Monday, May 20, 2013
Prison of My Dreams
By Edward Copeland
As I snap the cuffs on Will Smith's wrists, I try to look stern and sympathetic simultaneously. "I take no pleasure in having to do this, Mr. Smith, but it's for your own good as well as the good of the public. Hopefully, your stay will be a short one." I'm taking Smith to serve his sentence in the Copeland Penitentiary for Bad Film Ideas. The actor received a summary conviction with the recent announcement of his interest of remaking Sam Peckinpah's classic Western The Wild Bunch. We had no choice. Trying to do a new version of such a revered film would be bad enough, but when you read the details that explain it would be a modern version involving the DEA and drug cartels, it sounds as if it's only stealing the title. We couldn't risk this debacle-in-development from getting to pre-production. Smith needed to be jailed until he regained his senses.
Now, if Smith breaks quickly, his sentence should be short since this idea didn't originate with him. Warner Bros. has toyed with the idea of a remake for more than a decade with various names such as the late director Tony Scott and stars such as Tom Cruise mentioned. If it were possible to put an entire studio into permanent solitary confinement, I would do it. Johnny Depp, pictured above being taken the prison to serve his time, had a longer time behind bars when he announced his intention to make a new version of The Thin Man and to take on William Powell's trademark role of Nick Charles. Thankfully, that talk disappeared once we locked up Depp for awhile and he hasn't mentioned it since. It's great that Depp loves The Thin Man — but the original remains and people should watch it. (If only the prison existed before Gus Van Sant got his cuckoo idea of doing a shot-by-shot remake of Hitchcock's Psycho in color.)
Look at the case of something that happened before the Copeland Penitentiary opened when Russell Brand remade Arthur with Brand in the Dudley Moore role and Helen Mirren taking over for John Gielgud. It sounded like a bad idea on paper, looked more horrendous when commercials and trailers appeared and received mostly bad reviews. (I did enjoy that the original in 1981 grossed more than the remake's budget which flopped badly.) What disturbed me was that the original Arthur never received a DVD release in the proper ratio and when the remake came out, they released a Blu-ray that forced you to get it with its awful sequel Arthur 2: On the Rocks.
Therein lies the dangers of remakes of great films. With technology constantly changing and money always an issue, at some point they'll start leaving us with the fresher versions, assuming that younger audiences won't know or care to see the classics. I'd try to talk them into how much money they'd save if they just re-released older films to theaters without having to spend all that money on new movies, but they won't go for it. Besides, making movies cost WAY too much to make and see today and the best stuff gets made on television anyway.
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Labels: 10s, Cruise, Depp, Gielgud, Hitchcock, Mirren, Peckinpah, Remakes, T. Scott, Television, Van Sant, W. Smith, William Powell
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Saturday, March 10, 2012
“Here’s my hope that we all find our Shangri-La…”
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
With the publication of his novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips in 1934, a book penned by author James Hilton a year earlier, Lost Horizon, also began to garner attention from the public and soon would obtain the similar success of Chips. In fact, it became one of the first and best-selling “mass-market” paperbacks as well as one of the 20th century’s most popular and beloved novels. The story concerns a British diplomat who stumbles onto a utopian paradise known as “Shangri-La” — a civilization free from war and want, where its inhabitants are able to live long, peaceful lives well past the usual life expectancy. The title, “Shangri-La,” refers to the lamasery in the novel but soon was adopted as shorthand for any sort of utopian existence; Franklin D. Roosevelt even borrowed it for the nickname of the presidential retreat in Maryland (that we have come to know as Camp David).
Motion picture director Frank Capra read the novel while he was making his Academy Award-winning comedy It Happened One Night (1934), and vowed that Lost Horizon would be his next picture. Capra knew precisely whom he wanted for the protagonist of the novel: actor Ronald Colman. Colman wasn’t available, so Capra made Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) in the interim and when he finally cemented Colman’s participation he convinced Columbia studio head Harry Cohn to pony up a hefty $1.25 million to finance his production — the largest amount ever allocated to any Columbia film at that time. Beginning in 1936, the filming of the movie that was released to theaters 75 years ago on this date would run over that amount by more than three-quarters of a million dollars and though it would be another five years before the film finally recouped its initial cost, it also provided audiences with another outstanding work from one of the greatest of American film directors.
It is 1935, and in the Chinese city of Baskul, diplomat and foreign secretary candidate Robert Conway (Colman) has been assigned the task of rescuing 90 Westerners before civil war breaks out in the region. Conway manages to catch the last plane out along with his brother George (John Howard) and three disparate passengers: tubercular prostitute Gloria Stone (Isabel Jewell), fussy paleontologist Alexander P. Lovett (Edward Everett Horton) and Henry Barnard (Thomas Mitchell) — whom we later learn is the alias of fugitive embezzler Chalmers Bryant. The plane on which these individuals are traveling is hijacked by an Asian pilot and flown toward the Himalayan Mountains, where it runs out of gas and crashes, killing the man at the controls. The group is rescued by a mysterious man (H.B. Warner) who identifies himself as “Chang”; he and his men take the travelers to a lamasery known as “Shangri-La,” an idyllic paradise remotely separated from the outside world.
