Friday, May 18, 2012

 

Centennial Tributes: Richard Brooks Part I


By Edward Copeland
"First comes the word, then comes the rest" might be the most famous quote attributed to Richard Brooks, who began his life 100 years ago today in Philadelphia as Ruben Sax, son of Jewish immigrants Hyman and Esther Sax. He wrote a lot of words too — sometimes using only images. In fact, too many to tell the story in a single post. so it will be three. His parents came from Crimea in 1908 when it belonged to the Russian Empire. Like the parents of a great director of a much later generation and an Italian Catholic heritage, Hyman and Esther Sax also worked in the textile and clothing industry. Sax's entire adult working life revolved around the written word — even while he busied himself with other tasks. “I write in toilets, on planes, when I’m walking, when I stop the car. I make notes. If I am working at a studio, I work at the studio in the morning, then come home. I am really writing two days instead of one. After the studio, I have my second day (at home). I write whenever I can,” Brooks said in an interview with Patrick McGilligan for his book Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s. After high school, he entered Temple University where he majored in journalism, though he left early when he realized the financial hardship that his tuition put on his parents. After drifting around the eastern half of the U.S. for a while by train, Sax returned to Philadelphia and got a job as s sports reporter at The Philadelphia Record where he first adopted the name of Richard Brooks. When he later got hired by The Atlantic City Press-Union, he met another reporter with an independent streak who would eventually make his way to Hollywood by the name of Samuel Fuller. Shortly after moving to New York for a job with that city's World Telegram newspaper, only leaving the sports beat behind for crime reporting. Brooks discovered that radio jobs provided bigger paychecks so he took a job at the 24-hour radio station WNEW, first as a disc jockey. "Played records 23 of those hours," McGilligan described in the introduction to his interview. Later, the station promoted him to news where he edited four news broadcasts a day newspaper jobs and wrote one. His work there led to a news job at NBC Radio's Blue Network where he also got to do commentary. At the same time, in 1938, Brooks tried his hand at playwriting, which led in 1940 to co-founding The Mill Pond Theater in Roslyn, N.Y., with David Loew. It's on that stage that Brooks made his debut as a director, taking turns with Loew helming productions at the summer theater. A falling out with other members of the theater sent Brooks to California where he worked for NBC Radio from the other coast. Among his duties was writing and directing the broadcast Richard Sands. Brooks also began writing a short story every day and reading it on air. “I’d written some short stories before, but none was published. Anyway, every day, another short story. Everything became grist for a short story. It began to drive me crazy…a different plotline every day. My ambition: write one story a week instead of a different story every day. In about 11 months, I wrote over 250 stories. I even devised a system whereby on Fridays I wouldn't have to write a short story. I called that day 'Heels of History.' I would take a fable and convert it. As a matter of fact, I used one afterwards in The Blackboard Jungle,” Brooks told McGilligan. Brooks gave the example of how he took the story of "Jack and the Beanstalk," citing how while he's portrayed as a hero, Jack's actually a dumb, bad kid who ignores his mother's order, shows little concern for an ailing fire and steal, even if it's from a giant. Granted, it doesn't appear to have been broadcast nationally but I wonder if Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine came across this when conceiving Into the Woods?. Witches can be right, giants can be good… Brooks, like what happened when he learned radio paid more than newspapers, discovered in California that screenwriters earned bigger paychecks than broadcasters. He set up a meeting with George Waggner at Universal, where Waggner — who later would direct The Wolf Man and much episodic TV including many installments of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Batman — was the assistant producer of White Savage, a Maria Montez film directed by Arthur Lubin. Waggner asked if Brooks wrote because they desperately needed a rewrite. It was his first movie job and Brooks made "$100 (weekly) plus a day or two prorated, and they put my name on (the screen) as 'additional dialogue,'" Brooks told McGilligan. White Savage wasn't the first film Brooks worked on to be released though — two others and a serial came first. He also hung on to the NBC gig and got the chance to write for Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. Brooks produced countless sentences and paragraphs and but still lacked a "written by" credit on a screenplay credit. Once he did and, later, when he directed, he'd impact filmmaking both during and beyond his life, often with social themes few would touch (though occasionally in a heavy-handed way). He also managed to write some novels on the side — while with the Marines during World War II, where he'd also crank out a couple of screenplays (including his first credited one on Cobra Woman, directed by Robert Siodmak and again starring Montez) and report for Stars & Stripes as well while learning about filmmaking from Frank Capra's motion picture unit and eventually on his own editing combat footage into documentaries while attached to the 2nd Marines, Photographic Unit. If the Allies only needed a typewriter to defeat the Axis, Brooks might have been a good option for the weapon. First comes the word…

Though Brooks' legend derives predominantly from his film legacy, he experienced his first rush of acclaim with the publication of his debut novel, written while stationed at Quantico at night in the bathroom, according to the account in Tough as Nails: The Life and Films of Richard Brooks by Douglass K. Daniel. Several publishers rejected it until Edward Aswell at Harper & Brothers, who also edited Thomas Wolfe, agreed to take it — and he shocked Brooks further by telling him (after a few suggestions) they planned to publish in May 1945. This news flabbergasted Brooks who obtained a weekend pass to go to New York because Aswell insisted on informing him in person. Now Brooks had to return to Quantico where the top officers of the Corps about shit bricks when The New York Times published a big review of The Brick Foxhole soon after it hit shelves. (Orville Prescott's take was mixed, assessing it as compulsively readable but weak on characterization.) Its story of hate and intolerance within the Marines brought threats of court-martialing Brooks, since he'd ignored procedure and never submitted the novel to Marine officials for approval ahead of time. They wanted to avoid bad publicity, especially with all the good feelings as the war wound down. "There was nothing in that book that violated security, but their rules and regulations were not for that purpose alone," Brooks told Daniel. Aswell prepared to launch a P.R. counteroffensive with literary giants such as Sinclair Lewis and Richard Wright ready to stand by Brooks. In case you don't know the story of the novel, it concerns a Marine unit in its barracks and on leave in Washington. Through their wartime experiences, some of the men truly turned ugly, suspecting cheating wives and tossing hate against any non-white Christian. It turns out, though the real Marines let the matter drop, what bothered them about the book wasn't the anti-Semitism or racist tendencies of the characters but the murder of a Marine some of the other Marines learn is gay. The U.S. Marines didn't want to promote the idea there might be homosexuals serving in the military. Ironically, they got their wish when The Brick Foxhole transferred to the big screen in 1947 as Crossfire. Brooks wasn't involved in the film version, but they made the murdered Army (The Marines even got to toss it off to another military branch entirely) soldier Jewish in the film. The film actually happens to be very good and was nominated for best picture and earned Robert Ryan his only Oscar nomination ever as supporting actor. What's even sadder is that Crossfire ends up being a much more powerful film against anti-Semitism than the creaky Gentleman's Agreement that took on the same subject that year and won best picture. If there weren't already enough ironic twinges in that story for you, Gentleman's Agreement, probably the grandfather of that tried-and-true staple "let a white guy be the hero of a story about another ethnic group" with Gregory Peck playing a Christian going undercover as a Jew to learn about anti-Semitism, won Elia Kazan his first directing Oscar. Edward Dmytryk, one of The Hollywood Ten, directed Crossfire, which dealt straight on with anti-Semitism and the effects of warfare on men. Then again, once Dmytryk served his jail time, he became the only one of the 10 to name names to HUAC because he wanted to work again.

