Friday, February 03, 2012
Ben Gazzara (1930-2012)
We've lost yet another of the unofficial John Cassavetes repertory company with the news that the great Ben Gazzara lost his battle with pancreatic cancer Friday at the age of 81. Gazzara left his mark on stage, screen and television throughout his long career and never abandoned his taste for taking risks beyond the works of Cassavetes, who directed Gazzara in three films and co-starred with him in two movies directed by others, eventually appearing in films by directors such as David Mamet, Vincent Gallo, the Coen brothers, Todd Solondz, Spike Lee, Lars von Trier and Gérard Depardieu.
A native Manhattanite from a working class family, once the acting bug bit Gazzara, he studied under Lee Strasberg at The Actors Studio. He made his Broadway debut in 1953 in Calder Willingham's adaptation of his own novel End as a Man which earned Gazzara a 1954 Theater World Award. In March 1955, he created the role of Brick in the original production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof under Elia Kazan's direction. Barbara Bel Geddes had the role of the original Maggie and Burl Ives put his mark on Big Daddy. Only Ives and Madeleine Sherwood as sister woman Mae made the leap to the 1958 movie version. Though the Pulitzer Prize-winning play was a huge hit, Gazzara departed it later in 1955 to take the lead role of Johnny Pope in A Hatful or Rain written by Michael V. Gazzo, who movie buffs undoubtedly know better as Frankie Pentageli in The Godfather Part II. The play concerned a Korean War veteran who came home addicted to morphine and how it tore his family apart, It earned Gazzara his first Tony nomination as lead actor and co-star Anthony Franciosa a nomination as featured actor as his younger brother. When it was made into a film in 1957, Don Murray got to play Johnny though Franciosa kept his part and earned an Oscar nomination in the lead category. Gazzara's final Broadway appearance in the 1950s was a gigantic flop. The Night Circus also was written by Gazzo, but it closed after seven performances. It did co-star Janice Rule, who Gazzara would wed in 1961. For the remainder of his New York stage career, he would receive two more Tony nominations (but never a win). One for playing George to Colleen Dewhurst's Martha in a revival of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the other for an evening of paired one acts: Eugene O'Neill's Hughie and David Scott Milton's Duet. In 2004, he received a Drama Desk nomination for solo performance for his off-Broadway play Nobody Don't Like Yogi about baseball legend Yogi Berra, which he took on tour. He received a 2006 Drama Desk Award as part of the winning ensemble for the Broadway revival of Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing!, his last stage appearance.
Concurrent to his stage work in the 1950s, Gazzara appeared frequently on television, almost exclusively on the many live theater programs that originated from New York, though some episodic appearances pre-date his Broadway debut and stretch back to 1952 on series such as Treasury Men in Action, Danger and Justice. He didn't make his film debut until 1957 in The Strange One, which is the title they gave to a reworked version of the play End as a Man with many of the original Broadway cast repeating roles along with Gazzara including Pat Hingle, Peter Mark Richman (not using the Peter yet), Paul E. Richards and Arthur Storch. His second film in 1959 though is one of his works that will keep his memory alive as the defendant in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder starring James Stewart. The film still plays well today, though it's hardly as daring now as it was in its original release. While Gazzara always bounced between the three mediums, his only regular roles on series took place in the 1960s. First, as Det. Sgt. Nick Anderson on the 30 episodes of Arrest and Trial from 1963-1964, then as Paul Bryan in the far-more-successful Run for Your Life which aired from 1965=1968 and earned him two Emmy nominations as outstanding lead actor in a drama series. He also was nominated in 1986 for the lead actor in the TV movie An Early Frost and won as supporting actor in a TV movie for the 2002 HBO film Hysterical Blindness.
Gazzara never stopped working and if I attempted to be comprehensive, I'd never finish this. It would be impossible to have seen everything he has made — I imagine even he never saw all of his films. I never realized how many movies he made in Italy. In The New York Times obit, it quotes a 1994 interview he gave to Cigar Aficionado magazine about those movies where he said, “You go where they love you.” So, forgive any omissions, because I'm finishing this fast.
You always want to start with the Cassavetes trilogy: Husbands, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Opening Night and how those working friendships spread to other projects such as Gazzara directing Husbands co-star Peter Falk in two episodes of Columbo and, many decades later Cassavetes' widow Gena Rowlands wrote a short film for her and Gazzara to star in that Gérard Depardieu directed as part of Paris, je t'aime . There was the incredibly goofy Patrick Swayze vehicle Road House where Gazzara played the bad guy, but he portrayed Brad Wesley in such a damn entertaining way you kept forgetting that he was the one you were supposed to be rooting against. His mysterious Mr. Klein, one of the many puzzling characters in David Mamet's puzzle picture The Spanish Prisoner. The magnificent duet of dysfunction that he and Anjelica Huston performed in Vincent Gallo's Buffalo '66. The neighborhood boss trying to play peacekeeper and vigilante at the same time in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam. Then he was part of the quirky ensembles that made up Todd Solondz's Happiness and the Coens' Big Lebowski.
Gazzara lived to take chances and loved to work and he did both about as well as anyone. RIP Mr. Gazzara.
Tweet
Labels: A. Huston, Albee, Awards, Cassavetes, Coens, Falk, J. Stewart, Kazan, Mamet, O'Neill, Obituary, Preminger, Spike Lee, Tennessee Williams, von Trier
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Sunday, January 08, 2012
Centennial Tributes: José Ferrer
By Edward Copeland
CYRANO: You may go. Or tell me, why are you staring at my nose?
THE MEDDLER: No!
CYRANO: It disgusts you, then? Does its color appear to you unwholesome? Or its form obscene?
THE MEDDLER: But I've been careful not to look!
CYRANO: And why not if you please? Possibly you find it just a trifle large!
