Saturday, March 31, 2012
The World is Yours
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
Around my home base at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, the “Gangster Trilogy” is the nickname assigned to the three movies that for many kicked off the crime film genre in the 1930s: Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931) and Scarface (1932). The first of these films starred Edward G. Robinson in what has commonly been called his “breakout” role, and Enemy did likewise for James Cagney…making both actors silver screen legends. Though there are variances in the plots of each movie, they feature a unifying theme of a racketeer who rises to the top of his profession stealing, killing and plundering all the way…only to achieve his comeuppance before the lights in the theater come up and the second show begins.
Scarface — which at the time of its release 80 years ago on this date was subtitled “The Shame of a Nation” — also made veteran stage actor Paul Muni a household name among theatergoers, though his starring turn in I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang equally boosted his cinematic stature (he received an Oscar nomination for the role, and was soon signed to a long-term contract by Warner Bros.) as well. While both Caesar and Enemy were Warner releases, Scarface was an independent production funded by the deep-pocketed Howard Hughes (and released by United Artists) and as such it’s often the overlooked feature of the three. (At one time, the movie even was withdrawn from release and didn’t resurface until 1979.) If it’s remembered at all today, it’s probably because it was the inspiration for the 1983 Brian De Palma cult classic with Al Pacino as the lead. But there’s much more than meets the eye in the Howard Hawks-directed original. (Much more.)
Crime boss “Big” Louis Costillo (Harry J. Vegar) is gunned down by a mysterious assailant shortly after he’s thrown one of his impressive shindigs, and as dedicated police inspector Ben Guarino (C. Henry Gordon) has been instructed to round up the usual suspects, he brings in Antonio “Tony” Camonte (Muni) and Guino “Little Boy” Renaldo (George Raft), two lieutenants who work for one of Costillo’s rivals, Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins). Lovo gets both men released with writs of habeas corpus, and we learn that Tony was responsible for croaking Big Louie at the behest of Lovo. Johnny then informs his now second-in-command that they’ll be taking over the beer concession on the city’s South Side, selling illegal suds to speakeasies and squeezing out those bars owned by rival gangs. Lovo has specifically ordered the ambitious Camonte to leave the North Side operation (run by a hood named O’Brien) alone, because that’s just asking for trouble.
Tony’s stock starts to rise in the beer rackets, and he finds himself constantly trying to attract the attention of Poppy (Karen Morley), Lovo’s girlfriend. He’s also earned the disapproval of his mother (Inez Palange), who scolds Tony’s sister Francesca (Ann Dvorak) when she accepts her brother's “dirty” money. Tony has a rather unhealthy (and suggestively incestuous) relationship with “Cesca” to the point that he gets enraged when he sees her in the company of eligible men. Finally, the impatient Tony makes a bid for the North Side operation by having Little Boy “eliminate” O’Hara in his flower shop, and this stunt earns him both the disapproval of Lovo and the enmity of Gaffney (Boris Karloff), the hood who takes over for the deceased O’Hara. Tony and his men wage a full assault on Gaffney and the other gangs…and seeing that Camonte is consolidating his power, Lovo orders a hit on Tony. The attempt fails, and Tony (with the help of Little Boy) exacts swift retribution.
The forces of good beat their collective breasts at the lawlessness exhibited by Tony, who is now king of all he surveys, and despite increased pressure by the newspapers and law enforcement, there seems to be little that will stop him. His downfall comes when he shoots and kills Little Boy after finding him in the same apartment with Cesca, not knowing that they have secretly wed. Returning to his stronghold (his sidekick Angelo, played by Vince Barnett, also has been killed as a result) as the police close in, Cesca arrives to Tony's surprise; she had planned to kill him for revenge but now realizes that “you’re me and I’m you” and she agrees to hold them off, but she’s felled by a stray bullet, and tear gas drives the now abandoned Tony out of his hideout to face Guarino and two detectives downstairs. Camonte agrees to come quietly, but bolts from his captors at the last minute and ends up gunned down in the street.
W.R. Burnett, the author responsible for the novel on which Little Caesar was adapted, was one of several credited scribes who supplied dialogue and continuity for Scarface, along with Seton I. Miller and John Lee Mahin (with uncredited contributions from producer Hawks and Fred Pasley) — but the bulk of the screenplay was penned by old newspaper hand Ben Hecht, who adapted Armitage Trail’s 1929 novel of the same name. “Scarface” also was the well-known nickname of racketeer Al Capone, and concerned that the film might possibly portray him in a negative light, he supposedly sent a couple of his boys around to see Hecht, hoping to discourage him from finishing the project. But Hecht, being a veteran ink-stained wretch, was not an easy man to scare…and according to legend, not only did he convince Capone’s goombahs that the movie was not about their boss, but he called upon them as consultants. (Further legend states that the end result pleased Al so much that he later obtained a print of the film for his very own.)
At the time of Scarface’s release, a vocal faction of individuals, concerned that others might be having more fun than they were, decried the product coming out of Hollywood…and the Hawks-Hughes movie was one on which they complained the longest and loudest. The accusations claimed the film glamorized gangsters and crime, and that this might be a bad influence on impressionable minds. Most of the time, this was true — it’s what was known as the “sin-and-salvation” approach to filmmaking. Cecil B. DeMille mastered this; presenting sequences of immorality and debauchery in his silent epics (which he got away with provided the characters received their just deserts at the end). Many of the later “message” movies that tried to warn innocent dupes away from sex or drugs (such as Reefer Madness) also took the same approach…and you often have to wonder how effective that was, showing kids having the time of their lives drinking and partying while frowning upont this type of behavior to be frowned.
I don’t think anyone would ever emulate the onscreen conduct in Scarface, however. The main character, Tony Camonte, isn’t a particularly admirable role model — as played by Muni, he’s positively primal; at times it’s as if someone shaved a simian and forced him into a nice suit. (Critic Danny Peary once observed that Muni’s Tony is essentially Fredric March’s Mr. Hyde, only without the fangs.) Camonte is constantly in a state of macho swagger, thinking himself sophisticated (but he’s not) and like a 1930s Donald Trump, judges the quality of what he buys by how much it costs. “That’s pretty hot” proves to be the highest praise he can bestow upon any item or individual, proving that Paris Hilton didn’t just come up with that asinine catchphrase by her lonesome. And like James Cagney’s Cody Jarrett in White Heat, Tony Camonte has some serious psychological problems. Man, has he got it bad for his sister Cesca. Of the film's many elements, the incest theme intrigues the most in what I consider to be the best gangster movie of the 1930s, addressed in the uncomfortable familial relationship between brother and sister Camonte. Hecht based the characters on the Borgia family, making actress Ann Dvorak a delightfully slutty carbon copy of Lucretia and while Muni received many of the critical kudos for his performance in the film, I think Dvorak walks away with the picture. Scarface made me a huge fan of the underrated actress; her tantalizing dance moves and naughty double entendres (not to mention that unmistakable glint she gets in her eye when she talks to Muni’s Tony) no doubt concerned the censors more than the violence.