Perplexed by their surroundings at first, the members of the group gradually are enchanted by Shangri-La and find themselves becoming as content as its inhabitants — particularly Robert, who learns from Chang that the paradise was founded by a priest named Perrault, who accidentally stumbled upon the lamasery in the 1700s. Conway also is introduced to the de facto leader, the High Lama (Sam Jaffe), who is revealed to be Father Perrault himself! The High Lama announces to Conway that despite the longevity bestowed upon Shangri-La’s inhabitants because of its relaxing atmosphere (temperate climate, healthy diet, etc.) he is dying, and on the recommendation of Sondra Bizet (Jane Wyatt), a native resident who has read many of Conway’s writings, has decided that Robert possesses the wisdom and knowledge of the outside world to continue on as his successor. He then expires in a manner later described by Conway as “peacefully as the passing of a cloud’s shadow.”
The offer to remain in Shangri-La is quite tempting to Robert, who also is in love with Sondra, but there is dissension in the ranks in the form of brother George, who has been distrustful of Shangri-La since the moment he arrived — despite having fallen for young Maria (Margo), a resident who was brought to the lamasery as the survivor of an expedition in the late 1800s. George convinces Robert, who is still a bit shell-shocked from the High Lama’s passing (and is loyal to his brother), that the tales told to him by both Chang and the Lama are lies and that they have an opportunity to escape the confines of Shangri-La with the help of a team of porters if they leave in the morning (the remaining members of their party have elected to stay). Both Conway brothers and Maria experience several days of travel in grueling conditions and, succumbing to the elements, Maria falls face down in the snow and expires. George learns to his horror that what Chang had told his brother — that Maria was much older than she appeared and was “preserved” by the magical properties of life in Shangri-La — is indeed true, Maria’s countenance is that of an old woman…which causes George to go mad and leap into a ravine. Robert manages to continue on through the horrific weather to be rescued by villagers from a nearby hamlet.
In an epilogue to the adventures of Robert Conway, an explorer named Lord Gainsford (Hugh Buckler) relates to members of his club in Old Blighty that Conway’s experiences had been wiped from his memory as a result of amnesia but that the recollection of Shangri-La returned while Conway was returning by boat to England. Jumping ship, Conway obsessively made it his mission to return to the tranquil paradise, and Gainsford informs the club members that his ten month attempt to pursue Conway resulted in failure. But in the film’s final scenes, it is apparent that Conway “has found his Shangri-La.”
The characters of Sondra and Lovett are not present in Hilton’s original novel, but were added merely as romantic interest and comic relief, respectively. In the case of Lovett, the addition of the persnickety academic added a touch of humorous whimsy to what would otherwise be a dreary fantasy excursion; Horton — the silver screen’s embodiment of what was then known as the “sissy” — was a perfect choice for the role, and director Capra wisely let the actor improvise much of his onscreen business (including the scene with the lacquer box mirror). Horton’s rapport with Mitchell’s “Barney” Bernard also is priceless; Bernard refers to him as “Sister” and “Toots” before finally deciding to call Lovett “Lovey,” a nickname that soon is adopted by some of the children in Shangri-La as well.
Capra, as a rule, hated screen tests…and made it a point to develop the characters in his films around actors he already had in mind for the roles. But this wasn’t always set in stone; he tested both Louis Hayward and David Niven for the part of George Conway before deciding upon John Howard two days before shooting was to begin, and he cast the part of the High Lama twice before deciding on Sam Jaffe (the other two actors he had in mind, A.E. Anson and Henry B. Walthall, passed away before he could utilize their services). As stated, Colman was his first and only choice for the movie’s protagonist, Robert Conway (changed from Hugh in the novel), and though Colman was hesitant about Capra’s methods of film direction the two men eventually were able to form a rewarding collaboration.
The final cost to make Lost Horizon was $2,626,620. Its production history was a troubled one, which goes a long way in explaining why Capra went over budget and why ultimately his partnership with Columbia studio head Harry Cohn suffered a tremendous strain (Cohn’s insistence on edits to the film resulted in Capra’s filing suit against the studio that same year, charging “contractual disagreements”). Horizon’s snow scenes and aircraft interiors were shot inside the Los Angeles Ice and Cold Storage Warehouse, where the low temperatures wreaked havoc with the camera equipment; cinematographer Joseph Walker would discover to his horror that the extreme cold often damaged the film stock. The Streamline Moderne sets designed by art director Stephen Goosson had been constructed near the busy thoroughfare known as Hollywood Way, with the daytime activity forcing the production to shoot at night and accelerating overtime expenses. Other film locations included the Mojave Desert and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the cost of transporting cast, crew and equipment expanded the budget’s waistline as well.
There also were problems related to casting — Cohn hated Sam Jaffe as the High Lama (he thought Jaffe was too young and the makeup used to make him appear older unsuitable) and demanded that Capra replace Sam with Columbia stock thespian Walter Connolly. Capra succumbed to re-shooting all the Lama’s scenes (an additional expense was added in that Cohn also insisted on constructing an expensive new set to accommodate the switch), only to discover that Connolly-as-Lama simply didn’t work (Capra would remark later that Connolly was too hefty to play the part of a 200-year-old character who was supposed to be an ascetic). So Capra had to re-shoot the High Lama scenes upon the return of Jaffe and of the footage he shot, only 12 minutes of the Lama made it into the actual film. Overall, Capra’s insistence on shooting scenes using multiple cameras to cover multiple angles resulted in multiple zeroes being added to the final budget tally.