While he didn't want to make a movie of The Brick Foxhole himself, another former newspaperman turned socially conscious film artist met with Brooks about working with his independent production company. At first, Mark Hellinger tried to lure Brooks away from Universal with the promise of doubling his salary if he'd adapt a play he liked into a movie, but before Brooks could consider that offer, Hellinger called with a more pressing matter. He was producing an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's famous short story The Killers. The problem: someone had to dream up what happened after the brief tale ends because it certainly wouldn't last 90 minutes otherwise. Hellinger flew Brooks out to meet Papa himself, but he didn't get much out of him but he did come up with an idea for what would happen after the story ends. Hellinger liked it and sent it to John Huston, who wrote the screenplay as a favor. Since both Brooks and Huston had contracts at other studios, neither got screen credits, so Ernest Hemingway's The Killers' official screenplay credit goes to Anthony Veiller, who received an Oscar nomination for best screenplay. He'd previously shared a nomination in the same category for Stage Door. The film also made a star out of Burt Lancaster, who would work with Brooks several times and be his lifelong friend. In fact, Lancaster would star in the next screenplay that Brooks wrote, a Mark Hellinger production directed by one of those people Edward Dmytryk eventually would name before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The film, of course, would be the still-powerful Brute Force, the director, Jules Dassin.


John Huston wasn't happy. Producer Jerry Wald called him, excitement in his voice, to tell him he'd secured the rights to Maxwell Anderson's Broadway play Key Largo for Huston to direct. This didn't thrill Huston, who thought the play gave new meaning to the word awful. Written in blank verse, Anderson's play concerned a deserter from the Spanish-American War. People at a hotel do get taken hostage, but by Mexican hostages. Essentially, Huston tossed the play in the trash bin. Huston hired Brooks to co-write an in-title only version and, still pissed at Wald, barred him from the set. Part of Huston's anger stemmed from the HUAC nonsense, (His outrage would drive him to move to Ireland for a large part of the 1950s.) so he couldn't stomach adapting a play by Anderson whom he considered a reactionary because of his hate of FDR. Despite Huston's distaste for the project, he turned it into a classic film with a little help from Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Claire Trevor in her Oscar-winning role and, last but certainly not least, Edward G. Robinson as exiled mobster Johnny Rocco, who likes to brag about the power he used to wield. "I made 'em — like a tailor makes a suit of clothes," he tells a former associate. Knowing the story of what happened prior to filming makes you chuckle when you see the credit that reads, "As Produced on the Spoken Stage." It's great to watch Robinson and Bogart go toe-to-toe. Rocco makes a particularly memorable first appearance, lounging upstairs in a hotel bathtub, looking in a way like a prediction of that famous photo of Dalton Trumbo that would be taken decades later. Bogart, updated to a returning WWII veteran, perfectly plays his role of Frank McCloud so that you never know if he's being savvy or scared of the crimnals terrorizing them. "You don't like it, do you Rocco, the storm? Show it your gun, why don't you? If it doesn't stop, shoot it," Frank says at one point, but when he gets a chance to grab a gun and take him out (though Rocco's men would certainly finish Frank afterward), he nonchalantly declares, "One Rocco more or less isn't worth dying for." The script's dialogue crackles and for additional fun touches we get a great Max Steiner score and the multitalented German émigré Karl Freund as cinematographer. The most remarkable thing that Huston did though was to invite Brooks to stay on the set during the film's shooting, something he'd never done as a writer and that he talked about in this YouTube video in 1985.


While I would have liked to have viewed more of Brooks' work that I've never seen (and to re-visit some which I have), time and availability, combined with his prolific nature and the industry's increasingly cavalier willingness to let both old and recent films fade into oblivion, proved to be a problem. After Huston's generosity, Brooks' directing debut would arrive two years later. Four films where Brooks worked solely as a writer remained — the Paris-set spy thriller To the Victor; Any Number Can Play with Clark Gable as an underground casino owner advised by his doctor to get out of the business because of his heart disease; Mystery Street with detectives Ricardo Montalban and Wally Maher consult a Harvard forensics expert (Bruce Bennett) to solve a mystery when a decomposed body washes ashore; and Storm Warning, where model Ginger Rogers goes to visit her sister in a particularly unfriendly town and secretly witnesses a mob lynch a man that her sister (Doris Day) tells her was a reporter who denounced the KKK. Rogers' character gets a bigger shock when she realizes baby sis' husband participated in the lynching. After 1951, every film Brooks worked on he at least held the title of director, beginning with 1950's Crisis with Cary Grant as a doctor vacation with his wife in a small country when the dictator (José Ferrer) kidnaps them to force the doctor to treat his life-threatening condition. The doctor's ethics get tested by his oath and the idea that if he lets the man die, life for the country's people will improve. For a writing-directing debut, Brooks makes a pretty good start even if it doesn't come close to some of the films he wrote. His next four films as director and writer or co-writer I haven't seen, though I tried to watch the last one. The next film, The Light Touch (1952). starred George Sanders and Stewart Granger a collector of stolen art and an art thief, respectively, trying to get their hands on the masterpiece Granger stole and that his wife Pier Angeli stays busy counterfeiting enters their lives. At the time, Granger was married in real life to Jean Simmons, who would become Brooks' second wife about 10 years later. The next two films both starred Bogart. First came Deadline-U.S.A. with Bogie playing an investigative reporter trying to expose a gangster as his paper faces imminent closing followed by Battle Circus co-starring June Allyson where they played medical personnel at a MASH unit during the Korean War. The final film, which I almost watched, was The Last Time I Saw Paris, based on a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald and co-written by Brooks and the Epstein brothers, Van Johnson plays a former soldier returning to the city he liberated in the war, now despondent over his attempts to be a writer. He gets invited to parties with the city's beautiful people and finds one (Elizabeth Taylor) who enchants him. Unfortunately, the DVD transfer on Netflix’s rental copy proved abysmal. The Technicolor has faded beyond belief and it was filmed in an odd 1:75:1 spherical ratio, so every image looked distorted because they just flattened it full screen. After a few minutes, I had to shut it off. Apparently, it's a Warners Archive title now, but of course, they don't offer those for rental so the shitty DVDs will remain for people who don't believe in buying blind. I haven't caught his next two directing efforts either, but they stand out because they marked the first two times (and it only occurred three times) that Brooks directed screenplays written by someone else. In 1953, he directed Richard Widmark as a Korean War vet now serving as a tough drill instructor for new GIs bound for Korea while he's bitter that his request to return to Korea keeps being denied in Take the High Ground! In 1954, Brooks helmed Flame and the Flesh with Lana Turner as unlucky woman trying to get what she can for nothing visiting Europe who finds herself wooed by a gigolo.

With 1955, Brooks wrote and directed the first film that truly garnered him an identity as more than a writer who directs but as a director with Blackboard Jungle, a film that admittedly manages to look both dated and timely simultanouesly, First, as so many old films did, it had to start with a long scroll explaining that American schools maintain high standards, but we need to worry about these juvenile deliquents before this gets out of hand. It gets off to a rockin' start — literally — with opening credits that can't help but make you think of the original beginning to TV's Happy Days as Bill Haley and the Comets get everything moving to "Rock Around the Clock" as new English teacher Richard Dadier (Glenn Ford) arrives to work at all-boys high school North Manual Street. Most of the school overflows with miscreants, especially his class who start calling him "Daddy-O" to avoid pronouncing his name. (Though it's never been confirmed, many assume that the movie inspired Leiber & Stoller's lyric "Who called the English teacher Daddy-O?" in The Coasters' huge late '50s hit "Charlie Brown.") The ensemble Brooks assembled, including some of the "teens" who would make their names much later included Anne Francis as Dadier's pregnant (and, quite frankly, neurotic) wife; Louis Calhern as a veteran teacher left with nothing but cynicism and a desire to beat the crap out of the punks; Richard Kiley as a nerdy math teacher with a love for jazz; Margaret Hayes as another new teacher who doesn't think about how she's dressing and nearly pays for it; Sidney Poitier as a student who appears to be one of the delinquents yet practices playing the piano and singing hymns; and Vic Morrow as the worst kid in the school, a downright criminal. Also, look for appearances by future writer-director Paul Mazursky as a student, Richard Deacon as a teacher and Jamie Farr as another student when he acted using the name Jameel Farah. While Blackboard Jungle offers much to praise, at times it comes off as too simplistic. It did dare to tackle bigotry and use the epithets. Sometimes, it feels eerily like the awful 1984 film Teachers. I kept expecting Calhern to turn out to be like the Royal Dano character and drop dead at his desk. I wonder what Brooks would have thought if he'd seen The Wire's fourth season. Blackboard Jungle earned Brooks his first Oscar nomination for best screenplay. Brooks' competition consisted of Millard Kaufman (who wrote Take the High Ground!) for Bad Day at Black Rock, Paul Osborn for East of Eden, Daniel Fuchs and Isobel Lennart for Love Me or Leave Me and Paddy Chayefsky, who wrote the teleplay that would be the basis for one of Brooks' 1956 films, for Marty. Chayefsky won his first Oscar. Nearly the entire cast excels in spite of some of the weaker parts of Blackboard Jungle (except Francis, burdened with a thankless role) but Morrow stands out in the ensemble as the worst punk.