José Ferrer played many roles throughout his lengthy career on stage, screen, television and even radio, but none loomed larger than Cyrano de Bergerac, who actually was a 17th century dramatist and swordsman but gained famed only in other authors' works loosely based on his life, most notably the 1897 play by Edmond Rostand. Without a doubt, Cyrano became Ferrer's signature role from the moment he placed the fake proboscis on his face and stepped onto the stage of The Alvin Theatre on Oct. 8, 1946 (Though on Nov. 18 of that year, the production moved to the Ethel Barrymore Theatre). His Roxane happened to be the late Frances Reid, best known for her 44-year-run as Alice Horton on the soap Days of Our Lives. I'll get back to Ferrer and Cyrano later in this tribute to the Oscar- and Tony-winning actor, Emmy and Directors Guild nominee and first actor to receive the U.S. National Medal of Arts, who was born 100 years ago today as José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón in the Santurce district of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Ferrer's father was a respected attorney and writer in San Juan. His parents sent José to the prestigious Swiss boarding school Institut Le Rosey, which was founded in 1880 and has educated children of royalty from all parts of the world. After his attendance there, Ferrer went to Princeton University, where he graduated either in 1933 or 1934 (depends which source you read at the time). While at Princeton, he was a member of its famous Princeton Triangle Club, the oldest collegiate musical-comedy theater troupe in the U.S. which was founded in 1891. Since its creation, the club has counted as members Booth Tarkington, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joshua Logan, James Stewart, Wayne Rogers, David E. Kelley and Brooke Shields. Regardless of whether he graduated in '33 or '34, it didn't take Ferrer long to make his Broadway debut, even if it were merely the role of Second Policeman in the comedy A Slight Case of Murder. Written by Damon Runyon and Howard Lindsay, the play opened Sept. 11, 1935, and played for 69 performances at The 48th Street Theatre, a theater that
hasn't been renamed but was destroyed when a water tower collapsed on Aug. 24, 1955. When A Slight Case of Murder closed, Ferrer moved almost directly into another comedy, Stick-in-the-Mud by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan which starred Thomas Mitchell, who also directed. Ferrer was cast as the chauffeur. The play's run was a brief one — it lasted only nine performances at the same 48th Street Theatre. It would be eight months before Ferrer would appear on The Great White Way again. When Ferrer tread the Broadway boards again in August 1936 in the Philip Barry comedy Spring Dance, another quick closer, lasting only 24 performances at The Empire Theatre, which was demolished in 1953 so an office tower could be built. His next Broadway role changed everything. The play was a huge hit and Ferrer got his largest part yet. The production was the comedy Brother Rat by John Monks Jr. and Fred F. Finklehoffe and was produced and directed by the legendary George Abbott, who was a spry 49 years old then (He was 107 when he died in 1995, outliving Ferrer by three years). The plot revolved around three senior cadets at the Virginia Military Institute where one is secretly married and about to be a father. Ferrer played Dan Crawford, one of the three, opposite Eddie Albert as Bing Edwards, the dad-to-be, and Frank Albertson as Billy Randolph. The show ran 577 performances at The Biltmore Theatre (now The Samuel J. Friedman Theatre) through May 1938. By October 1938, a movie version of Brother Rat had hit movie theaters, though only Albert re-created his stage role. Ferrer's part in the film went to Ronald Reagan, who met Jane Wyman on the film's production. It's unclear when
Ferrer exited the Broadway production, but he appeared in two other Broadway plays while Brother Rat still was running. A very significant event occurred in Ferrer's life in 1938, the year Brother Rat did close though — he wed Uta Hagen, who would go on to become an esteemed actress herself and an even more legendary acting teacher. The next notable Broadway production in which Ferrer appeared was the debut of Maxwell Anderson's Key Largo on Nov. 27, 1939. Based on the Brooks Atkinson review of the play in The New York Times archives and the fact that none of the characters has the same names as the characters in John Huston's famous 1948 film version, it's difficult to tell who played what part. Paul Muni was the star of the Broadway production in what would seem to be the equivalent of the Humphrey Bogart role, though Ferrer plays a character named Frank (and received Atkinson's praise) as Bogie did in the film, though with a different last name. Hagen played Ferrer's Victor's sister. I can't be positive who plays the Johnny Rocco equivalent, but the play also featured Karl Malden as Hunk and James Gregory in his Broadway debut as Jerry. In October 1940, Ferrer received his first undisputed lead role in a smash as he starred in a revival of the drag farce Charley's Aunt under Joshua Logan's direction. The revival ran for 233 performances at The Cort Theatre, which still bears that name today.
Two days before Charley's Aunt opened on Oct. 17, 1940, Ferrer and Hagen premiered another collaboration: daughter Leticia Thyra. Ferrer stayed with Charley's Aunt through May 3, 1941. On Sept. 22, 1942, S.M. Herzig's Vickie debuted on Broadway, marking Ferrer's Broadway directing debut. He also played the husband of the title character, whose role was filled by Hagen. Also in the cast were Red Buttons and Mildred Dunnock. The comedy only played at The Plymouth Theatre (now The Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre) for 48 performances. Sometime in February 1943, Ferrer replaced Danny Kaye for the final month of performances of the hit musical Let's Face It! with songs by Cole Porter and a book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields.
Ferrer's next Broadway engagement turned out to be a landmark in the history of that strip of Manhattan theater. Ferrer played Iago and Hagen played Desdemona opposite Paul Robeson in the title role as Shakespeare's Othello. The revival of the famous tragedy opened at The Shubert Theatre on Oct. 19, 1943 and ran 296 performances before taking a break to take the play on tour. The trio returned in May 22, 1945 for 24 more performances, this time at The City Center. To this date, it is the longest running Shakespeare production in Broadway history. While Ferrer was playing Iago, Billy Wilder pursued him because he wanted the actor to play the lead in The Lost Weekend, however Paramount refused to let Wilder hire him, insisting he cast a name. They pursued Cary Grant, who passed but finally got Ray Milland who won an Oscar for the role, despite his initial reluctance to take the part. On a personal level, Othello would leave to an unhappy side effect for Ferrer. Robeson and Hagen had an affair, leading the Ferrers to divorce in 1948. Before their split, Ferrer kept himself busy. On radio, he had a successful series playing detective Philo Vance in 1945. On Nov. 29, 1945, Lillian Smith's play Strange Fruit opened at The Royale Theatre (now the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre). Ferrer produced and directed the production which starred a different though unrelated Ferrer — actor Mel Ferrer, still going by his full first name Melchor. Also in the cast were Murray Hamilton and Ralph Meeker. It ran 60 performances. The two Ferrers would swap roles in José's next Broadway production, though José would produce it while Melchor directed and José starred in the Oct. 8, 1946, premiere of Cyrano de Bergerac. Meeker also was part of the cast as was the actress Phyllis Hill, who would become Ferrer's second wife in 1948 soon after his divorce from Uta Hagen.
"José Ferrer has administered a lively draft of tonic to this season by staging Cyrano de Bergerac as though he meant it. Acting the part of the braggart romantic, he is appearing at the Alvin in a pulsating performance that makes full use of the modern theatre. Although Cyrano is no longer a modern play, it is still one of the most dashing ever written, particularly in the Brian Hooker version that preserves the bravura of the Rostand text in light verse of a modern idiom." That's how Brooks Atkinson began his review in The New York Times on Oct. 9, 1946. Atkinson heaped praise upon practically all aspects of the production — even giving a shout-out to the stage hands for moving the scenery, The critic closes by writing, "Mr. Ferrer has done Cyrano in the grand manner,
like a man who gets fun as well as a living out of the theatre." Another notable name composed the incidental music for the production: the renaissance man Paul Bowles. Ferrer's revival ran 193 performances through March 22, 1947 and its run coincided with the inaugural year of the Antoinette Perry Awards, better known by its shorthand name, the Tony, presented by The American Theatre Wing. The Tonys were presented for the first time on April 6, 1947 at the Waldorf Astoria. The American Theatre Wing handed out 11 Tonys in seven categories that first evening. Ferrer's performance in Cyrano was honored for dramatic actor alongside Fredric March in Years Ago. Four others won for acting that first year, including Ingrid Bergman in Maxwell Anderson's Joan of Lorraine and Helen Hayes in Happy Birthday, both for dramatic actress. Shortly before Cyrano ended its run, Ferrer produced and directed a five-performance run of As We Forgive Our Debtors for the American National Theatre and Academy after originally being staged by The Experimental Theatre Inc. When the play closed, Ferrer finally prepared to leave New York, ironically in the film version of the play that won Ingrid Bergman her Tony. Retitled Joan of Arc, the Victor Fleming film premiered in 1948 with Ferrer portraying the Dauphin. He earned a supporting actor Oscar nomination for his film debut. It's been a long time since I've seen the film, but I remember him being the best thing in it other than the vibrant Technicolor cinematography. 
Once Ferrer returned from California and making his first feature film, he started bouncing between the media of stage, screen and television. Between January 1948 and May 1949, Ferrer either starred, directed, produced, co-adapted or some combination of those in five Broadway shows. In January 1949, he appeared on The Philco Television Playhouse and reprised his role in a televised version of Cyrano de Bergerac. He returned to the same showcase in April to play Sammy Glick in Paddy Chayefsky's adaptation of Budd Schulberg's novel What Makes Sammy Run? In November 1949, he appeared in his second feature role, playing the manipulative hypnotist in Otto Preminger's thriller Whirlpool. Another fabled story has it that Ferrer was the first choice to play Addison De Witt in All About Eve, but the role went to George Sanders, who of course won the 1950 best supporting actor Oscar for the part. This time period wasn't an easy one for artists and like so many in his field, Ferrer found himself caught up in the Communist witchhunts of the time. Former co-star and friend Paul Robeson had his own problems above and beyond the run-of-the mill ones associated with others who ended up on HUAC-inspired blacklists when in March 1950, at the last minute, NBC canceled his planned appearance on Eleanor Roosevelt's program and banned him from its network while the U.S. State Department lifted his passport, effectively confining the Soviet-friendly artist from leaving the country. Red Channels, an anti-Communist pamphlet by the right-wing magazine Counterattack published on June 22, 1950, a list of 151 artists it claimed had Communist ties — including Ferrer and his ex-wife, Uta Hagen. It affected Hagen immediately and she never did much outside theater, but Ferrer held off repercussions for a bit as he had two films coming out in 1950.