Capra’s “director’s cut” originally was six hours long, and though the studio toyed with the idea of releasing Lost Horizon in two parts, it was eventually whittled down to 3½ hours (by Capra and editors Gene Havlick and Gene Milford) for a 1936 preview in Santa Barbara, Calif. The audience reaction to that preview was disastrous (though in all fairness, it followed a showing of the comedy Theodora Goes Wild — a film Capra’s crew worked on during the delays in making Horizon) and Capra continued to hack away at his film, becoming more and more distraught in the process. By the time of its official release, Lost Horizon’s official running time was 132 minutes…and in its early engagements was promoted as a “roadshow release,” meaning that tickets had to be purchased in advance and that presentations were limited to two screenings per day. Capra would later argue that Cohn’s continued slashing of Horizon was perpetuated because the studio head wanted to guarantee more daily showings and generate the needed revenue for the expensive production. In its initial theatrical release, the critical response to Horizon was mostly positive despite its poor showing at the box office; the prestige surrounding the picture allowed it to snag seven Academy Award nominations (including best picture), winning for Goosson’s art direction and the best editing trophy for the team of Havlick and Milford.
Horizon only managed to pay for itself upon its re-issue in 1942, when it was re-titled The Lost Horizon of Shangri-La. Since it was being re-shown during wartime, Columbia cut a scene of Colman’s character drunkenly railing against war and diplomacy on the hijacked airplane — something the studio felt wouldn’t go over well with the pro-war sentiment at the time. A further re-trimming saw a slimmed-down version of the film in 1952 at 92 minutes, with the attitudes displayed toward the film’s Chinese characters muted (due to tension between the U.S. and China following World War II) and the “Communist” elements of the utopian society dissipated. The slicing and dicing of Lost Horizon over the years came back to haunt Columbia in 1967, when the original nitrate camera negative of the film has found to have deteriorated and no copies of the full length version of the film were known to survive.
The American Film Institute, beginning in 1973, conducted an exhaustive combing of film archives from around the world in an attempt to locate the missing elements. Their efforts resulted in the finding of a complete soundtrack of the 132 minute film, and all but seven minutes of the visual portion of Horizon. To compensate for the missing video, Columbia and the UCLA Film and Television archive filled in
the gaps with freeze-frame images from the movie and surviving production stills, and the resulting product (which was completed in 1986) was made available on DVD in 1999. The disc, in addition to commentary on the preservation of the film, also contained an “alternate ending” which director Capra wisely chose to excise from the finished product (it makes the established ending less ambiguous with regards to Conway’s rediscovery of his paradise, but doesn’t quite “sync” with the rest of the film). Interestingly, in that same year that the AFI's restoration mission began, a musical remake of the movie made the rounds in theaters, produced by Ross Hunter (his final film) and starring Peter Finch, John Gielgud and Liv Ullmann. Despite tuneful songs by Hal David and Burt Bacharach, the production was an unmitigated disaster — its disappointing box-office earned it the nickname “Lost Investment” and film critic John Simon famously suggested that the movie “must have arrived in garbage (cans rather) than in film cans.” Despite its inclusion in Michael Medved’s The 50 Worst Films of All Time, the 1973 Horizon developed a kitschy reputation among moviegoers that a MOD (manufactured on demand) DVD of the film was made available in October 2011.
As for the original, critical acceptance of Lost Horizon is somewhat split in today’s quarters, with classic movie fans on both sides of the fence as to its merits. Speaking only for myself, the realist in me is inclined to dismiss Horizon because I know that the utopian society depicted could never come to pass, owing to man’s innate venality and stupidity. But the idealist in me has an equally powerful opinion, and finds that watching the film is every bit as idyllic as the paradise that is its subject matter; in addition, I love the performances (it’s my favorite Ronald Colman film) and the cinematography, and think screenwriter Robert Riskin is in peak form (Sidney Buchman also worked on Horizon, taking no credit for rewriting much of the High Lama’s dialogue) — it’s a shame that the movie’s problematic history created a rift in the fruitful alliance between he and director Capra. “In these days of wars and rumors of wars — haven’t you ever dreamed of a place where there was peace and security, where living was not a struggle but a lasting delight?” the movie famously posits in an opening title…and each time I visit the cinematic environs of “Shangri-La,” I respond with a most emphatic “yes.”
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Labels: 30s, Books, Capra, Fiction, Gielgud, Liv Ullmann, Movie Tributes, Musicals, Niven, Oscars, R. Colman, Remakes, T. Mitchell
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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, July 17, 2011
He did more than just think funny things
By Edward Copeland
Thirty years ago, we were visiting my aunt and uncle when one night my older cousin came home raving about a hysterical movie that he and his date had seen called Arthur and how good this Dudley Moore was in the title role. Why he didn't know who Moore was before that, I can't rationally explain. I certainly knew who he was. Not only from two years earlier in Blake Edwards' sex farce 10 but for his amusing supporting turn in 1978's Foul Play with Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. Admittedly, I was unaware of his decades of British work with the satirical troupe Beyond the Fringe or his frequent comic pairings with Peter Cook. However, when Arthur opened on this date 30 years ago, it launched Moore into the stratosphere in the U.S. thanks to his brilliant comic turn, a great supporting cast led first and foremost by the incomparable Sir John Gielgud and a Grade A script by writer and first-time director Steve Gordon. Despite the best efforts to suppress the original gem for this year's remake which thankfully bombed, the real Arthur survives and perhaps finally will get the proper DVD release the movie always has been denied.