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Friday, December 09, 2011

 

Centennial Tributes: Broderick Crawford


By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
In 1949, Columbia Pictures brought Robert Penn Warren’s classic novel All the King’s Men to the big screen in an adaptation that deviated a great deal from the source material (as most films are wont to do) but nevertheless made for a compelling movie about idealism and political corruption in telling the tragic story of the rise and fall of a populist demagogue named Willie Stark. In casting the film, director Robert Rossen first offered the role of Stark to John Wayne who — not surprisingly — turned down the part, thinking the script unpatriotic. Rossen then decided upon Broderick Crawford, a burly character actor whose prolific if undistinguished cinematic career was comprised of playing tough guys and Runyonesque hoods in vehicles such as Tight Shoes (1941) and Butch Minds the Baby (1942). The role of Willie Stark fit Crawford like a glove, however; he won an Oscar for his performance in King’s Men beating out the Duke, who also had been nominated that same year for his starring turn in Sands of Iwo Jima.

Crawford’s triumph for All the King’s Men has often acted as a litmus test where Academy Awards are concerned; many film historians and critics argue that the Best Actor Oscar should not have gone to someone whose movie career, with the exception of King’s Men and Born Yesterday (1950), was marked by admittedly one-note performances in B-pictures, alternately playing heroes and villains. Is the purpose of Academy Awards to single out meritorious individual performances, or are they largely recognition for an entire distinguished body of work? I suppose it matters very little in the final analysis, because there are no mulligans when it comes to Oscars: Crawford won his, and in all honesty I think it was most deserved. The actor, who would become one of Hollywood’s most cantankerous character thespians, was born 100 years ago today, and now is good as time as any to see if his stage, screen and television legacy holds up.

Broderick Crawford was born in Philadelphia in 1911 to a second generation of performers, vaudevillians Lester Crawford and Helen Broderick. The latter name is familiar to many classic film buffs that’ve seen the comedienne in such Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers vehicles as Top Hat (1935) and Swing Time (1936). Before her movie career, she and her husband were a successful comedy duo in vaudeville, with an act that occasionally featured their young son in small roles. Brod graduated from the Dean Academy in Franklin, Mass., (where he was a well-regarded athlete) and was accepted at Harvard but his further academic pursuits came to a halt when he dropped out after three months to find work in New York. He became a jack-of-all-trades (longshoreman, seaman, etc.) though eventually the show business bug consumed him and he landed a number of radio jobs in the 1930s; reportedly appearing from time to time on Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel — the 1932-33 half-hour comedy series starring Groucho and Chico Marx.

With performing in his blood, Broderick made his Broadway debut in 1934 as a football player in She Loves Me Not (he had made his stage debut in the same production in 1932 in London, where his talents attracted the notice of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, who in turn introduced him to Noel Coward) and later appeared in such productions as Coward’s Point Verlaine, Sweet Mystery of Life and Of Mice and Men. It was for the latter play that Crawford earned exceptional critical acclaim, though when it came time for Hollywood to do its adaptation Brod was overlooked for the part in favor of Lon Chaney, Jr. By that point in his show business career, Crawford had set stage work aside in favor of the movies; his film debut was in the Samuel Goldwyn-produced Woman Chases Man (1937; with Miriam Hopkins and Joel McCrea) and he continued to appear in such B-flicks as Submarine D-1, Undercover Doctor and Eternally Yours. On occasion, Broderick would land roles in “A” productions such as Beau Geste, The Real Glory, Seven Sinners and Slightly Honorable but his rough-hewn manner and less-than-matinee-idol looks (in later years he remarked that his cinematic countenance resembled that of “a retired pugilist”) usually relegated him to character parts in scores of shoot-‘em-up Westerns like The Texas Rangers Ride Again and When the Daltons Rode. He did, however, prove versatile and adept at humorous turns in films like The Black Cat (Brod’s actually one of the “heroes” in this horror comedy, teamed with cinematic toothache Hugh Herbert) and Larceny, Inc.; he supported Edward G. Robinson in this last one as the lunkheaded Jug Martin, who assists Eddie and Ed Brophy in their attempts to rob a bank by purchasing and operating a luggage store next to it. (A decade later, Crawford paid homage to Robinson by re-creating a role that Eddie G. had played in the 1938 crime comedy A Slight Case of Murder but unfortunately, Stop, You’re Killing Me can’t quite measure up to the original.)

Crawford’s film career was interrupted briefly by World War II; he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps and while in Europe saw action in the Battle of the Bulge. He later was assigned to the Armed Forces Radio Network in 1944, where as Sergeant Crawford he fell back on his previous radio experience to serve as an announcer for Glenn Miller’s band. Back in Hollywood by 1946, Brod returned to the B-picture grind with occasional bright spots such as Black Angel, The Time of Your Life (as a melancholy policeman) and Night unto Night. His gig in All the King’s Men transformed him into a box-office draw and made him the most unlikely leading man since Wallace Beery; signing a contract with Columbia that same year, he also nabbed the plum role of tyrannical junk tycoon Harry Brock opposite Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday — a part that actor Paul Douglas had played to great acclaim on stage.

Crawford’s brilliant comic turn in Yesterday had an unfortunate side effect in that it earned him enmity from critics who have argued that, for the most part, he played variations of Harry Brock in practically every film in its wake. The success of both King’s Men and Yesterday nevertheless earned him considerable cache to appear in “A” productions such as Night People (1954) and Not as a Stranger (1955) —the latter film once described by one critic as “the worst film with the best cast.” His turn as Capt. “Waco” Grimes in Between Heaven and Hell (1956) features some of his best work, and his approach to the character may remind you of Col. Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. That same year, he surprised critics again by scoring as a petty thief seeking redemption in Federico Fellini’s Il Bidone.

Truth be told, Crawford worked his magic best as a screen heavy; he appeared as a formidable villain against Clark Gable in 1952’s Lone Star, and particularly shone in film noirs such as Big House, U.S.A. and New York Confidential (both 1955). One of his best showcases in that style was in 1952’s Scandal Sheet, a film directed by Phil Karlson (based on a novel by Sam Fuller) in which he plays a tyrannical tabloid editor who assigns his star reporter (John Derek, who had played son Tom Stark in King’s Men) to investigate a sensationalistic murder knowing full well that he is the guilty party. Scandal Sheet bears a strong resemblance to the earlier The Big Clock (1948) — in which powerful magazine magnate Charles Laughton tries to frame editor Ray Milland for a murder Charlie committed — but while Crawford was certainly not in Laughton’s league watching him sweat bullets as the noose tightens around his neck during Derek and girlfriend Donna Reed’s relentless investigation is certainly worth the price of admission.