A couple of weeks after his name appeared on the Red Channels list, the movie Crisis opened. Written and directed by Richard Brooks, Crisis starred Cary Grant as a brain surgeon on vacation with his wife in an unnamed Spanish-speaking country where Ferrer played its dictator, who happens to have a life-threatening tumor. Grant's doctor must decide whether he should keep his oath to save lives or let the tyrant die and give the country a chance at freedom. Later in 1950, Ferrer put on the big nose again in Michael Gordon's film version
of Cyrano de Bergerac. Ferrer would win the best actor Oscar (so he and Sanders won in the same year) becoming the first Hispanic actor and first Puerto Rican actor to win an Academy Award. Ferrer is one of only nine performers to win both Oscars and Tonys for playing the same role, sharing that distinction with Jack Albertson (The Subject Was Roses). Anne Bancroft (The Miracle Worker), Shirley Booth (Come Back, Little Sheba), Yul Brynner (The King and I), Joel Grey (Cabaret), Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady). Lila Kedrova (Zorba the Greek/Zorba) and Paul Scofield (A Man for All Seasons). To honor his Puerto Rican roots, Ferrer donated his Oscar to the University of Puerto Rico. Ferrer played Cyrano in a television production again on Oct. 17, 1955, on Producers' Showcase and received an Emmy nomination for best actor — single performance. Because the Emmys always have been screwed up, Ferrer also was nominated as best actor in 1951, though even their official database doesn't know for what and the only TV credits IMDb shows prior to 1951 were those two appearances mentioned earlier. At any rate, Ferrer remains the only actor in history to be nominated for an Emmy, an Oscar and a Tony for playing the same role. He also returned to the Cyrano role in a 1953 production he directed at City Center in New York (the year his marriage to Phyllis Hill ended). In a March 1956 episode of the Burns and Allen show, he played Cyrano again, but only as a voice. Abel Gance directed him as Cyrano in French in the 1964 film Cyrano et d'Artagnan. He did Cyrano's voice again in a March 1974 ABC Afterschool Special. On a 1980s Tony telecast, Ferrer recited from the play a final time and then hung up the nose for good.When Cyrano de Bergerac opened and throughout the time of his nomination and Oscar win, Ferrer had returned to New York where he produced, directed and starred in a revival of the comedy Twentieth Century opposite another 1950 Oscar nominee — Sunset Blvd.'s Norma Desmond herself, Gloria Swanson. In the 1951-52 Broadway season, Ferrer directed three big plays. In addition to directing, he produced the premiere of Stalag 17, staged the key Hume Cronyn-Jessica Tandy teaming in The Fourposter and directed, produced and starred in The Shrike. When the 1952 Tonys came out, Ferrer won best actor in a play for The Shrike as well as best director for all three plays. In Hollywood, he had two films come out. The first was the comedy Anything Can Happen. The second and far more important film was John Huston's
Moulin Rouge where Ferrer played the famed painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec as well as The Comte de Toulouse-Lautrec, the painter's father. When Ferrer received an Oscar nomination, it was the first instance of a performer being nominated for portraying two distinct characters in the same film. Before that happened though, that Red Channels list controversy finally hit. As William O'Neill wrote in his chapter on The Blacklist in his book A Better World: Stalin and the American Intellectuals: On Dec. 27, 1952, the American Legion announced that it disapproved of…Moulin Rouge, starring José Ferrer, who used to be no more progressive than hundreds of other actors and had already been grilled by HUAC.…Nine members of the Legion had picketed it anyway, giving rise to the controversy. By this time, people were not taking any chances. Ferrer immediately wired the Legion's national commander that he would be glad to join the veterans in their "fight against communism." A few days later, Ferrer denounced Paul Robeson for accepting the Stalin Peace Prize. On Jan. 2, Leonard Lyons a columnist, wrote that the Legion opposed any further picketing of Moulin Rouge. Victor Lasky, another red-baiting columnist, was said to have withdrawn an article on Ferrer he had written for the Legion's magazine. On the 16th, Lyons reported the Ferrer had ironed out all his problems with Legion officials over lunch.
As I mentioned earlier, 1953 was the year when Ferrer and Phyllis Hill ended their marriage. It also was the year that Ferrer married his third wife, singer and actress Rosemary Clooney. The couple had three sons and two daughters. Their marriage ended eight years later in 1961, though they tried again and remarried in 1964 only
to divorce again in 1967. Their first child, born in 1955, was son Miguel, who would become an actor in his own right, always will be treasured by Twin Peaks fans for his role as FBI Agent Albert Rosenfeld. The resemblance between father and son shows through clearly when you compare the b&w photo of José from Whirlpool three paragraphs above to the photo of Miguel as Albert in this paragraph. The marriage of José and Rosemary connected to branches of many entertainment families. It made José the uncle of George Clooney. Their son Gabriel married Debby Boone, who sang the 1977 pop hit "You Light Up My Life," which made Ferrer and Clooney the in-laws of Pat and Shirley Boone. While Ferrer only made one feature film with Rosemary Clooney (1954's Deep in My Heart), the spouses appeared on many entertainment TV shows together as well as The Ed Sullivan Show and an appearance on Person to Person with Edward R. Murrow. In 1964, competed against each other on an episode of the game show Password All-Stars. Even before he married Clooney though, Ferrer was somewhat of a regular fixture on all sorts of TV shows as himself as early as 1949 including The Milton Berle Show, Penthouse Party hosted by Betty Furness and three appearances on Your Show of Shows. Without his new bride, he appeared on shows including Tonight! when Steve Allen was host, two episodes of The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show and the game shows What's My Line? and I've Got a Secret.For the most part, though Ferrer kept working nearly continuously until his death, the decade of the 1950s marked his heyday across all media. "The truth is I made a few good movies in the '50s, then went into freefall," Ferrer was quoted as saying, but his stage and television work didn't bring the acclaim they once did either. The Oscar nomination he received for Moulin Rouge was his third and final one, though I believe he should have been a contender for supporting actor for his role as Lt. Barney Greenwald, lawyer for the accused
mutineers in 1954's The Caine Mutiny. The British Academy of Film nominated Ferrer as best foreign actor for his part, mainly for his superb drunken dressing down of his clients after he has cleared them and exposed Humphrey Bogart's Captain Queeg as a nutcase on the stand. Edward Dmytryk, the sole member of The Hollywood Ten who turned friendly HUAC witness after serving jail time, directed the film. The Oscars deservingly nominated Bogart as lead but from a supporting cast that also included fine work from Van Johnson and Fred MacMurray, instead nominated the milquetoast Tom Tully. In 1955, he made his film directing debut as he re-created his Tony-winning role The Shrike. He directed six feature films in total: The Cockleshell Heroes (1956); The Great Man (1957), which earned him a Directors Guild of America nomination alongside 16 other contenders though the prize went to David Lean for The Bridge on the River Kwai; I Accuse! (1958) where Ferrer played Capt. Dreyfuss in a screenplay by Gore Vidal; and The High Cost of Living (1958). The final two films Ferrer helmed didn't star him: 1961's Return to Peyton Place and the 1962 remake of State Fair starring future in-law Pat Boone. Other notable films in which Ferrer would appear throughout his life included Lawrence of Arabia, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Ship of Fools, the hilarious 1976 disaster spoof The Big Bus where Ferrer plays the villain who spends the film in an iron lung, Voyage of the Damned, finally got to work with Billy WIlder on Wilder's penultimate film, Fedora, made a disaster movie that meant to be serious — The Swarm, Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, the remake of To Be or Not to Be and David Lynch's Dune.