Arthur Bach (Moore) may look like an adult, but he's really a child trapped in a man's body and having one helluva time with it. He's a wealthy playboy devoted to fun and leisure and leaving many an empty bottle in his wake across Manhattan. In the film's very first scene, his chauffeur Bitterman stops the Rolls by two streetwalkers for his drunken boss who asks if "the more
attractive" of the two would please step forward. Realizing that's not the best approach, even when you are paying, Arthur amends his query to ask the one who finds him more attractive to step forward. Dressed in red spandex pants, the hooker Gloria (very recognizable character actress Anne De Salvo) steps up to the car and asks Arthur what he wants. "VD. I'm really into penicillin," he laughs. She gets in any way as the inebriated heir continues to crack jokes and laugh. When she asks him what he does for a living, Arthur tells her, "I race cars, play tennis and fondle women, but I have weekends off and I AM my own boss." At one point, he just starts laughing for no apparent reason. Gloria asks what's so funny. "Sometimes I just think funny things," he responds. Arthur will say a lot of funny things as will the other members of the cast and we'll learn we're not just laughing at someone doing a drunk act — if it's been a while since you've seen the 1981 film, you might be surprised to see how relatively little time Arthur spends soused in the movie and when he's on a bender, something has usually set him off or he's inoculating himself ahead of time for an event he's dreading. There's a serious reason behind it that actually makes Arthur slightly deeper than your average comedy. I'll get to all that later, first I have to take a break to vent about unnecessary remakes and how they actually can be dangerous in this era.I must get this rant off my chest about the Arthur remake that came out earlier this year with Russell Brand taking Moore's role and John Gielgud's Oscar-winning valet Hobson getting a sex change and becoming Arthur's nanny Hobson in the form of Oscar winner Helen Mirren. I did not see the remake. I live by the principle that if the original movie was really good or great, I will not see a remake of it. There's no point other than filmmakers
bereft of original ideas looking to steal what worked in the past and, inevitably, doing a piss-poor job of it. When I first heard that they were remaking Arthur, I thought it sounded like a bad idea. Once commercials started appearing, it looked much worse than even I imagined. It didn't help that they had Brand going around semi-criticizing the original in a way that only proved he couldn't have seen it (or wasn't sober at that time if he did). Since the character of Arthur does drink to excess and Brand is a recovering addict in real life, he made a big point about changes in the remake as if the original were pro-alcoholism. “It was very important that we established a context where the alcohol was humbling,” Brand said in an interview. “In 2011, you also need to see a resolution to his vice. I was happy to see how it was rendered.” The only times Dudley Moore's Arthur Bach gets drunk is when he's miserable or frightened. Once he meets Linda (Liza Minnelli) and falls in love or when he worries about Hobson's health and becomes his caretaker for a change, his drinking ceases. His drinking wasn't a vice: It was an anesthetic to ease his pain about being forced into marriage with a woman he not only didn't love but didn't like much either with the cost of refusing to wed her being the loss of his fortune.What's most despicable in this case is that it sort of proves my fears of why remakes are dangerous. With the constant development of new technologies, Hollywood won't keep transferring every film ever made to the latest format. They will stick to the most recent versions with the most recognizable stars. When I started plotting out tributes to do this year at the end of 2010, I knew that the 30th anniversary of Arthur would be one of them. Upon investigation, I was shocked to find that it was NEVER released on DVD in its proper aspect ratio. All versions were cropped instead of the 1.85:1 in which it was shot. (At the time of the remake's release, the original along with its horrid 1988 sequel Arthur 2: On the Rocks were released together on a single Blu-ray disc in widescreen without any special features which even the cropped DVDs had.) I also try to collect screenshots from the web ahead of time, so I know if there is anything I'll have to grab from the DVD. Surprisingly, very few shots from the actual 1981 movie are out there. Mostly, there are poster or publicity stills. Even more frightening, if you try to do an advanced search where you specifically omit the name "Russell Brand," you still end up getting more art related to the remake than the original anyway. Now someone tell me I have nothing to fear from Johnny Depp's ego thinking it needs to play Nick Charles in a remake of The Thin Man. If they start trying to pretend that a 1981 film doesn't exist, what do you think they'll do with one made in 1934? Think they released that no-frills Blu-ray where they handcuffed it to its terrible sequel by accident or so they can say, "Nobody bought it" and then let it die? It's more ridiculous when you realize what a gigantic hit the original Arthur was and what a colossal flop the remake turned out to be.
