Monday, December 12, 2011
Even a man who is pure at heart and says his prayers by night…
By Edward Copeland
…may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright. That little poem of folklore gets repeated several times in 1941's The Wolf Man which, like all the other classic Universal horror films of the 1930s and '40s, I saw for the first time at a young age, before I'd even started school. That rhyme of warning is so short and simple, I memorized it early and never forgot it — or much of the movie that contains it either. The Wolf Man was a latecomer to Universal's monster mash, premiering 70 years ago today, a full decade after Dracula and Frankenstein began the trend, The Mummy joined their ranks and many sequels popped up in the interim. However, the 10-year wait proved beneficial for The Wolf Man as a movie, gaining it better production values, a cast with higher marquee value and what may be the most literate and philosophical screenplay of any of the Universal horror films. Written by Curt Siodmak, what separates Larry Talbot's werewolf from the other monsters within the Universal fold is the story's more psychological approach. Certainly we feel sympathy for Frankenstein's monster, but he's not evolved enough to feel sorry for himself and he can't wish, as Talbot does in later installments, for his own death. As a werewolf, he may become a predator when his transformation takes place, but Talbot takes no joy from it the way Count Dracula does.
Until I looked at Siodmak's prolific credits on IMDb, I didn't realize that the 2010 film The Wolfman starring Benicio Del Toro was an actual remake of the 1941 film. Del Toro played Lon Chaney Jr.'s role of Lawrence Talbot and Anthony Hopkins took on Claude Rains' part as his father Sir John Talbot. Having not seen the 2010 film, I have no idea how closely it follows Siodmak's screenplay, though I'm certain it improves on the makeup effects. Admittedly, the makeup by Jack Pierce, while impressive on its own, doesn't show us the facial transformation as I remembered. In my mind, I always recalled the still shots that showed Chaney's face changing into that of a werewolf, but I must have been confusing my Talbots with later outings which did show that, as you can see in this YouTube clip that compares the metamorphosis in The Wolf Man which only showed Talbot's feet changing and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in 1943 which showed his face undergoing the transformation (though the quality isn't great). Hopefully, this will stay. Three times I've placed clips that have gone away later and this one is the same one that was there before.
In the 1941 original, we don't see his face until later when it's complete and in reverse when he "dies." In a documentary on the werewolf legend in film on the two-disc special edition DVD, Oscar-winning makeup artist Rick Baker (who won the first Oscar in that category for An American Werewolf in London) heaps praise on Pierce as a trendsetter who doesn't get the credit he deserves largely because of his reluctance to use rubber pieces in his designs, even though they had become standard practice by the time of The Wizard of Oz in 1939. As a result, Pierce eventually lost his job in the later films though his essential look for The Wolf Man remained.
Now, without meaning to, I've leaped way ahead of myself, failing to give my readers even a minimal amount of background detailing the story of The Wolf Man and how the son of a wealthy Welsh family returns home and ends up falling victim to a werewolf's curse. The Wolf Man was directed by George Waggner, who earlier in 1941 directed Lon Chaney Jr., in his first Universal horror film, Man Made Monster (also known as Atomic Monster). Waggner's other best known features probably were 1949's The Fighting Kentuckian and 1951's Operation Pacific, both starring John Wayne. Waggner's real niche turned out to be television where he directed multiple episodes of series such as Cheyenne, 77 Sunset Strip, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Batman. The Wolf Man opens on a row of leather-bound encyclopedias and hands pull out the volume for the letter L and flip pages until they find the entry for lycanthropy that reads:
LYCANTHROPY (Werewolfism). A disease of the mind in which human beings imagine they are wolf-men. According to an old LEGEND which persists in certain localities, the victims actually assume the physical characteristics of the animal. There is a small village near TALBOT CASTLE which still claims to have had gruesome experiences with this supernatural creature. The sign of the Werewolf is a five-pointed star, a pentagram, enclosing…