I also became a Karen Morley fan because of this film, even though I’ll certainly concede that Dvorak gets the showier role and makes much more of an impression. (Morley was an underrated thesp, often on the receiving end of static from the industry about her personal life and politics, all coming to a boil in 1947 with her blacklisting in the motion picture industry after testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee.) As Poppy, the fair-weather bitch who switches her romantic allegiance to Tony when she’s able to read the tea leaves that Johnny Lovo hasn’t much of a future, I like her blasé responses to Camonte’s advances (“I’m nice with a lot of dressing”), and how at times it seems as if she’s having difficulty holding it in and not laughing at the jerk. Scarface also served as a breakout vehicle for actor George Raft, who had danced his way to fame on Broadway (under the tutelage of Texas Guinan) before venturing out to Hollywood to crash the movie business. Raft had appeared in films before Scarface but his “Little Boy” character in the picture really cemented his stature in the motion picture industry; during the 1930s he was the go-to individual for gangster portrayals alongside Cagney and Robinson. George was quite cozy with a number of real-life hoods (including Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky), which led many people to speculate that he actually might have been in the mob at one time (he wasn’t). A bit of business performed by Raft — flipping a nickel in the air and catching it while never looking at the coin — soon became a trademark and even provided a hilarious in-joke in 1959’s Some Like It Hot, in which he had a nice comic (and menacing) turn as hood Spats Columbo.
The actor who wasn’t quite as convincing as Raft playing a gangster was Boris Karloff, who also had a small role in Scarface as Gaffney. Personally, I welcome Boris in any movie but the man was just a little too cultured and refined to play a hood. Be that as it may, Boris does get a memorable death scene in which he’s gunned down by Muni and his mob while bowling…and though he leaves this world having bowled a strike, the “kingpin” symbolically takes a little time to fall before finally doing so. Symbolism plays a large part in Scarface; director Hawks came up with an interesting motif in that all of the gangsters who are “rubbed out” are designated as such with an “X” visible onscreen. Hawks thought this great fun, even to the point of offering crew members $200 for each creative suggestion to allow him to present this. Scarface originally had been scheduled to be released in September 1931, but producer Hughes still was getting grief from the Hays’ Office about the movie’s violent content. In an attempt to pacify the censors, the producer had Richard Rosson shoot an alternate ending, one in which Muni doesn’t die in a hail of bullets at the end but gets taken into custody, tried and convicted by a judge (who gives Muni’s character a lecture though you never see the actor) and sentenced to hang by the neck until he’s really most sincerely dead. (This scene also was shot without Muni’s participation; a double was used in long shots.) The censors weren’t wild about this ending either so Hughes finally threw up his hands and just did an end run around them, releasing the movie in states where there were no censorship boards. (It did great box office and received positive critical reviews.) The “alternate ending” has survived and is available on Universal’s 2007 DVD release…but seeing as how they also eliminated some of the more overt sexual attraction between the Muni and Dvorak characters, I’m glad Hughes stuck to his guns and kept Ending A.
That stand-alone disc release of Scarface provided the best news a classic film fan could get in that before that DVD, the only way you could purchase a copy of the Hawks original was on a 2003 “Anniversary Edition” box set of the 1983 Brian De Palma version…and that’s a purchase I simply wasn’t capable of justifying. There’s even more bad news on the horizon in that Universal has got another remake of the film in the works (this was announced last year) that will combine elements of the 1932 and 1983 films…but as a cinematic British barrister once observed: “Is that really desirable?” Classic film fans can take solace in that the one-and-only original is being looked after; having been added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 1994. Otherwise I’d have no other recourse than to respond with one of Tony Camonte’s most memorable quips: “Get out of my way, Johnny…I’m gonna spit!”
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Labels: 30s, blacklist, Cagney, De Palma, Edward G., Fredric March, Hawks, Hecht, Howard Hughes, Karloff, Movie Tributes, Pacino, Raft
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Monday, November 21, 2011
It's Still Alive
By Damian Arlyn
When the 18-year-old Mary Shelley decided to participate in a competition involving her husband and two other colleagues (including the famous British poet Lord Byron) centered on who could write the best horror story, she probably had very little notion that her story, which was reportedly based on a dream she had experienced, would be not only the obvious winner of the competition but go on to become one of the most celebrated and oft-imitated horror stories in Western Civilization. First published in 1818, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus told the terrible tale of a scientist who created a monster and then suffered the disastrous consequences of such an action. Though it has been adapted for stage, screen and radio numerous times (including the campy but highly enjoyable Kenneth Branagh version made in 1994), there is one incarnation that stands above the rest: James Whale's 1931 masterpiece, which celebrates its 80th anniversary today. Released by the same studio as Tod Browning's Dracula and in the same year (a seminal one for monster movies it would seem), Universal's Frankenstein became a Hollywood classic for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was turning the unknown actor playing the large, mostly mute creature (an actor so obscure they didn't even include his name in the film's opening credits) into a major motion picture star. That actor's name was Boris Karloff.
Initially, Bela Lugosi was cast as the monster but he turned out to dislike the part so much that he soon quit the picture and Karloff stepped in. Karloff's performance is the heart of Frankenstein. His stiff, lumbering movements and vast emotional mood swings (from innocent curiosity to angry, maniacal rages) perfectly captures the early development of a newborn infant. One of the most heartbreaking
sequences of the film also is one of the most memorable: his tragic encounter with a young girl. Though despised by everyone he comes into contact with, the child is the first and only person not to respond with fear or antagonism to his frightening appearance. She invites him to sit and play with her, tossing flowers into a nearby lake and watching them float. The giddy expression on the monster's face betrays the first real feelings of joy he's experienced since his creation, but it is short-lived. Once the flowers are all gone he stupidly picks up the girl and tosses her in the lake, drowning her in the process (a scene whose second half actually was censored upon original release). He quickly realizes he's done wrong and runs off with a look of fear, panic and confusion on his face, like a toddler who's just broken his mother's favorite vase and knows he's in trouble. It's a tremendously sad moment and not just because of the death of the child but because of the pathetic nature of the monster. Through his ignorance and foolishness, he destroyed the one thing in his life that offered him genuine unconditional love. Karloff's creature is one of the saddest and most sympathetic monsters ever put on screen. Some have speculated in recent years that the monster's lonely and persecuted existence served as a metaphor for director James Whale's own feelings of isolation as a homosexual.The cast surrounding Karloff also is quite good. Colin Clive's portrayal of the obsessed scientist is as equally memorable as Karloff's performance (his declaration of "It's alive!" is forever etched in cinematic history). Dwight Frye plays Frankenstein's hunchbacked assistant Fritz with the same gleeful malevolence with which he played Renfield in Browning's film (it's almost as common to mistake Fritz's name for Igor as it is to assume Frankenstein is the name of the monster rather than the doctor). Another Dracula alumnus is Edward Van Sloan (Van Helsing) who once again plays a scientist in Whale's film, though one who meets a far more inauspicious end. Van Sloan also appears in a prologue warning more sensitive audience members of what they're about to see. Interestingly, Van Sloan performed a similar act at the conclusion of Dracula in its initial run.
