imdb.com/czone/times will have seen that we have been in a backlog for the Awards list for a significant amount of time.
We have been actively recruiting for a Data Manger since that time, as you may have seen from our jobs page http://www.imdb.com/imdbjobs/#129661, and recruitment is going well.
Until we have successfully filled this role, we have reallocated some workload within the team. As a result of this, we now have a team member who has taken ownership of the Awards list, and is actively working through the backlog.
There are a number of open bugs with the current interface, which are being actively worked on currently by our software team. I will post a further update on those when I have one.
I appreciate that this has been a less than satisfactory situation for our contributors, particularly those that have been attempting to submit Awards data - and I apologize for that. With a data manager dedicated to this list from this point forwards, and software developers working with that individual, we are now in a position to make the improvements this unique and important type of content requires/deserves.
Regards,
Rachel
Call me crazy, but I'd think they'd still want to be aware of the errors, even if they didn't want people to use the new system. (Never mind that there hadn't been an update in nearly a year.) Wait — there's more. Recently, when I was working on my Centennial Tribute to José Ferrer, I found a couple of errors in his biography. They also were repeatedly rejected, though I found some other way to contact them and sure enough those mistakes eventually got fixed. Here though comes the most disturbing one of all.
Right after watching the movie Margin Call, I went to read their summary, just to make sure I was getting those tricky financial terms right. While there, I discovered the summary had a big plot point error. The summary's date indicated it had been written a few months prior to the film's opening. I went to try to edit the summary where I encountered what apparently any new users encounter if they try to register, what IMDb refers to higher "identity verification" or some such nonsense. I wrote them a note mincing no words that I'd be damned if I was going to give them that information just to try to correct an error. At least I knew it was wrong. Heaven help the people who didn't. I didn't even tell them what was wrong, but they've since had an updated Margin Call summary and the wrong information has been purged, so someone else got it to them.
That error though isn't as troubling as their reaching out for cell phone and credit card numbers. What that amounts to is they expect newcomers or anyone trying to change a summary to give them their cell phone number (making the assumption that everyone in the world has a cell phone) and, more disturbingly, a credit card number that they "swear they will never use." If they are never going to use it, why do they need it? It reminded me of Kirk's question in the awful Star Trek V: "Why does God need a starship?"
The cell phone scam is easy to understand: It's the same reason that Google and Facebook try to con you into giving them yours in the name of "security" should you lose your account. It's because they figure most people don't know that one of the loopholes in the rules of the Do-Not-Call-List law is that it doesn't apply to any business that you have a relationship with, so once they get your number, let the telemarketers ring your cell off the hook. The credit card bit is more ominous. Old users are grandfathered, but for how long? What are they planning? They can't expect run-of-the-mill users to get a hankering for IMDb Pro. unless they are planning to hide more things there, but I sure as hell wouldn't pay for a reference source that doesn't consider accuracy a priority.
On the last season of Boardwalk Empire, they had the wrong actor listed playing a part. Luckily I got the real cast lists from HBO and recognized that the actor's photo and age didn't match. Their TV credit listings are laughable as some actors and actresses will submit themselves as generic types such as "Townsperson" and claim to appear in every episode, though they add uncredited afterward. On the new series Luck, on individual episodes Kerry Condon's character is identified as Rosie but on the main page for the series they still just call her "exercise girl." They don't know what the hell to do with Nick Nolte. Sometimes he's Walter. Sometimes he's Walter Smith. Sometimes he's The Old Man. All are correct, but it's same character and looks confusing that way.
Be wary, all of you. I fear IMDb could start making Wikipedia look 100% credible.
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Labels: Awards, Boardwalk Empire, Books, Chaplin, Ferrer, Luck, Misc., Nolte, Oscars
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Thursday, September 15, 2011
After 40 years, I have far more than just one thing to say about Columbo
"That's me — I'm paranoid. Every time I see a dead body, I think it's murder.…But that's me. I'd like to see everyone die of old age." — Lt. Columbo, "Étude in Black" (Season 2, Episode 1)
By Edward Copeland
Actually, television audiences met Lt. Columbo three times before his series debut 40 years ago on this date as part of the NBC Mystery Movie — and the first time he wasn't even played by Peter Falk. Though most who are old enough probably remember the series as part of a Sunday night rotation with NBC's other mystery series, McMillan & Wife and McCloud, the "wheel" actually started on Wednesday nights. The troika didn't move to Sunday until the second season. As far as the Columbo character goes, actor Bert Freed first played
the cigar-chomping lieutenant in an episode of NBC's The Chevy Mystery Show , a summer anthology series hosted by Walter Slezak, that aired July 31, 1960, titled "Enough Rope." William Link and Richard Levinson, the creators of the Columbo character, adapted the teleplay from a story "Dear Corpus Delicti" that they published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine with Richard Carlson playing a murderous doctor. Two years later, the writers expanded the story into a stage play called Prescription: Murder which starred legendary Oscar-winning character actor Thomas Mitchell as Columbo with Joseph Cotten as the homicidal physician. By 1968, they decided to return Columbo to television with a movie version of Prescription: Murder. They sought Lee J. Cobb to play Columbo, but he was unavailable, but consider this frightening possibility: Their second choice was Bing Crosby. Fortunately, Bing's golf game proved more important to him than a television series and, though they thought he was too young for the part, Peter Falk
won the role with Gene Barry playing the killer. They did a second TV movie, Ransom for a Dead Man, that aired in early 1971 with Lee Grant as the murderer (for which she received an Emmy nomination), and come that fall Columbo became a regular series as part of that mystery wheel and Falk's portrayal of the scruffy homicide detective with his junky car, tattered raincoat and ever-present cigar became an irreplaceable TV icon. In the first season episode "Lady in Waiting," a socialite mother (Jessie Royce Landis) arrives at her son's mansion after he's been shot to death and doesn't immediately recognize exactly who or what Lt. Columbo is. When he introduces himself as a police detective, she says, "I must say you hardly look the role." That may have been true, but no one but Peter Falk could have played the role any better. I was too young to catch the early years in first run, but I remember how excited Henry Mancini's spooky theme music for The NBC Mystery Movie with the unknown figure waving a flashlight in all directions at whatever shows were in the rotation at the time followed by the announcer's booming voice announcing, "Tonight's episode —" It always punctured my balloon if he finished his statement with McMillan & Wife, McCloud or even Hec Ramsey. Thankfully, in this example, it is Columbo.
