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.
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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
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Sunday, December 18, 2011
Centennial Tributes: Jules Dassin Part I
By Edward Copeland
With a name like Jules Dassin and some of his most classic films made in France, Turkey, Italy and Greece and mostly filmed in French with some Italian, Greek, Turkish and Russian thrown in, it's easy to assume that the great director himself hailed from Europe, probably France. In actuality, when Dassin was born 100 years ago today, that event occurred in Middletown, Conn., and he grew up in Harlem, N.Y., and went to school in The Bronx. Dassin was quintessentially American — until after working in the theater and making 11 features
for or distributed by Hollywood studios, Dassin was one of those unfortunate artists who received the most un-American of treatments from the first round of Communist witch-hunting by the House Un-American Activities Committee (before Joe McCarthy really made blacklisting a phenomenon) and Dassin couldn't work in the U.S. so he headed to Europe where he made one of the greatest heist films ever. Eventually, he did come back to the U.S. from time to time, but his later films lacked the punch of either his early studio work or his movies made in exile. That exile also introduced him to the woman who became his second wife and the great love of his life — Melina Mercouri. So, though eventually he returned to the U.S. to make some films and direct a Broadway musical based on the couple's most famous film collaboration, Never on Sunday, Greece became his adopted home — until he and Mercouri were booted from there by a military coup led by dictators who felt they were agitators. Eventually, they were able to return to Greece as well, staying together until Mercouri's death in 1994 at the age of 73. However, Dassin lived a much longer and vibrant life, almost making it to his own centennial. He only died a little more than three years ago at the age of 96. In some of his early work in Hollywood, he directed some classic examples of film noir that also boasted elements of social consciousness, something he maintained in real life right up until the end as seen in one of the best discoveries I found preparing this piece: an interview conducted at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2004 when he was 93 or 94 that Criterion included on The Naked City DVD. The invaluable Criterion Collection also includes interviews from other years with Dassin, the most recent being 2005, on DVDs of his various films, leaving us a great resource on the man, his films and the blacklist. As was the case with many directors, Dassin's first foray into the creative arts began as a theater actor, in Dassin's case working with The Yiddish Theater called ARTEF (acronym for the Arbeter Teater Farband or Worker’s Theatrical Alliance) in New York in the mid-1930s after studying acting at the Civic Repertory Theatre Company begun by Eva Le Gallienne. It was during this time that he joined the Communist Party, though he quit in 1939 when Stalin signed the Soviet Union's nonaggression pact with Hitler. “You grow up in Harlem where there’s trouble getting fed and keeping families warm, and live very close to Fifth Avenue, which is elegant,” he told The Guardian newspaper in a 2002 interview. “You fret, you get ideas, seeing a lot of poverty around you, and it’s a very natural process.”
Around the same time, he quit the party. Dassin decided to take his career in another direction — both literally and geographically. He headed to Hollywood where he was hired by RKO to a six-month apprentice director contract at $250 a week where Dassin got to assist directors at work but didn't actually do much in the way of hands-on participation. At least that was the way Dassin described it in the 2004 L.A. County museum interview on The Naked City DVD. One director working on the lot at the time that Dassin who Dassin was assigned to and who particularly fascinated Dassin with his technique was Alfred Hitchcock, who was making Mr. & Mrs. Smith at the time. As Dassin tells it, his awestruck gazing at Hitch at work became very noticeable — so much so that after each take Hitchcock would turn to find Dassin and ask him if the take was OK. As the RKO contract neared its end, the studio informed Dassin that he was being let go. Fortunately, MGM hired Dassin and gave him his first film assignment making shorts. Dassin said his farewells to his friends at RKO — even working up the nerve to say goodbye to Hitchcock, who already had heard that Dassin would be making his first film. Hitchcock gave Dassin these words of advice: "Don't ever make a picture with children, animals or Charles Laughton." Of course, Dassin would end up doing films with all three.
At MGM, he made short documentaries about Arthur Rubinstein and Marian Andersen. He then made a short adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Tell-Tale Heart." Frustrated with his progress, Dassin was able to get his short of the Poe story screened theatrically and that prompted MGM to sign him to a seven-year contract. In that 2004 interview, Dassin didn't express much affection for his time at MGM, equating the contract to being a slave. While he was tied to them for seven years and had to make what they told him to make, they had the option of dumping him every six months. Dassin had tried to get time off to direct a play on Broadway, but MGM wouldn't even let him do that. (He had directed one play that ran a month in 1940 called Medicine Show.) Of the seven features and the Poe short (I have no idea if the other shorts still exist) that he made at MGM, I've only managed to see the short and two of the features. While none come close to what Dassin made later of the ones I saw, they weren't complete embarrassments.