Like the prior Dracula film, Frankenstein was based not primarily on the author's original novel but on a theatrical adaptation by John L. Balderston. Unlike Browning's film, however, it bore very little resemblance to its source material. Beside the essential premise and the names of a few of the characters, this Frankenstein was a work of total imagination. For example, details about how the creature is brought to life in the book are exceptionally few. This makes the legendary birthing sequence (brilliantly parodied in Mel Brooks' affectionate 1974 spoof Young Frankenstein), wherein Dr. Frankenstein uses the natural elements such as thunder and lightning to animate the lifeless corpse lying flat on the platform being lifted up high into the air while sparks of electricity fly noisily from various mechanical apparatuses all the more impressive. Likewise, the creature's appearance is radically different from that described in the book but no less creative and memorable. The now instantly recognizable look of the monster (the bolts on the neck, the flat head, the green skin, etc) was designed by make-up artist Jack Pierce, the man also responsible for yet another Universal monster a decade later — Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolf Man. Needless to say, Frankenstein was a huge hit upon its release, but unlike a number of other Hollywood classics which now are dated terribly, Whale's film still holds up incredibly well.
One of the qualities that makes it so watchable are the amazing visuals. Clearly inspired by German expressionism, the stark and at times surreal look of the film contributes to the dark Caligari-like atmosphere. Whale was a theater director before he did cinema and he brings a theatricality to the film that helps make it more chilling and captivating. Whale would go on to direct the sequel Bride of Frankenstein (considered by many to be ever better than its predecessor but still unseen by me) and Universal's The Invisible Man. Whale tried to distance himself from his horror films later in his life but his career faltered and he eventually committed suicide in 1957. He even got his own film in 1998 in the form of Gods and Monsters where he was was played by openly gay actor Ian McKellen, who has admitted that he identifies very strongly with the struggles of the talented filmmaker. Regardless, however, of the obscurity or notoriety of Whale's more "serious" output, his horror work is among the best of the genre and Frankenstein wouldn't be the celebrated classic it is today without him. It also makes sense that the story of Frankenstein itself (as originally conceived by Shelley) wouldn't be as remembered today as it is without Whale's film. It's ironic that a story which warns against the dangers of man trying to achieve immortality shows no signs of "dying" anytime soon.
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Labels: 30s, Books, Branagh, Browning, Fiction, Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., Lugosi, McKellen, Mel Brooks, Movie Tributes, Remakes, Sequels, Theater, Whale
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Saturday, October 22, 2011
"A person can't sneeze in this town without someone offering them a handkerchief"
How come you treat me like a worn-out shoe?
My hair's still curly and my eyes are still blue
Why don't you love me like you used to do?
•••
Well, why don't you be just like you used to be?
How come you find so many faults with me?
Somebody's changed so let me give you a clue
Why don't you love me like you used to do?
By Edward Copeland
Even if Hank Williams Sr. weren't well represented with songs that play throughout Peter Bogdanovich's film adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel The Last Picture Show, somehow I think the movie would play as if it were a cinematic evocation of the music legend. Despite the fact that today marks the 40th anniversary of the film's release and The Last Picture Show took as its setting a small, depressed Texas town in 1951 and 1952 (even going so far as to have cinematographer Robert Surtees shoot it in glorious black & white), it contains a universality that resonates today both in human and economic terms. Williams' hit "Why Don't You Love Me (Like You Used to Do)?" that I quote partially above are the first words we hear, before any character speaks a line. In the movie's context, the lyrics could be describing the first person we see — high school senior Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms). With the way the U.S. has been going of late, I know very few people who don't feel like a "worn-out shoe" and wish fondly for past, better days and these feelings stretch from one end of the ideological spectrum to the other. Fortunately, The Last Picture Show itself hasn't changed. Age has served the film well, helped in no small part by its amazing cast.
McMurtry, who based the town in the novel on his own small north Texas hometown of Archer City, co-wrote the screenplay with Bogdanovich, the former film critic who was directing his second credited feature film after the fun and tawdry thriller Targets that gave Boris Karloff a great, late career role. (Under the name Derek Thomas, he had filmed a sci-fi feature called Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women in 1968 starring Mamie Van Doren.) In the novel, McMurtry renamed the town Thalia, but the film gave it another moniker — Anarene.
The movie opens on Anarene's main stretch of road and passes the Royal movie theater. The wind howls ferociously, blowing dust, leaves, trash and anything that isn't tied down through the air and down the street. The flying debris leads us to Sonny and that Hank Williams song, which comes from the radio of his old pickup that he's having a helluva time getting started. Actually, the pickup only half belongs to
Sonny — he shares it with his best friend Duane Moore (Jeff Bridges), who always seems to get it first on date nights so he can neck with his girlfriend, Jacy Farrow (Cybill Shepherd in her film debut), widely considered the best-looking teen in town. Once Sonny gets that old pickup running, he spots young Billy (the late Sam Bottoms, Timothy's real-life younger brother) standing in the middle of the street with his broom, trying to sweep up the dust. Sonny honks at him and Billy smiles and climbs in the pickup with him. As he usually does, Sonny affectionately turns the mentally challenged boy's cap around backward and the two head to the pool hall owned by Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson). Sonny pays for what looks like a sticky bun and a bottle of pop, prompting Sam to shake his head. "You ain't ever gonna amount to nothing. Already spent a dime this morning, ain't even had a decent breakfast," Sam tells Sonny, but not in a mean-spirited way. "Why don't you comb you hair, Sonny? It sticks up…I'm surprised you had the nerve to show up this morning after that stomping y'all took last night." Sam's referring to Anarene High School's final football game of the year, where the team took a real beating. "It could've been worse," Sonny replies. "You could say that just about everything," Sam says. "It could've been worse" applies to most of the situations in The Last Picture Show, which can be described accurately by the overused phrase "slice of life." Plot doesn't drive the story — character, not only of the people but of the town itself, does. While you watch the movie, you aren't concerned with what happens next or how the film ends because you realize that life will go on for most of these fictional folks you've come to know even after the lights come up in the theater and the projector shuts off. Wherever the movie finishes will resemble a chapter stop more than a finale. (As if to prove the point, McMurtry returned to Thalia in four more novels, though Duane becomes the main character in the followups as opposed to Sonny, who decidedly takes the lead here. Bogdanovich even filmed the first sequel, Texasville, in 1990 with mixed results.)