Ferrer's theater career in New York for the remainder of the 1950s resembled reruns. Three days after Ferrer finished the 1953 revival of Cyrano he directed himself in at City Center, Ferrer did the same at City Center with The Shrike. Three days after The Shrike closed at the location, Ferrer acted there in the title role of Shakespeare's Richard III for The New York City Theatre Company with a cast that included Vincent Price and Maureen Stapleton. Two days after The Bard's work ended its run, Ferrer reached into his past again, starring and directing a revival of Charley's Aunt at City Center. One year and a day after the curtain fell on that revival, Ferrer directed Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy at City Center in a revival of The Fourposter. It took three years for Ferrer to return to work on something in New York theater. The project was the original musical comedy Oh Captain!, based on the 1953 comedy The Captain's Paradise starring Alec Guinness. Ferrer directed the musical and co-wrote the book with Al Morgan. Music and lyrics were by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans and Tony Randall played the Guinness
role in the musical. The show received six Tony nominations, including the last Ferrer would ever receive for co-writing the book. Ferrer would direct three more shows in the 1950s, only one of which he would act in (Edwin Booth), the second which was the third director to work on a troubled musical (Juno) and the last was the play The Andersonville Trial where he butted heads with star George C. Scott. When he returned to Broadway in December 1963, it was in the original Noel Coward musical The Girl Who Came to Supper co-starring Florence Henderson. Ferrer briefly replaced Richard Kiley in the lead role of the gigantic hit Man of La Mancha in May 1966 and did well enough to lead the first national touring company of the musical. He wouldn't do any Broadway work again for 13 years, though he did some off-Broadway productions. In 1972, he directed The Web and the Rock. He succeeded Ellis Rabb in the role of Robert in the Gerald Gutierrez-directed production of David Mamet's A Life in the Theatre at some point in its run from Oct. 20, 1977-July 9, 1978. Finally, he produced and starred in White Pelicans, written and directed by Jay Broad, which ran for 14 performances beginning Oct. 19, 1978, at Theatre de Lys (now the Lucille Lortel Theatre). Ferrer's last work on Broadway was his direction of the new musical Carmelina with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner (My Fair Lady, Camelot, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Brigadoon), music by Burton Lane (Finian's Rainbow, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever) and book by Lerner and Joseph Stein (Fiddler on the Roof, Zorba). It only ran 17 performances and received a single Tony nomination best original score. Ferrer was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 1981. The hall's inductees' names get inscribed in gold lettering on the walls of the upper levels of the Gershwin Theatre, one of Broadway's largest houses. 
From the 1960s on, the bulk of Ferrer's work came on television. In 1964, he was the uncredited narrator of the first three episodes of Bewitched, explaining the story of Samantha admitting to
Darrin that she's a witch before they wed. Rumor has it that the producers of the TV series Batman pursued Ferrer first to play The Joker. He also provided the voice of Ben Haramed, the man who kidnaps Aaron to put in his act in the Rankin/Bass animated version of The Little Drummer Boy in 1968. His presence became a common one on episodic television such as The Name of the Game, The Marcus-Nelson Murders, the movie that served as the pilot for Kojak, the "Mind Over Mayhem" episode of Columbo, Banyon, Starsky and Hutch, Magnum, P.I., Quincy, M.E., Murder, She Wrote, Hotel, Matlock and the requisite appearances on The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. Ferrer took roles in many television movies
and miniseries including A Case of Libel, The Rhinemann Exchange, Gideon's Trumpet, Evita Peron, Peter and Paul, Blood Feud, Samson and Delilah, George Washington, Hitler's S.S.: Portrait in Evil, Strange Interlude for PBS' American Playhouse. He also appeared on Sesame Street in 1988 as Tio Jose' to attend the wedding of Luis and Maria. Between 1985-87, he guest-starred eight times on Newhart as Arthur Vanderkellen, the father of spoiled maid/heiress Stephanie (Julia Duffy). Between 1989-91, he appeared on the soap opera Another World four times as Reuben Marino, an attorney involved in a custody suit. Ferrer's final work on film came out posthumously and only opened in Hong Kong. It's an action film called Lam Gong juen ji fan fei jo fung wan or Attack the Restless and starred Leslie Cheung. Ferrer was married for the fifth and final time to Stella Daphne Magee in 1977, a marriage that lasted until his death. In 1985, he was the first actor to receive the National Medal of Arts alongside the other honorees for that year composer Elliott Carter Jr., arts patron Dorothy Chandler, writer Ralph Ellison, dancer/choreographer Martha Graham, corporate arts patron Hallmark Cards, arts patron Lincoln Kirstein, arts patron Paul Mellon, sculptor Louise Nevelson, painter, Georgia O'Keeffe, soprano Leonytne Pryce and arts patron Alice Tully.
Ferrer passed away on Jan. 26, 1992, in Coral Gables, Fla., following a brief battle with colon cancer at 82. He is interred in Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery in Old San Juan in his native Puerto Rico.
Tweet
Labels: blacklist, Chayefsky, Cole Porter, Cronyn, Fitzgerald, George C. Scott, Gloria Swanson, Huston, Ingrid Bergman, Lynch, Mamet, Morgan Freeman, Preminger, R. Brooks, T. Mitchell, Tandy, Tony Randall, Vidal, Wilder, Woody
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Conversation Piece
"Entirely devoid of clichés…There is nothing else like it. It should be unwatchable, and yet those who love it return time and again, enchanted." — Roger Ebert
By John Cochrane
Today marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Louis Malle’s My Dinner With Andre (1981), not only one of the best films of recent decade, but a unique viewing experience that redefines what great filmmaking can be. Essentially an unbroken 100-minute conversation between two men in a restaurant, it has no right to work at all cinematically. It succeeds marvelously however — not only as a philosophical discussion — but as a portrait of two friends who often disagree yet are bound by mutual respect and the search for significance in their own lives.
The idea for the film came from its stars — experimental playwright and character actor Wallace Shawn and New York theater director Andre Gregory — who in 1975 became disillusioned and left his career to travel the world, in a soul-searching quest for creative inspiration. After hearing about some of these experiences upon Gregory’s return, Shawn suggested they write a screenplay revolving around their talks — with the two of them playing characters loosely based on their own personalities.
As the film opens, Wally walks across a dirty New York street to meet Andre for dinner. As he boards a graffiti-strewn subway, Shawn tells us in a voiceover that he is stressed about the scarcity of work and money, and the last thing he wants is to meet an old friend he hasn’t seen for years, and who — according to colleagues — appears to have suffered some sort of mental breakdown. Shawn is the more conventional character who most people will identify with — inquisitive, pragmatic and a little skeptical. Gregory is idealistic, easily excited, open to unconventional ideas and quick to give his honest opinion. Their differences are immediately apparent when greeting one another inside the restaurant. (Shawn: “You look terrific!” Gregory responding enthusiastically: “Well, I feel terrible!”) After some initial small talk, Shawn presses Gregory to tell him about what he’s been up to. It’s here where the film really takes off — with Gregory spinning fascinating stories for 45 minutes about working with theater groups in the Polish forest, traveling through the Sahara desert with a Buddhist monk and stepping off the societal grid in order to rediscover his self-identity.
In a typical movie, most filmmakers would create visual set pieces to dramatize what Gregory talks about — but director Louis Malle never does. He keeps his camera focused on the two men talking. (Malle received the script from a mutual friend of Gregory’s and enthusiastically offered his services as director unsolicited — while also strongly advising that there be no cutaways from the conversation in the restaurant.) Because of this stylistic choice and the director’s steady rhythm of two-shots, close ups and reactions, not only do we focus on the events and concepts that Andre describes, but we actually can see Wally and Andre's friendship evolve. This creates a wonderful instance of "theater of the mind." Instead of being shown Gregory’s stories of “beehives” and a simulated “death and burial” that others created for him, the viewer imagines and experiences them himself. In a recent interview, Gregory correctly states that the film has a canvas just as big as an epic such as Lawrence of Arabia (1962) — the difference being that it all takes place in the audience’s imagination.