From there, we see Lawrence "Larry" Talbot being driven by a chauffeur (Eric Chilton) to his family's Welsh castle after that 18-year exile in the United States. His return has been sparked because of his older brother John's death in a hunting accident. The chauffeur soon points and says, "Talbot Castle, Mr. Larry." The gargantuan Welsh estate does provide a stunning sight. The car pulls up in front and his father, Sir John Talbot (the always-welcome Claude Rains) comes out to welcome him home. Larry steps inside his family's ancestral home again and comments that it looks the same, though his father comments that they've added some modern conveniences. Larry also
receives a surprise visitor — old friend Paul Montford (Ralph Bellamy, taking a rare break from the usual third wheel in screwball comedies), who just wanted to say hello before getting back to his job as chief constable of the district. When he departs, Larry expresses surprise to his father than Montford became a cop, a term his father isn't familiar with, so Larry says policeman, but Sir John says Montford was a captain, but he's retired. Strangely, the opening credits identify his character as Colonel Montford. It isn't clear what either Sir John or Larry Talbot do for a living, though it's clear that the family's wealth has been handed down and Sir John is a very educated man who conducts research in a variety of areas. For not having seen each other in nearly two decades, the reunion lacks tension though a definite chill
continues between the two men, especially from Sir John's direction. When Larry crosses into the area of the main floor in front of the hearth, the large portrait of his late older brother John (who bears a striking resemblance to Larry) that hangs above it immediately draws his eyes and he offers his sympathies to his father. "Your brother's death was a blow to all of us.…You know, Larry, there's developed what amounts to a tradition about the Talbot sons. The elder, the next in line in succession and so forth, is considered in everything. The younger frequently resents the position in which he's found and leaves home, just as you did," his father opines while stoking the fire. "Yes, but Father, I'm here now," Larry reminds him. "Fortunately, but isn't it a sad commentary on our relationship that it took a hunting accident and your brother's death to bring you?" Sir John asks rhetorically. Rains raises the level of every film he ever made and to have him here lifts The Wolf Man to a higher plane immediately. Then again, Rains' choice of roles always were eclectic and with the exception of an appearance in a 1920 silent film called Build Thy House, Rains' true film debut came in James Whale's The Invisible Man in 1933 which Whale made between Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. Larry assures his father that the perceived fracture between him and his family isn't as bad as it seems and tells him he followed news accounts and beamed with pride when Sir John won the prestigious Belden Prize for his research. "The whole business is probably my fault. The tradition also insists that the Talbots be the stiff-necked, undemonstrative type. Frequently, this has been carried to very unhappy extremes," Sir John tells his son. "Don't I know that," Larry says, almost under his breath. "Larry, let's decide between you and I that from now on there shall be no such reserve," his father suggests. 
Father-and-son bonding begins almost immediately with the arrival of the final parts that Sir John needs to complete a powerful new telescope he's installing in his in-house observatory. He can hardly wait to get the device working so he enlists his son's help to carry the boxes upstairs and help him set up. While Sir John Talbot might be brilliant when it comes to matters of research and theory, when something requires assembly, he often runs into trouble. Fortunately, while his son Larry might not share his high IQ, he compensates for that with an ability to fix just about anything and soon the new telescope's installation and optics satisfy his father and his son's work on it impresses Sir John as well. Sir John assumes that Larry must work in a similar field to accomplish such a task, but Larry says he just has a knack for mechanical things. He also mentions to his father that he didn't realize that he'd added astronomy to his many areas of expertise, but Sir John denies he has. "All astronomers are amateurs. When it comes to the heavens, there's only one professional," his father tells him. After Sir John tries it out for a little while, there isn't much to see during the daytime so he excuses himself and Larry takes his seat at the large magnifying device and finds one celestial object that seems heaven sent to him — a young woman (Evelyn Ankers) in her bedroom above a small shop in the downtown area of the village, Larry determines that he must meet this woman soon.