Sam's reference to the previous night's football debacle displays an excellent example of what captivates the citizens in a so-called "one-stoplight" town such as Amarene, as the team's players (mainly Sonny and Duane, since they are the teammates we know best) get repeatedly berated by their elders the day after the loss. A common refrain becomes variations of the question, "Have you ever heard of tackling?" That even continues when Abilene (Clu Gulager), one of the many oil-field workers who live in Amarene, when he comes straight from work to Sam's pool hall, changes clothes and takes billiards so seriously that he has his own cue stick that he keeps in a case and assembles. While he's there, he collects on a bet he had with Sam on the game. Abilene isn't faithful in most areas of his life and that's telegraphed right away when we see that he'd bet against the hometown high school football team. "You see? This is what I get for bettin' on my own hometown ballteam. I ought'a have better sense," Sam says as he forks over the cash. "Wouldn't hurt to have a better hometown," the emotionless Abilene declares. Soon enough, football will fade from the town's collective memory as they move into basketball season. While sports may be important in holding this dying town
together, we never see an actual game of any kind. The closest we come is one instance of basketball practice in the school gym. That's because high school sporting events aren't what The Last Picture Show wants to show us. It's telling a coming-of-age story — several in fact — and not all concern the teen characters in the tale. It's also about love and loss, not always in the present tense. Of course, at its core, The Last Picture Show also deals with community and by community, I mean gossip. In this small a town, very few secrets can be kept, yet at the same time its citizens seem fairly discreet about what they know and staying out of other people's business. I've never read the novel, but I can see how easily it would work in book form. There's a story that Bogdanovich, who was then married to multi-hyphenate Polly Platt, who died earlier this year, read the jacket cover of the book and didn't see a way it could work as a film until Platt outlined it for him in chronological form. She must have done a brilliant job since she not only changed Bogdanovich's mind but led him to the road where he ended up directing and co-writing one of the best films of all time. the balancing act needed to transfer The Last Picture Show to the screen would have been very tricky for anyone to pull off, but I think the reason it worked boiled down to two key elements: its look and its cast.Platt, in addition to being the person who gave Bogdanovich the vision to turn McMurtry's novel into a feature film also served as the film's production designer and its uncredited costume designer, seamlessly taking the actors and Archer City, Texas, back in time nearly 20 years. Her work was helped in no small part by the legendary director of photography Robert Surtees' exquisite black & white images, which earned one of The Last Picture Show's eight Oscar nominations. Surtees received a total of 15 Oscar nominations for
cinematography in his career and won three: for King Solomon's Mines, The Bad and the Beautiful and Ben-Hur. He actually lost twice in 1971 — he was nominated for Summer of '42 as well as The Last Picture Show. He earned four consecutive nominations from 1975-78, when he made his last film before he retired. Other nominations included The Sting, The Graduate and Oklahoma! He showed a strong gift for using both color and black & white and his stark look in The Last Picture Show perfectly captured the time and place of the setting without letting any nostalgia sneak into the proceedings, which it really shouldn't. No one is looking back at the events from the future, so that element shouldn't be there. In a way, it's interesting to compare it to George Lucas' American Graffiti two years later. Both films look at high school seniors and eschew musical scores in favor of soundtracks full of the pop hits of the era. The difference is that Graffiti, while good, revels in a "good old days" spirit with barely a mention of sexual curiosity let alone activity while The Last Picture Show depicts an entirely different economic class that's having very few good times, but certainly getting drunk and laid. Of course, adults didn't exist in Graffiti whereas their roles prove integral in The Last Picture Show. Admittedly, I haven't seen American Graffiti in some time — Lucas hasn't re-edited it to make the drag race CGI and digitally replaced all the cars out cruising with hybrids, has he?
Despite the film's ensemble nature, Sonny truly serves as the center of this movie's universe. Timothy Bottoms wears such deep, soulful eyes that it made him a natural to play a role that required deadpan humor as well heartbreaking drama. While the other younger cast members mostly continue to flourish in the industry if we can still count Randy Quaid, who made his film debut as Lester Marlow, a rich kid from Wichita Falls who lures Shepherd's Jacy to a nude swimming party, but has now transformed himself from a talented character actor into a fugitive from justice on the run with his wife and being pursued by Dog the Bounty Hunter), Bottoms' star never seemed to take off after such a promising start. The Last Picture Show was his second feature following Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun and in 1973 he starred in The Paper Chase, but it has been mostly TV. low budget movies and downhill since then. (I suppose his most recent highlight was playing the title character in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's short-lived Comedy Central sitcom That's My Bush!) It's a shame because he's the key to so much of The Last Picture Show. Of those eight Oscar nominations that I mentioned it received, four went to acting and two won. All were much deserved, but Bottoms deserved a slot as well. I didn't add it up, but I imagine he appears in a great majority of the movie's scenes and a case could have easily been made for pushing him for lead — not that he stood a chance to win against Gene Hackman in The French Connection, but I would have nominated him before Walter Matthau in Kotch, George C. Scott in The Hospital or Topol in Fiddler on the Roof. However, I don't know if I could have evicted Peter Finch in Sunday Bloody Sunday for him.
Bottoms' Sonny though really serves as the line upon which so much of the movie's clothing hangs to dry. He's the first character we meet, introducing us to Billy, whose origin never gets explained, and more importantly Johnson's Oscar-winning Sam the Lion, who not only owns the pool hall but the diner and the Royal movie theater as well. Sonny takes us to the Royal for the first time, arriving late because of his delivery job. Miss Mosey (Jessie Lee Fulton), the kindly manager of the place who never has popcorn since she long ago forgot how the machine worked, tells Sonny that he already missed the newsreel and the comedy and the feature has started, so she only charges him 30 cents for admission. Imagine being able to see a movie for that cheap — and I imagine it wasn't that much more to get two movies and a newsreel, Now, the prices go up and up and up while, in general, the quality goes down further and
further. Once inside, he hooks up with his girlfriend Charlene Duggs (Sharon Taggart), who gets annoyed that he doesn't realize what an important day it is. It seems it's their one-year anniversary of going steady. With that perfect deadpan aplomb I mentioned earlier, Bottoms as Sonny simply says, "Seems longer." The main feature playing that night is Father of the Bride starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor. Though Sonny and Charlene have relocated to the back row so they can make out, it's clear that Sonny finds the giant image of Liz Taylor more alluring than the girl who is kissing him, While we met Duane earlier when he got off work from the oil field and went to the diner with Sonny, he and Jacy show up and take the seats in front of them and it's clear that Duane finds it very satisfying to be kissing Jacy because they don't seem to be watching the movie at all. When the movie is over and all the kids exit, they tell Miss Mosey they enjoyed it, but I bet they wouldn't want to take a quiz on it. However, that wind still howls giving the older woman trouble putting up the poster for the next attraction so Sam gives her a hand teasing the return of Sands of Iwo Jima starring John Wayne. The town can boast having a movie theater, but it certainly isn't first run. After the show, Duane lets Sonny have the pickup, so he drives Charlene out by the lake and they begin to make out. You can tell this is a choreographed routine for the teens because Charlene immediately unhooks her bra and hangs it from the rearview mirror, which is followed immediately by Sonny's hands going to her bare breasts as if they were magnets and her chest was built out of metal. Charlene complains that something's wrong
with Sonny — that he's acting as if he's bored or would rather be somewhere else. However, when Sonny does venture to place his hand somewhere else, Charlene goes nuts. "You cheapskate — you didn't even get me an anniversary present. Now, you want to get me pregnant," she barks as she starts to put her top back on. Sonny argues that it was only his hand, but she says she knows how one thing leads to another and she's waiting until she gets married. Sonny, a hangdog expression on his face, tells her that they should break up then. This shocks Charlene, but she gets mad, not upset. "Now don't go tellin' all the boys how hot I was," she warns him. "You wasn't that hot," Sonny sighs sadly in a monotone. He can't decide if he's depressed or relieved to be rid of Charlene when he shows up at the diner and tells the ever faithful manager/waitress Genevieve (the great Eileen Brennan) about it. "Jacy's the only pretty girl in town and Duane's got her," Sonny tells her. "Jacy will bring you more misery than she'll ever be worth," Genevieve declares. What a font of wisdom her character will turn out to be. Sonny remembers hearing the news that Genevieve's husband Dan finally is able to return to work, so he figures that means she won't be working much longer. In another moment from a 1971 film set in 1951 that could be taking place in 2011, she responds, "We've got four thousand dollars in doctor bills to pay. I'll probably be making cheeseburgers for your grandkids." If the bills are that high in 1951, calculate them now.