Back to the real Arthur. We'll pick up where we left off with Arthur on his "date" with Gloria. Part of the genius of Steve Gordon's screenplay was how deftly it intertwined plentiful laughs and exposition at the same time. Arthur takes Gloria to dinner at The Plaza. Needless to say, when she walks in first, the maitre'd (Dillon Evans) is ready to throw the hooker out — until he sees she's with "Mr. Bach" and then he's all manners. The other haughty patrons express shock, but few of them stand to inherit $750 million someday so the maitre'd isn't
too concerned. On their way to Arthur's regular table, Arthur spots his Uncle Peter (Maurice Copeland, no relation) and Aunt Pearl (Justine Johnston). He goes on to introduce the hooker as "Princess Gloria," telling them she hails from a tiny country. "It's terribly small, tiny little country," he breathes on Aunt Pearl to her disgust. "Rhode Island could beat the crap out of it in a war. That's how small it is." Uncle Peter finally steps in saying what he does know is that Arthur is terribly drunk and perhaps they should see him when he's sober. "Grow up Arthur, you'll make a fine adult," his uncle tells him. "That's easy for you to say. You don't have 50 pair of short pants hanging in your closet," Arthur responds as Gloria leadx him to their table. Without being aware of what he just asked, Arthur prods Gloria to tell him about herself. "You mean why I'm a hooker?" she replies. She goes on to reveal that her mother died when she was 6 and her father raped her when she was 12. "So you had six relatively good years," Arthur slurs. "Sorry. My father screwed me too." That's how he introduces the film's main plot point and why Arthur drinks. His father and grandmother keep pressuring him to marry a young heiress named Susan Johnson, but Arthur wants no part of it. He holds on to the silly notion that he'll get married for love.The next morning, when Gloria wakes up with Arthur in his bedroom that looks more suited for a child, complete with an elaborate train set behind his bed, we meet the most important person in Arthur's life: his butler/manservant/valet Hobson (Gielgud, who most deservedly took home the Oscar for best supporting actor). We first see him as elevators door open to reveal him bearing a tray of breakfast sustenance. Having just awakened, Arthur's embracing Gloria and we hear Hobson intone, "Please stop that." He steps further into the room and informs Arthur, "I've taken the liberty of anticipating your condition. I have brought you orange juice, coffee, and aspirins. Or do you need to throw up?" Gloria registers surprise at the sudden appearance of this British gentleman who hands her a robe and asks her to put it on, adding that she has breakfast waiting for her on the patio. "Say goodbye to Gloria, Arthur," Hobson instructs him and Arthur does as he says. Later, Arthur sits in a chair reading part of the newspaper while Hobson stands next to him reading another. It's a scene that contains several classic moments and, thankfully, YouTube had the clip.
Now Arthur's bathtub is much like his bedroom: Elaborate with an intercom system and a stereo (From the photo of the remake the bigger budget seems to have bought a smaller tub with fewer frills). Hobson reminds him that he must meet with his father in his office, so he gets prepped. Once they arrive and wait in the outer lobby, Arthur's jitters are on full display. He tells Hobson how he hates it there. "Of course you hate it. People work here," Hobson replies, before ordering Arthur to lean back in his chair and sit up straight. The receptionist announces that Arthur's father will see him now. He wants to take Hobson, but the receptionist says that his father said for Arthur to come in alone. After Arthur has left, an
exec in the lobby (Paul Gleason) picks up the courtesy phone and says to Hobson, "He gets all that money. Pays his family back by being a stinkin' drunk. It's enough to make ya sick." Hobson smiles. "I really wouldn't know, sir. I'm just a servant. On the other hand, go screw yourself." In his father's office, Arthur makes a beeline for the bar. His father, Stanford Bach (Thomas Barbour), flips through newspaper clips, noting how his drunken playboy status has made great fodder for the tabloids. He calls his son weak. "I despise your weakness," his father tells him. Arthur reiterates what he says he's told his father "a thousand times." He's not going to marry Susan Johnson. His father tries to sell him on it, insisting that he wants it, his grandmother wants it and Burt Johnson wants it. "Burt Johnson — he's a criminal!" Arthur exclaims in reference to Susan's father. Stanford Bach says they all are criminals in their own way and he admires Arthur, in a way, for sticking to his principles, but from this moment on — he's cut off. "From you? From grandmother? The rest of the family?" Arthur gulps. His father shakes his head. "You mean from —" Arthur can't even say the word. "The money Arthur," his father says. Suddenly, Arthur has a change of heart about Susan, finding positive qualities about her. Stanford shakes his son's hand. "Congratulations Arthur. You're gonna be a very wealthy man for the rest of your life," he tells him. "It's all I've ever wanted to be."Most of the pieces for Gordon's simple yet great screenplay are in place but the final part comes into play after Arthur's meeting with his father when he and Hobson go shopping at Bergdorf Goodman. Arthur goes on a spiteful spending spree, ordering three dozen of a particular shirt then telling Hobson, "I hate my father." "Buy four dozen," Hobson advises and Arthur increases the order. Then Arthur spots her (Liza
Minnelli). She's wearing a red hat and bright yellow slicker with a bag draped over her shoulder — and she steals a necktie and stuffs it in the bag. Arthur asks Hobson if he saw that. "It's the perfect crime — women don't wear ties. Some women do so it's not the perfect crime, but it's a good crime," Arthur comments. He then sees that the store's security guard has begun to follow her. Despite Hobson questioning why they should care, Arthur follows her out to the street where the guard confronts her, accusing her of stealing a tie. She gets confrontational, wanting to know the guard's name and asking the people in the crowd to get her a cop. Arthur steps in and says he thinks he can straighten this out. The guard of course knows who he is. He tells the guard he told her to pick out a tie and he'd put on his bill at the cashier. Arthur even asks to see it which the woman shows to him. Arthur says it's lovely and plants a big kiss on her lips. He tells the guard to have the cashier add the tie to his bill and he just keeps following the woman, whose name he learns is Linda. She can't figure out who the tall British gentleman stalking them is. When Arthur tells her he's not married, she gives him her phone number. "Thank you for a memorable afternoon," Hobson tells her. "Usually one must go to a bowling alley to meet a woman of your stature." Arthur lets Bitterman drive her home while he and Hobson continue shopping. Now the romance, albeit thwarted, at the center of Arthur may be between Arthur and Linda, but when you get right down to it, the film's most important relationship exists between Arthur and Hobson. The reason Arthur drinks has little to do with him being an overgrown kid out to have a good time but much to do with