This 20-minute adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's famous short story proves to be quite a stylish film debut for Jules Dassin. The short opens with a biblical quote, specifically Romans II.15: "The law is written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness." It stars Joseph
Schildkraut, the second person to ever win an Oscar for best supporting actor playing Captain Dreyfus in 1937's The Life of Emile Zola, as the young man who finally snaps at the abuse inflicted upon him by his tyrannical boss and kills the old man (Roman Bohnen). Dassin really pulls out the attention-getting stops: Focusing on Schildkraut's ear from the short's beginning before the killing even takes place. The boss slaps him on it and he threatens to quit, but the boss tells him he's too much of a coward to do that. He's worked for the old man since he was 14 and he's almost 30 now. Murder will out and the young killer slowly goes mad as he becomes convinced that he still hears the boss's beating heart below the floorboards where he hid his body. In his limited amount of time, Dassin creates a very atmospheric tale, helped immeasurably by cinematographer Paul Vogel, who later won an Oscar for his black & white photography in Battleground. The short's only negative is a somewhat obvious and overbearing musical score by Sol Kaplan. For some reason, The Tell-Tale Heart is included as a bonus feature on the Shadow of The Thin Man DVD in The Thin Man series box set. Didn't get to see this one which starred Conrad Veidt (best known as Nazi Major Strasser in Casablanca) as identical twins: one a stamp collector and rare bookshop owner, the other a ruthless Nazi. On one of the many interviews included on Criterion DVDs, Dassin said of Veidt on the French TV program Ciné Parade in 1972, "At the time, he was the big European star. He was a big actor with a personality to match." When Veidt realized he would be directed by a first-timer, he objected. Dassin sought advice and one of the crew suggested setting up dolly tracks so when Veidt returned to the set, he asked what they were for and Dassin explained that they were doing a shot that started back at one point and then zoomed up to him for a close-up. Veidt thought it sounded great and was satisfied after that.
Dassin's next film was a comedy I also haven't seen, so here's the IMDb summary by Les Adams, though I've added performers' names. "The town gossips are reporting that a household servant in exclusive Rocky Point is writing an expose of the colony. Mrs. Sophia Sommerfield (Spring Byington) is convinced it can't be either one of her maids, Martha Lindstrom (Marsha Hunt) or Mrs. McKessic (Marjorie Main), although, unknown to Sophia, she is totally unaware that her son, Jeff (Richard Carlson), is married to Martha."
Of Dassin's MGM features, this Joan Crawford vehicle happens to be the earliest one I've seen. Produced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Reunion in France opens telling us it's May 9, 1940, in Paris and then adds these words: The Ninth Night of the Ninth Month Too Uneventful to Be Taken Seriously and Too Far Away to Worry About. Crawford plays Michele de la Becque, a Parisian society figure with a high-profile
beau Robert Cortot (Philip Dorn), trying to pretend that the Nazi threat isn't knocking on France's door. As Michele heads off on a train trip, an announcement at the station tells everyone to get into shelters. When Michele returns, she finds that the Nazis have not only occupied Paris — they've taken over her house as their headquarters as well, leaving her servants' quarters for use as her new home. More disturbing, she finds that Robert seems awfully cozy with the Nazi high command. Meanwhile, she stumbles across American pilot Pat Talbot working with the British (John Wayne) and hides him out, even though he's out to stop Cortot from supplying the Nazis with war machinery he's producing. It does lead to one nice dialogue exchange between Michele and Pat where Pat speaks negatively about Michele's love. "You hardly know Cortot," Michele tells Pat, defending her boyfriend's character. "I hardly know Hitler either," Pat replies. The story unfolds in a by-the-numbers fashion, but Dassin does add some nice touches. Old TV sitcom fans will spot Natalie Schafer aka Lovey on Gilligan's Island as the top Nazi's wife. On his appearance on Ciné Parade, Dassin told the interviewer about working with a huge star like Crawford and the star system in general in that era. "To explain the attitude of the time, I was young and I seemed even younger,"