Larry takes his first step toward meeting the woman by wandering into Charles Conliffe Antiques where the young lady happens to work since she is the daughter of the owner (though Larry never learns this or her name in the entire scene). He decides to toy with her at first, acting the part of the type of wolf women more commonly encounter, saying that he seeks a pair of earrings and while she shows him some, he describes a very specific pair that he's looking for — the kind he saw her putting on when he spied her through the telescope. When he reveals that he knows she has a pair (leaving out how he knows). Gwen tells him that they aren't for sale. Larry decides that if he can't get the earrings, he'll purchase something else instead. A curious Gwen asks how he knew about her earrings and Larry tells her he's a psychic — it's a power that kicks in anytime he spots a beautiful girl. Talbot settles on buying a walking stick. He rejects the first one with a gold tip that Gwen shows him as
well as the second with a dog on the handle. He likes a third though — at first joking that it would make a good putter — then he notices that it also has a carved dog on the handle and a star. He wonders aloud what that could mean. "I thought you were psychic," Gwen says. He tells her that the cane is made only of wood and silver — and doesn't have blue eyes. She explains that it isn't a dog but a wolf and that star is a pentagram and she prices the piece at three pounds, which Larry calculates as "15
dollars for an old stick." She explains to him that it's a rare piece because the wolf and pentagram are the sign of the werewolf, a creature about which Talbot at this point shows complete ignorance, asking her what a werewolf is. "That's a human being that at certain times of the year changes into a wolf," she informs him. He laughs it off. "You mean, runs around on all fours and bites and snaps and bays at the moon?" he asks. "Even worse than that sometimes," Gwen replies, adding that the pentagram marks the werewolf as well as their next victim. "Oh, what big eyes you have Grandma," Larry jokes as he flirts across the counter. Gwen confirms that Little Red Riding Hood was a werewolf story, but says there have been many others. She then becomes the first person to recite the infamous poem to him in the film: "Even a man who is pure in heart/and says his prayers by night/may become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms/and the autumn moon is bright." Gwen still wants to know how he knew about her earrings and Larry says that she should take a walk with him that night and they'll talk it over, but she says no, then they hear the hoofbeats of horses outside. As they go outside the shop, they see the arrival of gypsies, which Gwen identifies as fortune tellers who arrive around this time every year. Larry, who still persists in trying to get Gwen to go out with him suggests they get their fortunes told that evening. Her response steadfastly continues to be, "No" but Larry tells her he'll be outside the store at 8.When Larry returns to the Talbot Castle, Sir John recognizes the markings on his son's new cane as the sign of the werewolf. "That's just a legend though, isn't it?" he asks his father. "Yes, but like most legends it must have some basis in fact. It's probably some ancient explanation for the dual personality in each of us," Sir John speculates. While I couldn't appreciate this aspect of The Wolf Man when I first became a fan of the film in my pre-school days, each time I've watched in the many decades since, it becomes so much clearer how this is as much a psychological horror story as it is a monster movie. Eventually, we do see that after Larry gets bitten, he undergoes an actual physical transformation, but for a little while the movie does play with the idea that it's all in his head. Even after the audience knows the curse exists and Larry does indeed change into a werewolf, when he tries to seek help and explain this to others, Sir John thinks that all he requires is some rest, Paul Montford believes Larry should be punished for committing murders and Dr. Lloyd (Warren William), whom we've yet to meet, thinks he's had a psychological breakdown and needs help restoring his sanity, not jail time punishing him for his crimes. In the current scene, Sir John even finds a book in his library with the poem and repeats it once again to Larry.
