Edward Copeland's Tangents

Monday, May 07, 2012

Love Story

“Oh my God, that’s the saddest movie ever made! It would make a stone cry! And nobody went to it!”
— Orson Welles on Make Way for Tomorrow
By John Cochrane
No one film dominated the 1937 Academy Awards, but with the country still in the grips of the Great Depression and slowly realizing Europe’s inevitable march back into war, the subtle theme of the evening in early 1938 seemed to be distant escapism — anything to help people forget the troubled times at home. The Life of Emile Zola, a period biopic set in France, won best picture. Spencer Tracy received his first best actor Oscar, playing a Portuguese sailor in Captains Courageous, and Luise Rainer was named best actress for a second year in a row, playing the wife of a struggling Chinese farmer in the morality tale The Good Earth.

Best director that year went to Hollywood veteran Leo McCarey for The Awful Truth. McCarey’s resume was impressive. He paired Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy together as a team, and he had directed, supervised or helped write much of their best silent work. He had collaborated with W.C. Fields, Charley Chase, Eddie Cantor, Mae West, Harold Lloyd, George Burns and Gracie Allen — almost an early Hollywood Comedy Hall of Fame. He had also directed the Marx Brothers in the freewheeling political satire Duck Soup (1933) — generally now considered their best film. The Awful Truth was a screwball comedy about an affluent couple whose romantic chemistry constantly sabotages their impending divorce that starred Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy — and a breakout performance by a handsome leading man named Cary Grant — who supposedly had based a lot of his on-screen persona on the personality of his witty and elegant director. Addressing the Academy, the affable McCarey said “Thank you for this wonderful award. But you gave it to me for the wrong picture.”

The picture that McCarey was referring to was his earlier production from 1937, titled Make Way for Tomorrow — an often tough and unsentimental drama about an elderly couple who loses their home to foreclosure and must separate when none of their children are able or willing to take them both in. The film opened to stellar reviews and promptly died at the box office — being unknown to most people for decades. Fortunately, recent events have begun to rectify this oversight as this buried American cinematic gem turns 75 years old.

Based on Josephine Lawrence’s novel The Years Are So Long, the film opens at the cozy home of Barkley and Lucy Cooper (Victor Moore, Beulah Bondi), who have been married for 50 years. Four of their five children have arrived for what they believe will be a joyous family dinner — until Bark breaks the news that he hasn’t been able to keep up with the

mortgage payments since being out of work and that the bank will repossess the property within days. Bark and Lucy insist that they will stay together, regardless of what happens. With little time to plan, the family decides that, for the time being, Lucy will move to New York to live with their eldest son George’s family in their apartment, while Bark will be 360 miles away — sleeping on the couch at the home of their daughter Cora (Elisabeth Risdon) and her unemployed husband Bill (Ralph Remley). For the film's first hour or so, we see Bark and Lucy trying to adjust to their new surroundings. While George (an excellent Thomas Mitchell) tries to be as pleasant and accommodating to his mother as possible, his wife Anita (Fay Bainter) and daughter Rhoda (Barbara Read) display little patience and dislike the disruption of their routines. Meanwhile, Bark spends his time walking around his new hometown, looking for a job and visiting a new friend, a local shopkeeper named Max Rubens (Maurice Moscowitz).

Many filmmakers develop a visual signature that dominates their work, but McCarey employs a fairly basic and straightforward style, using group and reaction shots as well as perceptive editing that places the emphasis on the actors and the story. Working with screenwriter Vina Delmar, McCarey creates set pieces that blend touches of light comedy and everyday drama that feel so correct and truthful that audiences likely feel a sometimes uncomfortable recognition with them. Often, this stems from McCarey's use of improvisation to sharpen his scenes before filming them. If short on ideas, he would play a nearby piano on the set until he figured out what to do. This practice creates a freshness that, as Peter Bogdanovich points out, gives the impression that what you’re watching wasn't planned but just happened. A large part of the film’s greatness also comes from the cast, headed by Moore and Bondi as Bark and Lucy. Both theatrically trained actors, vaudeville star Moore (age 61) and future Emmy winner Bondi (age 48), through the wonders of make-up and black and white photography prove completely convincing as an elderly couple in their 70s.

Moore performs terrifically as the blunt, but loving Bark. Bondi gives an even better turn as Lucy. In one scene, representative of McCarey’s direction and Bondi’s performance, Lucy inadvertently interrupts a bridge-playing class being taught by her daughter-in-law at the apartment by making small talk and noticing the cards in players’ hands. She’s an intrusion, but by the end of the evening, after being abandoned by her granddaughter at the movies and returning home, she takes a phone call in the living room from her husband. Critic Gary Giddins notes that as the class listens in to her side of the conversation, she becomes highly sympathetic — and the scene now flips with the card students visibly moved and feeling invasive of her space and privacy. Then there’s the crucial scene where Lucy sees the writing on the wall and offers to move out of the apartment and into a nursing home without Bark’s knowledge, before her family can commit her — so as not to be a burden to them anymore. She shares a loving moment with her guilt-ridden son George. (“You were always my favorite child,” she sincerely tells him.) His disappointment in himself in the scene’s coda resonates deeply. Lucy’s character seems meek and easily taken advantage of when we first meet her, but she’s really the strongest person in the story. It’s her love and sacrifice for her husband and family that give the movie much of its emotional weight, and the unforgettable final shot belongs to her.