Though the film begins with stories and ideas about theater and dramatic techniques, the last half of the movie morphs into an ideological debate about what it means to be human — whether you’re really alive or just doing things out of habit and avoiding real expressions of
feeling and connection. Shawn begins to speak more in this part — passionately defending the scientific method and suggesting that some of Andre’s experiences (which Gregory interprets as fated signs or supernatural messages directed at him) are mere coincidences. He also argues that while many people may live their lives on autopilot, why should they have to go to Mount Everest — which is expensive, impractical and difficult — in order to have a life-changing experience when they could just as likely have an epiphany in their own home? Upon repeated viewings, it becomes even more evident that the film is as much about friendship and fear as it is about ideas. Shawn himself stated in an interview that in the beginning of the film, Wally is hiding behind silence, and Andre is hiding behind words. Sometimes Wally interjects an awkward tangent — like mentioning a submarine drama Violets Are Blue when Andre talks about a hallucination he had during a Christmas church service. By the movie’s conclusion though, both men have opened up — as they actively listen to and passionately question each other’s points of view. My Dinner With Andre may seem more conventional by today’s standards, but it was a revelation back in 1981. The film defied easy categorization, and although seemingly improvised, was crafted painstakingly by its creators. Shawn and Gregory taped their conversations for months, and Shawn then took an additional year to fine-tune the script. Likewise, Louie Malle shot the film not in an actual restaurant, but at the then abandoned Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Va., over several weeks — carefully finalizing the script, editing takes and framing shots down to the inch to maintain the illusion of a busy public establishment. The movie almost died a quick death upon its initial release, but thanks to critics and word of mouth became a sleeper hit that rose to the forefront of independent American cinema. The picture played in some cities for more than a year and attained a beloved cult status among film buffs that remains to this day.
Since his death from lymphoma at the age of 63, it only has become more obvious that Louis Malle (1932-1995) was one of the great underappreciated masters of world cinema. A Palme d’Or winner at the age of 24 as a co-director and cameraman on Jacques Cousteau’s The Silent World (1956), Malle went on to be a founding member of the French New Wave, along with the likes of François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Eric Rohmer. Malle then quickly went his own way, avoiding repetition and often creating films that were vastly different from one another — other than a unifying technical virtuosity and a fierce intelligence and curiosity about people.
Because he worked in both France and America, making both fictional features and documentaries, Louis Malle never was accepted completely by either country. But his filmography of more than 30 movies speaks for itself. In addition to the one-of-a-kind Andre, some additional highlights include The Lovers (1958) — an adult fairy-tale, in which a bored aristocratic woman abandons her family and privileged existence when she falls in love with a stranger. In the controversial Lacombe, Lucien (1974) a teenage outcast joins the Gestapo, after being rejected by the French Resistance, only to later to have everything jeopardized when he develops feelings toward a Jewish girl. Revisiting this theme from a different angle toward the end of his career, the very personal Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987) is a semi-autobiographical account of a young boy during World War II, who discovers that his best friend at Catholic boarding school is one of several Jews that the priests are hiding. A possible companion piece to My Dinner With Andre is The Fire Within (1963), which tells the story of an alcoholic writer who decides to commit suicide after he finds he can no longer meaningfully connect with another person, or accept the life compromises that his friends and family have made. While that earlier character gives up his struggle, Andre and Wally continue to search for personal happiness and fulfillment.
Louis Malle’s last motion picture, Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), reunited him with Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory in a filmed rehearsal-performance of Gregory’s long gestating workshop of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (1899) — translated by David Mamet, and starring Shawn in the title role. Performed in a decaying Manhattan theater and featuring actors in street clothes with a minimal set of paper cups and card tables, Malle once again showcased his ability to make an engrossing film utilizing only great dialogue, ideas and performances. (Louis Malle was fascinated with sound, and was said to be able to tell if a take was good, just by listening to it with his eyes closed. “I like the talkies”, he once responded when questioned by Andre during Vanya’s production on why he made unconventional films like their two collaborations together.)
My Dinner With Andre ends ambiguously with an epilogue that’s just about perfect. As Wally takes a quiet taxi ride home, with Erik Satie’s beautifully pensive piano piece “Gymnopedie No. 1” playing on the soundtrack, the reflective mood is in stark contrast to the garbage cluttered landscape that Shawn travels through at the beginning of the movie. What the film seems to say is that it doesn’t matter whether you go to Mount Everest, or what answers you come up with on the meaning of life. It’s that you ask the necessary questions for continual growth, that you take the time to appreciate everyday things, and make the essential connections to others that make us all human beings — which includes the very important act of listening. As Andre so aptly puts it, “If you’re operating by habit, you’re not really living.” In today’s fast-paced world of technological advances, polarizing opinions, increased narcissism and decreasing communication, My Dinner With Andre remains a beacon of hope — and just as riveting and relevant as ever.
Tweet
Labels: 80s, Awards, Ebert, Godard, Malle, Mamet, Movie Tributes, Rohmer, Theater, Truffaut
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Sunday, January 16, 2011
From the Vault: Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa was a storyteller, a man who would rather finish a tale than be interrupted for news, who recognized words as the key to selling an idea or, in this instance, a labor movement.
It's a shame that the people who made his screen bio didn't share this focus on narrative because the film's lack of coherence leaves Hoffa as elusive to the public as he was before the movie began.
Though titled Hoffa, the film actually focuses on the story of Bobby Ciaro, Hoffa's right-hand man played by Danny DeVito, who also directed. While DeVito gives a solid performance, neither he nor Hoffa are particularly well-defined.
Jack Nicholson immerses himself in the role of the presumably late Teamsters leader. He hasn't disappeared this completely into a part since Prizzi's Honor. Unfortunately, the script by the usually reliable David Mamet doesn't allow us to know what made Hoffa into the man he was and even skimps on the details of what made him famous. As a result, Nicholson's performance ends up being more exercise that interpretation.
Because of the shortfalls of either the script or the editing, Hoffa never clearly establishes a sense of time or place. Years can be identified only if other recognizable time elements pop up like Robert Kennedy's presence as attorney general or the poster for A Clockwork Orange, assuming you know that film came out in 1971.
In the latter case, the time cue leads to the suspicion that much of the film lies on the cutting room floor. Hoffa leaves prison in 1971 and the movie alludes that the events shown in that year directly lead to his disappearance. However, Jimmy Hoffa didn't vanish until 1975. What happened in the intervening four years? If the film knows, it's not telling.
This exemplifies the problem of the entire movie, which doesn't seem to have an attitude about Hoffa or his accomplishments. In a way, it admires Hoffa but it fails at showing how his work with the Teamsters actually helped workers.
Perhaps the saddest thing about Hoffa is that DeVito directs with a lot of flair. His segues and visual cues, his fades and individual sequences are outstanding, but the lackluster script squanders his techniques.
The longer Hoffa went on, the more disappointing it became. It has good actors, good direction and a usually good screenwriter. Why this film went so wrong remains as big a mystery as Hoffa's final resting place.
Tweet
Labels: 90s, DeVito, Mamet, Nicholson
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Let's not be that careful out there (so great TV can be made)
By Edward Copeland
Three days ago, I celebrated the 40th anniversary of the groundbreaking comedy series All in the Family, which not only addressed issues unheard of for a television comedy, but also introduced dramatic elements to the half-hour comedy format. Ten years and three days later, a drama premiered that almost did the reverse, upending what an hour-long dramatic series could be and injecting a healthy dose of humor, often of the darkest variety, into its story. That series was Hill Street Blues and 30 years later, it's still as strong as it was when it premiered.