You will have to forgive me for saying so much — I have an unfortunate tendency to ramble about films I love — but I also needed to get you to this point so we could talk about the most important part of film dealing with Sonny, something that begins with doing a simple favor for Coach Popper (Bill Thurman). The coach asks Sonny if he will drive his wife Ruth (Cloris Leachman in her Oscar-winning performance) to her doctor's appointment. In exchange, he'll get Sonny out of physics lab. Sonny will take any excuse to get out of that class so he agrees. Mrs. Popper is surprised when Sonny shows up at her door — her husband didn't tell her that he wasn't taking her. It's all quiet and above board on that trip. However, when Sonny sees her again at the town's sad Christmas dance, she asks him if he could help her take out the trash from the refreshment stand. He does and the two share their first kiss. Ruth asks the teen if he'd be able to drive
her to the clinic again next week. "You bet!" Sonny replies. Many movies and works of fiction have told stories of affairs between older married women and younger men of high school or college age, but none have done so with as much meaning or affection as The Last Picture Show does in its depiction of Sonny and Ruth, which tosses most of those clichés out. Ruth isn't some oversexed seductress — she's a lonely, needy woman of 40 trapped in a miserable marriage. The movie doesn't spell it out directly, but in the commentary on the DVD, Bogdanovich says that Coach Popper is supposed to be gay. To me what's so stunning about Leachman's performance is that I can't think of her in any other dramatic roles. She's a comic actress extraordinaire. but she's so frighteningly good as Ruth I wonder why we never saw her explore really juicy drama. When Ruth and Sonny make love for the first time, it's such a mixture of elements when you have the overanxious boy rushing to lose his virginity while the 40-year-old married woman cries because she feared she never know that feeling again. As their affair continues, she actually seems to grow younger. Sonny also finds himself surprised to learn how many people are aware of what's going on between the two of them.
As great as Leachman is, she didn't win that Oscar in a walk. Her toughest competition came from the same film. Ellen Burstyn scored her first Oscar nomination in the same category, supporting actress, for playing Lois Farrow, Jacy's mother. Burstyn always is brilliant, but she
manages to make us have sympathy for Lois at the same time we realize that her somewhat crazy ways have rubbed off on her daughter and turned her into the superficial cocktease that she is. Jacy claims she loves Duane, but her parents won't ever permit her to marry a boy like him without a future. The Farrows are one of the few well-off families in town, thanks to her husband striking oil. Not that it has saved the marriage any because Lois has been having an on again-off again affair with Abilene for quite some time. Jacy tries to convince her mother that she married her father when he wasn't rich. "I scared your daddy into getting rich, beautiful," Lois tells her daughter. Jacy insists that if Daddy could do it, so could Duane. "Not married to you. You're not scary enough," her mother replies. Later, when Lois informs Jacy about Sonny and Ruth's affair, Jacy's shocked, "She is 40 years old." Her mother quickly says, "So am I, honey. It's an itchy age." The big scenes for Burstyn (and Leachman) don't come until after other developments.The fourth performer to earn an acting nod from the film was the great Jeff Bridges as Duane. It was his very first. He's good, but Duane actually isn't that large a part despite the fact he becomes the central figure in the book sequels. Duane's love for Jacy goes beyond reason. When she ditches him at the dance to go to the nude swim party in Wichita Falls, he takes it. When she finally agrees to put out,
he can't perform (though Bridges' facial expression when she exposes her breasts to him is priceless). They try again and he comes out all smiles and she cuts him down, telling him, "Oh, quit prissing. I don't think you done it right, anyway." Finally, as she ducks him more often, he leaves town to take another job elsewhere, but gives Sonny explicit orders to watch if anyone starts seeing her. One night, Abilene stops by the Farrow house to tell her dad that a well came in, but he isn't home. He ends up taking Jacy to the pool hall and having sex with her on a pool table, her hands grabbing hold of the corner pockets. After awhile, when the boy she'd been dating from Wichita Falls runs off and gets married, she pursues Sonny, who is powerless to resist, no matter how it hurts Ruth. When Duane returns and finds out that Sonny and Jacy are dating, he breaks a beer bottle against his face, injuring his eye. "Jacy's just the kind of girl that brings out the meanness in men," Genevieve tells Sonny when she sees him with the patch on his eye. Soon after, he and Jacy drive to Oklahoma to elope, only Jacy left a long detailed note so the Oklahoma state troopers detain them until her parents arrive and get the marriage annulled. Sonny rides back with Lois who tells him he's lucky they saved him from her.
In a way, I have saved the best for last, except it isn't really the last. If Timothy Bottoms' Sonny provides the line from which all the characters and stories dangle, Ben Johnson's Sam the Lion provides the posts that anchors his line. The story goes that Johnson didn't want to take the part because he thought it was too wordy and Bogdanovich, who had just completed a documentary on John Ford asked Ford to talk him into it. Ford reportedly asked Johnson if he wanted to be the Duke's sidekick all his life and told him that if he played the part,
he'd win the Oscar for supporting actor and that's just what happened. There are so many moments in Johnson's performance that I'd love to pick, but so I don't go on forever, I'm concentrating on one, which also happens to be my favorite part of the film. Sam takes Sonny and Billy fishing at this reservoir on land he once owned and it opens him up about the past. He talks about this crazy girl he was involved with about 20 years ago after his wife had lost her mind and his sons had died and how they always came out there. She challenged him to ride horses across the water. He didn't think they'd make it, but somehow she did it. Sonny asks why he never married her, but Sam tells him she already was married — one of those young marriages people get into that makes them miserable. He figured some day it would end, but it never did. "If she was here I'd probably be just as crazy now as I was then in about five minutes. Ain't that ridiculous? Naw, it ain't really. 'Cause being crazy about a woman like her is always the right thing to do. Being an old decrepit bag of bones, that's what's ridiculous. Gettin' old," Sam declares. What makes the whole sequence and monologue even better is the way Bogdanovich films it. He starts out in a medium shot where you can see all three characters, but as the tale grows more romantic he slowly moves the camera in on Johnson's face. As he starts to tell how they never ended up together, the camera pulls back out again.
The Last Picture Show has so many great moments, big and small, that I want to talk about them all but I do have to mention one final Sam moment before wrapping up Lois and Ruth. Earlier in the film, before Duane beats him up (they reconcile anyway) Duane and Sonny drown separate sorrows in sundaes at the diner when Duane decides that he just wants to get out of town — that night — at least for the weekend. He suggests to
Sonny that they go to Mexico. The two friends check their cash reserves and decide they can do it and get up and leave. Genevieve asks where they are going. "Mexico," they tell her. "Mexico?" As they drive the pickup down the street, they notice Sam sitting on the curb outside the theater. They tell him of their plans. He gives them some money, telling them that Mexico has a way of swallowing your money. Wistfully, he even says that if he were younger, he might go with them. There's something odd in the town — as if he has something else to say, but he just tells them he'll see them around and gives them a wave. Somehow though, even when you're watching The Last Picture Show for the first time, you know that will be the last time in the movie you'll see Sam. When Sonny and Duane come back, they go to the pool room and find it locked. They find that odd. They ask a man what's going on. He remembers that they've been gone so they don't know. Sam died. "Keeled over one of the snooker tables. Had a stroke," the man says. He adds the Sam left the diner to Genevieve, the theater to Miss Mosey and the pool hall to Sonny.