If you have never seen an episode of Columbo (and if that's the case, I must ask what the hell you've been doing with your life), you needn't worry that for a mystery series I'm being so carefree in identifying the various killers because what made Link & Levinson's creation (in this case the series, not the detective) so great was that you know from the outset who the murderer is. Spoiler alerts aren't necessary here because Columbo begins by showing the culprit plotting and carrying out his and her crime and Falk's intrepid homicide detective doesn't
show up until later to play cat-and-mouse with the killer. In the first season, the movies (which, in essence, is what they were more than a series) ran 90 minutes with commercials while in later seasons they alternated between 90 minute and two hour installments. Sometimes, Columbo didn't turn up until as late as 30 minutes into the show. In the first episode when Columbo was a regularly scheduled series, "Murder By the Book," Falk's lieutenant first appears as a faint figure at the end of an office hallway as he approaches the wife (Rosemary Forsyth) of apparently kidnapped and possibly dead mystery writer Jim Ferris (Martin Milner), who is getting a drink from a water fountain. It's about 15 minutes into the story and the audience already knows that Ferris' soon-to-be-ex-writing partner Ken Franklin (Jack Cassidy) has lured Jim to his lakeside cabin, killed him and staged the entire kidnapping. Cassidy will be one of the show's favorite actors to cast as a killer: he'll play the villain two more times. Others in this rogues gallery include Robert Culp (three times as a murderer, once as the father of a murderer) and Patrick McGoohan (a killer four times, taking home Emmys for two of them; he also directed five episodes, one of which he wrote). It's also one of several Columbo mysteries that involve writers. Most interesting of all, the series premiere was written by the show's story editor at the time, Steven Bochco, who would go on to co-create Hill Street Blues, and was directed by a 24-year-old kid named Steven Spielberg.Many directors whose names you'd recognize helmed a Columbo, though no one else who'd become a Spielberg. The other director who would probably go on to the most notable career would be Jonathan Demme, who directed an installment in its seventh season. Many known better for their acting gave it a try as well as some whose names might not ring a bell but who did direct some interesting features such as Jack Smight (No Way to Treat a Lady), Boris Sagal (The Omega Man), Richard Quine (My Sister Eileen, The Solid Gold Cadillac), Robert Butler (The Barefoot Executive, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes), Jeannot Szwarc (Somewhere in Time), Ted Post (Hang 'em High, Magnum Force) and James Frawley (The Muppet Movie). Other writers who would pass through included the prolific Stephen J. Cannell, Dean Hargrove, who went on to create or co-create The Father Dowling Mysteries and Matlock, and Larry Cohen who would go on to write and direct such quirky horror films as It's Alive and Q.
While the two previous made-for-TV movies had set the basic mold for what a Columbo mystery would be, it
truly wasn't until it became a regular network fixture that Falk could really cut loose as the lieutenant and the show could become a comedy as much as it was about catching the bad guy. That's really why I think Tony Shalhoub's Monk gets compared to Columbo so often — it's not because Columbo has a mental disorder but because Columbo and Monk both emphasize comedic elements. In fact, Monk tends to be more dramatic than Columbo with Monk's underlying mourning for his murdered wife while Columbo just got funnier the longer it went on. "Murder By the Book" really sets the template for the entire series and even if you have no interest in Columbo, it's fascinating to watch just as one of Spielberg's earliest credits. "Murder By the Book" opens with the sound of typing (sigh…typewriters) while the visual shows a car driving down an L.A. street. We soon see that Milner's Jim Ferris busily types away. On the wall, (Homage to Rear Window or not? You decide.) are plaques, painting and photos charting the partnership of Ferris and Ken Franklin (Cassidy). As the typing continues to be the only sound, the car we're watching pulls into the building's garage and parks on the roof. A hand reaches inside the glove compartment and removes a gun. A man exits
the car and shuts the door and we see it is Franklin whom Spielberg films at a low angle as credits continue. The director throughout the episode uses a lot more adventurous angles and quick cuts than I've seen from him in years, but he was young and trying to gain notice. Upstairs, something only a grammarian or a copy editor would notice — Ferris types a quote but places the period outside the quotation mark. It turns out the gun was a joke — it's not even loaded — and he's not wearing gloves. Franklin was just trying a good-natured ruse to show Ferris that there aren't any hard feelings about severing their partnership and asks him Jim to his lakeside cabin near San Diego to mark the end of a fruitful relationship. Ferris doesn't know that it also will mark the end of his life.It's obvious why they would re-team Falk with an actor such as Jack Cassidy more than once because some performers' chemistry with Falk's Columbo reached a perfection that you expect came from a lab and since the interplay between the lieutenant and the killer drove the show, why not go back to a proven winner as they did with Cassidy, who would return in seasons 3 and 5. He might have appeared again if he hadn't fallen
asleep with a lit cigarette and died in 1976, 10 months after his third Columbo aired. Cassidy excelled at what was the most common Columbo scenario — a villain who's not only a killer, but a snob. In most cases, class comes into play with the murderer always assuming he or she is smarter and better than that rumpled lieutenant, but no one plays dumb on purpose better than this detective so when he makes the case on the cultured killer, they inevitably are surprised that this little man in the tattered raincoat, always seeming to be forgetful and driving that Peugeot 403 convertible that looks as if it could crumble into a million pieces at any moment beat them. In "Murder By the Book," it takes 35 minutes for Columbo to say his first, "There is one more thing." The comic highlight, harbinger of many to come in the series, occurs as Ken Franklin is being interviewed by a magazine writer and her photographer tries to take photos of him while in the background Falk does some great slapstick as Columbo, juggles an armful of books, cigar stuck in his mouth, looking for a place to put the books down.The second episode of its first season had another three-time killer, Robert Culp, as Brimmer, the head of a big private investigation agency hired by Ray Milland to find out if his much younger wife (Patricia Crowley) is
cheating on him in "Death Lends a Hand," which won Columbo creators Levinson & Link the Emmy for outstanding writing in a drama series, the only writing Emmy the series ever received though it earned a lot of nominations in that category. Brimmer proves she did, but lies (with the wife in a nearby room) and says she's faithful. She asks why he would do such a thing. "Oddly enough, I'm a moralist," he tells her. So moral that he lied to her husband to hold the truth over her head so she can feed him information about her husband's powerful friends and business interests. She balks, saying she'll expose the private eye instead and he kills her in a rage — the cleanup and coverup of which gets wonderfully filmed as reflections in the lenses of Culp's glasses. He stages her death to look like she was
robbed and dumped in a vacant lot. Some interesting facts about L.A. life in 1971: 187 already was the police code for a homicide and when Brimmer tries to woo Columbo to take a job at his agency, Columbo learns a top position there can pull in $30,000 a year. That doesn't seem like much and in the first episode of season two, Columbo says his salary is $11,000 a year, which is the start of the poverty line for a single person today and the oft-mentioned Mrs. Columbo is a housewife. When they tried to spin her off in the form of Kate Mulgrew when Columbo ended the first time in 1978, she had a part-time job writing for a weekly neighborhood newspaper, until they decided to change her name to Callahan and forget that she was supposed to be related to Columbo at all (though at the start of Mrs. Columbo she even took their unnamed basset hound Dog with her). 
Falk won the first of his four Emmys (out of 11 nominations) for playing Columbo for that first season. The sole time the show won an Emmy for best series, it actually was shared ith the other NBC Mystery Movie members for outstanding limited series. Throughout its two runs (the original NBC run from 1971-78 and the ABC return from 1989-2003), it earned 38 Emmy nominations and won 11 awards. Because of the shared time
slot, it also meant shorter seasons than a regular series. Where a normal network show would be producing around 26 episodes a year at that time, Columbo only had seven installments in season one. Some of the other actors who played killers that year were Eddie Albert, Ross Martin, Susan Clark (in "Lady in Waiting" which featured Leslie Nielsen when he could still play it straight and was directed by veteran actor Norman Lloyd, who fell off the Statue of Liberty in Hitchcock's Saboteur and would play Dr. Auschlander on St. Elsewhere), Patrick O'Neal, who played a homicidal architect in "Blueprint for Murder," the only Columbo episode that Falk directed himself, and perhaps most fun of all, Roddy McDowall in an episode titled "Short Fuse." Did you hear the one about the exploding cigar? You will in "Short Fuse," where we also learn aboute Columbo's famous fear of heights. Because McDowall's character Roger Stanford is a playboy and a prankster (oh — and there is that murder), he does fool around with things such as those cans that spray strings of sticky colored plastic. When Columbo snoops around his darkroom, he accidentally sets it off on himself and an entire scene consists of McDowall picking the goo out of Falk's hair. As I mentioned when I sadly had to write my appreciation of Peter Falk when he passed away in late June, there was much more to the actor than just Lt. Columbo, as great and iconic as Columbo is. Between the time he made his first Columbo movie Prescription: Murder and prior to filming his second Ransom for a Dead Man and beginning the series, Falk began another important creative relationship — with John Cassavetes. The two actually had worked as actors in 1969 first in the Italian gangster flick Machine Gun McCain, which also featured Gena Rowlands but didn't open in the U.S. until October 1970. The important film they made together though was Husbands (subtitled A Comedy About Life, Death and Freedom) that was written and directed by Cassavetes and co-starred Ben Gazzara. Falk became a vital part of Cassavetes' unofficial repertory company appearing in A Woman Under the Influence, Opening Night (as himself) and Big Trouble. The two also co-starred in Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky. The Cassavetes troupe all played with Falk on Columbo in some capacity. Rowlands appeared as the wife of a killer, Gazzara directed two episodes and Cassavetes starred as the killer in the second season premiere, "Étude in Black," one of the series' best episodes thanks to chemistry these two fine actors already had with one another.