When Hill Street Blues debuted, I was in sixth grade and had little use for what passed for hour-long drama at the time. Police dramas were pretty formulaic: crime committed, cops solve crime. Big hour-long shows when I was growing up contained too much goody-goodiness for me (see The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie). The only hour-long show I can recall liking much that wasn't a detective/mystery show was Lou Grant. I didn't tune in to Hill Street Blues
right away, but a classmate sang its praises so I started watching, albeit late, though I caught up with the early episodes in reruns. I was enthralled. The series came to me around the same time that I was discovering Robert Altman in general and his film Nashville in particular. As I've written before, I'm a sucker for large ensemble casts because they seem more realistic to me. My life has lots of people in it, not just a manageable handful. When I saw Hill Street Blues with its opening credits that began with 13 regulars and countless recurring characters (in later seasons, the opening credits would get as high as 17), I knew television had changed. (The photo I used includes Ed Marinaro, though his character, Joe Coffey, didn't appear until the 14th episode of the first season's 15-episode run and he didn't make the opening credits until season 2.) You almost can trace the bounty of quality dramas (albeit non-network ones) that we enjoy on TV today back to Hill Street Blues. Thankfully, it hit the airwaves at a time when the NBC executives in charge then (Fred Silverman, Brandon Tartikoff) actually had patience and kept it on despite miserable ratings. When it swept the Emmys in its first season, the audience began to grow. In fact, Mike Post's memorable instrumental theme became a hit sooner than the show itself, hitting No. 10 on the Billboard Top 100 singles and No. 4 on Billboard's adult contemporary chart in 1981. As much as the Emmys are a joke now, they always will have to earn kudos for saving one of the greatest shows in the history of television.
One type of television series did use large casts (and had been doing so for decades) and while that genre is often mocked, it doesn't get the credit it deserves, not only for its influence on what made Hill Street Blues different but for what makes most of the finest dramas that have come in its wake so involving. That genre is the soap opera. When Hill Street Blues premiered, nighttime soaps were making a comeback with Dallas, its spinoff Knot's Landing, Flamingo Road and Dynasty, which debuted three days before Hill Street Blues did. (On the comic side, there also was Soap, which I also loved and had a huge cast, though like daytime dramas, its credits were at the end.) In the same time period, networks were reaping big rewards from another format with large casts and continuing storylines: the miniseries. With hits that varied in subject matter as widely as the soapy Rich Man, Poor Man; the fictionalized look at the Nixon White House in Washington: Behind Closed Doors; the historical Backstairs at the White House following eight administrations from the point of view of the servants; and the landmark adaptation of Alex Haley's Roots tracing his ancestors from Africa through slavery until emancipation. These precursors seem to make the time ripe for a series such as Hill Street Blues.
The police drama created by Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll was the first to take the elements of a soap — large casts, continuing storylines, cliffhangers — and transfer them to a different setting. Instead of the standard relationship drama that you'd find on a soap, Hill Street Blues was the first to camouflage those
aspects in a police story. As Bochco said in a DVD commentary recorded five years ago for the series' premiere episode, "Hill Street Station," he wanted Hill Street Blues not only to be true to the real spirit of police work but to examine the emotional consequences of the job as well. Prior to Hill Street, networks resisted the idea of stories that continued beyond one episode except for special two or three-part episodes for fear that viewers wouldn't make appointment television and the series wouldn't play well in syndication. Once the nighttime soaps showed they could be ratings hits and miniseries showed that audiences would make commitments for an entire week, let alone one night each week, it made the creation of a Hill Street Blues that much easier. Now, more shows, even comedies, contain continuing stories than don't. Some series would mix the continuing stories with standalones such as The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Comedies such as Cheers would end each season with a cliffhanger just like Dallas. Larry David would have standalones within season-long arcs, first on the Seinfeld season about Jerry and George writing the TV show and then every season on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Other comedies such as Friends were basically soap operas with laughtracks. All of them, to some extent, owed that freedom to the ground broken by Hill Street.As I mentioned in my All in the Family tribute (and other pieces), it usually takes about four episodes for new television series to work their way to what they want to achieve. Hill Street Blues happens to be one of the exceptions as it seems to almost have been born into perfection. Watch its very first episode, "Hill Street
Station," today and it's all already there. According to Bochco on that commentary, many of the series' trademarks that were there from the very beginning weren't planned to be things that would occur in every episode. They didn't originally have a plan to begin every episode with the morning roll call, led in those first three seasons and the early part of the fourth, until actor Michael Conrad's death from cancer, by Sgt. Phil Esterhaus. Neither was it planned for him to end each roll call with what would become the catchphrase, "Let's be careful out there." Some things did get decided based on that excellent template of an episode. Robert Butler, who directed "Hill Street Station" as well as the three episodes that followed, had originally wanted to film the entire episode using hand-held cameras, but Bochco felt it would make it look "too self-conscious." It was agreed though that from that point forward every roll call would be filmed that way. Another decision that was made before the series even hit the air was that each episode would cover one day. Bochco said part of the reasoning for that was to make continuity easier, but it was another nice touch, something that another of my all-time favorite series, Twin Peaks, did (for the most part) during its brief run. Despite its precarious beginnings, ratingswise, Hill Street Blues would go on to last seven seasons and 146 episodes. When I mentioned before that the Emmys helped save it, that was no exaggeration. The size and scope of its impact on the Emmy race the first year it was eligible to compete was so gigantic, that viewers simply couldn't ignore what the Emmy voters were saying. Granted, it helped that this was back when award shows and networks still had sway. Cable still was a fairly small blip and FOX didn't exist, so it basically was
ABC, CBS or NBC or you could read a book (unless you were one of those PBS types). The Emmy broadcast itself drew bigger ratings and when it showered such lavish praise upon Hill Street Blues, it convinced those watching to give the show a chance. It did the same trick a couple years later for a low-rated NBC comedy called Cheers because that network in particular then nurtured quality shows, giving them the time they needed to find their audience instead of killing them quickly when they underperformed. Let me get back to that first Emmy year for Hill Street Blues to illustrate how it basically swallowed most of the nominations (and deservedly). It received 21 nominations and won eight awards including best drama, best lead actor, best lead actress, best supporting actor, best writing and best direction. Its dominance was so great that it took three of the directing, supporting actor and film editing nominations. However, this was nothing compared to what it accomplished in its second season, when it took four out of five of the writing nominations and five out of five of the supporting actor nominations. The first year, its series competition was Dallas, Lou Grant, Quincy and The White Shadow. That second year, it was up against Dynasty, Fame, Lou Grant and Magnum, P.I. Needless to say, in those first few years it wasn't exactly a fair fight, but as other producers and writers saw what television could do, more quality dramas would appear and the network landscape would get markedly better because of the changes brought about by Hill Street Blues. Over its seven seasons, Hill Street Blues earned 98 Emmy nominations and won 25, including four consecutive Emmys for outstanding drama series. Actors who won were Daniel J. Travanti as Furillo (two in a row), Michael Conrad as Esterhaus (two in a row), Barbara Babcock as Grace Gardner, Bruce Weitz as Mick Belker, guest star Alfre Woodard and Betty Thomas as Lucy Bates (who had the unusual situation of an imposter who tried to accept on her behalf and steal the award as she was crossing the stage to get it herself).
Not only was Hill Street Blues unlike any drama that had aired on network television before, its large cast lacked anyone who could be called a star or a household name and that's because the show was the star. No one really knew who Daniel J. Travanti was before he appeared in our living rooms as police Capt. Francis Xavier Furillo, assigned to try to keep a handle on the chaotic Hill Street precinct. They couldn't have cast a better center for the show for Travanti was magnificent, miraculously adept at handling both the most dramatic and comic of scenes. In fact, his skills as a deadpan comic on the series may have been unsurpassed. His two consecutive Emmys as outstanding lead actor were quite deserved as he played Furillo, trying to keep peace between rival street gangs, dealing with his ever-present and annoying ex-wife Fay (Barbara Bosson, Bochco's then real-life wife), his own status as a recovering alcoholic (and some falls off the wagon) as well as countless administrative headaches dumped on him by his superiors, especially the recurring character of the politically ambitious Chief Daniels (Jon Cypher).