Back to that ride home from Oklahoma between Lois and Sonny. Before they get in the car, Lois tells him that he should have stayed with Ruth Popper. "Does everyone know about that?" he asks annoyed. She says yes. "I guess I treated her badly," Sonny admits. "Guess you did," Lois concurs. As she drives, Sonny says, "Nothin's really been right since Sam the Lion died." No, they really haven't, Lois agrees. Sonny guesses that she must have liked him a lot, but Lois says no, she loved him. Sonny mentions the story Sam told him about the girl and she's surprised. "He told you that? You know, I'm the one who started calling him Sam the Lion," Lois confesses as Sonny realizes that she was the girl that Sam talked about. She apologizes for getting slightly teary. "It's terrible to meet only one man in your life who knows what you're worth," Lois admits. "I guess if it wasn't for Sam, I'd have missed it, whatever it is. I'd have been one of them amity types that thinks that playin' bridge is about the best thing that life has to offer."
When Sonny gets back to town, he learns Duane, who has enlisted in the Army, is in town for a short visit. He asks if he wants to go with him to the Royal. Miss Mosey has to close the picture show. Duane agrees. The final movie is Howard Hawks' Red River. "No one wants to come to shows no more. Kid baseball in the summer, television all the time," Miss Mosey tells them. Imagine now. Out-of-sight prices, out-of-control crowds, declining quality of product, more at-home convenience, everything digital so there is in essence no difference between theaters and home. The next day, Duane boards a bus to his base to ship off for Korea. "I'll see you in a year or two if I don't get shot," he tells Sonny.
As Sonny works the pool hall, the scene mirrors the opening with the howling wind and blowing dust, only this time he hears a commotion. He runs outside and sees that a truck hauling cattle struck and killed Billy who, as usual was sweeping the middle of the street. A bunch of gawkers try to console the driver, explaining that the kid was "simple" and continuously asking why he had that broom. Sonny snaps. "He was sweeping you sons of bitches, he was sweeping!" he yells as he picks Billy's broken body up and lays it on the sidewalk.
Eventually, he works up the nerve to knock on Ruth's door and asks if he can have a cup of coffee with her. She apologizes for still being in her bathrobe this late in the day. Then, as she's starting to pour coffee, it's her turn to explode and she throws the cup and the coffee pot against the wall.
"What am I doing apologizing to you? Why am I always apologizing to you, you little bastard? Three months I've spent apologizing to you without you even being here. I haven't done anything wrong. Why can't I quit apologizing? You're the one ought to be sorry. I wouldn't still be in my bathrobe. I would've had my clothes on hours ago. It's because of you I quit caring if I got dressed or not. I guess because your friend got killed you want me to forget what you did and make it alright. I'm not sorry for you. You'd have left Billy too just like you left me. I bet you left him plenty of nights, whenever Jacy whistled. I wouldn't treat a dog that way. I guess I was so old and ugly it didn't matter how you treated me — you didn't love me."
Ruth sits down at the kitchen table across from Sonny. "You shouldn't have come here. I'm around that corner now. You've ruined it and it's lost completely. Just your needing me won't make it come back," Ruth tells him. He reaches out and takes her hand. She takes it and puts it to her face. He never says a word. The two of them just sit holding hands across the table.
Lots of people can quote the last lines of movies, but when you think about it, there aren't as many famous final ones as you would think. The Last Picture Show belongs in that exclusive company.
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Labels: 70s, B. Johnson, Bogdanovich, Burstyn, Cybill Shepherd, George C. Scott, Hackman, Hawks, Jeff Bridges, John Ford, Karloff, Liz, Lucas, Matthau, Movie Tributes, Oscars, R. Quaid, Sequels, Tracy, Wayne
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Friday, May 27, 2011
Centennial Tributes: Vincent Price
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
Over at my usual stomping grounds at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, I’ve been known to jokingly refer to the time I spent living in Morgantown, W.Va. (1992-2000) as “my years in exile” — and one of my fondest memories during that period occurred when my co-workers at the company that saw fit to employ me decided to have an impromptu lunch at an Italian restaurant located in nearby Westover, a small burg just across the Monongahela River from Mo-town, better known as home to West Virginia University (Or as I have been known to call it — using a gag I swiped from Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman — “a stadium with a college attached”). The eatery was known as Rose’s, and I’d heartily recommend that you stop by for a nosh sometime when you’re in the area were it not for the awful fact that it closed its doors about five years back.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure — when it comes to Italian cuisine, it’s not my first choice on the menu…I’m more of a cheeseburger-and-onion rings kind of guy. But when I followed my co-workers into the restaurant I had a feeling the food was going to be first-rate (and it was…so much so that I went back on repeat occasions with a friend of mine from high school) because on one of the walls near the entrance was an article from the local newspaper that talked up the place…and mentioned that Rose’s (and her cooking in particular) was a favorite of actor Vincent Price, who made it a point to stop by whenever he was in the area. Price, known for his distinguished accomplishments on stage, screen, television, radio — just about any facet of show business you can name, as a matter of fact — also enjoyed a reputation as a gourmet cook…so if Rose’s fare had his seal of approval I certainly wasn’t going to argue. I know, it’s sort of odd that I would remember something like this but seeing as how the man christened Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. was born 100 years ago on this date I guess I’m resorting to this “degree of separation” to pay tribute to one of my favorite actors on his “Vincentennial.”
Vincent Price was born a century ago in St. Louis, Mo., this date and to his dying day remained one of that city’s favorite sons…with good reason, of course. Truth be told, if Price had never set foot upon the stage his future would have been pretty secure; his father, Vincent, Sr., was president of the National Candy Company and his grandfather (also named Vincent) was the inventor of “Dr. Price’s Baking Powder” — the first cream of tartar baking powder. As a son of privilege, Vincent attended both St. Louis Country Day School and Yale University, where he developed his lifelong interest in art history and the fine arts. In the 1930s, he also began to acquire an interest in the theater and began appearing in stage productions in 1935. His big stage success came a year later, playing opposite Helen Hayes in Victoria Regina — a production that the superstitious actor believed brought him such good fortune that he named his first daughter “Victoria” (aided by the fact that her mother was raised in Victoria, British Columbia). Though he would eventually devote most of his time in show business to making movies, Price never completely abandoned his stage roots — among his triumphs in later years was a successful one-man production entitled Diversions and Delights in which he played the part of legendary author/playwright Oscar Wilde.