Crawford also headlined another underrated noir entitled The Mob (1951); as undercover cop Johnny Damico, Crawford sets out to find a hit man while exposing corruption in the waterfront rackets — Mob has some memorably snappy dialogue in addition to its first-rate supporting cast (Richard Kiley, Ernest Borgnine, Neville Brand) though I will admit Brod seems more like the guy who’d be running the waterfront in the first place. Other standout noirs with Crawford include Down Three Dark Streets (1954), in which he plays a stalwart FBI agent, and Human Desire (also 1954), a Fritz Lang-directed remake of Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine that cast him as the cuckolded husband in a torrid love affair between wife Gloria Grahame and co-worker Glenn Ford. (Crawford’s husband in Desire is a truly pitiful soul who earns the audience’s sympathy because Gloria, not to put too fine a point on it, is a real bitch.)

Ford and Crawford squared off again two years later in an underrated Western that’s been a longtime favorite of mine, The Fastest Gun Alive. Brod is the loathsome Vinnie Harold, a gun-toting bully compelled to challenge any individual who’s acquired a reputation as a fast gun. When he arrives in a town where shopkeeper Ford’s prowess with a firearm is being kept under wraps by the populace (they’re afraid that Glenn’s rep will draw every gunslinger in for miles around…and they were pretty much right), he and his men (John Dehner, Noah Beery, Jr.) threaten to set the burg ablaze unless they identify Ford. A great psychological oater, Fastest Gun stands out among the many Westerns Crawford appeared in at that time, which included such films as Last of the Comanches and The Last Posse (both 1953).

Toward the latter part of the 1950s, Crawford’s film appearances became sporadic (The Decks Ran Red, Goliath and the Dragon) due to his conquering another medium: television. Syndicated TV king Frederic Ziv tabbed Brod to play the lead role in a half-hour crime drama series entitled Highway Patrol, in which the actor played Dan Matthews, head of a state police patrol (the state was never specified). Ziv, who was responsible for such boob tube hits as Sea Hunt and Bat Masterson, scored a bona fide success in Patrol, which ran for four seasons (a total of 156 episodes) and made Crawford a TV icon, brandishing a trademark fedora and barking mile-a-minute orders into a microphone (“10-4, 10-4”). Crawford by this point in his career had finely honed the belligerence (and drinking habits) that made many producers reluctant to work with the volatile star, but Ziv got along well with Brod, though he later admitted: “To be honest, Broderick could be a handful.” Ziv wanted Crawford to do a fifth season of Patrol but Broderick took a pass, later explaining “We ran out of crimes.” However, he did go to work again for the company in 1961, starring as insurance investigator (whose specialty was precious gems) John King in King of Diamonds. The series lasted but a single season, as did a later show entitled The Interns (1970-71).

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Crawford found himself in demand as a frequent guest star in most of the hit dramatic TV shows from that era: The Virginian, Rawhide, Burke’s Law, The Name of the Game, etc. His movie work largely was relegated to foreign films though he turned up in the likes of Convicts 4, A House is Not a Home, The Oscar and Terror in the Wax Museum. His last notable film role was the titular protagonist of Larry Cohen’s 1977 cult curiosity The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover — a part he also had played in a sketch hosting Saturday Night Live in 1977, in which he also appeared in a send-up of Highway Patrol. Crawford also landed a tongue-in-cheek cameo on the first season of the TV series CHiPs, a watered-down version of the show that made him a household name (and he said as much, remarking to star Larry Wilcox: “You know, I was making those Highway Patrol shows long before you guys were born”).

Broderick Crawford rarely had any pretensions about being a great actor (he was famous for remarking “Don’t applaud, just send me the check”) — he took what work he wanted, and wasn’t what one would consider a leading man type in the style of a Cary Grant or James Stewart. Aside from his starring turns in All the King’s Men and Born Yesterday, his greatest legacy in show business was an unassuming little half-hour television cop show that is still around for us to enjoy today (Highway Patrol is frequently rerun on affiliates that carry ThisTV programming, and the first season of the series has been released on manufactured-on-demand DVD). But his performances were never boring, and when given the right material (King’s Men, Yesterday, The Mob, Scandal Sheet), he could be a most mesmerizing presence…and if you don’t believe me, check out Turner Classic Movies for a three-film festival beginning at 8 p.m. EST this evening in honor of his 100th birthday.

I’m serious, you need to sit down and watch.

“Do what I’m tellin’ ya!!!”

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Friday, June 24, 2011

 

Peter Falk (1927-2011)


One more thing…before I get started talking about the great Peter Falk, who died Thursday at 83 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, as memorable as his creation of Lt. Columbo was in the pantheon of iconic television characters, he needs to be remembered for far more than just that role, even if it may have been his most famous — maybe even his best — and earned him four Emmys and 10 Emmy nominations. He also did considerable screen work and some Broadway. He was capable of the most searing drama of John Cassavetes and the broadest of comedy. He was a talent.

As with many actors of his generation, he began his career on live television in the 1950s, appearing in many of the shows that featured theatrical productions staged for viewers at home as well as the occasional guest appearance in an episode of a recurring series. According to IMDb, his first television appearance came in 1957 on Robert Montgomery Presents in a presentation of Return Visit. This came shortly after his Broadway debut in 1956 in a revival of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan where Falk played an English guard. Also in the cast as a member of the ensemble was none other than Robert Ludlum, before he abandoned acting to become a novelist. Also in 1956 on Broadway, Falk appeared as a servant in the comedy Diary of a Scoundrel whose cast included Roddy McDowall, Howard da Silva, Margaret Hamilton, Jerry Stiller and future killer on multiple episodes of Columbo, Robert Culp. Falk didn't return to Broadway for about seven years, concentrating on television and movies.

In 1960, he made his film debut in Pretty Boy Floyd. The same year, he also appeared in Murder, Inc. as a violent hit man for the notorious crime syndicate of Jewish gangsters run by Louis "Lepke" Buchalter in the 1930s. It earned Falk his first Oscar nomination as best supporting actor. He still stuck mainly to TV after that, though an appearance on a 1961 episode of The Law and Mr. Jones won him an Emmy. He hit most of the big series of the time at some point: The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Untouchables, Have Gun — Will Travel.

In 1961, he made another big feature, this time with some big names. He co-starred with Bette Davis and Glenn Ford in Frank Capra's remake of his own Lady for a Day, retitled A Pocketful of Miracles. Falk played gangster Ford's none-too-swift sidekick and it earned him his second consecutive Oscar nomination for supporting actor. Movie roles started to come easier after that, though he still did a lot of television, including an appearance on a 1962 episode of The Dick Powell Theatre called "The Price of Tomatoes" that garnered Falk another Emmy nomination.

As the film roles started coming more frequently, he took advantage. In 1963, he was one of the two cab drivers caught up in the chase for the money buried under that big W in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The next year, he appeared in The Rat Pack vehicle Robin and the 7 Hoods when it was released. He did take time off to return to Broadway in 1964 to star as Stalin in The Passion of Josef D. by Paddy Chayefsky. In 1965, he joined Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis for The Great Race. That same year, he tried his hand as the lead of his first television series, The Trials of O'Brien, but it only lasted one season.

Heading back to the big screen, he made the comedy Penelope with Natalie Wood in 1966; Clive Donner's adaptation of the play Luv in 1967, again with Lemmon and with Elaine May; and Anzio in 1968 featuring a cast that included Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan. Falk also made a TV movie in 1968 called Prescription for Murder that introduced the world to a homicide detective named Lt. Columbo, even though he would not reappear again until 1971.

In 1970, Falk made his first collaboration with John Cassavetes in Husbands. Cassavetes' films remain an acquired taste for just about everyone, film lovers included, but he brought out sides and shadings in Falk that you never saw anywhere else. He directed Falk again opposite his wife Gena Rowlands in 1975's A Woman Under the Influence and his portrait of a blue collar Italian husband trying to deal with a mentally unbalanced wife really is a thing of wonder. Falk and Cassavetes worked again on screen together in 1976's Mikey and Nicky, a very unusual portrait of a friendship, only it was Elaine May in the director's chair in that case. Cassavetes even appeared as one of the killers on an installment of Columbo. He made a cameo as himself in Cassavetes' underrated Opening Night. He worked for Cassavetes on his final film, Big Trouble in 1986, which reunited Falk with Alan Arkin and Andrew Bergman, Falk's co-star and writer of The In-Laws, but I haven't seen that one since word was not good.