Travanti's revered Furillo sat at the top of a very talented pyramid of actors playing a collection of diverse and distinctive characters. For those first three seasons and part of the fourth, his right-hand man was Conrad's Esterhaus, his dispatch sergeant and a true original from the moment he appeared, winning him two
consecutive Emmys. Esterhaus' prosaic use of language set him apart from the other characters, though he could be just as rewarding not speaking at all. One of my favorite moments occurred in that first episode as he took Frank's ex Fay aside to try to calm her down after another argument with Furillo. Fay tries to make small talk, asking Phil how his wife is and learns that they also have divorced, but that he's found someone new and she's turned his life around. Fay asks if they plan to wed and Phil tells her that they might after she graduates. Naturally, Fay jumps to the conclusion that Phil, a man well into his 50s, is now dating a college student, but he has to correct her misconception by telling her that his new lady is a senior in high school. Fay collapses in tears and the silent reactions and moves of Conrad's head are hysterical. Phil and the high school senior won't last though, because he will soon meet Grace Gardner (Emmy winner Barbara Babcock). Grace arrives at the precinct by order of Chief Daniels to redecorate the place. At first, Phil finds her a nuisance, but an attraction develops between the sergeant and the widow of a former police officer and before you know it the sexually voracious Grace has enveloped Esterhaus' life.
I know I may sound as if I'm repeating myself, but the "Hill Street Station" episode's excellence on so many levels almost makes it worth writing about alone in this tribute. It's a perfect introduction to nearly all the characters (only Betty Thomas' Officer Lucy Bates basically gets silent background shots), it's wonderfully constructed with not one, but two big twists that almost guaranteed the small but discerning number of viewers who were there from the beginning would return for episode two. It's also almost entirely played on a humorous level until more than half the episode is over even though the story has included a tense hostage situation at a convenience store, but before any moment of the standoff can get too serious something always restores the levity. You've got the serious with the conscientious Lt. Henry Goldblume (Joe Spano) trying to talk the two young gang members into releasing their captives and leaving the store and with Furillo back at the station
trying to get their gang's leader Jesus Martinez (the late Trinidad Silva, another wonderful recurring character whose arc through the course of the series amazed) to help the situation. For the funny side, you could always count on James B. Sikking as the pseudo fascist buffoon Lt. Howard Hunter, leader of the precinct's tactical unit. He always recommended overwhelming force no matter what and, without authorization, with Furillo on the scene trying to get the teens to surrender, Howard brings in helicopters that blow everything to hell as his team storms the store and decimate the place. Fortunately, no one dies or is hurt but the store's owner berates Hunter for the destruction. Howard's response is to tell one of his men to check on the owner's immigration papers as he taps his almost-always present pipe against the shop's display window and it shatters. Howard could easily have been a cartoon as could other characters, but as the series went on, they all became terribly and vulnerably human. Howard in particular became multidimensional in later seasons' episodes that found him trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building with another officer (and ugly hints of what he might have done to survive) and when a mistake he made as young officer returns to haunt him and label him as corrupt and he puts a gun to his head, pulls the trigger and the episode ends with the sound of a shot.
Howard was hardly the only member of the ensemble that risked being a caricature, but Bochco, Kozoll and their team of talented writers and actors took that gamble and that's how they made characters so distinctive from that very first episode and no one proved to be more of an original creation than my own personal favorite, Detective Mick Belker as portrayed brilliantly by Bruce Weitz, who did eventually win an Emmy for the role. Belker looked completely unkempt with his tossled hair and bushy mustache and he often acted as something beyond human, prone to growl to show his displeasure. He took great joy pouncing on perpetrators, often sinking his teeth into them as part of his detention technique. His preferred epithets for people were dogbreath, hairball and dirtbag. Belker had his tender side though, befriending a mentally unbalanced man (Dennis Dugan) who believed he was a superhero from outer space named Captain Freedom (one of many misfits who seemed to be drawn to him over the years) or keeping a pet mouse in his jacket pocket. When it
counted, he still could be a convincing undercover cop and when he was at his desk hunting and pecking out an arrest report on his typewriter, he turned into the good Jewish son when his mother inevitably called to complain about his aging father. (His people skills also turned out to be a family trait, based on the time we met his sister.) In "Hill Street Station," we get to see the first "Hi ma" call with his usual collar and we also get to see the absolute glee on his face when he leaps off a desk to join a pile against a suspect gone mad, even though Furillo warns him, "No biting!" You can see his disappointment as he tells his captain that it isn't fair. "One lousy nose and I'm branded for life." Eventually, without losing his color, he managed to get a wife and child too. I even confess: When I was exiled in seventh and eighth grade in an awful northeastern Kansas town (but isn't seventh and eighth grade hell no matter where you are?), I often growled like Belker at the jerks in junior high.
According to Bochco's DVD commentary, part of the reason Weitz won the part was that during the audition he leaped off a desk shrieking and growling and he scared the late Grant Tinker, whose production company MTM produced Hill Street Blues, so much that he didn't want to tell him if Weitz didn't get cast. If you recall, the MTM production company logo was a cat (like MGM's Leo the Lion) in a circle meowing. For Hill Street Blues, the kitty wears a policeman's cap. For St. Elsewhere, the cat would have a doctor's surgical cap and mask (and in that show's final episode, the cat would be hooked up to a heart monitor and then flatlined when the credits finished). For Newhart, Bob Newhart would do the meowing.
I loved this show so much that I could probably write lengthy paragraphs about all its characters, including recurring ones, but then this piece would likely never end (or even more likely I'd miss my own deadline of the show's 30th anniversary), so I'm going to keep concentrating on that "Hill Street Station" installment to focus on the characters most pivotal to its developments. The main representatives of the beat cops on the show were the partners Bobby Hill and Andy Renko (Michael Warren, Charles Haid). Bobby was a laid-back, African-American officer who in the second season is upset when the black policemen's organization elects him vice president in absentia. He doesn't want anything to do with politics, but the other black members of the group tell him they picked Bobby precisely because of his nonthreatening demeanor that they feel they can use to pressure the department into promoting more black policemen. Renko always seems to have a run of bad luck and, though Hill Street Blues takes place in an unnamed urban
city (Bochco says it was loosely based on Pittsburgh, but second unit scenes were shot in Chicago), seems to have a redneck air about him. One of the calls the partners answer in the premiere is a domestic disturbance where a mother prepares to wield a knife on her towel-wearing teen daughter because she caught her bedding her husband, who is hiding in the bathroom. Bobby manages to defuse the situation, but when he and Renko return to the street, they find their squad car stolen. They search in vain for a working pay phone to call it in and then comes the most shocking and dramatic moment of the show. As they enter a building, they stumble upon some drug dealers who open fire, leaving Hill and Renko lying bleeding on the floor. The original plan was for Renko to die, but the pilot Charles Haid had filmed didn't get picked up, so they made a change and he lived. It's an interesting parallel to Bochco's later series NYPD Blue where Dennis Franz's character Andy Sipowicz (Renko and Sipowicz had the same first name. Weird.) also got shot in the premiere and was slated to die but they changed their mind then too. (Franz, by the way, played two characters on Hill Street: the corrupt Detective Sal Benedetto and later as a regular, the colorful Detective Norman Buntz.) It was an easier fix than Joe Coffey though. They not only shot him in an episode, they showed a chalk outline where his body had been only to bring him back to life.