Cassavetes plays gifted conductor and composer Alex Benedict who kills his pianist mistress (Anjanette Comer) after she threatens to tell his wife Janice (Blythe Danner) about their affair if he doesn't leave her. Benedict
tries to make it look like a suicide, but Columbo sees through the ruse rather quickly. He and Mrs. Columbo also are big fans of Benedict, who is prepping a big concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The scenes between Cassavetes and Falk prove positively electric as their relationship switches from a killer who thinks Columbo's swooning will save him until he figures out that the lieutenant actually has more on the ball than he ever suspected and he starts challenging the cop to find the evidence. The episode has time for laughs as well as Benedict stumbles upon Columbo waiting for him on stage at the Hollywood Bowl playing "Chopsticks" on a concert piano. The cast also includes Myrna Loy as his mother-in-law and patron of the orchestra, concerned over the P.R. when another member of the orchestra who was the murdered woman's ex-boyfriend turns out to have a criminal past. Benedict defends the musician, telling the woman who played Nora Charles that it's not like she didn't drink gin during Prohibition. This excellent episode was written by Bochco from a story by Levinson & Link and was directed by none other Nicholas Colasanto, best known as Coach on Cheers. This also is the episode where Columbo gets the basset hound that he never bothers to give a name.For a network series to have more good episodes than bad, especially when it involves a set formula that they didn't tinker with much, Columbo truly stands as a monumental television achievement. Of course, I refer only to NBC years from 1971-1978. In a way, they had the luxury that cable series have now by not having to deliver so many episodes a year. While they call it seven seasons, it only adds up to 45 episodes. The sixth season only produced three episodes and no season made more than eight. In a way, it was the Curb Your Enthusiasm of mystery shows: A formula and a limited number of shows per season. When ABC revived Columbo in 1989, they tried originally to pair it with other mysteries, but they all eventually flopped and it just turned into occasional movies. Some were OK, but they had a hard time getting worthy killers except for the two appearances by McGoohan and had some silly outing where Columbo went undercover in disguise with accents and one where there wasn't even a murder but a kidnapping. Faye Dunaway won a guest actress Emmy for what really was a controversial one, "It's All in the Game," because Columbo purposely lets the killer get away because of the victim's loathsomeness. They had two seasons where they were regularly scheduled between 1989 and 1991 and then just TV movies. They made 24 in all.
However, those first 45, I could go on about them all. While it wasn't unusual in the NBC version to have killers who turned out to be more sympathetic than their victims, Columbo still took them to jail. Donald Pleasence's wine maker in "Any Old Port in a Storm" may be the best example. His playboy half-brother plans to sell the vineyards to another wine company, taking away his pride and joy and he kills him in a rage. He also was one of the few cultured characters who didn't look down on Columbo. When his longtime secretary (Julie Harris) figures out his guilt, she proposes he marry her to keep her quiet. Columbo solves the crime first and he gratefully confesses — finding prison preferable to marriage. "Freedom is purely relative," he tells Columbo, who brings out a special bottle of wine when he arrests him, which his high tastes approve. "You learn very well, lieutenant," he says.
"Thank you, sir. That's about the nicest thing anyone has said to me," Columbo responds. All the Jack Cassidy episodes are great, but in the second outing, "Publish or Perish," it's neat to see him play a book publisher losing his biggest author and that they cast Mickey Spillane in the part. The episode also sends Columbo to Chasen's to interview some people and has the high-scale eatery whip him up some chili. Director Robert Butler also includes an imaginative triple split screen that shows Spillane's character at work dictating his book while the hired killer approaches down a hall and Cassidy is elsewhere, establishing his alibi. "Swan Song" from the third season proves to be another favorite of mine with probably the most unusual casting choice for a killer ever — Johnny Cash. He plays a gospel singer blackmailed by his controlling shrew of a wife (Ida Lupino) and turns in a solid acting performance. Cash's character drugs Lupino and a young girl singer that he had sex with when she was
underage so he drugs the two of them when they are flying to the next concert site and bails out of the plane, making it look like a simple plane crash. As Columbo investigates, an air crash investigator asks Columbo if he flies. "My ears pop in an elevator. In fact, I don't even like being this tall," he replies. I can't leave out Patrick McGoohan, always great, but of his four I think his first episode, the one that got him the first Emmy, "By Dawn's Early Light," ranks first. His strict commandant at a boys' military academy would be a great performance on any series. Some of the best guest killers whose episodes I didn't have time or space to mention in detail (original 45 only): Anne Baxter, Leonard Nimoy, Laurence Harvey, Martin Landau (as twins), Vera Miles, Jackie Cooper, José Ferrer, Richard Kiley, Robert Conrad, Robert Vaughn, Janet Leigh, Hector Elizondo, Ricardo Montalban, William Shatner, Theodore Bikel, Ruth Gordon, Louis Jourdan and Nicol Williamson.If I had to pick, the fourth season episode "Negative Reaction" might be my favorite Columbo of them all. Written by Peter S. Fischer, who would later create Murder, She Wrote and directed by Alf Kjelllin, it cast Dick Van Dyke against type as an asshole and a killer — even if what little we saw of his wife (Antoinette Bower) made it appear as if she had it coming. Van Dyke plays Paul Gallesko, an acclaimed photographer
reduced to shooting portraits because he's under the thumb of his wife. He fakes her kidnapping and gets a recently released ex-con named Alvin Deschler (Don Gordon) he met while chronicling San Quentin to photograph possible houses for him to buy, unaware that Gallesko is setting him up to be the fall guy and eventually kills him and shoots himself in a faked ransom exchange gone awry. What makes "Negative Reaction" so great in addition to Van Dyke being a bad guy is that it also may be the funniest Columbo as well. When the lieutenant arrives in the beat-up Peugot at the junkyard where it was staged, he passes a sign that says "WE BUY JUNK CARS." It seems that Gallesko had an unexpected witness — a drunk bum played by character actor Vito Scotti who appeared in six episodes in vastly different parts. (In "Swan Song," he was a funeral director trying to sell Columbo on post-life planning.) After he gets sobered up and gives his statement, the police let him slip away and Columbo has to track him
down at a Catholic mission where a nun (Joyce Van Patten, who will return in a later episode as a killer) mistakes Columbo as a homeless person and tries to find him a new coat and gets him a bowl of stew. Columbo keeps trying to explain that he's not homeless, but the nun replies, "No false pride between friends." When he finally finds the bum and talks with him, the nun returns with a coat and tries to take his and Columbo finally says, "I appreciate what you're doing ma'am, but I've had this coat for seven years and I'm very fond of it" and shows her his badge. The nun assumes he's undercover and compliments his disguise and promises not to blow his cover. Gallesko certainly isn't as friendly as the nun every time Columbo pops up to dig. "You're like a little shaggy-haired terrier. You've got a grip on my trousers and you won't let go. I can't turn around without you looking up at me with that blank innocent expression on your face," Gallesko growls. One of the other things that bothers Columbo is that Deschler was taking cabs everywhere until the
last day, the day of the supposed ransom exchange, when he suddenly rented a car. It would have been a lot less expensive to rent a car earlier than taking all these cab rides, but then it dawns on the detective: He didn't have a driver's license yet. Columbo goes to the DMV to check it out and it turns out the man who gave him the driving test that day, Mr. Weekly (Larry Storch), is stuck out on a street because a car broke down. Columbo goes and picks him up to see if he can identify Deschler, but Mr. Weekly keeps being distracted over worries about the safety of Columbo's car and his reckless driving. It's a hysterical scene — and they chose to break for this bit of comedy with only 14 minutes left. On top of everything else, "Negative Reaction" contains one of those classic endings where Columbo tricks the killer by using his own arrogance against him to give himself away. That's why this YouTube clip of conductor Alex Benedict's parting words to Lt. Columbo sum him and his series up.Tweet
Labels: Bochco, Cassavetes, Demme, Dunaway, Falk, Ferrer, Hitchcock, Joseph Cotten, Landau, Lee J. Cobb, Loy, Lupino, Nielsen, Nimoy, Pleasence, Ruth Gordon, Shatner, Spielberg, T. Mitchell, TV Tribute
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Monday, July 18, 2011
Centennial Tributes: Hume Cronyn Part II
Hume Cronyn
By Edward Copeland
We continue our tribute to Hume Cronyn as the decade turns to the 1950s. If you started here by mistake and missed Part I, click here. Cronyn continued to appear steadily on the various live theatrical programs on TV but only two feature films the entire decade. He definitely turned his focus to the stage, especially behind-the-scenes work. In March 1950, he directed his first Broadway play, the original comedy Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep whose cast included Fredric March. In November, he and his wife did their first New York stage collaboration when he directed her as the title character in the original drama Hilda Crane. In April 1951, he helped produce The Little Blue Light which reunited him with Burgess Meredith and had Melvyn Douglas in the cast. In August, his sole feature film of the year was released: the underrated Joseph L. Mankiewicz gem People Will Talk starring Cary Grant. Grant and Cronyn play professors at a medical school with diametrically opposed views on just about everything and Cronyn's character leads a crusade to get Grant removed from the faculty because of his unorthodox views.