In March 1971, Lt. Columbo appeared again in a television movie called Ransom for a Dead Man, but that fall, Columbo became a regular series — or as regular a series can be when it's on irregularly. It was part of NBC's rotating lineup of Mystery of the Week and would share its time slot with McMillan & Wife and McCloud. Columbo stayed on the air until 1978. Then, in 1989, ABC brought the rumpled detective with the broken-down car back. They tried an alternating format, but their other series sucked so they just continued doing occasional Columbo movies until 2003, only Falk also was the executive producer now. He also wrote an episode. He directed two outings back in 1972.

In early 1971, Falk made his last appearance on Broadway in the original production of Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue. He and Simon must have been good partners, because Falk later appeared in two original spoofs that Simon wrote for the big screen. The first was 1976's delightful Murder By Death with a truly all-star cast: Eileen Brennan, James Coco, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, Nancy Walker, Estelle Winwood and, of course, Truman Capote. Also playing a small role, and up until then probably most recognizable as Stretch Cunningham on All in the Family, a younger James Cromwell. The premise had the stars playing spoofs of famous literary detectives and Falk plays Sam Diamond, which means Sam Spade which to most people means Bogart and Falk does a hilarious Bogart satire. So funny in fact that Simon resurrected it in the 1978 film The Cheap Detective where Falk did Lou Peckinpaugh with another all-star cast in a spoof of all Bogart films. It wasn't as good as Murder By Death, but Falk was just as great.

Falk had another release in 1978, now largely forgotten, that I haven't seen in years but that I do remember enjoying when I was a lot younger and that was The Brink's Job. Directed by William Friedkin, it told the true story of a hard-luck would-be criminal who manages to rip off an armored car for a sizable amount of cash. He's surprised to find that the robbery doesn't even make the news and after some snooping, he discovers it's because Brink's has such poor security they didn't want it reported. Of course, it goes to his head so he and his gang plot an even bigger score. In 1979, Falk made what's probably one of the purest comic pleasures put on film, a movie so funny that even having Arthur Hiller as director didn't screw it up. Of course, I'm referring to The In-Laws where, frankly, I think Falk's off-the-wall portrayal of Vincent Ricardo and Alan Arkin's work as dentist Sheldon Kornpett, his flabbergasted, unwilling partner in hijinks, both deserved Oscar consideration in this crazy farce written by Andrew Bergman. If you've never seen it, you owe it to yourself to do so, but don't get the recent remake by mistake. Serpentine!

The remainder of Falk's film credits contained two certified gems and a lot of misses such as 1981's All the Marbles, where he managed female wrestlers; a cameo in the underwhelming The Great Muppet Caper the same year; 1987's Happy New Year, where the makeup was the star; Cyndi Lauper's try at screen fame in 1988's Vibes; a mobster in the dumb 1989 comedy Cookie; and 2001's Corky Romano. However, he did appear in some films that earned some good notices that I didn't see such as Joe Mantegna's directing debut of a David Mamet script called Lakeboat in 2000. He also made a very funny appearance in the first season of The Larry Sanders Show. The two film classics he made post-1979 were Wim Wenders' exquisite Wings of Desire, where he played himself but he had the ability to talk to the angels (click here to see the scene), and The Princess Bride, where he played the kindly grandfather reading the story to his sick grandson (Fred Savage) and us.

He wasn't done with the stage yet either. In 1998, he earned raves appearing off-Broadway in Arthur Miller's Mr. Peters' Connections.

What a range and I can't even add up the hours of enjoyment this man has given me through his work all my life. Thankfully, the work still remains to enjoy.

Rest in peace, Mr. Falk.

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Thursday, December 16, 2010

 

Blake Edwards (1922-2010)



Blake Edwards' reputation as a film director seems locked by some in the realm of lowbrow slapstick comedy and, in many cases, not particularly good ones, but Edwards' work as a director and a writer was more multifaceted than that. Born in Tulsa, Okla., in 1922, Edwards died this morning at 88.

True, at his heart he was a clown. A few years ago when the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences finally saw fit to bestow an honorary Oscar upon Edwards, he used his acceptance speech as an occasion for a gag, abetted by presenter Jim Carrey, showing up in a wheelchair with a broken leg and making it appear as if it went out of control and crashed through the wall of part of the awards show set. Like many recent honorary Oscar presentations, it was a highlight until the youth hungry, ratings-obsessed execs in charge segregated honorary awards to a nontelevised dinner where movie buffs couldn't celebrate significant players in film history such as Edwards anymore.

His work in the film industry began as a screenwriter in the late '40s with his most notable work probably being the screenplay for 1955's My Sister Eileen starring Janet Leigh and Jack Lemmon. In this same period he also did a lot of television work, including creating several shows in the late 1950s, the most famous being Peter Gunn starring Craig Stevens and Richard Diamond, Private Detective starring David Janssen and the legs of one Mary Tyler Moore.

His feature directing debut came in 1955 on the musical Bring Your Smile Along. He directed a few more films but the one that was his first standout was 1959's Operation Petticoat starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis.

In 1961, he helmed the adaptation of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's starring Audrey Hepburn. The following year, he made two films that no one could accuse of being slapstick: Experiment in Terror with Glenn Ford and Days of Wine and Roses with Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick battling alcoholism.

Though it opened in 1963 elsewhere, the film that would launch his most famous film series didn't open in the U.S. until 1964: Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther. The first followup, A Shot in the Dark, came out the very same year. Edwards became so attached to the series that he kept it going for decades, even after Sellers had died.

Other notable films of the 1960s included The Great Race, What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? and The Party.

In 1970, he directed the woman he wed in 1969, Julie Andrews, for the first time in Darling Lili. He tried a Western in 1971 with William Holden in Wild Rovers. He directed the adaptation of the Michael Crichton thriller The Carey Treatment in 1972. In 1974, he directed Omar Sharif and his wife in a romantic drama called The Tamarind Seed.

It wasn't until 1979 that he got out of a Pink Panther rut and introduced the world to Bo Derek in the Dudley Moore comedy 10, which also managed to make composer Ravel's piece "Bolero" popular again.

He followed that up with the wicked Hollywood satire S.O.B. with an all-star cast led by William Holden and including Julie Andrews' first topless scene.

In 1982, he made his last really big hit with Victor/Victoria, earning Andrews an Oscar nomination as best actress. More than a decade later, he tried his hand at turning it into a Broadway musical with terrible results.

Most of his films after that were not worth mentioning, though Micki & Maude with Dudley Moore as a bigamist had its moments and you have to mention Skin Deep since it is the only film with a glow-in-the-dark condom chase scene.

Still, Edwards' resume was far more eclectic than you'd think and he did produce some classics. His only competitive Oscar nomination came for writing the adapted screenplay for Victor/Victoria. He received two Emmy nominations for Peter Gunn, for writing and directing the same episode. He also earned a Directors Guild nomination for Breakfast at Tiffany's.

RIP Mr. Edwards.


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Monday, December 13, 2010

 

Centennial Tributes: Van Heflin


By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
In 1984, despite my father’s strenuous objections that a VCR was a “luxury and not a necessity” I purchased my very first VHS videocassette recorder with a bonus I received from my place of employment. As a movie buff, I was pretty jazzed at the thought of being able to record films for the purpose of building a library so that I wouldn’t have to wait until the next time a favorite came on — I had even purchased several dozen videocassettes from the public domain bins at our local Wal-Mart in anticipation of eventually investing in a VCR.