Dassin told the interviewer in 1972. "While shooting the first scene, at a certain point I said, 'Cut.' An icy silence fell over the set. She (Joan Crawford) turned as if to say, 'Who dared to say cut?' Immediately, the assistant director shouted, 'Why all this noise?' She said to me, 'Never say cut to Joan Crawford. Never.' I said, 'But it wasn't any good.' She said, 'What?' I said, 'It wasn't any good,'" the director shared with the audience. Two minutes later, Dassin found himself in Louis B. Mayer's office. "It's over," Mayer told him. "I thought I'd been fired on my very first scene, but no, she'd invited me to dinner. Joan Crawford. At her house. That was quite something," Dassin said. He went on to elaborate on what dinner at Joan Crawford's house was like, including being greeted by her three adopted children who all wore white gloves. Eventually, she asked him about why he had called cut during that scene. "Because the scene wasn't any good," Dassin told her. Crawford asked him if he thought she was a bad actress but he assured her that wasn't the case. "On the contrary. You're good," he told her "So what was wrong?" she asked. "When you're in character, and it's part of you, I love it, but when you act the grand lady, it feels fake," Dassin explained. "Really? I do that," Crawford said with surprise and Dassin confirmed it. "Fine. Let's give it another try tomorrow," Crawford agreed. Dassin got to keep his job as director on the film under the condition that he never say, "Cut." Instead, he and Crawford worked out a hand signal where he would run his finger across his forehead and then she would know.Dassin's next film has been seen so rarely, IMDb doesn't even have a plot synopsis or summary. It's never been released on any home format, but apparently pops up on TCM now and then. I borrowed the first two grafs by Laura at Laura's Miscellaneous Musings to at least get an idea of the movie. "Young Ideas is an MGM "B" movie which starts poorly but builds to an entertaining second half, thanks largely to the talent of its fine cast. Jo (Mary Astor), a best-selling author, is swept off her feet by small-town chemistry professor Michael (Herbert Marshall), much to the dismay of Jo's college-age children Jeff and Susan (Elliott Reid, Susan Peters). Jeff and Susan don't want to leave their home in New York, and Jo's agent Adam (Allyn Joslyn) is also apoplectic. Adam conspires with Jeff and Susan to break up Jo and Michael's marriage."
When I saw The Canterville Ghost, I had no idea that it was directed by the man responsible for films such as Rififi and Night and the City. This fun little trifle teamed the charming Margaret O'Brien, the same year she stole the show in Meet Me in St. Louis as Judy
Garland's little sister, and Charles Laughton, meaning Dassin ignored two-thirds of
Hitchcock's advice on his fifth feature. Based on the Oscar Wilde story, Laughton plays the cowardly ghost of Sir Simon de Canterville, sealed in a wall by his father in the 17th century after running away from a duel and doomed to haunt the halls of his family's castle until some Canterville descendant commits an act of bravery while wearing the family ring. Alas, all subsequent Cantervilles have proved to be cowards as well. The charming young O'Brien plays Lady Jessica de Canterville, the 6-year-old who currently owns the castle, though she lives nearby with an aunt because Sir Simon's ghost scares her. A bunch of American soldiers take refuge in the empty castle and have first-hand experiences with the ghost when young Jessica discovers that one of the fighting men, Cuffy Williams (Robert Young), has the Canterville birthmark. After the little girl overcomes her fear enough to introduce Cuffy to Sir Simon, they decide that perhaps Cuffy is a Canterville and he might lift Sir Simon's curse. The Canterville Ghost isn't a masterpiece by any means, but it's likable enough. Again, I must rely on the plot summary provided by an IMDb user, this time by Kathy Li. Again, I've inserted the performers' names. "Evie's co-workers at the uniform shirt factory, and her almost-fiancée's inability to kiss, inspire Evie (Marsha Hunt) to slip a letter into a size 16½ shirt for some anonymous soldier. It's received by 'Wolf' Larson (John Carroll), who immediately throws it away, but his sensitive, dreaming — and short — buddy John McPherson (Hume Cronyn) snags it, and begins a correspondence with Evie, pretending to be Wolf. But things get complicated when Evie wants to meet her tall, handsome soldier. And even more complicated when Wolf sees Evie and likes what he sees."
Dassin finally finished his MGM contract with this film that IMDb also lacks a synopsis or summary to describe. TCM's website does, but I had to insert the performers' names there as well. "Carrying $500,000 in stolen government certificates, which are stashed in the binding of his favorite cookbook, master confidence artist Ace Connors (John Hodiak) meets with businessman Dwight Chadwick (Lloyd Corrigan) at a posh Beverly Hills hotel to discuss an oil investment deal. Chadwick's sultry friend, Ricki Woodner (Lucille Ball), a confidence artist working a phony art racket, joins the men at their poolside rendezvous and tries to sell Chadwick on some paintings she claims were smuggled out of Europe. Ricki wastes little time in souring Chadwick on his deal with Ace, to which Ace responds by identifying one of her paintings as a fake. Following the meeting, Ace receives word that detectives in New York are closing in on his bond scheme, and that a deal is being made in which he is to serve a five-year sentence in Sing Sing penitentiary in exchange for his voluntary return to New York to face trial. Assigned to escort Ace back to New York is detective Bob Simms (Lloyd Nolan), Ace's inept but persistent nemesis of many years. Ace accepts the terms of the Sing Sing deal after a menacing visit from Fly Feletti (Elisha Cook Jr.), his former partner, who is seeking his share of the half million-dollar bond deal."