Two regulars actually weren't playing cops. The previously mentioned Barbara Bosson as Furillo's ex-wife Fay became a regular at the urging of Fred Silverman who suggested that the series needed a character who was a civilian so there would be a viewpoint unrelated to the legal system. The other was Veronica Hamel as public defender Joyce Davenport. In his commentary, Bochco says Hamel was the last person cast — they'd already started filming the first episode without a Joyce when Hamel walked in and saved the day. When we meet Davenport, she's storming in to hammer away at Furillo about the treatment of one of her clients who has been lost somewhere in the system. She's a fierce advocate for her client and fiery at what she sees as constant abuse by the actions of overzealous officers. That's why the ending of "Hill Street Station" comes as such a surprise when you see that Frank and Joyce, who have exhibited nothing but rancor at each other throughout the episode, are secret lovers. In fact, most episodes of the series ended with the two in some sort of steamy sexplay. Hamel also got some of the most dramatic moments of a series that tended toward the darkly humorous, ranging from the murder of a
colleague that made her rethink her chosen profession to an episode involving the execution of a client who was convicted and headed to death row and sought her as a witness to his last moments. Travanti and Hamel had great chemistry and one of the biggest mysteries to me since Hill Street Blues went off the air is where did these talented actors go? IMDb shows that Travanti has done a lot of one episode shots on other series, the most recent being the new version of The Defenders with Jim Belushi and Jerry O'Connell, but he's never had a role post-Hill Street that came close to Furillo. Hamel's career has followed a fairly similar path, with her most recent work being three episodes of Lost. Sadly, some of the cast members are no longer with us. Michael Conrad of course died during the show's fourth season. Robert Prosky, who joined the show as the new dispatch sergeant, Stan Jablonski, died in 2008. Kiel Martin (Detective J.D. LaRue) died of lung cancer in 1990, the same year Rene Enriquez (Lt. Ray Calletano) succumbed to pancreatic cancer. Trinidad Silva (gang leader Jesus Martinez) died in a car wreck in 1988.The show also was blessed with many guest stars or near regulars playing roles before they achieved fame elsewhere. Some of those actors included: two Larry Sanders Show alums Jeffrey Tambor as a shady lawyer turned cross-dressing
judge, and Megan Gallagher as an officer; David Caruso as the leader of the Irish street gang The Shamrocks; Jane Kaczmarek as an officer; Pat Corley as an overworked and incompetent coroner; Jennifer Tilly as a gangster's moll who dates Henry; Frances McDormand as a public defender with a drug problem; Dan Hedaya as a crooked cop; Lindsay Crouse as a lesbian officer accused of sexual harassment by a hooker; Linda Hamilton as Coffey's girlfriend who is raped; Danny Glover as a former gang leader who returns under the guise of a social reformer; Edward James Olmos as an apartment tenant being harassed by a landlord trying to force his dwellers out so he can raise rates; Alfre Woodard (who won an Emmy for her work) as the mother of a little boy shot to death by mistake by an officer; Ally Sheedy as a senior criminology student that J.D. takes a shine to despite the age gap; and legendary character actor Lawrence Tierney (best known to younger readers as Joe in Reservoir Dogs and Elaine's dad on Seinfeld) as the night shift dispatch sergeant who got the last line of the series, answering the phone and saying, "Hill Street."Lots of television shows had good and great acting, even if the series themselves weren't that special. What set Hill Street Blues apart was what went on behind the scenes. Its creators, writers and directors who changed the medium with its structure and storytelling. It doesn't seem like that radical an idea to have story
arcs that ran over multiple episodes, but bringing that form to a police drama was revolutionary. It paved the way for the technique to be used in other Steven Bochco series such as L.A. Law which took the format to a law firm; the short-lived Bay City Blues which tried it out on a minor league baseball team; and Murder One, which attempted to cover a single murder trial over the course of an entire season. Other non-Bochco shows that found the freedom to embrace the large cast/dark humor/multiepisode arc in the medical world (St. Elsewhere) or much later to paint a portrait of an entire city (The Wire). Some of the writers who worked on Hill Street would go on to make their own cultural landmarks such as Anthony Yerkovich, who would create Miami Vice; Mark Frost, who would co-create Twin Peaks; Dick Wolf, who birthed the Law & Order empire; and, of course, David Milch, who would not only create NYPD Blue for Bochco but the incomparable Deadwood. Even Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet wrote an episode, "A Wasted Weekend," an unusual entry for the series where the bulk of the action concerned Jablonski, Goldblume, Hill and Renko on a hunting trip.On a more general level, what I've found fascinating in the post-Hill Street era is how durable and versatile the police show genre is. When I become a fan of a certain type of show, it's pretty difficult for me to sample another in the same genre because they don't live up. Take the medical drama for example. I loved St.
Elsewhere and so I never understood how anyone could say they liked it and then watched ER, Chicago Hope or Grey's Anatomy. It took Scrubs (which as a comedy was different anyway) and House to break my bias on that and that's because House has a completely different approach to the medical show. It's the same thing on the comedy side. It baffles me how anyone who has ever seen the brilliance of The Larry Sanders Show and its behind-the-scenes look at an entertainment TV show can then watch the terribly overrated 30 Rock and not see it for a pasty pale imitation much in the same way Tina Fey's movie Mean Girls was a defanged Heathers lite. Both pull their punches. The police drama didn't take as long as the medical drama did to find new quality examples after Hill Street that weren't just copies: Cagney and Lacey, Miami Vice, Crime Story, NYPD Blue, Homicide: Life on the Street, all the variations of Law & Order and CSI, The Shield, The Wire (even though its scope was much wider than merely police, that's how it was essentially sold in Season 1) even the short-lived such as Boomtown and much-maligned such as Cop Rock. In its twisted way, Dexter is essentially a police drama. I'm even leaving out ones I've never seen or that I don't care for but others do such as The Closer.
Hill Street Blues' lasting legacy remains as the starting point for the higher level of quality drama that has continued to get better to this very day. Television always has been good at comedy, if not challenging or topical until All in the Family, but the best TV dramas before Hill Street usually were anthologies such as The Twilight Zone with different stories each week or just generally entertaining such as Columbo (on which Bochco served as a writer and story editor in the early seasons) or The Rockford Files, but hardly challenging. Lou Grant did get into some issues, but imagine how interesting a newspaper drama made in the Hill Street template could have been. Since Hill Street Blues hit the air, even though it slipped in its last couple of seasons, it seems as if there's always been some quality drama on and when cable exploded, it's been a smorgasboard where now the situation is reversed and television (non-network at least) does drama better than it does comedy. Perhaps this is because Hill Street Blues showed artists that you didn't have to be only purely drama or purely comedy and series such as The Sopranos, Deadwood, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, etc., satisfies the audience's need for both.
Hill Street Blues, aside from the technology, hasn't aged much when you watch it today because it tells stories about people you care about and spins tales that capture your attention and seldom lets go. Except in the weaker later years, I can't recall any storylines that were real duds as is often the case in the best of
shows (think Donna and Medavoy on NYPD Blue, the "D Girl" episode of The Sopranos, James' noir excursion in season 2 of Twin Peaks). Re-watching some of its key episodes, I still marvel at the ability of Hill Street to shift emotional gears so fast and so smoothly, cracking you up in one scene then touching your heart in the next. Not every show can treat death as both profound and absurd like Hill Street did, going serious with an execution or certain murders and then having a character drop dead in his plate of food at a fundraiser or a politician plunging through a high-rise window screen while trying to score points by taking the press on a tour of the building's deplorable conditions. It could even combine them, taking the comic team of Belker and the crazy Captain Freedom and breaking your heart when Freedom dies while staying in his dementia until the end. Remember, the power is in the glove. It always was. Even Sgt. Esterhaus didn't get a break. It must have been heartbreaking to the cast and crew to lose the actor Michael Conrad, but that didn't prevent them from letting Phil check out while having another session of strenuous sex with the insatiable Grace.What makes me sad is how you don't see reruns of Hill Street Blues on TV anymore. TV Land used to show both it and St. Elsewhere back-to-back until it made the decision to fill its schedule with as much crap as possible. Only the first two seasons are available on DVD, though you can see later episodes for free on IMDb. It's a damn shame. Greatness such as Hill Street Blues must be available for future generations.
Tweet
Labels: Altman, Bochco, Breaking Bad, Deadwood, Homicide, House, Larry David, Larry Sanders, Law and Order, Mad Men, Mamet, McDormand, Milch, Seinfeld, Tambor, The Sopranos, The Wire, Twin Peaks
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