One of the first movies I taped was one of my all-time favorite Westerns — 1957’s 3:10 to Yuma, in which a notorious outlaw played by Glenn Ford is kept under guard by a man who’s so desperate for the $200 he’s being paid (he plans to use the money to buy water for his drought-stricken ranch) that he vows nothing will keep him from making sure Ford is put on a train that will take the two of them to the titular city…even though Ford’s gang outnumbers him and is planning to gun him down the minute he sticks his head out of the hotel in which they’ve hid. The actor playing this man who remains courageous in the face of overwhelming odds was born on this date 100 years ago today, and would not only become one of finest stage and screen actors of his generation but gain an enthusiastic fan of his work in myself long after his death in 1971: Van Heflin.

Emmett Evan “Van” Heflin, Jr. was born in Walters, Okla., in 1910 to Fannie and Dr. Emmett Heflin, Sr. — the senior Heflin being a dentist. Schooled in Oklahoma in his formative years, Heflin relocated in California after his parents separated and upon graduating from high school, answered the siren song of the sea by shipping out on a tramp steamer for a year of nautical adventure. He returned to Oklahoma in pursuit of a law degree but two years into his studies found himself yearning for salt air and sea spray once more — a pastime that would remain with him for the rest of his life.

Since childhood, Van also expressed an interest in acting, and made his stage debut in the late 1920s in a performance of Channing Pollock’s Mister Moneypenny. When that play folded after 61 performances, Heflin returned to his lady love, spending the next three years sailing up down the Pacific. After that, it was back to the footlights for a series of various short-lived stage productions until he finally landed a plum assignment in S.N. Behrmann’s End of Summer in 1936. That was also the year he made his film debut alongside Katharine Hepburn in A Woman Rebels; a job that won him a contract with RKO and led to roles in such B-pictures as The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1937), Flight from Glory (1937), Annapolis Salute (1937) and Saturday’s Heroes (1937).

Heflin’s Woman co-star Katharine Hepburn requested that he play the part of reporter Macaulay Connor in her successful stage triumph of The Philadelphia Story — but unfortunately, MGM cast Van aside in favor of James Stewart in the 1940 film version. It wasn’t a total loss for the actor, however; he got a contract with the studio out of it and began to make more movie appearances along the lines of The Feminine Touch (1941) and H.M. Pulham’s Esq. (1941). His third assignment for Leo the Lion cast him as the alcoholic, Shakespeare-spouting buddy of gangster Robert Taylor in Johnny Eager, which received a December 1941 premiere but didn't get wide release until the following year and ended up nabbing him the 1942 best supporting actor Oscar. His film career, however, did not end up suffering beneath the “Oscar curse”; although he was still making appearances in B-pictures such as Kid Glove Killer (1942) and Grand Central Murder (1942), MGM began grooming him for leading man roles — notably Tennessee Johnson (1942), an entertaining (if wildly inaccurate) biopic of the 17th president of the United States, Andrew Johnson.

Heflin’s career on the big screen took a brief hiatus during World War II to allow him to “do his bit” — though he didn’t completely stray from the business; he served as a combat cameraman with the Motion Picture Unit and also the Ninth Air Force in Europe. But he returned to pictures in 1946 with The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, a crime melodrama that featured Barbara Stanwyck, Lizabeth Scott and, in his film debut, Kirk Douglas. In Ivers, Van played the part of Sam Masterson, a vagabond whose return to his home town threatens to expose a hidden secret kept between old flame Babs and her D.A. husband Kirk (this time it was his turn to play the drunk). Ivers would establish Heflin as a frequent participant in the film style labeled by the French as “film noir”; his other films in this vein included Possessed(1947), Act of Violence (1948) and The Prowler (1951). The latter two would feature two of the actor’s most memorable performances: Violence cast him as an ex-GI-turned-successful-businessman who finds himself being stalked by a slightly unhinged Robert Ryan (also an ex-GI). In Prowler, Heflin is an ambitious cop who kills the husband of a wealthy woman (Evelyn Keyes) and then marries her in a twisted pursuit of the American Dream. Heflin’s noir credentials would even stretch over to radio; he played Raymond Chandler’s famous shamus Philip Marlowe in a summer series over NBC Radio in 1947 that, as a lifetime OTR fan, I think was superior to the better-known 1948-51 CBS version with Gerald Mohr.

As an actor, Van Heflin displayed a tremendous range and versatility — he demonstrated an ease and comfort in musicals (Presenting Lily Mars, Till the Clouds Roll By), costume pieces (The Three Musketeers, Madame Bovary) and dramas (B.F.’s Daughter, East Side, West Side).

In 1953, he would appear in what probably remains his best-known film, the classic Western Shane — Heflin plays Joe Starrett, a simple homesteader whose battle against a powerful cattle baron Rufus Ryker (Emile Meyer) is joined by the titular gunfighter, played by Alan Ladd. Shane becomes Starrett’s farmhand and the idol of Joe’s young son (Brandon de Wilde)…and is also drawn to Starrett’s wife Marian, played by actress Jean Arthur in her final theatrical film appearance. One of my favorite moments in Shane occurs during a rousing fistfight between Starrett, Shane and Ryker’s hired goons — at one point during the ruckus, Starrett and Shane look at one another and grin in solidarity and then go back to punching out the lights of the villains. A similar sequence occurs earlier in the film when Shane helps Starrett remove a large stump from his property; it’s been suggested that there’s a hidden attraction between Marian and Shane but I find the camaraderie exhibited by Shane and Starrett to be every bit as interesting as well.

Shane is no doubt Helfin’s best-recognized cinematic showcase but my favorite of his film performances is in the movie I mentioned at the beginning of this essay. I’ve always been a huge fan of Van’s character, Dan Evans, and how he insists on carrying out his volunteered duty of escorting Glenn Ford’s outlaw Ben Wade to that 3:10 locomotive despite the overwhelming evidence that it’s a suicidal mission at best. It’s not about the money; Ford offers him a bribe that dwarfs the piddly two hundred clams Heflin’s signed up for — it’s all about principle and doing the right thing. The Western movie would serve Heflin’s amazing acting versatility well; among the memorable oaters he also graced include The Raid (1954), an underrated tale about a group of escaped Confederate prisoners who plan to rob a bank and set fire to a town during the Civil War; Count Three and Pray (1955), in which Heflin plays a reformed wastrel-turned-pastor who encounters trouble in the small town he’s chosen to preach; and Gunman’s Walk (1958), in which his rancher must mediate the conflict between his two strong-willed sons (Tab Hunter, James Darren).

Other outstanding performances in Heflin’s catalog include the films Battle Cry (1955), Patterns (1956), They Came to Cordura (1959), Stagecoach (1966), The Ruthless Four (1968) and his final feature film, Airport (1970) — in which he played the sympathetic but nevertheless twisted antagonist whose on-board bomb sets the film’s plot in motion. In between his film assignments, Van continued to distinguish himself onstage in productions of A Memory of Two Mondays, A View from the Bridge and A Case of Libel. He reprised his role from this last production for television in 1968 and was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Single Performance in a Drama; in fact, his last show business project was an appearance in a 1971 television drama entitled The Last Child. He succumbed to a heart attack (while enjoying a dip in his pool) not long afterward at the age of 61.

Heflin once memorably remarked in an interview: “Louis B. Mayer once looked at me and said, ‘You will never get the girl at the end.’ So I worked on my acting.” And fans of this remarkably talented actor are all the richer for it; Van Heflin may not have been a conventional handsome leading man by Hollywood standards — but he left behind a legacy of film performances that would make any “pretty boy” green with envy. I’m proud to call myself a fan.

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Sunday, November 28, 2010

 

Leslie Nielsen (1926-2010)


It will be hard to believe for many who read this appreciation of the career of Leslie Nielsen that for the better part of it, the actor was known as someone who tended to play the most dead serious of parts. "Surely, you can't be serious," they will inevitably say to me, but I am serious, that was the case of Nielsen's career until 1980 and a certain film called Airplane! turned him almost exclusively into a comic actor. And don't call me Shirley. Nielsen died of pneumonia Sunday afternoon at the age of 84.