With MGM's shackles removed from Dassin, you almost can say that it was at this point that his film career truly began and he began to direct the classic films that earned him his reputation. Mark Hellinger, who had achieved national fame as a New York columnist after starting out as a theater critic before trying his luck in Hollywood, spending several years at Warner Bros., where he worked on films such as They Drive By Night and High Sierra. Frustrated by the lack of social realism in films and being under the thumb of Jack Warner, Hellinger leaped at the opportunity to set himself up as an independent producer at Universal-International. The first film to come out of his new deal was The Killers starring Burt Lancaster. For his second film, he hired Lancaster again to star and Dassin to direct the prison noir Brute Force, Dassin's first great film. It also reunited the director with Cronyn from A Letter to Evie, but though I've only read the description of Cronyn's Evie character, that comedy's John McPherson bears little resemblance to Brute Force's Captain Munsey, head of the prison guards at Westgate Penitentiary and one of the all-time hissable screen villains. The film also had a screenplay by Richard Brooks, who would go on to write and direct films such as The Blackboard Jungle, Elmer Gantry, The Professionals and In Cold Blood. The opening credits for Brute Force show an imaginative flair, first listing Lancaster, Cronyn and Charles Bickford "As The Men Inside." After that, it ticks off the names Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Blyth, Ella Raines and Anita Colby "As The Women On The Outside." That hardly accounts for the entire ensemble as the credits announce that Brute Force is "Introducing Howard Duff, 'Radio's Sam Spade' as Soldier."
Though the film was made in 1947, Brute Force maintains a lot of intensity in its scenes today. Early on, there's a scene where inmates use blowtorches to drive another prisoner into a press to his death. Watch Brute Force and try to imagine The Shawshank Redemption being made without it. Granted, there isn't any shower rape in Brute Force and the warden (Roman Bohnen, the old man in Dassin's Tell-Tale Heart short) isn't corrupt as much as ineffective but the guards, led by Cronyn's Munsey are a different story. The overcrowded penitentiary has been facing political pressures from outside over a series of incidents, the most recent being a prisoner's suicide that Munsey provoked, so harsher discipline is demanded, including revoking all privileges, including paroles, and making all the men on the cell block where the suicide took place work on the prison's drain pipe. Of the prison staff, only the alcoholic Doc Walters (Art Smith) argues against a harder line doing any good. "He doesn't know that kindness is actually a weakness and weakness is an infection that makes a man a follower instead of a leader," the evil and ambitious Munsey says in the meeting. "You're worse than the worst inmates in this prison," the doctor tells Munsey.
The suspension of parole hearings even angers the generally genial Gallagher (Bickford), who runs the prison paper, The Westgate News, and is nearing release. Before Gallagher always urged the hot-head de facto inmate leader Joe Collins (Lancaster) to calm his rage, telling
him, "Those gates only open three times. When you come in, when you've served your time, or when you're dead." Gallagher always has served as a peacemaker, even breaking up inmate fights, pissing off Munsey in the process. "I understand you're responsible for settling that little feud over in cell block J. We appreciate your assistance, of course, but…," Munsey tells Gallagher as he passes his table at breakfast. "The boys and I were only trying to help," Gallagher replies. "Gallagher, when are you gonna' remember that you're not back home, running a gang of hoodlums? Let me be the policeman. You just serve your time. And that way we'll both get paid off," Munsey warns him. "Like the good book says to us, Captain, we all get what's coming to us — all of us," Gallagher smiles at the guard. With the crackdown, Gallagher's attitude changes when Joe once again concocts an escape plan. "Look, Gallagher, I know this drum's full of crackpots. One convict's gonna' buy his way out, another knows the governor's cousin. A third guy's even gonna' float out in a homemade balloon. But I'm not buyin' any pipe dreams. It can be done. It's been done before, and it'll be done again. It can be done here — by us," Collins insists. "Collins, if I ever put in with anybody, it'll be with you," Gallagher pledges.