Larry's a guy who just won't take no for an answer, so as promised he shows up in front of the antique shop that night despite the fact that Gwen said she wouldn't go with him. Despite her negative answer, Gwen turns up as well — though she brings a safety net in the form of her friend Jenny Williams (Fay Helm), who is anxious to have her fortune read. You'd think that where the gypsies set up shop would give the trio second thoughts as they have to walk deep into the fog-shrouded woods to find their encampment. While The Wolf Man already looks great, we really can see the decade in filmmaking advancements start to appear now through Joseph Valentine's sharp cinematography, Jack Otterson's art direction and R.A. Gausman's set decoration. Credited as associate art director is none other than Robert Boyle, who just received an honorary Oscar in 2008 for his lifetime achievement as an art director and production designer on Hitchcock's North by Northwest, The Birds and Marnie as well as other films such as the original Cape Fear, In Cold Blood, Fiddler on the Roof and The Shootist. As they slog through the murky view, Jenny notices some wolfsbane blooming by a tree, which — of course — prompts another recitation of that poem. When they arrive, they find the gypsy Bela (Bela Lugosi). Jenny asks him if he
can really read the future. "I will not disappoint you, my lady," he replies. Jenny begs to be the first to hear her fortune and Larry has no objection, since he wants to be alone with Gwen anyway and soon talks her into taking a stroll in those creepy woods after Jenny steps inside Bela's tent. Lurking around the gypsy encampment is Bela's older mother Maleva (the one-of-a-kind character actress Maria Ouspenskaya). Inside the tent, Bela has Jenny cut a deck of Tarot cards. On their walk into the woods, Larry comes clean to Gwen about how he knew about her earrings (and, amazingly, she doesn't flee at the thought that he's a peeping tom who stalked her), saying it was an accident that he caught sight of her with the telescope as he was just testing the refractor. Gwen has a
confession of her own to make — she kept resisting his overtures because she's engaged and will be getting. "In fact, I really shouldn't be here," she says. Back at the fortune teller's tent, Bela notices the wolfsbane that Jenny brought with her and suddenly grabs his head as if he has a migraine. "Can you tell me when I'm going to be married?" Jenny asks, apparently oblivious to the gypsy's pain. When she does notice how he's acting, she assumes he saw something bad and grills him about it. Bela puts on a happy face and asks for her hands, explaining that her left hand shows her past, her right hand shows her future. Jenny eagerly complies, but Bela sees the pentagram on her right palm and even Jenny recognizes that something has disturbed the fortune teller. "I can't tell you anything tonight. Come back tomorrow," Bela replies as he steps away from the table. Jenny persists in quizzing him about what he saw and if it was something evil. Bela won't answer — he just yells at her to go away. "Go away now! Quickly!" he shouts. Jenny follows orders and sprints out of the tent. Maleva turns and notices that one of the gypsies' horses has started acting crazy and she sees Bela standing agonized. As Jenny runs through the woods, a wolf's howl can be heard.
Larry and Gwen hear the ominous wolf sound first, followed soon after by Jenny's scream. Talbot tells Gwen to stay where she is and he takes off, carrying his cane with him. Part of the genius here is that we don't see what has already attacked and killed Jenny and then
takes on Larry — a tree obstructs our view so we can only see Larry whacking the killer hard with the cane. Eventually, Gwen finds him with his clothes torn, collapsed by the tree, saying he was attacked by a wolf. The gypsy woman Maleva comes by and she helps Gwen get the injured Larry back to Talbot Castle where Paul Montford happens to be. Gwen gives him and Sir John the lowdown about what happened in the woods and mentions how Maleva helped her, but the gypsy woman has slipped away as if she were never there. Montford decides to gather men and go back to the scene. When Montford and his men get there, they discover that Jenny indeed is dead, her jugular slit, but they find no evidence of a dead wolf. What they do find is the corpse of the gypsy Bela with a massive head wounds though his feet are bare. Lying near his body, they also discover Larry Talbot's cane. The next morning, Montford, accompanied by Dr. Lloyd, pay a visit on Larry to ask him some questions about the incident. Larry admits that the cane belongs to him — that's what he used to kill the wolf. They tell him they found no wolf, just the gypsy. Larry insists it was a wolf because it bit him on the chest and he opens his shirt to show them the wound — but it seems to have healed magically overnight. To go much further into the minutiae of the film's story would get into its spoilers, not that much should be a surprise after 70 years. 