Nielsen's early work consisted mostly of television and the many live theatrical programs. He only appeared on Broadway once in a play called Seagulls Over Sorrento that ran for a total of 12 performances in 1952. He also did guest shots on various series.

He made his film debut in 1956's Ransom as a newspaper reporter who convinces the father of a kidnapped son (Glenn Ford) not to pay the ransom but to try to rescue the boy instead. That same year saw him on the big screen three more times, the most famous being Shakespeare's The Tempest transferred to outer space in Forbidden Planet. He also appeared in Michael Curtiz's musical romance The Vagabond King and the musical comedy The Opposite Sex which featured June Allyson, Joan Collins and Ann Miller, among others.

The following year, Nielsen stayed in the musical romance genre as the title love interest opposite Debbie Reynolds in Tammy and the Bachelor. In 1958, he worked with Ford again (and Shirley MacLaine) in his first Western, The Sheepman, also known as Stranger With a Gun. Following that came a lot more television work, including two appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and as the star of his own series, The New Breed from 1961-62.

In 1965, he was featured in the big screen biopic of Jean Harlow called Harlow starring Carroll Baker. The same year, he had a regular role on TV's Peyton Place. The next year, he got to play Custer in the feature film The Plainsman, the same year he appeared with Guy Stockwell as Beau Geste.

While he wasn't the main clown on deck, he did co-star with Don Knotts in 1967's The Reluctant Astronaut. The same year, he appeared with Charlton Heston in Counterpoint, about a famous orchestra conductor kidnapped during World War II and forced to put on concerts for Nazi generals.

He got his feet wet in comedy again in 1969's How to Commit Marriage, though stars Bob Hope and Jackie Gleason were the ones getting the main laughs. In 1971, he starred in the thriller The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler about a reporter investigating how a senator is brought back to life after a fatal car wreck.

In 1972, before he ever starred in the greatest spoof of disaster films ever, he played the captain in one of the best, The Poseidon Adventure. The next year, he played straight man on one of TV's M*A*S*H's funniest episodes about a colonel eager to get back to the fighting but who ends up being delayed thanks to Hawkeye and Trapper's shenanigans.

In 1977, he starred in a horror film that I actually saw in the theater called Day of the Animals where he played a bad guy, so bad that you didn't mind when he got mauled by a bear. The same year, he had an uncredited part that put him together with David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams for the first time in Kentucky Fried Movie.

In 1980, he did appear in another film, the slasher film Prom Night, but it was Airplane! that changed his career trajectory.

First, by giving him the short-lived TV series Police Squad! where he created Lt. Frank Drebin and earned an Emmy nomination, a part he'd later repeat in the three Naked Gun movies.

From then on out, he pretty much was spoof master du jour, though none of the other films had the same magic touch that the ZAZ efforts did. The most notable probably was Mel Brooks' attempt to recapture his old magic with Dracula: Dead and Loving It.

Still, he did have some non-spoof roles in the gaps between Airplane! and Police Squad! and Police Squad! and Naked Gun such as 1982's Creepshow and 1986's Nuts starring Barbra Streisand. He even played Santa in All I Want for Christmas and married Bea Arthur's Dorothy in The Golden Girls finale.

Still, for the last 30 years, Nielsen mainly lived to make us all laugh, on screen and off. I never did hear when he started carrying that fabled whoopee cushion around with him at all times.

Until we meet again, Leslie. I don't know where we'll be then, but it won't smell too good, that's for sure.

RIP Mr. Nielsen.


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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.


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Thursday, January 17, 2008

 

Two trips to Yuma

By Edward Copeland
My general rule is to avoid remakes of good movies, but when 3:10 to Yuma was opening last year, it was a case of a remake where I hadn't seen the original. So I waited. I finally caught up with the 1957 version and while it was good enough, I saw room for improvement and watched the 2007 edition. Now that I've seen both, I can say that each film does some things better than its cinematic sibling.

The things I liked better in Delmer Daves' 1957 3:10 to Yuma is its stark black-and-white cinematography and great use of shadows. It also happens to contain what may be the best Glenn Ford performance I've ever seen as the bad guy Ben Wade. He's smooth and though Ford was cast against type as the villain, his Wade doesn't chew the scenery in a sinister way as you might expect. He's charming and seductive and you can really see how the underlying bond of mutual respect develops between him and the rancher Dan Evans (Van Heflin).

In the 2007 version, while Russell Crowe is very good as Ben Wade, his rendering of the character actually pales a bit when compared to Ford's. On the other hand, Christian Bale's Dan Evans does develop better and shows more shadings than Heflin's model.

Daves' 1957 version also is great in its efficiency. It runs less than 90 minutes and doesn't seem to suffer for it. In contrast, director James Mangold's 2007 version, while paced very well and more than a half-hour longer, seems to skimp on some of the details that the 1957 version had the time to explore.

What 2007's version has going for it, in addition to filmmaking advances, is just the sheer Western spectacle of it all. It sacrifices the intimacy of the 1957 film, but adds the scope. Also, Ben Foster makes a much bigger impression as Wade's main henchman Charlie Prince than Richard Jaeckel did in the earlier movie.

I haven't read the Elmore Leonard story upon which both films were based, but I've heard the 2007 3:10 to Yuma adheres more closely to its source in terms of its ending.

Of course, the surprise element was lost on me in the 2007 version since I'd seen the 1957 one first, but I think the darker ending of Mangold's version actually doesn't work as well as Daves' film.

Both versions end up being good, but of the two films, I prefer the 1957 film.


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Monday, July 16, 2007

 

Centennial Tributes: Barbara Stanwyck


By Edward Copeland
The tributes to Barbara Stanwyck this year, which marks the 100th anniversary of the year of her birth, started early and frequently. Dammit, she deserves it. Still, I saved my salute until today, the actual 100th anniversary of her birth. Stanwyck was nominated four times for best actress Oscars, but never won, though she did receive an honorary Oscar in 1981. If I controlled the Oscars, she would have four statuettes, though interestingly not for two of the films she was nominated for where she played more victimized characters. Stanwyck was too strong a presence to make those roles convincing to me.

STANWYCK IN THE 1930s


Some of Stanwyck's most interesting work came early in her career with a pair of 1931 films, which couldn't be more different. Neither really portrayed her as a truly malevolent schemer as many of her best roles would, but they were fascinating. The Miracle Woman was fascinating, not only because of its early introduction to Stanwyck, but because it was one of Frank Capra's most un-Capra outings. Florence Fallon starts as a bit of plotter, but is sparked by vengeance. When her preacher is fired from the church where he's preached for years, she teams up with a con man (Sam Hardy) to become a fake faith healer. Of course, this is Capra after all, so when she meets a decent blind man (David Manners) she soon recovers her lost faith and reforms. Regardless, The Miracle Woman remains a fine piece of work with Stanwyck's great performance as its crucial center.

Her other 1931 offering, William Wellman's Night Nurse, gives Stanwyck a more heroic role as she's assigned to care for two ailing children and begins to think that someone is trying to let the kids die for nefarious reasons (among the bad guys, Clark Gable), so she teams with a man of shady origins himself (Ben Lyon) to get to the bottom of the plot and save the young ones' lives. Night Nurse also offers great work from Joan Blondell as one of Stanwyck's pals. 1933 brought Stanwyck her first truly great femme fatale role as well as a part in yet another odd entry in the Capra filmmography. The first was the very odd Capra film The Bitter Tea of General Yen, where Stanwyck played a young woman coming to Shanghai, China during the middle of its civil war to marry a missionary. Once there though, she gets separated from her fiance and becomes involved with a a Chinese general (Nils Asther). Is she prisoner? Is she there willingly? Will there be romance? The film hedges around all these issues, but it is a curious artifact both of old Hollywood stereotypes and pre-Code filmmaking. According to IMDb, this film was the very first to play at Radio City Music Hall.