Brooks' dialogue overflows with memorable lines from the talented cast. Brute Force gets around the pure prison scenes when the various inmates share tales of their lives in the outside world, some touching, some funny. One of the best gets told by the inmate Spencer (John Hoyt, who decades later would play the grandfather on the Nell Carter sitcom Gimme a Break). His story becomes a first-person film noir parody within a tough prison noir drama. Spencer talks about the woman he still dreams about named Flossie (Anita Colby) back when he was a gambling fool. He delivers his voiceover monologue in the pitch-perfect style of the genre while the flashbacks play as a pantomime. Here's just the punchline excerpt: "Flossie had looks, brains and all the accessories. She was better than a deck with six aces. I regret to report that she also knew how to handle a gun — my gun…She wanted all the money I'd won and I never refused a lady — especially when she's armed." Spencer also gets one of the film's other most memorable lines when he says, "You know, I was just thinking. An insurance company could go flat broke in this prison." Brute Force really introduced Jules Dassin to the world as a director to watch. The great cast, daring producer and solid screenplay helped make Brute Force a classic, but the pulsating score by Miklos Rozsa, the crisp, stark cinematography by William H. Daniels and Edward Curtiss' film editing all contributed as well. Dassin's earlier works had shown hints of what he could do, but Brute Force was the first film where he could really show his stuff which he'd be able to do even more in his next three American-financed films.
Unfortunately, these would come just as he became a victim of the blacklist and headed to Europe so he could continue to work in film. When I started to delve into Dassin and discovered so many of the DVDS of his best films contained interviews with him, this tribute began to morph into something larger than usual. I hope to keep it two parts and I hope the second part comes today, but to do his life and work justice may end up taking three parts and two days.
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Labels: blacklist, Crawford, Cronyn, Dassin, Documentary, Foreign, Garland, Hitchcock, L. Ball, Lancaster, Laughton, Mankiewicz, Mary Astor, Musicals, Oscars, R. Brooks, Wayne
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Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Redeemed: Elmer Gantry
By Matt Maul
On the 50th anniversary of its release, many of the same issues addressed in Elmer Gantry, Richard Brooks’ 1960 adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel, are very much a part of the current debate between aggressive people of faith and the more secularly oriented segments of society. Front and center in the narrative is a display of Christian organization leaders engaging in shameless self-promotion, bitter turf battles, frenzied attempts to influence public policy and hypocrisy in the conduct of their personal lives which seem at odds with the person for whom their dogma is named. However, I think it’s interesting to note that unlike the works of celebrated contemporary atheists such as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, Elmer Gantry ultimately honors the underlying religious principles that most of the characters observe only in the breach.
While the novel takes place over a much broader time frame, Richard Brooks compresses it to focus singularly on an episode where Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster, in an Oscar-winning performance) becomes involved with Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) and her revivalist church. In the film, a down on his luck Gantry opportunistically applies talents developed as a failed traveling salesman to become an effective preacher in Falconer’s road show. His influence helps make Falconer and her movement an overnight sensation. While Lewis presented the pair as equally unscrupulous in their ambition, the Brooks script pulls its punches and allows Gantry and Falconer to be likable people in spite of their many faults.
For the film, Jim Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy), Gantry’s friend and college roommate in the novel, becomes an agnostic reporter and counterbalance to Gantry. While here he’s more integral to the plot, Kennedy’s role is similar to one he’ll play two years later as Jackson Bentley in Lawrence of Arabia (T.E. Lawrence a god-like character himself). Lefferts and Bentley both function as a sort of Greek chorus for the audience. Interestingly, reporter E.K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly) from Inherit the Wind also provides a running commentary as the “God debate” progresses in that film. It’s significant that journalists are used as story elements operating to deliver the “bad news” in seemingly deliberate opposition to proponents of the Gospels.
I mention Inherit the Wind because, like Elmer Gantry, the sting of the agnostic/atheistic stance is somewhat diminished as the characters arguing that position seem to retreat from a full blown attack on the views held by people of faith. In fact, at the end of Inherit the Wind, Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) reveals himself to be a closet theist (“Matt Brady got lost because he looked for God too high up and too far away”).
As Gantry, Lancaster appropriately chews the scenery where needed to bring life to the character. Many of the actor’s closest friends have commented that they found the preacher to be an uncannily accurate reflection of Lancaster’s own real personality. While the former acrobat puts on a display of unbridled physicality that may for some seem over-the-top today, I found it a truly enjoyable performance. Witness how Lancaster does suitably turn it down a notch when Gantry is not required to be “on.”
Jean Simmons is OK as Falconer, I suppose. In three important "serious" roles of her career from around that same time (The Big Country, Spartacus and Elmer Gantry), I can’t give her more than “adequate” marks. But, that may just be me. For what it’s worth, I loved her in The Grass is Greener.
On the other hand, Shirley Jones (who won an Oscar), practically steals the show as Lulu Bains — a former lover whose extortion plot against Gantry leads to his downfall. Brooks famously didn’t want to cast Jones and it was only the insistence of Lancaster himself that won her the part. Jones manages to be simultaneously sexy, innocent, tawdry and sympathetic (Did I mention sexy?). For those only familiar with Jones as Mrs. Partridge, this film may itself be something of a revelation.