On the silver screen, Vincent made his debut in the 1938 film Service de Luxe — a movie he wasn’t particularly fond of, but it paved the way to future appearances in more prestigious films such as Michael
Curtiz's The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex starring Bette Davis, Erroll Flynn and Olivia de Havilland (1939), The House of the Seven Gables (1940), The Song of Bernadette (1943), The Eve of St. Mark and Wilson (both in 1944). In fact, 1944 was a big year for the actor for he also appeared in The Keys of the Kingdom and a movie I’ve long considered one of his signature roles (and is the personal favorite of daughter Victoria), Otto Preminger's film noir classic Laura. As the rakish scoundrel Shelby Carpenter, Price gave an amazing performance as a cad who lies as easily as taking a breath but whose courtly Southern manner and charm (“I can afford a blemish on my character but not on my clothes”) made him more a figure to be pitied than scorned. Price would later make two additional movies with Laura co-star Gene Tierney, Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and Dragonwyck (1946), and he began to develop a reputation for screen villainy with choice parts in films such as The Web (1947), The Three Musketeers (1948), The Bribe (1949) and The Baron of Arizona (1950).Playing the part of the Duke of Clarence in 1939’s Tower of London — a horror movie that co-starred Boris Karloff, a thesp with whom Price would work with time and time again — offered Vincent an indication of the direction his career would later take as a horror icon…and a year later, appeared as the titular undetectable character of The Invisible Man Returns. (Price would also play the unseen individual in a joke cameo near the end of the 1948 comedy classic Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.) His active participation in the horror genre reached full swing in 1953 with another unforgettable turn in the 3-D horror romp House of Wax, and Price followed that with such vehicles as The Mad Magician (1954), The Fly (1958) (and the 1959 sequel, Return of the Fly), The Bat (1959) and two movies he made for schlockmeister William Castle —
House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler (both 1959). The actor would occasionally get high profile gigs in movies such as The Ten Commandments and While the City Sleeps (both 1956), but by the 1960s, horror had a new name in Vincent Price, who would make many of his most memorable films during that decade…the ones that endlessly captivated me as a child watching “Chiller Theater” on Saturday nights while my parents were out for the evening.
Price starred in several films directed by “King of the B’s” Roger Corman that were heavily influenced by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, beginning in 1960 with House of Usher. Classic examples of the horror movie genre followed in the same vein, including Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Raven
(1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1965). These movies serve to remind film buffs that, despite his B-movie pedigree, Corman was capable of turning out incredible work (particularly Pendulum and Red Death) but they also saddled its star with a reputation for “hamminess” that he simultaneously embraced and rejected. An example of Price capitalizing on this status is undoubtedly his starring turn in 1971’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes (a role he reprised in the sequel, 1972’s Dr. Phibes Rises Again) but Vincent demonstrated that he could reign in his hambone tendencies with an understated performance in Witchfinder General (1968; aka Conqueror Worm). As religious fanatic/evil madman Matthew Hopkins, Price could have pulled out all the stops but wisely chose not to do so…and for many fans (myself included), General ranks with some of the finest work Vincent ever did onscreen.
There are those who believe that Price agreed to undertake a starring role in Theater of Blood (1973) — a film in which a Shakespearean actor takes revenge on the critics who denied him recognition — as an answer to all those naysayers who time and time again dismissed him as a big slice of ham but Price enjoyed himself in this movie because it allowed him to indulge in another of his passions, performing the words of the Immortal Bard himself. (Needless to say, Blood was one of Price’s particular
movie favorites.) Vincent’s involvement in films began to peter out around 1975 (mostly because the kind of horror movies he specialized in were on the wane) but by that time he was already making frequent guest appearances in shows on TV, including memorable turns in episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, F Troop, Get Smart, Night Gallery, The Brady Bunch, Columbo, Ellery Queen and The Bionic Woman. His best-known TV gig is probably that of his multiple appearances as the villainous Egghead on Batman, a program on which he started a legendary food fight by lobbing hen fruit at stars Adam West and Burt Ward. He also was a frequent panelist on the boob tube game show Hollywood Squares and a fixture on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, where he was in high demand as a raconteur telling tales of both show business and the culinary and art worlds.I mentioned Price’s expertise in gourmet cooking in the first two paragraphs of this essay; it was such a lifelong passion of the actor’s that he authored several cookbooks (including one with second wife Mary Grant, A Treasury of Great Recipes) and hosted a TV show entitled Cooking Price-Wise. But Price also excelled as an authority on art, having graduated from Yale with a degree in such and founding the Vincent and Mary Price Gallery at East Los Angeles College in the 1960s…kick-started by a donation of some 90 pieces from his personal collection to the school in 1951. Today, the gallery contains some 2,000 works, estimated at more than $5 million, and remains a testament to Price’s legacy. Price’s celebrity status was put to maximum use in merchandising not only art (Sears and Roebuck successfully touted art works under the banner of “The Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art”) but books (a series of mystery and detective novels offered in a mail-order book club), games (he was the spokesman for several board games put out by Milton Bradley), recordings (his one-of-a-kind sinister voice can be heard on albums by Alice Cooper…and most famously, Michael Jackson), theme parks and commercial products like Polaroid and Tilex.
In the 1980s, Vincent Price continued to maintain a presence on television and in film; beginning in 1981 he appeared weekly on public television stations as the host of Mystery! (a series he relinquished in 1989 due to failing health) and continued to appear in the occasional movie such as The Great Mouse Detective (1986; he supplied the voice of “Professor Ratigan”) and The Whales of August (1987), which gave him a wonderful showcase alongside such old pros as Bette Davis, Lillian Gish and Ann Sothern. And though it wasn’t his last project in the business it can be said that his final moment of celluloid glory was an appearance (unfortunately curtailed due to his precarious health) as the inventor of Edward Scissorhands (1990). Price had worked with director Tim Burton previously, narrating the memorable short Vincent (1982)…about a little boy who, appropriately, wants to be just like Vincent Price. Years devoted to “coffin nails” finally caught up with Price, however, and he succumbed to lung cancer in October 1993.
At We Are Movie Geeks, the proprietors of that website came up with a Top Ten list of the film performances they felt represent the crème de la crème of Price’s career…and while I certainly agree with the majority of their choices (I especially enjoyed that they included his — if you’ll pardon the pun — priceless comedic turn in 1950’s Champagne for Caesar…though I would have moved Laura up the list some) they left off one of my personal favorites (they explain, however, that all of the movies on the list will be shown at the ten-day Vincentennial celebration currently underway from May 19-28): 1951’s His Kind of Woman. Robert Mitchum is the star of this spoof of he-man heroic adventures (doing his patented sleepy-eyed lug schtick) and Jane Russell plays his love interest…but Price walks off with the film as (what else?) a hammy actor who comes to Big Bad Bob’s rescue when Mitchum is kidnapped by thugs working for deposed mobster Raymond Burr, who plans to croak Bob and use his identity to get back into the country. Price’s antics are falling-down funny in this one: I love his facial reactions as he watches an assembled crowd watch one of his movies (in which he engages in some swashbuckling derring-do) and such memorable lines of dialogue (spoken to rally volunteers who will help Price’s character save Mitchum) as “Survivors will all be given parts in my next picture.”
Victoria Price once commented that her father had so much fun making both Woman and Caesar, and the proof is in the pudding — but then I can’t imagine there ever being a time in the actor’s life when he didn’t have fun and make the most of his brief stay here on Earth. Chef, art collector, gardener, opera devotee, author and an exemplary performer in nearly all worlds of show business — Vincent Price was one of the most remarkable men of the 20th century. And as far as this fan goes, he is so terribly missed to this day.
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Labels: Abbott and Costello, Bette, Books, Carson, Corman, Curtiz, de Havilland, Erroll Flynn, G. Tierney, Karloff, Mitchum, Music, Preminger, Shakespeare, Television, Theater, Tim Burton, Vincent Price
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Thursday, October 07, 2010
Take the Highway That Is Best
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
With the publication of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road in 1957 — an autobiographical account of the author’s experiences traveling across the U.S. and Mexico with Neal Cassady and other members of “The Beat Generation” — it wasn’t long before television found the inspiration to start creating series placing protagonists in identical situations of “trying to find themselves” roaming the nation’s highways and bi-ways in similar fashion. You had The Fugitive’s Dr. Richard Kimble (David Janssen), a man who pursued a one-armed man for four years in an effort to prove that he had been falsely convicted of killing his wife. There was Run for Your Life’s Paul Bryan (Ben Gazzara), a man who decided to live his life to the fullest via endless travel after being diagnosed with having only two years to live. And Jim Bronson (Michael Parks), the hero of Then Came Bronson, got in touch with his inner Wild One and quit his newspaper job in favor of a life riding his “sickle” around from town to town after the suicide death of a close friend.