Beginning Oct. 24, 1951, Cronyn and Tandy appeared on Broadway together for the first time in a play that became such a hit, that it managed to be spun off into radio, TV and movie versions with Cronyn and Tandy starring in all but the movie version because they were still enjoying the successful Broadway run at the time. The original comedy The Fourposter by Jan De Hartog is a two-character play where spouses Michael and Agnes re-enact their marriage around their four-poster bed and took place between 1890 and 1925. José
Ferrer directed the production and both he and De Hartog won Tonys (meaning it won best play). Since Cronyn and Tandy stayed with the play until May 1953, their roles in the 1952 film version directed by Irving Reis went to Rex Harrison and Lili Palmer. Its only Oscar nomination was for black-and-white cinematography. When Cronyn and Tandy finished their run in the play, Cronyn produced an NBC radio sitcom version of the play, changing the title to The Marriage, the characters' names to Ben and Liz and losing the period element. While they worked on this during the play's run, the radio show didn't begin airing until October 1953. A total of 26 episodes aired and then The Marriage made history, albeit short-lived. It moved to NBC TV where it became the first sitcom broadcast in color, though it only lasted eight episodes when, tragically, Tandy suffered a miscarriage and live broadcasts ceased never to start again. The Fourposter would come back throughout Cronyn and Tandy's careers though in the form of revivals and tours (including a 15-performance Broadway revival in 1955). In fact, in the summer of 1955, Cronyn and Tandy performed The Fourposter on an episode of Producers' Showcase and Tandy received her first Emmy nomination for actress in a single performance.Throughout the 1950s, movies didn't see much of Cronyn as he kept busy with productions on TV and the stage. Other than People Will Talk, the only other feature film IMDb lists for that decade is something called Crowded Paradise in 1956 of which IMDb contains the bare minimum of information. Part of the reason for this may have been that Hume Cronyn may have been one of the few people in this country's sordid history of the blacklist to keep himself busy so constantly that he didn't know he'd been blacklisted. Another reason was that it seemed inconceivable to him since he was never very active politically, never called before HUAC or ever attended any "suspect" meetings. It turned out eventually that his particularly puzzling blacklisting was because he had hired people who were blacklisted, not that he knew or even if he did he would have cared. Cronyn didn't suffer too much because by the time he became aware of his status, others had started breaking the blacklist anyway by doing what got him on the list in the first place.
In December 1953, he and Norman Lloyd inaugurated The Phoenix Theatre by co-directing and co-starring in Madam, Will You Walk? which also featured Tandy. Interestingly, the play with the same opening and closing dates is listed in both the Internet Broadway Database and the Internet Off-Broadway Database and I can find nothing in a quick look to settle where it belongs — not even number of seats or an address. Cronyn didn't spend all his stage time in New York though, he started doing a lot of tours, including a series of concert readings with Tandy in 1954 called Face to Face which were later turned into a recording. In 1955, Cronyn hit The Great White Way with Tandy twice: the aforementioned short revival of The Fourposter and an original farce by Roald Dahl called The Honeys. Sometime that year he had time to act in A Day By The Sea at the American National Theatre and Academy Theatre — and that's not counting 13 TV acting jobs between 1953 and 1955.
The remainder of the decade was even more dominated by work on television, to the exclusion of actual stage work in 1956 though he did make the first of two appearances (the second coming in 1958) on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He returned to Broadway in 1957 to direct longtime friend Karl Malden in The Egghead. Cronyn and Tandy also toured several cities across the U.S. in 1957 with the new comedy The Man in the Dog Suit ahead of its Broadway premiere in 1958. Cronyn followed the same pattern in 1958, touring with Tandy and other actors in a production he both starred in and directed called Triple Play that consisted of three one-act plays and a monologue, which was considered an original one act play when it opened on Broadway in 1959, though it was written by the long dead Anton Chekhov. The one acts were Tennessee Williams' Portrait of a Madonna, two by Sean O'Casey: A Pound on Demand and Bedtime Story, and the Chekhov monologue which Cronyn performed Some Comments on the Harmful Effects of Tobacco. Cronyn and Tandy closed out the 1950s with a television movie adaptation of Somerset Maugham's novel The Moon and Sixpence with a cast led by Laurence Olivier and featuring Judith Anderson, Denholm Elliott, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Jean Marsh. IMDb actually had a link to the original Time magazine review of it.