the lousy childhood he had. The movie never even alludes to what happened to Arthur's mother, but in one of the film's quieter and sweeter scenes, when he's showing Linda his favorite horse, she comments how great it must have been to be around the horses and the rest of the estate when he was growing up. Arthur admits he wasn't home a lot because he always was at a boarding school — and he got kicked out of 10 prep schools because he was a bad kid. "You weren't bad. You just wanted to come home," Linda tells him. She's right — and the main reason for that was Hobson, who treated Arthur more like a son than Stanford Bach did. Sure, Hobson and Arthur have a teasing relationship, but Hobson always has been Arthur's protector. While the rapport between Moore and Gielgud provides many of the movie's biggest laughs, it also supplies the film with much of its emotional underpinnings and heart. You can tell from looks that Gielgud gives early in the film (or the TV ads showing Mirren's Hobson in the remake) that Hobson isn't well and he's trying to prepare Arthur for life when he's no longer there.At first, Hobson isn't the wise oracle you might take him for, at least when it comes to Arthur's feelings toward Linda. When Arthur asks Bitterman where Hobson is and the driver says he's tired, Arthur notes that he's been tired a lot lately. Arthur goes to Hobson's room out of concern for his surrogate father and also to vent because he's feeling crappy, having just told Linda about his engagement to Susan. First, Hobson tries to
allay Arthur's fears about his health by doing his usual hammy fake dying scene, but Arthur isn't in the mood. He tells Hobson about his admission to Linda and the old valet, assuming they still are playing their usual verbal games responds, "I don't know why. A little tart like that could save you a fortune in prostitutes." Arthur gets livid, yelling at Hobson never to speak about Linda in that way again and asking why he has to be such a snob before storming out. It actually causes Hobson to sit up in bed when Arthur returns to the room, saying that's the first time he's yelled at him in his life. "Perhaps you're growing up," Hobson suggests. Despite Arthur standing up for Linda as he did, it still isn't enough to convince Hobson yet that Arthur's feelings really represent love for Linda and not just resistance to marrying Susan. Arthur's mood does not change though. Hobson accompanies him to one of his favorite getaways — some high-speed spins around the racetrack — but Bach remains as morose as ever when he climbs out of his car, complaining to Hobson that, "I could love somebody. I never got to love anybody. I'm a failure in everything I do." Hobson asks Arthur to remove his racing helmet, then his goggles, and holds them both under one arm as he repeatedly slaps him on both cheeks with one hand.
And incidentally, I love you. (Hobson puts his arm around Arthur and they walk off together.) Marry Susan, Arthur. Poor drunks do not find love, Arthur. Poor drunks have very few teeth, they urinate outdoors,
they freeze to death in summer. I can't bear to think of you that way."
Hobson may have advised Arthur to marry Susan, but he has plans of his own. He soon shows up at Linda's apartment with a dress and the time and address for Arthur and Susan's engagement party. Linda can see that the old man is sick, but she realizes he's doing this because he cares for Arthur. He tells her he still recognizes when "a gentleman is in love." She does have to ask though if Arthur sent him. "Arthur would never be involved in something as devious as this," Hobson insists. Linda tells Hobson that Arthur has a really good friend in him. "You really look out for him, don't you?" she says. "It's a job I highly recommend," Hobson
responds. He has another bad coughing spell as he's leaving and she asks if he's seen a doctor. "Yes — and he has seen me." Soon, Hobson does end up hospitalized and his role and Arthur's are reversed as Arthur sees to his care, completely re-doing his hospital room, bringing him catered meals against doctor's orders ("I'm not going to let his last meal be jello.") and moving in himself. He also brings him a plethora of gifts from basketballs and toy trains to a cowboy hat, which Hobson insists he remove if he should die suddenly. After Arthur stays up most of the night when Hobson has a bad one, Hobson tells him in the morning that he looks awful. "That's because you've never seen me sober," Arthur tells him. At one point as he grows weaker, Hobson confides to Arthur that he can do anything he wants. Arthur asks what he means. "Figure it out." The pairing of Gielgud and Moore was brilliant casting on someone's part and, as I wrote before, Gielgud deserved that Oscar win. Moore also deserved his nomination for best actor, but he faced a tougher field that consisted of Warren Beatty in Reds, sentimental favorite and winner Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond, Burt Lancaster in Atlantic City and Paul Newman in Absence of Malice.Watching it again, you have to commend whoever took a chance on Steve Gordon and let him make his directing debut on Arthur when it was only the second screenplay he'd written. The first, The One and Only starring Henry Winkler and directed by Carl Reiner, wasn't bad, but couldn't prepare anyone for how good Arthur would be. The remainder of Gordon's resume consisted of limited sitcom writing on shows such as Barney Miller and Chico and the Man and as creator/head writer of a short-lived 1976 comedy called The Practice starring Danny Thomas. Sadly, after the success of Arthur, including an Oscar nomination and a Writers Guild award for original screenplay, Gordon died in 1982 of heart failure at the age of 44.