As I said earlier, while Elmer Gantry may indeed provide solid commentary on the negative aspects of organized religion, in the end, it waters down the thrust of Sinclair Lewis’ satire. When a fire of biblical proportions breaks out at Falconer’s tabernacle by the pier, the literary Gantry knocks people out of the way to secure his own safety. Lancaster’s Gantry has more in common with other heroic figures he has portrayed over the years and vainly tries to save the day. Likewise, the novel ends with the unsavory Gantry continuing on in the religion business. However, the cinematic Gantry walks away from the mission to leave it in more capable, and by inference, more morally suitable hands. As he exits, Gantry quotes from the Bible: "When I was a child, I understood as a child and spake as a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things."
I’m not sure which version of Gantry I prefer. As a person of faith myself, I’m probably more comfortable with the Brooks’ interpretation. And it certainly is a very entertaining and worthwhile film. However, in living up to the thrust of what Lewis sought to communicate, Monty Python’s Life of Brian is probably (and ironically) more successful.
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Labels: 60s, Gene Kelly, Jean Simmons, Lancaster, Movie Tributes, R. Brooks, Tracy
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Friday, April 02, 2010
John Forsythe (1918-2010)
John Forsythe, who has died at the age of 92, had a long career as a leading man in movies and television, even a bit on stage, but for all the work that played off his distinguished looks, one of his most famous roles may always be the one the depended solely on the timber of his voice.
Forsythe's first film of note was 1943's Destination Tokyo, but the majority of his early career was spent on various episodic television and the stage, including a role in the Broadway debut of Teahouse of the August Moon in 1953.
In 1955, he landed the lead in Alfred Hitchcock's dark comic classic The Trouble With Harry. Two years later, he starred in his first television series, Bachelor Father, which ran through 1962.
In 1964, he starred opposite Ann-Margret in the cult classic Kitten With a Whip. In 1965, he had a short-lived, self-titled TV comedy that ran a mere 29 episodes about a retired Air Force major who inherits a school for girls.
In 1967, he landed a role in Richard Brooks' classic adaptation of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. In 1969, he and Hitchcock worked together again, this time in one of the master's lesser works, Topaz. The same year he played opposite Jean Simmons in her Oscar-nominated role in The Happy Ending.
1969 also brought him another television series, To Rome With Love, about a widower who takes his three daughters and accepts a teaching position at a school in Italy. It lasted two seasons.
Then, in 1976, he finally landed his most successful series to date and he never had to appear on camera. All he had to do was begin his dialogue with, "Hello, angels" and you'd recognize the voice as John Forsythe on Charlie's Angels. Throughout the years of the series until its end in 1981, the angels may have been replaced, but there was only one Charlie. In fact, when they decided to do a movie version in 2000, Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz may have been the new angels, but Forsythe was still Charlie.
No sooner had Charlie's Angels gone away that Forsythe scored another television hit and this time, he actually appeared on screen as well. Aaron Spelling, looking to cash in on the success of Dallas, designed his own soap opera among the rich and famous and Dynasty was born with Forsythe playing Blake Carrington. He also appeared as Blake on the spinoff The Colbys and a Dynasty reunion movie.
In the middle of the run of Charlie's Angels, he had a juicy big screen turn as a corrupt judge battling Al Pacino's crusading lawyer in 1979's And Justice For All... He returned to the big screen again briefly during Dynasty in 1988 to play the ghost of Bill Murray's old boss to tell him what was about to happen in that take on "A Christmas Carol," Scrooged.
Forsythe's final TV series didn't last, but I enjoyed it. It was from Norman Lear and was about a political family titled The Powers That Be with Forsythe playing a Reaganesque senator with Holland Taylor as his Nancyesque wife. It also introduced TV audiences to the comic talents of David Hyde Pierce, who played his congressman son-in-law.
R.I.P. Mr. Forsythe.
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Labels: Capote, Hitchcock, Jean Simmons, Murray, N. Lear, Obituary, Pacino, R. Brooks, Television, Theater
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Centennial Tributes: Robert Ryan
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.(Warning: Spoilers contained herein…)
Robert Bushnell Ryan was born 100 years ago on this date and he’s one of only a handful of actors who I’ll take the time to watch in anything. But since confession is good for the soul, I thought I’d start this essay out with an admission of guilt…
I used to get actors Robert Ryan and Sterling Hayden confused.
Thankfully, I don’t do that anymore. They’re both still favorites of mine, of course, but I’ve probably seen more Ryan films than those of Hayden’s. My preference for Ryan is due to the fact that the celebrated actor — a man who, off screen, was a pacifist, a tireless campaigner for civil rights and a dedicated foe of McCarthyism — excelled at portraying sadistic villains who were more often than not thoroughly despicable, possessing not the slightest shred of human decency.