Truly though, it's easier to appreciate The Wolf Man now than as a child. The idea that Larry might have snapped really entices me, even if the movie doesn't play with the notion long (or at all really since in the opening credits they don't say "Lon Chaney Jr. as Larry Talbot" but "Lon Chaney Jr. as The Wolf Man." None of the classic horror films frighten that much, but few get stuffed with as many ideas as The Wolf Man. Siodmak's screenplay touches on mental health, religion, intolerance and other topics I'm probably missing. Rains' Sir John Talbot character acts as the mouthpiece for most of the ideas, but not always. Consider this great exchange between Larry and his father after Larry has come to believe he has the werewolf curse and Larry tries to ease into the discussion by grilling his dad on the topic.
SIR JOHN: It's an old legend. You'll find it in the folklore of almost every nation. The scientific name is lycanthropia. It's a variety of schizophrenia.
LARRY: That's all Greek to me.
SIR JOHN: Well, it is Greek. It's a technical expression for something very simple. The good and evil in every man's soul. In this case, evil takes the shape of an animal.
LARRY: But do you believe in these yarns?
SIR JOHN: Larry, to some people life is very simple. They decide this is good, that is bad, this is wrong, that's right. There's no right and wrong, no good and bad. No shadings and grays, all blacks and whites.
LARRY: That would be Paul Montfort.
SIR JOHN: Exactly. Now others of us find that good, bad, right, wrong are many-sided, complex things. We try to see every side but the more we see, the less sure we are. Now, you ask me if I believe a man can become a wolf. Well, if you mean, 'Can he take on the physical characteristics of an animal?' — no — it's fantastic! However, I do believe that most anything can happen to a man inside his own mind."
(church bells ring)
SIR JOHN: Time for church. You know Larry, belief in the hereafter is a very healthy counterbalance to all the conflicting doubts man is plagued with these days.
The crucial words contained in that exchange come when Sir John tells Larry, "…the more we see, the less sure we are." While the elder Talbot says those words, he also declares with certainty that a physical transformation of a man would be impossible, a belief he will have challenged in the harshest way possible at the movie's end when he's placed in the same position that Larry was when he tried to save Jenny, only Sir John rushes to save Gwen and uses the same cane to kill the wolf and then watches in horror as he sees the creature revert to the human form of his son. Rains' facial expression is remarkable when you consider that the actor has to conjure what the proper look would be for something that no one has experienced in real life. Another of the many great conversations come when Dr. Lloyd tries to convince Sir John to get Larry help, but Talbot resists and Lloyd questions his motive.
DR. LLOYD: Sir John, your son is a sick man. He has received a shock that has caused severe psychic maladjustment. You must send him out of this village.
SIR JOHN: You're talking like a witch doctor. If my son is ill, the best place for him is in his own home proving his innocence.
DR. LLOYD: Does the prestige of your family's name mean more to you than your son's health?
I can't end this without discussing in more detail about the great Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva. She was nominated twice for the supporting actress Oscar — each time for single scenes in a movie: in 1936's Dodsworth and 1939's Love Affair. Her character has all the answers and appears to be the only one who can calm the werewolves and lead them to peace after their deaths. "The way you walked was thorny, through no fault of your own, but as the rain enters the soil, the river enters the sea, so tears run to a predestined end. Your suffering is over, Bela my son. Now you will find peace," Maleva prays, first over her son, later over Larry. Ouspenskaya was a unique presence in every film she appeared in starting with silents in 1915 through 1949, the year she died. Her age was a subject of dispute. Her headstone gives her birthdate as 1887 but other records dating back to her birthplace in Tula in the Russian Empire say 1876. She also was a diminutive presence, standing a mere 5 feet 1½ inches tall.
Tweet
Labels: 40s, Bellamy, Hitchcock, Hopkins, Lon Chaney Jr., Lugosi, Movie Tributes, Oscars, Rains, Remakes, Silents, Television, Wayne
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
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!!!”
Tweet
Labels: Astaire, B. Crawford, Borgnine, Cary, Edward G., Fellini, Fuller, Gable, Ginger Rogers, Glenn Ford, J. Stewart, Joel McCrea, Lang, Laughton, Lon Chaney Jr., Marx Brothers, Oscars, Renoir, Wayne
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
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.