Arthur wouldn't feel that out of place if it had been made decades earlier than 1981 except for some language and sexual innuendo. Classic comic scene follows classic comic scene, great actors both of stature and solid character work fill most every role and it
follows the tried-and-true rule of the best comedies by running around 90 minutes. (The remake and the original's own awful sequel both end up 10 minutes shy of the two hour mark.) The infectious, bouncy score by Burt Bacharach blends perfectly with the laughs and tugs on the heart when needed, though the instrumental music was overshadowed by the film's popular and award-winning theme song. The cinematography by Fred Schuler (who also filmed The King of Comedy) makes Manhattan look beautiful and glistening, something you didn't see too often in films of the late '70s and early '80s. I've praised the exquisite work of Moore and Gielgud, but some of the others deserve their due. Admittedly, I've always felt that Liza Minnelli was the weak link as Linda, but seeing it again, I enjoyed her performance more than I have in the past and it's probably the most likable she's been on screen. Of course, this was before her body was made mostly of plastic, rivets and wax. Even better is the late Barney Martin (probably best known now as Morty Seinfeld on Seinfeld) as Linda's unemployed father who gets more upset than she does at times when it looks as if she's lost her chance at love with a multimillionaire. Martin's far from the only familiar face that shows up. 
Jill Eikenberry, long before L.A. Law, gets the somewhat thankless task of playing Susan, Arthur's unwanted fiancée, who always denies the evidence of what's in front of her — namely that Arthur isn't attracted to her in the least. She's blind to the clue of his drunken playboy antics that perhaps she shouldn't be anxious for this marriage. She does come from her own fortune after all. The restaurant scene where Arthur forces himself to propose turns out to be another hilarious keeper as he shows up blotto — he couldn't go through with it otherwise — and tosses out a seemingly endless line of nonsequiturs. (My personal favorite: "Do you have any objection to naming a child Vladimir? Even a girl?") Susan never runs out of patience, insisting to Arthur that "a real woman could stop you from drinking" to which he replies, "It'd have to be a real BIG woman." While Susan may be a forgiving sort, the same cannot be said for her father Bert Johnson, a tough self-made millionaire who likes to intimidate and, though he wants Arthur to marry his daughter, he doesn't trust him or like his drinking. Played
by another great character actor, Stephen Elliott, veteran of countless TV appearances as well as films such as The Hospital and Beverly Hills Cop as the police chief. Bert sets up a meeting with Arthur to make it clear that he won't put up with his nonsense. Arthur offers him a drink, though he's in Bert's house, but Bert informs him that no one in his family drinks. "I don't drink because drinking affects your decision-making," Bert tells Arthur. "You may be right. I can't decide," Arthur replies. On a feature on the DVD, which must have been made before anyone even dreamed of a laserdisc let alone a DVD, the late Gordon talks about how during the sequence, which takes place in Bert's study in front of the head of a moose he killed while hunting, Dudley Moore kept improvising so many funny things that he ended up with 12 takes where each one was just as funny as the last and he wished someday he could run all of them in a row. Bert makes a point of telling Arthur — with a smile no less — how he killed a man when he was 11 who was trying to steal food from his family. "Well, when you're 11 you probably don't even know there's a law against that," a drunken and nervous Arthur replies.
Sir John Gielgud wasn't the only actor with "prestige" in Arthur. Also a delight is Geraldine Fitzgerald, the Irish-born actress whose film career dated back to the 1930s (She earned a supporting actress Oscar nomination for 1939's Wuthering Heights), though she moved to the U.S. early and became an American citizen during World War II to be in solidarity with her adopted country, and earned the title of a British Lady when she wed Sir Edward Lindsay-Hogg 4th Bt., which means he held an inherited title of baronetcy from one of the U.K.'s isles. Fitzgerald turns in a doozy of a performance as Arthur's grandmother, who he calls Martha, and who is keeper of the Bach family fortune. She can be naughty, as when she tells Arthur, "Every time you get an erection it makes the papers" or asks him, "Is it wonderful to be promiscuous?" However, she might seem old and dotty, but that doesn't mean she isn't ruthless as she insists that Arthur marry Susan, reminding him that he's too old to be poor. "You're a scary old broad, Martha," he tells his grandmother. She's also one of the few with the guts to stand up to Bert Johnson in the film's climax, slapping him and threatening him with the words, "Don't screw with me."
I wanted to make sure to include a good shot of Ted Ross as the chauffeur Bitterman. He didn't get a lot to do, giving a performance that was mostly reacting to what was going on around him. He wasn't close to Arthur the way Hobson was, but he had a similar dynamic where he could be exasperated by his boss, but he wouldn't want to work for anyone else. Ross deserves some recognition not just for his performance because
he also belongs to the sadly long list of people associated with Arthur who have died in the 30 years since it was released. I already discussed the early and untimely death of writer-director Steve Gordon, but of the performers in major roles in the film we have lost Dudley Moore, John Gielgud, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Stephen Elliott, Ted Ross, Barney Martin and Thomas Barbour. Even though they only had single brief scenes, even Paul Gleason, Lou Jacobi who plays a florist, Richard Hamilton who plays a drunk in a bar who listens to Arthur's story and Lawrence Tierney who plays a diner customer sitting next to Arthur when he proposes to Linda. Of the major characters and notable appearances, only Liza Minnelli, Jill Eikenberry and Anne De Salvo remain. Even Executive Producer Charles H. Joffe and Peter Allen, one of the four people who took home an Oscar for contributing to the song "Arthur's Theme (The Best That You Can Do") have passed on. (Allen only got any credit because on a completely separate occasion, he'd coined the phrase "caught between the moon and New York City" when his airplane was circling awaiting approval to land.)Three decades after it first seemed to spring out of nowhere, Arthur remains a well-crafted, well-acted piece of film entertainment. After the disastrous remake's huge flop and the original's years of neglect (probably partially due to its origination as an Orion release, making it another unfortunate orphan of that defunct studio), the movie deserves proper preservation and presentation for those who wish to see it again at home, either as a rental or as part of their home library. If they need another reason, do it as a record of what may be Dudley Moore's finest work. Sadly, he never made another film that came close to equaling Arthur in terms of quality or using his talent to great effect.