And what’s more — he did these roles in such a way that made these “bad guys” oddly endearing…
Born to Timothy and Mabel Bushnell Ryan in 1909, young Robert’s dream was to become a playwright — but since that noble profession can sometimes lead to starvation, he decided to study acting in order to support himself. He had attended and graduated from Dartmouth in 1932, distinguishing himself as the school’s heavyweight boxing champion during all four years of his attendance. He then latched onto a series of odd jobs, including ship’s stoker, ranch hand (in Montana) and a stint with the WPA before signing up to study alongside the great Max Reinhardt. It was during his time with Reinhardt that he met his future wife Jessica Cadwalader, whom he wed in March of 1939 and stayed married until her death in 1972 (he died a year later).
Ryan’s big break on stage came when he was appearing alongside “Viennese Teardrop” Luise Rainer in A Kiss for Cinderella in 1941; her ex-husband Clifford Odets offered him the juvenile role of Joe Doyle alongside Tallulah Bankhead in Odets’ Clash by Night. (In 1952, Ryan would appear in the film version but because of his age was cast in the lead role of Earl Pfeiffer.) It was at this juncture that Ryan began getting small parts in films like The Ghost Breakers (1940) and Queen of the Mob (1940); he received his first screen credit in a B-quickie entitled Golden Gloves (1940), which capitalized on his boxing prowess. From then on, he began to get noticed for his roles in North West Mounted Police (1940), Bombardier (1943), The Sky's the Limit (1943) and Tender Comrade (1943). Upon signing a secure contract with R-K-O in January 1944, Ryan enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and served as a drill instructor there until 1947. It was while he was in the Corps that he took up painting and, hearkening back to his halcyon college days, won a boxing championship as well.
While in the Marines, Ryan befriended a writer (and future director) named Richard Brooks, who had written a novel that the actor very much admired entitled The Brick Foxhole. Back in Hollywood, R-K-O adapted Brooks’ novel into Crossfire (1947), a down-and-dirty film noir directed by Edward Dmytryk and produced by Adrian Scott (with an adapted screenplay by John Paxton). Ryan portrayed Montgomery, a recently demobilized American soldier who kills a fellow G.I. named Joseph Samuels (Sam Levene) simply because Samuels is Jewish; two other soldiers, Keeley (Robert Mitchum) and Finlay (Robert Young) investigate the murder and ultimately bring Montgomery to justice. Ryan’s portrayal of the anti-Semitic Montgomery was nothing short of astonishing; he literally oozed hatred and intolerance from every pore. The role earned him the only Oscar nomination he would ever receive (for best supporting actor) — but unfortunately typecast him as the silver screen’s resident bigot; he would play similar parts in films like Bad Day at Black Rock (1954) and Odds Against Tomorrow (1959).
Because roles like Black Rock’s Reno Smith and Odds’ Earle Slater were completely at odds with his real-life persona, Ryan accepted the fact that these parts presented to him as an actor a real challenge — but not one with which he was necessarily happy; he was quite reluctant to discuss Crossfire in later years because he thoroughly detested the Montgomery character. Indeed, Crossfire sort of scarred his film career — though he would get an occasion to be a “good guy” every now and then (Berlin Express [1948], The Boy with Green Hair [1948]), he continued to play the reliable “heavy” in films like Caught (1949), The Racket (1951), Beware, My Lovely (1952), House of Bamboo (1955), Billy Budd (1962) and The Dirty Dozen (1967). When he was once complimented on being one of the silver screen’s best heavies, Ryan remarked: “I guess they never saw me in most of my pictures. Still, I've never stopped working so I can't complain.”
But Ryan’s talent was such that even when he was required to be the "baddie" he was able to add subtle nuances to each character that made them three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood human beings. A good example of this is his portrayal of ex-POW Joe Parkson in Act of Violence (1949) — from the moment the movie gets underway he menacingly stalks his former commanding officer Frank Enley (Van Heflin), a seemingly nice middle-class businessman who’s completely flummoxed as to why the embittered Parkson is obsessed with meting out revenge. As the story unfolds, however, we learn that while Parkson’s elevator may not go all the way to the top it’s entirely the fault of Enley, who sold out his fellow soldiers during their internment in the POW camp.