Tweet
Labels: 30s, Books, Branagh, Browning, Fiction, Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., Lugosi, McKellen, Mel Brooks, Movie Tributes, Remakes, Sequels, Theater, Whale
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Beware the Moon and Stick To the Road
By Damian Arlyn
1981 was a seminal year for werewolf movies. First, Joe Dante's The Howling hit theaters in April followed by Michael Wadleigh's Wolfen in July and, finally, John Landis' An American Werewolf in London in August. It is the latter title with which this article will be concerned, primarily because today marks the 30th anniversary of its release but also because, in the opinion of this critic, Landis' picture not only is the best of the three werewolf films released that year but, arguably, the best werewolf film ever made. I still remember the first time I was exposed to it. I was no older than 10 and for some strange reason my parents thought it would be appropriate for me to watch. They changed their minds shortly into the film and promptly sent me to bed, but by then it was too late: the damage had been done. Though I wouldn't see the film in its entirety until years later, that opening sequence where two young Americans hikers get attacked by a vicious beast while walking through the English countryside at night had been permanently etched in my memory. To this day, it is one of the most terrifying sequences I've seen on screen and I've had many a nightmare because of it.
What makes An American Werewolf in London work so beautifully (besides how effectively scary it can be), is its tongue-in-cheek sensibility. It is commonplace to see humor blended with horror in movies nowadays but back in '81 it was far more outré. The comedy manifests itself in many different forms…such as in Landis' choice of music. He brilliantly peppers the soundtrack with classic songs that feature the word "moon" in the title ("Bad Moon Rising," "Moondance" and "Blue Moon"), thus underscoring the absurdity of many of the things
being depicted onscreen. For example, during the now iconic transformation scene while the character David (David Naughton) thrashes about on the floor as his body slowly and painfully changes into a werewolf, we hear one of the three versions of "Blue Moon" used in the film playing in the background. The juxtaposition of the sweet and the sickening makes for a simultaneously scary and funny (not to mention incredibly memorable) sequence. Even the characters themselves comment on how ridiculous many of the things they're experiencing are. When David's friend Jack (Griffin Dunne) returns from the dead to inform David that since he will soon become a werewolf he must commit suicide, David says he will not be threatened by a "walking meatloaf"…an epithet which he later apologizes for during his metamorphosis (incidentally, throughout the course of the film every time Jack appears to David he does so in increasingly decaying forms; it is both gruesome and hysterical).
In fact, many of the lines in the film clearly are designed to poke fun at the bizarre goings-on in the story. "A naked man stole my balloons"; "Have you ever tried talking to a corpse? It's boring."; and "Sean, I think there are some hooligans in the park again" are just some of the many gems to be found in the film's dialogue. My personal favorite comes when David realizes he truly is a werewolf and thus attempts to get himself arrested, spouting off the kind of horribly irreverent nonsense that every typical American thinks would offend his uptight British neighbors ("Queen Elizabeth is a man! Prince Charles is a faggot! Winston Churchill was full of shit! Shakespeare's French!"). It is impossible for me to watch the film and hear David's anti-English rant without laughing out loud. Landis also does something that was relatively new for its time. Much as Wes Craven did years later in the first Scream, Landis populates his horror film with characters who have actually seen other horror films. When David talks to his girlfriend (Jenny Agutter) about Claude Rains and Lon Chaney Jr. in 1941's The Wolf Man, it may not be the first example of meta-cinema in a scary movie, but is a rare (for its time) case of movie characters acknowledging that their lives seem to resemble the trappings of a horror movie.