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Labels: 80s, Blake Edwards, C. Reiner, Depp, Gielgud, H. Fonda, Lancaster, Liza, Mirren, Movie Tributes, Newman, Oscars, Remakes, Seinfeld, Sequels, Television, W. Beatty
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Sunday, June 12, 2011
Declassified: A Neglected Early Hitchcock
By Rhett Bartlett
For 75 years, Secret Agent has laid unappreciated by film critics and moviegoers when discussing the canon of Alfred Hitchcock.
In some aspects, the film does fail to be convincing and entertaining; however, there are significant moments throughout that warrant more than just a passing glance. With Hitchcock's earlier black-and-white talkies, debate and critique is often directed toward the masterpieces of The Man Who Knew Too Much and The 39 Steps or the overrated The Lady Vanishes, but Secret Agent, with its subtle metaphors and occasional brilliance demands to be re-visited, and certainly re-awakened in the conscience of film.
To identify the strengths and weaknesses of Secret Agent we have to appreciate that the film which preceded it was The 39 Steps, a strong novel, and even stronger production by Hitchcock, that was able to merge all aspects of cinema (casting, editing, cinematography) into a tense thriller. So Secret Agent had a lot to live up to and, to this day, is often (when discussed) unfairly grouped together with his other films of the area — when an individual assessment is more practical.
After the success of The 39 Steps, Hitchcock decided on the vehicle of Secret Agent — based on the novel Ashenden by W. Somerset Maugham which became a play by Campbell Dixon.
On paper, the cast is extremely strong. Madeleine Carroll, fresh from a stellar turn in The 39 Steps a year earlier, again plays leading lady, this time to John Gielgud, who is a war soldier searching for a spy he knows little about, and has no idea what he looks like. Gielgud himself was less established on screen. He had only acted in four previous films, long forgotten now, yet was a successful stage actor, but Gielgud struggles with the material he is given. Reports have since surfaced that he felt he was misled as to what his character would be, and that it resembled little of the complex characters he was portraying on stage and expected on screen.
And this belief could hold true, as often in the film, Gielgud has waning screen presence, and seems disinterested to give many of his character’s quotes meaning. The fact he would not act in another film until 1941 — some six years later — gives credence to the theory that he considered himself, at that point, more suited to stage than screen.
Then there is Peter Lorre. Five years on from his tremendous role as a child molester in M — Hitchcock casts him as some maniac sidekick to John Gielgud. Yet two years earlier, Hitchcock had perfectly cast him as the villain in The Man Who Knew Too Much. The Yin and Yang collaboration of Gielgud/Lorre doesn't fire at all and is distracting and grating on the screen.
So yes, there are some negatives to this film that rightfully deserved to be acknowledged. Hitchcock himself, in his lengthy interview with Peter Bogdanovich in 1963, addressed the box office and critical failure of Secret Agent:
"I liked The Secret Agent quite a bit. I'm sorry it wasn't more of a success, but I believe it was unsuccessful because it was the story of a man who did not want to do something. He was sent out to kill a German spy and was given a killer to do it and he botched it the first time — killed the wrong man. You can't root for a hero who doesn't want to be a hero. So it's a negative thing. I think that's why it didn't really succeed."
So Hitchcock basically lays blame on the author W. Somerset Maugham, when really it should have been directed at the casting director (of which there is no appropriate credit) and to Hitchcock himself. In the same interview he admitted that another of his films, Waltzes in Vienna, was his “lowest ebb,” so he did have awareness late in his career of his strengths and weaknesses as a director.
But allow me to point out aspects of Secret Agent that deserve to be addressed. The film's underlying metaphor that "everything is not what it seems" is very smartly revealed many times throughout the narrative, and highlights how well Hitchcock, Bernard Knowles (cinematographer) and Albert Jullion (set dresser) worked together.
Of all the scenes in Secret Agent there is one that stands out. The sensationally shot, edited and directed set piece of the cliff murder. The entire killing is seen through a telescope, foreshadowing decades later James Stewart's encounters with Raymond Burr in Rear Window. And that is what makes Secret Agent an important signpost in the Hitchcock journey. It was the film in which he tried ideas in their embryonic state to arrive later after full gestation, such as the hunt and killing of an innocent person, later referenced in Strangers on a Train. Other examples:
After 75 years, Secret Agent deserves to come out of the shadows. Even with its flaws it still shows Hitchcock as an always moving, always learning director, trying to stay ahead of his audience, never allowing film itself to hold him back.
Rhett Bartlett blogs at Dial M for Movies and can be reached on Twitter at @dialmformovies. He also can be heard on ABC Radio 774am Drive Show in Melbourne, Australia, every Monday night from 5:30 p.m. local time.
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Labels: 30s, Bogdanovich, Fiction, Gielgud, Hitchcock, J. Stewart, Lorre, Movie Tributes, Theater
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