Stanwyck's other 1933 offering certainly pushed the pre-Code boundaries and it manages to still induce some shocks today. Baby Face concerns Lily Powers (Stanwyck), who literally sleeps her way from floor to floor in a New York office building, leaving many damaged men in her wake. Of course, Lily will have to pay a bit before the movie's end, but her maneuvering and single-mindedness is breathtaking, especially in the hands of Stanwyck. You can see a little of Phyllis Dietrichson being born in Baby Face. One other note of interest: The movie also has John Wayne in a small role. In 1935, Stanwyck got to have a little bit of fun starring as the title character in George Stevens' Annie Oakley. Of course, it's not the musical telling like Annie Get Your Gun, but it is nearly as romanticized, but Stanwyck has fun with it.

Two years later, Stanwyck finally landed her first Oscar nomination for the landmark weepie Stella Dallas. I'm not a big fan of this one, whose most positive attribute I find is that it makes Bette Midler's 1990 remake look even shittier. King Vidor's melodrama tries its best and Stanwyck is good, but I like my Stanwyck to be strong. It doesn't help that the then 30-year-old Stanwyck is eventually supposed to be the mother of the awful Anne Shirley, who was 19 at the time. Still, Stanwyck was better than the winner, Luise Rainer pretending to be Chinese in The Good Earth. Still, if the Academy would have opted for a melodramatic tearjerker that year, they should have picked Greta Garbo for Camille, though I imagine I would have voted for Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth. The final Stanwyck offering from this decade that I got to see was Cecil B. DeMille's Union Pacific, an overlong but still entertaining account of the railroad race to the West Coast. Stanwyck even does a half-decent Irish accent in a cast whose every member seemed destined to become a Preston Sturges regular (Joel McCrea, Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff). She's torn between her love for two men — McCrea and Robert Preston, but there is never much doubt who will get her in the end or even how they will get her.

STANWYCK IN THE 1940s



Preston Sturges. Howard Hawks. Frank Capra. Billy Wilder. All in one year to boot. That's a helluva run for anyone and 1941's triple Stanwyck feature truly astounds to this day. The weakest of the three, Meet John Doe, is a more conventional Capra, especially given her previous work with the director, and it's also a lesser Capra when compared to his classics such as It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life. Still, Stanwyck is great fun as the Janet Cook of her day, who concocts a suicidal, jobless man for a newspaper story then has to rush to find someone to pretend to be him, which she finds in the form of a man hard up for cash (Gary Cooper). The charade ends up launching a political movement that even Stanwyck's reporter comes to believe in. However, Meet John Doe wasn't the best Cooper-Stanwyck teaming of 1941. That honor goes to the sublime Ball of Fire, which earned her a much deserved Oscar nomination that she lost to Joan Fontaine for Suspicion. Directed by Hawks with a script by Wilder and Brackett from a story by Wilder and Thomas Monroe, Ball of Fire is a hilarious twist on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, only Snow White (Stanwyck) is a gangster's moll named Sugarpuss O'Shea and the dwarfs are cloistered professors out to create a dictionary of slang. Stanwyck's other comic gem from 1941 put her to work with Preston Sturges opposite Henry Fonda and the inimitable Charles Coburn as Stanwyck's con artist father who travels with his daughter, bilking the gullible on cruise ships until Stanwyck makes the mistake of falling for their latest mark (Fonda).

Of course, 1944 brought Stanwyck her third Oscar nomination and the one she was robbed the most for, perhaps her greatest role: Phyllis Dietrichson in Billy Wilder's classic Double Indemnity. The sultriness and seductive powers she wields as Phyllis really set the mold for all femme fatales to come. It's easy to see how Fred MacMurray would get suckered into her trap: The web she weaves is so sticky, I doubt any human no matter how smart or strong-willed would be able to avoid it. Phyllis truly is a wonder to behold, as is the movie itself, which is a must-see to this day. Ingrid Bergman was good in Gaslight, but she had nothing on Stanwyck's performance here and the film's loss of best picture to Going My Way and the lack of nominations for MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson are some of Oscar's biggest all-time blunders. Two years later, she had the title role in an odd little noirish tale, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. The tale is almost too complicated for its own good as Martha's former lover (Van Heflin) returns to town after many years to find Martha wed to a powerful D.A. (Kirk Douglas) and tortured by her past — or is she? Stanwyck's final Oscar nomination came from Anatole Litvak's adaptation of the radio play Sorry, Wrong Number and it plays as if it was meant for the radio, since it's practically a one-woman show as Stanwyck plays an ailing woman alone in a house who overhears a murder plot on the phone and becomes convinced that she is the intended victim and that her missing husband (Burt Lancaster) may be involved. Stanwyck does what she can, but being the victim was never what she did best, even when flashbacks start to make the case that perhaps she's more manipulative than helpless. Still, the entire enterprise really ends up being so murky, it's hard to find a solid character for her to grab a hold of in there.

STANWYCK IN THE 1950s



The Hollywood of old is not unlike the Hollywood of today and as Stanwyck reached her 40s, her roles became either smaller or in far less important works. Still, she managed to find a gem still now and then, such as in Fritz Lang's 1952 film Clash By Night, which would seem to be noirish but really is more of a straight-forward romantic triangle with Stanwyck playing a woman returning to her home in a fishing village and marrying, almost on a whim, the decent Paul Douglas, while being tempted by the devilish Robert Ryan. The following year, she played a commoner turned socialite who wed Clifton Webb and ends up on the Titanic. Their relationship is even chillier than the iceberg the ship is headed for, but this still is the second-best film telling of the story after A Night to Remember and though nearly as melodramatic as James Cameron's version, it seems positively profound in comparison and does it in half the time.

1954 brought two roles: A smallish turn as the daughter of a corporation's largest shareholder and founder who is wooed by competing interests in Executive Suite and a venture into the West she soon will seem trapped in opposite Ronald Reagan in the programmer Cattle Queen of Montana, which manages to show both positive portrayals and negative sterotypes of Native Americans at the same time. Thankfully, her next trip out of West gave her a role more in tune with her greatest works. 1955's The Violent Men cast her as Martha Wilkinson, the Lady MacBeth of the prairie, only without the guilt or loyalty to her husband. With Edward G. Robinson as her crippled husband and Glenn Ford as the good-hearted rancher out for revenge, The Violent Men is quite an underrated find. Her 1957 Western proved to be even odder as she took the role of Jessica Drummond in Samuel Fuller's Forty Guns. It's almost a Western noir as Jessica runs roughshod over an Arizona county with the help of hired guns, though the ending seems to want to have it both ways with her longing for the good guy. It's an interesting movie but one that would have been better if the actors surrounding Stanwyck weren't such a collection of stiffs.

STANWYCK IN THE 1960s AND BEYOND



Once the 1960s arrived, Stanwyck's film work was less and less frequent, especially once she took on the role as the Western matriarch Victoria Barkley on television's The Big Valley from 1965-69. Among those playing her children on the show were Lee Majors and Linda Evans, whose path she would cross again in 1985 in her final role on the Dynasty spinoff The Colbys. Before she was primarily relegated to television though, she did get one last great role in the villainous vein in 1962's Walk on the Wild Side as Jo Courtney, the vindictive New Orleans madam who may have had more than a passing interest in one of her best call girls (Capucine), who intends to leave. Of course, Jo's husband also didn't have any legs and was forced to roll around on a little board with wheels that seem better suited for Tod Browning's Freaks. She also had one more lark of a roll, playing the matriarch of a traveling carnival who crosses paths with Elvis Presley in Roustabout. Television though gave Stanwyck her final triumph (and an Emmy) when she played the manipulative Mary Carson in the miniseries The Thorn Birds in 1983, once again getting to play the type of role of women you should not mess with that Stanwyck did better than anyone else.



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# posted by Edward Copeland @ 3:40 AM 7 comments

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