However, the laughs (of which there are plenty) that the film provokes do not in any way lessen the impact of the horror scenes. If anything, they just throw them into sharper contrast. The atmospheric opening section of the film, a suspenseful foot chase through the underground tunnels of Tottenham Court Road tube station (where the camera adopts the POV of the wolf, though it is never actually seen except briefly from a distance
in the scene's penultimate shot) and especially some horrific nightmares experienced by David after he is bitten are all frighteningly visceral sequences. And, of course, there is the aforementioned extended transformation scene where another stellar element of the film is highlighted: namely, the superb special effects. Landis' idea was that David's change into the werewolf would be more traumatic than simply growing hair (through a cheesy optical dissolve) and then howling at the moon. It would be a more "realistic" transmogrification involving skin stretching, bones popping and cracking, cries of sheer agony and it goes on for quite a while. Landis does not let his character off the hook with a quick conversion. He also does not conceal his effects in shadows. He has it take place right out there in the open, harsh light. Nowadays the scene would be done with CGI. In the '80s, they had to use physical effects that took a great deal of time and labor to produce (often for only a second of a half of screen time). Still, the scene and the movie is the better for it. Naturally Landis owes a lot to the genius of the great Rick Baker (who also consulted on the makeup effects for The Howling). Baker's work for the film was so magnificent that it inspired the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to create a new category for makeup (for which Baker received the first Oscar for this movie).
An American Werewolf in London opened to big box office success and generally positive reviews. It became known as a "game-changer" in the genre of horror and in particular in the makeup/special effects arena of said genre. It spawned a successful radio adaptation, a highly inferior 1997 sequel and is apparently set to be remade, proving yet again that Hollywood has completely run dry of ideas since they are remaking something that wasn't the most original concept when it was made.
Tweet
Labels: 80s, Griffin Dunne, Joe Dante, Landis, Lon Chaney Jr., Movie Tributes, Rains, Remakes, Sequels
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Howlingly Scary, Howlingly Hilarious
By Phil
What can you say about a movie in which the villain digs into his own forehead to retrieve a bullet, but not before quipping to a woman unlucky enough to be witness, “I want to give you a piece of my mind”? Don’t answer that. It’s a rhetorical question. Suffice it to say that The Howling, released 30 years ago today, understood the irresistibility of dishing up horror with a dash of humor. A werewolf picture jam-packed with B-movie references and a giddy love of the genre, it quickly earned a cult following that has remained loyal since the film first hit screens in 1981.
It had to share the love from fanboys. While The Howling helped steer the career of director Joe Dante into (regrettably) safer, more mainstream fare, the movie was initially overshadowed by another man-becomes-wolf horror-comedy from 1981, John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London. Comparisons between the two flicks were inevitable. Released within four months of each other, both embraced the spirit of drive-in exploitation while boasting more polished filmmaking, and both featured onscreen werewolf transformations that would have made Lon Chaney Jr.’s head spin with envy.
Still, I prefer The Howling for its generous humor, genuine creepiness and willingness to sleaze it up. It’s a nicely calibrated blend of smart camp and lowbrow shocks, anchored by Dee Wallace’s surprisingly effective performance as a woman trapped between lycanthropy and self-help jibber-jabber. A year before she would be Elliott’s mom in E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, Wallace plays Karen White, a TV news reporter in Los Angeles with the misfortune of having drawn the affection of a serial killer. As the film opens, Karen has agreed to meet with the psychopath, Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo), in a peepshow stall at a seedy porn store. Eddie appears behind Karen in silhouette, hissing about what he’s going to do to her. Karen stares ahead, in mute horror, at a grainy bondage reel being projected.
Then Eddie commands Karen to face him. She turns and sees…Well, we don’t know what she sees exactly. Karen lets out a scream, the first of many in The Howling. Two police officers who have been trailing Karen open fire, killing Eddie Quist.
The incident naturally rattles our heroine. When she returns to work, Karen freezes up under the unmerciful gaze of the camera. At home, she rejects the loving arms of husband Bill Neill (Christopher Stone). Knowing she needs help, Karen is intrigued when a courtly therapist, Dr. George Waggner (Patrick Macnee), suggests she join his self-help group in Big Sur called The Colony.
The ensuing detour into quasi-psychobabble gives Dante and screenwriter John Sayles, at the time just coming off Alligator and Piranha (also helmed by Dante), a ripe avenue for satire. Karen and Bill are bemused by the goings-on of The Colony, whose inhabitants soak in Dr. Waggner’s cautionary line that “repression is the father of neurosis.” The good doctor might be on to something, but his EST-styled knockoff includes some curious aspects. The Colony appears to host more barbecue cookouts than your average pop-psych cult.