As the 1960s began, movies began to enter Cronyn's life again and television receded a bit, mainly because the popularity of programs that televised plays were on the wane. Theater maintained its prominence in his life, and he started to see some award recognition for it. In the fall of 1960, he played Louis Howe to Ralph Bellamy's FDR and Greer Garson's Eleanor when Sunrise at Campobello was released. In early 1961, Cronyn opened on Broadway as Jimmie Luton, the main character of the new farce Big Fish, Little Fish by Hugh Wheeler, his first work on Broadway though he'd go on to write the books for A Little Night Music, Candide and Sweeney Todd, winning a Tony for all three. Cronyn was directed in Big Fish, Little Fish by John Gielgud, who won the Tony for best direction in a play. Cronyn received his first Tony nomination as actor in a play and the cast included Jason Robards, George Grizzard (Tony nominee for featured actor in a play) and Martin Gabel (Tony winner for featured actor in a play). The show proved to be such a success that
the following year Cronyn made his London stage debut when he played Jimmie Luton again when Big Fish, Little Fish opened at the Duke of York's Theatre. While overseas he helped his friend Joe Mankiewicz by taking the part of Sosigenes in the out-of-control Cleopatra, which finally opened in 1963. When he was back in the U.S. in 1963, he helped inaugurate the premiere season of the Tyrone Guthrie's Minnesota Theatre Company at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis by appearing in three productions: Harpagon in Moliere's The Miser, Tchebutkin in Chekhov's The Three Sisters and Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. In 1964, Cronyn scored a coup — playing Polonious in a Broadway production of Hamlet starring Richard Burton and nearly stealing the show from the melancholy Dane. Directed by Gielgud as if the company were in rehearsal clothes, it also was filmed and aired on TV the same year. Cronyn's performance won him a Tony for featured actor in a play. Here is a YouTube clip of Cronyn and Burton at work.A few months after his triumph in Hamlet, Cronyn returned to the Broadway stage with Tandy in tow in The Physicists opposite Robert Shaw. Two days after that show closed, Cronyn was one of the producers of the play Slow Dance on the Killing Ground, which earned Cronyn his third Tony nomination, his first as producer of a best play nominee. In late 1966, Cronyn and Tandy created the roles of Tobias and Agnes in a bona fide classic: Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning A Delicate Balance and Cronyn received another Tony nomination as actor in a play as Tobias. In 1967, Cronyn took A Delicate Balance on tour. He stayed on the road performing in productions in L.A. and Ontario in 1968 and 1969. He squeezed out two films in 1969: Elia Kazan's adaptation of his own novel The Arrangement and Norman Jewison's comedy Gaily, Gaily starring Beau Bridges. Somehow, in this busiest of schedules, Cronyn also had to recover from a bout of cancer that cost him one of his eyes in 1969 and left him with a glass eye for the rest of his life.
Now, we do draw near the end of the theatrical careers of Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, but Cronyn wraps it up very actively and the couple will follow it up with prolific television and film work. First in 1977, Cronyn co-produced with Mike Nichols the two-person play The Gin Game for he and Tandy to star in and Nichols to direct. After an initial tryout in Long Wharf, Conn., they moved to Broadway to much success, running 517 performances. Cronyn received Tony and Drama Desk nominations for both best actor and best play while Tandy won both those awards for best actress. The play's author, D.L. Coburn, won the Pulitzer. Nichols received play and directing nominations from both groups. Cronyn and Tandy then took The Gin Game on tour, not just in the United States but throughout Canada, the United
Kingdom and some cities in the Soviet Union as well through 1979. Then, they made a television version of the play that aired in a version made for Showtime in 1981. During this time period, dating back to 1977, Cronyn also was collaborating with writer Susan Cooper on what would become Cronyn and Tandy's penultimate stage project. Before they got to that, Cronyn managed to return to feature films three times and took Tandy along on two of them. They had small parts in the odd ensemble assembled for John Schlesinger's wacky satire Honky Tonk Freeway, Cronyn re-teamed alone with his Parallax View director Alan J. Pakula for an economic thriller called Rollover starring Jane Fonda and Kris Kristofferson and then he and Tandy had brief roles as the parents of the one-of-a-kind Jenny Fields (Glenn Close) in the movie adaptation of The World According to Garp.Susan Cooper also hailed from England, but came to the U.S. when she married an American, though the marriage didn't work out. She primarily wrote novels and children's books until she developed an interest in
playwriting and somehow began collaboration with Cronyn a long-gestating work called Foxfire about the end of an Appalachian family's way of life. It added to Cronyn's resume because not only was he co-author of the play, he, Cooper and Jonathan Holtzman wrote lyrics for songs for which Holtzman wrote the music, though it wasn't strictly a musical. After debuting first at The Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario and The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, it opened on Broadway in November 1982. Playing Cronyn and Tandy's characters' son in the play was Keith Carradine. Tandy won both the Tony and the Drama Desk awards for best actress in a play. Five years later, it aired on CBS where Tandy again won outstanding actress, this time in a miniseries or special. Cronyn was nominated as outstanding actor and he and Cooper received a solo writing nomination. The movie itself was nominated as outstanding drama or comedy special and John Denver took Carradine's role. Below is a YouTube clip of the TV movie.After having seen Foxfire, Cronyn's co-star in Rollover, Jane Fonda, asked if he and Susan Cooper would adapt the novel The Dollmaker into a script for a TV movie for her. They did and received Emmy nominations for writing the 1984 telefilm and Fonda won outstanding actress in a miniseries or special for it. It was (and remains) only the second time Fonda appeared in a TV production, the previous one being when she was just starting out in 1961. Cronyn started heading back to the cinema in the 1984 thriller Impulse and Richard Pryor's surprise relative who gives him the challenge of spending $30 million in 30 days if he wants to inherit his vast fortune of $300 million in the umpteenth remake of Brewster's Millions in 1985. However, Cronyn, with Tandy beside him, had another 1985 release that really made the veteran actors stars to an entirely new generation.
Joining Cronyn and Tandy as the leads of Ron Howard's Cocoon were Wilford Brimley, Maureen Stapleton, Gwen Verdon, Jack Gilford, Herta Ware and Don Ameche, who took home an Oscar for supporting actor for
the film even though he wasn't even the best supporting actor in the film. A sci-fi comedy and meditation on aging and dying, it was made when Big Blue was a swimming pool loaded with extra-terrestrial magic making the seniors horny instead of a pill for erectile dysfunction. Cronyn and Tandy had particularly good moments as the pool awakened his character's libido and his wandering eye, reminding his wife of his younger days when he was far from faithful. Of course, they had to make an awful sequel, but to have that a big a hit with that many older actors as leads was quite something. It's not like Steve Guttenberg was the draw. The following year, 1986, Cronyn and Tandy were honored together as that year's batch of Kennedy Center honorees alongside Lucille Ball, Ray Charles, Yehudi Menuhin and Antony Tudor. Cronyn and Tandy would appear in two more feature films togethers (three counting the Cocoon sequel): 1987's *batteries not included and 1994's Camilla, Tandy's final film released after her death. Among the many televison and feature films we won't still talk about that Cronyn would go on to make the most notable were The Pelican Brief and Marvin's Room.
In 1986, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy appeared in their last Broadway show, fittingly together. The Petition was a two-person play and earned each of them Tony nominations. In 1994, they received the very first Tony Awards ever given for lifetime achievement. It was just a few months before Tandy's death. Though their stage work considerably lessened and Broadway work ceased, movie and TV worked soared. Cronyn became a regular presence at the Emmys, being nominated five times between 1990 and 1998 and winning three times. He won lead actor for HBO's Age-Old Friends, which allowed him to act opposite daughter Tandy Cronyn. He won that, his first Emmy, the same year that Tandy won the best actress Oscar for Driving Miss Daisy. During this time, the pair went on 60 Minutes and had fun putting Mike Wallace on.
Cronyn earned two 1992 Emmy nominations, one for lead actor in a miniseries or special in Christmas on Division Street and one for supporting actor in a miniseries or special for Neil Simon's Broadway Bound, which he won. His third win was bittersweet. Written by Susan Cooper, To Dance With the White Dog co-starred Tandy who also was nominated, and dealt with a widower working through the grief over the loss of his wife. The awards ceremony took place shortly after Tandy's death. Cronyn's final Emmy nomination came for supporting actor in a miniseries or special for Showtime's version of 12 Angry Men in 1998. Two years after Tandy's death, Cronyn married Susan Cooper who remained his wife until his death in 2003. The only other writing project they worked on together was a screenplay adaptation of Anne Tyler's novel Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, which they didn't complete. Cronyn completed one other bit of writing: his memoir A Terrible Liar which was published in 1991. Hume Cronyn only missed his own centennial by eight years, but with as much as he accomplished, he might as well have lived 200 years. It helps when you have a partner as simpatico to you as Jessica Tandy was to him.