In The Woman on Pier 13 (1950, a.k.a. I Married a Communist), Ryan plays a former stevedore who’s just starting to make good in his company when his past comes back to haunt him in the form of Communist agitators eager to exploit his former affiliation with the Party. Though the film presents the Commies as little more than “gangsters,” Ryan’s Brad Collins character is actually played in a sympathetic fashion; a tragic noir hero whose fate cannot be altered because of his youthful indiscretion. Another noir from that period, On Dangerous Ground (1952), features Ryan on the right side of the law — but as big city cop Jim Wilson, he’s often no better than the “garbage” he deals with on a day-to-day basis…roughing up suspects and seeming on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Assigned by his commander (Ed Begley) to assist locals in a murder investigation in a small town upstate, he comes face-to-face with his doppelganger (Ward Bond) and is redeemed by the love of the murderer’s blind sister (Ida Lupino).
As I stated in the opening lines of this essay, I am such a huge fan of Robert Ryan that I’ll watch anything he’s in…and admittedly, there are a large number of his movies that I can easily pick out as favorites. But the film I keep coming back to — and the one that I personally feel contains his finest performance onscreen — is The Set-Up (1949); a short-and-sweet boxing saga (written by Art Cohn and directed by Robert Wise) that stars Ryan as a worn and faded pugilist named “Stoker” Thompson who’s scheduled for just another bout in his thirty-five years participating in “the sweet science.” Stoker is washed up, a has-been — and his crooked manager Tiny (George Tobias) is so certain that Stoker is going to tank that he takes money from mobster Little Boy (Alan Curtis) for his man to “take a dive”…but decides not to clue Stoker in on the deal, in order to keep more of the kitty for himself.
Stoker is definitely mismatched: he’s fighting the much younger and heavily favored “Tiger” Nelson (Hal Baylor), but somehow has a feeling that he’s “just one punch away” from reversing his misfortune in the ring. His ever-patient wife Julie (Audrey Totter) has heard this all before, and vows to herself that she won’t be at his bout that evening because she can’t bear to see him take another beating. (She later changes her mind.) But the angel who looks after fools, drunks and children is in Stoker’s corner that evening; Stoker’s actually giving Nelson a good scrap — and even when Tiny finally tells him about the fix, he refuses to give up. He soundly beats Nelson to a pulp, and emerges victorious — but Little Boy has the final say when his goons break Stoker’s right hand, taking him out of the fight game forever.
The Set-Up runs a total of 72 minutes and takes place in “real time” — and Ryan is nothing short of sensational. His early career as a boxer no doubt helped in this role, but Ryan clearly has the chops to convince the viewer that he is that washed-up pug who daydreams of a comeback and gets that one-in-a-million opportunity to show that he “could have been a contendah.” The haunting finale of the film — where an anguished Stoker cries out to Julie “I can’t fight no more” — is both heart-breaking and bittersweet; Totter’s performance as the supportive spouse will convince you that although Stoker’s career has ended due to tragedy, she is just the woman who can inspire him to carry on.
One thing that has always fascinated me about Robert Ryan is how he managed to emerge unscathed from the period of paranoia prevalent in the 1950s despite his defiant liberalism; when the House Un-American Activities Committee was discovering “subversives” under every bush and many actors and actress who had even the tiniest tinge of “pink” (read liberal) in their politics found themselves out of work. Ryan once commented: “I was involved in the things he [McCarthy] was throwing rocks at but I was never a target. Looking back, I suspect my Irish name, my being a Catholic and an ex-Marine sort of softened the blow.” Ryan walked the walk and talked the talk (he intensely disliked his Flying Leathernecks co-star John Wayne because the Duke was in favor of the blacklist): he was an extremely vocal supporter of the group known as “The Hollywood Ten” and donated his time and money to groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, American Friends Service Committee, and United World Federalists. He also founded the Hollywood chapter (along with entertainer Steve Allen) of The Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy in September of 1959. In the 1960s, he volunteered to serve in the cultural division of the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and with other actors like Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier, founded the short-lived Artists Help All Blacks. He even became a vociferous supporter for Sen. Eugene McCarthy’s quixotic Presidential campaign in 1968.
Toward the end of his life, Ryan continued to do outstanding work in films, including The Professionals (1966), The Wild Bunch (1969), Lawman (1971) — he even went out with a winner in his last film, The Iceman Cometh (1973), in which he played the terminally ill political activist Larry Slade. Ironically, Ryan was himself was diagnosed at the same time with lung cancer, a condition that he publicly denounced (in the manner of actor William Talman) as being caused by his heavy use of cigarettes. He died on July 11, 1973.
(Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. blogs at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, where Robert Ryan is often referred to as “one of the most delectable rat bastards of the silver screen”…and in all honesty is meant to be a compliment.)
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Labels: blacklist, Hayden, Luise Rainer, Lupino, Mitchum, Poitier, R. Brooks, Robert Ryan, Van Hefiin, Wayne
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