There are other red flags, too, including John Carradine as a crazy old coot and Elisabeth Brooks as a resident nymphomaniac outfitted in what looks to be an early prototype for Xena: Warrior Princess. There is more to The Colony than meets the eye. Chris and Terry (Dennis Dugan and Belinda Balaski), an intrepid pair of reporters who work with Karen, discover mysterious links between Dr. Waggner’s sanctuary and Eddie Quist. And speaking of the slain killer, his corpse has suddenly disappeared from the morgue.
It all makes for an irrepressible horror flick that delivers its jolts with a grin. Unlike a raft of slasher flicks of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Dante and Sayles mined the inherent absurdity of their yarn but, honestly, there’s really no other way to approach a story of werewolves who are urged on by a pop psychiatrist to embrace their inner animal.
The Howling exposes its funny bone in the opening minutes, with a sly bit involving a news anchor whose authoritative delivery masks an aw-shucks Southern twang. Dante, an avid movie buff, peppers the proceedings with knowing winks to the genre. Several characters’ names are lifted from movie directors of werewolf flicks, such as George Waggner (1941’s The Wolf Man) and Lew Landers (1944’s Cry of the Werewolf). Dante also isn’t shy about shoehorning in wolf references in everything from cartoons to literature.
Similarly, The Howling makes room for an array of B-movie icons. Kevin McCarthy of Don Siegel’s classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers portrays Karen’s boss at the TV station, while The Thing from Another
World’s Kenneth Tobey turns up briefly as a cop. Forrest J. Ackerman, the man behind Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, makes an appearance. Dante’s mentor, the notoriously penurious Roger Corman, has a fitting cameo as a guy checking a pay phone for forgotten change. Corman even gets a second, however peripheral, nod in The Howling. His 1959 comic-horror picture, A Bucket of Blood, is referenced when its star, Dick Miller, turns up to play a slick occult bookshop owner named Walter Paisley. The name is the character Miller played in — wait for it — A Bucket of Blood. Miller’s performance in The Howling launched what would become tradition for Dante, who went on to cast the actor in a slew of his movies. 
Despite the cornucopia of inside jokes, The Howling is, above all, a monster picture and it offers a humdinger of one thanks to the inventiveness of special-effects maestro Rob Bottin. By inflating various-size bladders pasted on to the face and body of actor Picardo, Bottin fashioned an impressive, before-your-eyes transmogrification from man to beast. In today’s world of CG wizardry, where even the lamest schlockfest can be visually interesting, it is tempting to forget just how eye-popping Bottin’s feat really was. Moreover, The Howling’s fully realized werewolves are a far cry from the mega-hirsute guys who roamed the Hollywood countryside of yesteryear. Bottin’s creations, shot at oblique angles and occasionally backlit in cartoon-friendly colors, look as if they just padded in from Little Red Riding Hood’s neck of the woods. These are giant wolves, not wolf men.
The non-monster moments also are memorable. Dante assembled a strong cast; it’s a kick to see veteran character actors such as Carradine and Slim Pickens (as a yokel sheriff, of course) chewing on the scenery, especially when the aforementioned chewing involves fake fangs.
At the center of it all is Dee Wallace. With her feathery blonde hair and all-American good looks, she is an appealing damsel in distress. But she does one better, imbuing her character with melancholic vulnerability and investing The Howling with a welcome depth of emotion. It makes the film’s ending, in which Karen transforms into a werewolf for the local TV news, as heartbreaking as it is howlingly hilarious.
Tweet
Labels: 80s, Corman, Don Siegel, J. Carradine, Joe Dante, Landis, Lon Chaney Jr., Movie Tributes, Sayles
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
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.
Tweet
Labels: 60s, Caan, Crawford, Duvall, G. Kennedy, Karloff, Keaton, Lon Chaney Jr., Lorre, M. Sheen, Marvin, Matthau, Redford, TV Tribute
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