SOURCES: Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy: A Register of Their Papers in the Library of Congress,, The Digital Deli Too, thelostland.com, film reference.com, Internet Accuracy Project, Superiorpics.com, Wikipedia, Lortel Archives: Internet Off-Broadway Database, The Internet Broadway Database and the Internet Movie Database.
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Labels: Albee, Beau Bridges, Bellamy, blacklist, Burgess Meredith, Cary, Ferrer, Fredric March, Garson, Gielgud, Glenn Close, J. Fonda, Jewison, K. Carradine, Kazan, Malden, Mankiewicz, Nichols, Olivier, Robards
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Sunday, June 13, 2010
Centennial Tributes: Mary Wickes
By Edward Copeland
Where would entertainment be without the character actor or, in this case, actress? Mary Wickes, who was born 100 years ago today, spent nearly 60 years supporting the stars on the stage, big and small screens, usually with a crusty exterior and almost always leaving the audience laughing. Her Broadway debut came in 1936 in a play called Spring Dance written by Philip Barry of The Philadelphia Story fame and starring José Ferrer and her film debut came two years later in a comedy short titled Too Much Johnson that starred Joseph Cotten and was directed by none other than Orson Welles. Her name may never have reached household status, but at 5 feet 10 inches tall with a usual wisecracking demeanor, once someone showed you a photo or clip of her, you knew who Mary Wickes was.
Wickes was born Mary Isabelle Wickenhauser on June 13, 1910, in St. Louis, Mo., the daughter of well-off banker. While the vast majority of her roles came from the working class, Wickenhauser was a debutante who graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in political science with plans to pursue a law degree until the acting bug bit.
Her career began on the stage (to which she returned frequently) and she became part of Welles' Mercury players. She appeared in the original Broadway production of Stage Door. She originated the role of Miss Preen in the Kaufman/Hart hit The Man Who Came to Dinner opposite Monty Woolley. When Hollywood decided to adapt the play to film, they kept Wickes and Woolley in their roles, though they did add Bette Davis and Ann Sheridan to the cast. Though Wickes did frequently return to Broadway throughout the 1940s, her career remained firmly anchored on the West Coast after that, except for a return to the Great White Way in 1979 to play Aunt Eller in a revival of Oklahoma!
The movie of The Man Who Came to Dinner was released in 1942, a particularly busy year for Wickes who also co-starred with Bette Davis in Now, Voyager. She appeared in the short Keeping Fit which also featured Robert Stack, Broderick Crawford and Andy Devine as Wickes' husband. Wickes also landed in the cast of two musicals: Private Buckaroo with The Andrews Sisters and The Mayor of 44th Street starring George Murphy that was part musical, part gangster story. She aided Penny Singleton in her popular series with the installment Blondie's Blessed Event and she teamed with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in their comic mystery Who Done It? All of those released in what was essentially her first year in movies. The following year brought fewer roles as she headed back East for more stage work. A couple of film roles went uncredited, but she did appear in three more musicals: another with Andrews Sisters (How's About It?), another that featured Andy Devine (Rhythm of the Islands) and a third that featured a young singer named Frank Sinatra (Higher and Higher). Wickes didn't make another film until 1948.
When she did return to the West Coast, her first feature in 1948 was June Bride, once again with Bette Davis (whom she'd work again with in 1952's The Actress), but she really began to make her mark in the fledgling medium of television, beginning with two appearances on The Actor's Studio. She appeared on many of the live theater shows, including re-creating her role of Miss Preen in a production of The Man Who Came to Dinner (and she reprised it again in a 1972 TV movie). A friendship with Lucille Ball led to her guest appearance on an infamous episode of I Love Lucy as the ballet instructor Madame Le Mond. Ball and Wickes' friendship led to frequent guest appearances on every TV series in which Ball ever starred.
On the feature side of things, she appeared with Doris Day in On Moonlight Bay, whom she teamed again with in I'll See You in My Dreams, By the Light of the Silvery Moon and two episodes of Day's TV show. Once someone met her, they seemed to develop a loyalty to Wickes, working with her again and again. She worked with Glenn Ford in five films, the most notable being 1957's Don't Go Near the Water and the 1960 remake of Cimarron.
Aside from guest shots, Wickes had many recurring and regular roles on television series throughout her long career including Make Room for Daddy, Dennis the Menace, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, Doc, The Father Dowling Mysteries and, though some episodes appeared after her death, her voice was heard on the animated series Life with Louie featuring comic Louie Anderson. Two of her most memorable guest shots appeared on Sanford & Son as a housekeeper Fred and Lamont hire but can't bring themselves to fire, even though she's terrible and as Hot Lips' visiting supervising colonel on M*A*S*H who tries to seduce Frank.
Throughout her many decades an actress, there were still other notable feature films. She was housekeeper to Dean Jagger's general as Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye plotted to cheer the old man up in White Christmas. Her
voice graced Disney's original animated 101 Dalmatians. She helped populate River City in The Music Man. She put on a nun's habit alongside Rosalind Russell in The Trouble With Angels directed by Ida Lupino and its sequel (though Lupino sat that one out). She played Meryl Streep's grandmother and Shirley MacLaine's mom in 1990's Postcards From the Edge. She strapped on a nun's habit again as Sister Mary Lazarus opposite Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act and its sequel. In the 1994 Little Women with Winona Ryder, she played Aunt March. Her final film, released after her death, again featured only that remarkable voice as she gave life to the gargoyle Laverne in Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame.Tweet
Labels: Abbott and Costello, Animation, B. Crawford, Bette, Disney, Doris Day, Ferrer, Glenn Ford, Joseph Cotten, L. Ball, Lupino, MacLaine, Mary Wickes, Musicals, Roz Russell, Sinatra, Streep, Welles, Winona
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Tuesday, November 06, 2007
From the Vault: Lawrence of Arabia
Following the paths of Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, Lawrence of Arabia has marched back onto movie screens. Unlike those classic 1939 films which were restored and re-released to commemorate their 50th anniversaries, thanks for the meticulous work on Lawrence of Arabia goes to some of Hollywood's best-known modern directors.
Names such as Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese helped secure the funding to restore the 1962 David Lean classic that launched Peter O'Toole to stardom. Over the years since the film's release, cuts have been made and this re-release marks the first time in 25 years that the complete film has been shown anywhere.
Lawrence of Arabia tells the true story of T.E. Lawrence, a British soldier who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel during World War I and helped lead the Arab revolt against the Turks in 1917 and 1918.
The film is a feast for the eyes and may well be the best use of widescreen ever. If you haven't seen the film before, don't watch it on television unless it is letterboxed — cropping saps this film of much of its power.
Lawrence contains a great ensemble cast, including the mesmerizing title role by O'Toole and a fine cast of actors including Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quayle, José Ferrer and Claude Rains. For me, a most fascinating benefit of this film was being able to see Rains in color. He seems as if he's permanently trapped in black and white in classics such as Casablanca and Notorious.
The film run 222 minutes, but it never bores. The movie illustrates epic filmmaking on a personal scale. Though the film lags a bit in the second half, it still is great. Visually, Lawrence of Arabia could very well be unsurpassed, especially when you see it on a 70 millimeter print. Sometimes the entire screen seems filled with sand and as figures appear over the dunes, it's hard to suppress your awe.
In addition to O'Toole's magnificent work, the rest of the cast contributes fine moments as well, especially David Lean-regular Guinness and Quinn. Trying to review a film such as this borders on ridiculous. The opportunity to see these sort of classics in a movie theater occur so rarely that you feel afraid to criticize any aspect for fear it will keep someone away.