The urge to roam was certainly not a new theme in the medium of television; the heroes of numerous Western series had been doing it for years. But 50 years ago on this date, two young men named Tod Stiles (Martin Milner) and Buz Murdock (George Maharis) gassed up a powder-blue Corvette left to Tod by his late father and headed off for adventure or whatever came their way…without guns or horses. Today, Route 66 is recognized by critics and classic television fans alike as the one of the best and most unique of small screen dramas to be televised in the 1960s — a first-rate blend of episodic television and dramatic anthology of such quality that, sadly, isn’t likely to be seen on the boob tube ever again any time soon.
Television producer Herbert B. Leonard and Stirling Silliphant first explored the idea of a show in which the weekly episodes would concentrate more on the guest stars than the series’ principals in Naked City, a program loosely based on the 1948 film that premiered in the fall of 1958 as a half-hour and then sat out a season before returning in the fall of 1960 in the full hour format. Their second collaboration would be Route 66, and in the debut episode, “Black November,” we’re introduced to Murdock, an orphan from New York’s “Hell’s Kitchen,” and Stiles, a Yale-educated son of privilege whose only possession is the Corvette in which the two men would travel (Mr. Stiles died penniless). Though the premise had out heroes looking for “a place to plant roots and stick,” it was really more of a dropping-off to meet a myriad of unusual and offbeat characters that they would encounter in their “vision quest” and to hear their personal stories (we rarely learned much about Buz and Tod save for a few sketchy biographical details). The title of the series, Route 66, was even a bit of a misnomer — many of the stories featured on the show actually took place in areas where the famous highway made famous by Nat King Cole’s hit (written by Bobby Troup) didn’t reach (in fact, two episodes took place in Canada).
Having been sired from the same stable that produced Naked City, there were naturally a good many similarities between the two shows. Both programs often relied on offbeat episode titles — some of the wackier ones for Route 66 include “How Much a Pound is Albatross?”, “Ever Ride the Waves in Oklahoma?” and the ever-popular “Is it True There are Poxies at the Bottom of Landfair Lake?” These whimsical titles often provided camouflage for first-rate scripting (which often tackled controversial and adult issues like mercy killing, drug addiction and the threat of nuclear annihilation) supplied by the likes of creator Silliphant (who scripted the bulk of the show’s output, close to 75 episodes), Howard Rodman, Shimon Wincelberg and Arnold Manoff. Movie veterans and up-and-comers who received credit for directing on both series include Arthur Hiller, Elliot Silverstein, David Lowell Rich, James Sheldon, George Sherman, Robert Gist, Robert Ellis Miller and Ralph Serensky.
Like its Naked sister, Route 66 also relied on the cream of the crop of acting talent, some of who were just getting a foothold in the business. James Caan, Robert Duvall, George Kennedy, Walter Matthau, Robert Redford and Martin Sheen all guested on the show — with veterans such as Joan Crawford, Buster Keaton, Rod Steiger and Lee Marvin (who appeared twice) also putting in appearances. One of Route 66’s classic outings, “Lizard’s Leg and Owlet’s Wing,” spotlighted a horror film triumvirate of Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre and Lon Chaney, Jr. — all three who played themselves in tongue-in-cheek fashion. In Route’s fourth season, an episode entitled “Where are the Sounds of Celia Brahms?” even featured former Naked City regulars Horace McMahon and Harry Bellaver; (McMahon’s character, in a sly wink to the audience, is told that he resembles a policeman in New York City.)
Naked City was a trendsetter in the use of on-location shooting, and not only did Route 66 do the same it surpassed it in so many ways (of course, City rarely ventured beyond the Big Apple) by filming exclusively “on the road.” It was estimated that by the time the series ended its four-year run the Route 66 “caravan” (often numbering 50 people) had traveled to 25 states, led by Silliphant and location manager Sam Manners. Not only did this help fuel the show’s passion for realism, but it provides a sort of historical travelogue for today’s viewer — a look at a time when these United States of America weren’t quite so homogeneous. The Web site TV Party wryly summed up the nomadic nature of the show by observing: “If Star Trek was meant to be ‘Wagon Train in space,’ then Route 66 was Wagon Train in a rag top.”
For two-and-a-half seasons, the clean-cut Tod (and moral compass of the duo) and his volatile buddy Buz cruised around meeting new people and romancing women until co-star George Maharis (Buz) came down with a case of hepatitis that sidelined him for several episodes in the third season, and left Martin Milner (Tod) with no one to ride shotgun. Upon his return, Maharis let it be known that he had no love for Milner (the two men had always had a prickly working relationship) or the show’s producers and crew…and while producer Leonard (along with everyone else) interpreted Maharis’ actions as a ploy to renegotiate his contract he refused to play ball, so Maharis up and left. His character was replaced in March of 1963 with Lincoln Case (Glenn Corbett), a disillusioned war hero just back from Vietnam…and though viewers weren’t probably supposed to notice, a dead ringer for the departed Buz. Fans of the show weren’t happy with the switch, and Route 66 came to the end of the road in March 1964, with a two-part episode (“Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way”) that closed the chapter on the lives of its protagonists (Tod eventually settles down and marries guest star Barbara Eden).
In its first season, Route 66 benefited from a cushy time slot: it followed the Top Ten favorite Rawhide on Friday nights at 8:30 p.m. The problem was that the show had to compete for the same youth audience against formidable competition on ABC, with The Flintstones and 77 Sunset Strip — which goes a long way toward explaining why Route ranked an anemic (if respectable) No. 30 in the Nielsens for that season. Moving the show to another night of the week might have helped it considerably; it made only one other appearance in the Top 30 ( No. 27 in the 1962-63 season) before the exit of Maharis sealed its fate for good.
Nick at Nite provided a home for Route 66 reruns during its early years in operation but since that time fans have only the DVD releases of the program’s first three seasons to satisfy their wanderlust — and sadly, the company that brought Route to disc has done so in a lackluster, substandard fashion. But the strength of the scripts, the first-rate acting talent and exhilarating cinematography make up for these presentational shortcomings, as a new generation of viewers tune into one of the era’s finest dramatic shows. Though there have been other series that featured “traveling” themes — Movin’ On, Highway to Heaven and Touched by an Angel, to name just a few of the many — the original Route 66 stands head and shoulders above the rest. And when the attempt to revive the concept in 1993 lasted only a scant four weeks, it demonstrated that not only can you not go home again…you can’t even do it in a bitchin’ Corvette.
Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. blogs at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear and even hearing just a few bars of Nelson Riddle’s classic theme for the show makes him want to take to the road in search of adventure…or at least as far as the local Dairy Queen.
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Labels: 60s, Caan, Crawford, Duvall, G. Kennedy, Karloff, Keaton, Lon Chaney Jr., Lorre, M. Sheen, Marvin, Matthau, Redford, TV Tribute
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