One question always has puzzled me about biopics. Why does it seem necessary that every historical film begin by showing us how the main character dies? They did it in Gandhi and they do it in Lawrence. The film begins showing how Lawrence was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1935. While the sequence is exceptionally well done, I didn't know that much about T.E. when I entered the theater. Since the movie contains a lot of action and battle sequences, suspense over whether Lawrence could be killed is lost. Historians may know what happened to him, but I didn't.
Lean, who made this five years after Bridge on the River Kwai, has concentrated on epics in his later career — and he's still working, having just released A Passage to India five years ago.
Re-releases of anything not made by Disney are rare and movie fans would be remiss if they took a pass on this opportunity to see the restored Lawrence on the big screen.
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Labels: 60s, Disney, Ferrer, Guinness, Lean, O'Toole, Rains, Scorsese, Spielberg
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Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Centennial Tributes: Otto Preminger
By Edward Copeland
My first exposure to Otto Preminger came, as I'm sure it did for many in my age group, courtesy of the 1960s TV series of Batman where Preminger played one of the three Mr. Freezes during the series' run. For my money, he was the best as well, not to cast any aspersions on the interpretations of George Sanders (the first to play the role on the series) or Eli Wallach (the last). I had no idea about this Preminger guy, who would have turned 100 today, was a director. For me, he was just a bald guy with an accent playing a bizarre villain on a campy half-hour superhero show I enjoyed watching once school let out. Laura? Anatomy of a Murder? Those titles meant nothing to me at the time.
My memory is fuzzy as to whether by the time I saw Preminger play Col. von Scherbach in Billy Wilder's Stalag 17, I was aware of his directing career. I do know for certain that I saw Stalag 17 long before I ever saw Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion. Granted, the films and von Scherbach vs. Capt. von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim) couldn't be more different, Preminger's German POW camp official certainly pales compared to von Stroheim's. However, that shouln't be seen as taking anything away from Preminger or Wilder's darkly comic Stalag 17. I didn't decide to do this centennial tribute to Preminger based on his acting — it's his directing that stands out, as inconsistent as it often was. It probably isn't fair to lump the two together just because they are bald German directors playing army officials in POW camps, but I subconsciously do it anyway. So, without further ado, let's look back at Preminger's extensive filmography, or at least his directing efforts that I've managed to see.
Laura wasn't Preminger's first film as a director but, for better or worse, I think it still stands as his crowning achievement, even though it came so early in his career. Based on a novel by Vera Caspary, the screenplay by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein and Betty Reinhardt (with alleged uncredited contributions from Ring Lardner Jr.), powers what would be an otherwise routine noirish mystery with its sharp and witty screenplay full of memorable dialogue. It also has one of the most recognizable film scores ever by David Raksin). For the uninitiated, the socially connected Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) has been murdered and police detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) has the assignment of ferreting out the killer from her circle of acquaintances, prompting him to comment, "I must say, for a charming, intelligent girl, you certainly surrounded yourself with a remarkable collection of dopes." McPherson may call them dopes, but the actors who played them bit into the roles and classic lines with great glee.
From Vincent Price as Shelby Carpenter as Laura's on again-off again cad of a fiance ("I can afford a blemish on my character, but not on my clothes.") to the socially connected Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson), who longs for Shelby herself ("He's no good, but he's what I want. I'm not a nice person, Laura, and neither is he. He knows I know he's just what he is. He also knows that I don't care. We belong together because we're both weak and can't seem to help it."). Standing above them all though is Clifton Webb's Oscar-nominated turn as Waldo Lydecker, a Walter Winchell-esque columnist and broadcaster ("I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.") who really transformed Laura into the social maven she became. In many respects, Lydecker resembles a cinematic antecedent of George Sanders' great Addison de Witt in All About Eve. For the trivia-obsessed, it's worth noting that not only did Twin Peaks make some obvious allusions to Laura, but paid tribute to Webb's character as well, naming the mynah bird Waldo whose veterinarian was named Dr. Lydecker. Re-watching Laura recently, it's amazing what a spell it can still cast 60-plus years later.
Preminger's immediate followup to Laura reunited him with Dana Andrews and kept him in the noirish realm, though Fallen Angel intriguingly keeps the audience guessing for awhile about where exactly it is heading.
Instead of a police detective, this time Andrews is Eric Stanton, a hustler and a con man who lands in the small town of Walton because he lacks the bus fare to get all the way to San Francisco. He bluffs his way into a job with a traveling psychic charlatan, a sort of John Edward for the 1940s (played by John Carradine) which brings him in contact with the sheltered sister (Alice Faye) of a Havisham-esque older sister (Anne Revere, the same year she won the Oscar for supporting actress for National Velvet) determined to protect her from the misfortune she suffered in romance. Stanton sees her as possible mark so he can make enough money to woo the real object of his affection — the cool, manteaser Stella (Linda Darnell). On top of these characters, there is that of Mark Judd (Charles Bickford), a retired cop who takes on the role of a special investigator when somebody winds up dead. Fallen Angel doesn't hit the heights that Laura did, but it's an entertaining and intriguing film. It also is worth noting that Fallen Angel displays Preminger's first fascination with interesting credit sequences, though not by Saul Bass, as a bus drives down the highway past the cast and crew depicted on road signs seen through the window.Preminger still was concentrating in the noirish realm with this one, but it doesn't come close to Laura or Fallen Angel. He teams again with Gene Tierney and Charles Bickford, but neither equals their earlier success with the director in this mostly, dull and uninvolving story of a woman trying to conceal her kleptomania from her shrink husband (Richard Conte) who falls prey to a hypnotist with a penchant for blackmail and theft (José Ferrer). Ferrer really is the only one who scores any points in this outing — but it's not enough to make this one worth remembering.
Preminger reunited with Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney for this twisty detective tale. In a way, it's reminiscent of Fallen Angel in that its direction seems to keep shifting. It begins in the squad room of New York's 16th Precinct where Sgt. Mark Dixon (Andrews) is once again being dressed down for his brutal treatment of suspects, then it shifts to an underground gambling room run by the hood Scalisi (Gary Merrill) where a man is winning too much and a woman (Tierney) dragged there by her estranged husband (Craig Stevens) wants to leave. Soon, abuse and death follow — but then the story take another unexpected beat when Dixon pursues the case under the watchful eye of his straight-arrow new commander (Karl Malden). To divulge many more details would lessen the film's fun, which contains some of Preminger's most taut direction and one of Andrews' best performances, though Tierney's part seems almost an afterthought.
Glenn Close's Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction has nothing on Jean Simmons' Diane Tremayne here. While most of Preminger's earliest works have been collectively dumped into the noir category, none comes as close to the typical noir formula as Angel Face does, though even that comes with a difference. Diane is not your run-of-the-mill femme fatale out for her own ambitious interests such as Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity or Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction, she does the things she does in the name of obsessive love, for her father (Herbert Marshall) and an unfortunate ambulance driver (Robert Mitchum) who crosses her path. Another thing that sets thie film apart from most noir outings is that just about everyone (with the exception of her father) spot what she is up to almost from the beginning, yet it still doesn't stop them from becoming her victims. Mitchum's Frank Jessup doesn't seem to be your standard dupe, but toward the end when he makes one decision you want to slap yourself in the head for his stupidity. Following Where the Sidewalk Ends, Preminger was on quite a roll in the early 1950s.
For a country founded on principles of free speech, the United States sure has a lengthy record of frequent attempts by supposedly solid American citizens going apeshit over words. This tendency hit Preminger when he sought to bring his stage success, The Moon Is Blue, to the big screen and ignited a massive controversy because the film seemed to make light of seduction and use words such as "virgin" and "pregnant." Oh my word — how did the republic ever survive such a thing? Perhaps it survived because artists such as Preminger ignored the moralists and made the movie he intended without changing a word or a plot line. Of course, the controvery seems quite silly now, but The Moon Is Blue does remain an entertaining light comedy about two men (William Holden, David Niven) seeking to seduce a "professional virgin" (Oscar nominee Maggie McNamara). While the movie certainly still shows its theatrical origins, it is a lot of fun and the actors are all fine, especially Niven who may have delivered one of his wittiest performances ever as the father of Holden's girlfriend and McNamara's would-be seducer.
This hokiest-of-the-hokey Western seems really out of place in Preminger's filmography, coming as it does as Preminger seems to have made his move toward more purposefully daring subject matter. With stiff performances by Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe and more cliches than you can count, it wears on one's patience, even with a mercifully brief 90 minute running time. The CinemaScope imagery is lush and beautiful, but it can't compensate for the insipid story.
This adaptation of the stage musical might have seemed daring for its time as Oscar Hammerstein brought colloquial lyrics to a modern version of Bizet's Carmen. It still plays well enough and has good performances from its cast, but perhaps its lasting legacy is landing Dorothy Dandridge the first lead actress nomination to ever go to an African American.
This true-life tale of a patriotic military man who challenged the system about the neglect and unsafe practices of its air fleet following the death of a close friend is a fairly straight-forward courtroom drama for most of its running time and the stolid Gary Cooper seems the perfect choice to fill out the role. There's not a lot there to rail against, but there isn't a lot to recommend viewing it for either. For television fans, it's interesting to note the presence of many later TV stars such as Elizabeth Montgomery, Peter Graves and Jack Lord among its cast. This film seems like another 1950s aberration from Preminger.
I had hoped very much to re-watch this film before I wrote this piece, but finding a copy (without buying one) has been impossible to catch in time and TCM isn't airing it until after Preminger's birthday, so I'm having to rely on my memory. What I do remember was this was the first Preminger film I remember seeing where his fun with the opening credits almost threatened to overwhelm the film itself. Frank Sinatra gave a good performance and I can see how its portrait of drug addiction was harrowing at the time of its release, but it seemed somewhat tepid by the time I saw it after seeing later, even more brutal film displays of drug addiction such as Drugstore Cowboy, Rush and other films, good, bad and mediocre.
I've watched this trifle even more recently than The Man With the Golden Arm, yet it left even less of an impression. Jean Seberg plays the widowed David Niven's grasping daughter who does everything she can to undermine his budding romances, particularly one with Deborah Kerr, whose fine performance is about the only thing I remember about this film beyond its gorgeous cinematography and scenery.
Having re=watched this again, I reconfirmed that after Laura, this riveting courtroom drama remains at the top of the Preminger canon. Great performances from Jimmy Stewart, Arthur O'Connell, George C. Scott and Eve Arden. Taut direction from Preminger. An absolutely great jazz score by the legendary Duke Ellington, who cameos. Another brilliant title sequence from Saul Bass. Among all the excellent attributes this film offers, I believe the best asset is Lee Remick as possible rape victim and the wife of murder defendant Ben Gazzara. Her party girl masquerading as a good girl is her best performance and her drunk scenes certainly outshine her similar scenes that earned her an Oscar nomination years later in the tepid Days of Wine and Roses. Anatomy of a Murder was another one of Preminger's 1950s efforts steeped in controversy over its straight-forward use of language in dealing with the issues of rape during the course of its trial, but it's much more than that. It's simply one of the best courtroom dramas ever put on film.
As the decades rolled over into the 1960s, Preminger begin to experiment with EPIC FILMMAKING, which unfortunately turned out to be EPIC BORES, especially in the case of this film which boasts a fine cast including Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Ralph Richardson, Lee J. Cobb and an inexplicable Oscar nomination for Sal Mineo. You would think that a fascinating film could be made telling about the founding of the state of Israel, but Preminger's film proves so plodding and long — 3 hours and 28 minutes to be exact — that it's just a chore to sit through. You almost wish Preminger's desire to stoke controversy had reared its head more often in this film, but it just seems to try too hard to be tasteful and plays like a lecture.
Admittedly, I'm a sucker for political movies done well and while there certainly have been many done better than Advise and Consent, with its insanely strong cast especially (I'm sure Gloria will love me for this) Charles Laughton as a scheming Southern senator, Walter Pidgeon as the Senate majority leader and Burgess Meredith as a nervous witness brought in to try to sink the president's nominee for secretary of state. There certainly have been better (and shorter) political dramas, but it's still fun for a political junkie such as myself. It also includes another fun Saul Bass credit sequence and even Betty White as a senator.
As bloated as Exodus turned out to be, it plays like a breakneck carnival ride when compared with this turkey. What hampers it most is Tom Tryon as the lead, since the film chronicles the journey of his priest character through as many "issues" as it can shoehorn into its timeline — and it bored me silly. Even though John Huston earned a supporting actor Oscar nomination as a cardinal, I was even disappointed in his performance — and he usually was reliably fun in his acting. Then again, by each time his character would appear, I was so beaten down by fatigue and disinterest, it would have been hard for even the greatest actor to grab my attention. The technical aspects, as usual, are reliably great, but the movie and Tryon are stiff as a board.
One shouldn't expect a typical World War II drama from Preminger, especially coming this late in his career when his products tended to be epic in scope and require a certain amount of cynicism or controversy. In Harm's Way certainly must contain Preminger's most star-studded cast — John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Patricia Neal, Dana Andrews, Burgess Meredith, Franchot Tone and Henry Fonda (giving one of the worst Southern accents in film history). That's leaving out small roles by the likes of Carroll O'Connor, George Kennedy, Stanley Holloway, Slim Pickens and a don't-blink-or-you'll-miss-him appearance by Larry Hagman. Unfortunately, it is difficult not to blink as you try to endure the 2 hours and 45 minutes of this fractured narrative. It starts typically enough on the eve of Pearl Harbor and even seems to contain allusions to From Here to Eternity as the Japanese attack occurs while an adulterous officer's wife and her lover are awaking from their tryst on the beach. In fact, some of the setup of this scene reminded me of the opening beach scene of Jaws that would come 10 years later. The film does have a lot of interesting elements that you wouldn't expect to find in a World War II drama — especially one coming less than 25 years after Pearl Harbor. One character even characterizes the war as something FDR trumped up, which while certainly said in public was nearly verboten for a mainstream Hollywood film. It also contains a large dose of cynicism about military politics and missteps following the attack. Unfortunately, those are just minor elements in this meandering mess which too often resembles more soap opera than war tale and in which characters can take sudden turns from cantankerous but worthy officers into rapists. Still, the stark black-and-white cinematography is stunning, making some of the night naval scenes appear as if the ships are slicing through oil instead of the ocean.
Though Preminger made a few films after this one, this was the most recent that I've managed to see and while it doesn't live up to his greatest works, it was a welcome relief from his bloated 1960s epics. It's a strange little thriller about a woman (Carol Lynley) who reports her daughter missing, though the police suspect that the girl may never have existed. Again, great Saul Bass credits and it contains an unusually subdued performance by Laurence Olivier as a detective, though Keir Dullea is too much of a stiff to pull off the character he's assigned to play. It also is most fascinating to see how the film's central idea has been swiped so often recently in films such as The Forgotten and Flight Plan. In fact, next year Reese Witherspoon stars in an actual remake of the movie.
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Labels: Cooper, Deborah Kerr, Eve Arden, Ferrer, G. Tierney, George C. Scott, Hammerstein, Holden, Huston, J. Stewart, Jean Simmons, Laughton, Malden, Marilyn, Mitchum, Niven, Olivier, Sinatra, Vincent Price
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