McCarey and Delmar create totally believable characters and it should be pointed out that while friendly, decent people, Bark and Lucy, by no means, lack flaws. Bark doesn't make a particularly good patient when sick in bed two-thirds of the way through the story, and Lucy stands firm in her ways and beliefs — traits that can annoy, but people can be that way. Even the children aren’t bad — they have reasons that the audience can understand — even if we don’t agree with their often seemingly selfish or preoccupied behavior. This delicate skill of observation was not lost on McCarey’s good friend, the great French director Jean Renoir, who once said, “McCarey understands people better than anyone in Hollywood.”

As memorable a first hour as Make Way for Tomorrow delivers, McCarey saves the best moments for the film’s third act. Bark and Lucy meet one last time in New York, hours before his train departure for California to live with their unseen daughter Addie for health reasons. For the first time since the opening scene, the couple finally reunites. The last 20 minutes of the picture overflows with what Roger Ebert refers to in his Great Movies essay on the film as mono no aware — which roughly translated means “a bittersweet sadness at the passing of all things.” Regrets, but nothing that Bark and Lucy really would change if they had to do everything over again.

Throughout the story, the Coopers often have been humiliated or brushed off by their children. When a car salesman (Dell Henderson) mistakes them for a wealthy couple and takes them for a ride in a fancy car, the audience cringes — expecting another uncomfortable moment — but then something interesting happens. As they arrive at their destination and an embarrassed Bark and Lucy explain that there’s been a misunderstanding, the salesman tactfully assuages their concerns. He allows them to save face, by saying his pride in the car made him want to show it off. Walking into The Vogard Hotel where they honeymooned 50 years ago, the Coopers get treated like friends or VIPs — first by a hat check girl (Louise Seidel) and then by the hotel manager (Paul Stanton), who happily takes his time talking to them and comps their bar tab. Bark and Lucy's children expect their parents at George’s apartment for dinner, but Bark phones them to say that they won't be coming.

At one point, we see the couple from behind as they sit together, sharing a loving moment of intimate conversation. As Lucy leans toward her husband to kiss him, she seems to notice the camera and demurely stops herself from such a public display of affection. It’s an extraordinary sequence that’s followed by another one when Bark and Lucy get up to dance. As they arrive on the dance floor, the orchestra breaks into a rumba and the Coopers seem lost and out of place. The watchful bandleader notices them, without a word, quickly instructs the musicians to switch to the love song “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” Bark gratefully acknowledges the conductor as he waltzes Lucy around the room. Then the clock strikes 9, and Bark and Lucy rush off to the train station for the film’s closing scene.

Paramount studio head Adolph Zukor reportedly visited the set several times, pleading with his producer-director to change the ending, but McCarey — who saw the movie as a labor of love and a personal tribute to his recently deceased father — wouldn’t budge. The film was released to rave reviews, though at least one reviewer couldn’t recommend it because it would “ruin your day.” Industry friends and colleagues such as John Ford and Frank Capra were deeply impressed. McCarey even received an enthusiastic letter from legendary British playwright George Bernard Shaw, but the Paramount marketing department didn’t know what to do with the picture. Audiences, still facing a tough economy, didn’t want to see a movie about losing your home and being marginalized in old age. They stayed away, while the Motion Picture Academy didn’t seem to notice. McCarey was fired from his contract at Paramount (later rebounding that year at Columbia with the unqualified success of The Awful Truth), and the film seemed to disappear from view for many years.

The movie never was forgotten completely though. Screenwriter Kogo Noda, who wrote frequently with the great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, saw the film and used it as an inspiration for Ozu’s masterpiece Tokyo Story (1953), in which an elderly couple journey to the big city to visit their adult children and quietly realize that their offspring don’t have time for them in their busy lives — only temporarily getting their full attention when one of the parents unexpectedly dies during the trip home. Ironically, Ozu’s film also would be unknown to most of the world for decades, until exported in the early 1970s, almost 10 years after the master filmmaker’s death. Tokyo Story, with its sublime simplicity and quiet insight into human nature now is considered by many critics and filmmakers to be one of the greatest movies ever made — placing high in the Sight & Sound polls of 1992 and 2002. In the meantime, Make Way for Tomorrow slowly started getting more attention in its own right, probably sometime in the mid- to late 1960s. Although the movie never was released on VHS, it occasionally was shown enough on television to garner a devoted underground following. More recently, the movie played at the Telluride Film Festival, where audiences at sold out screenings were stunned by its undeniable quality and its powerful, timeless message. Make Way for Tomorrow was finally was released on DVD by The Criterion Collection and was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress on the National Film Registry in 2010.

The funny phenomenon of how audiences in general dislike unhappy endings, and yet somehow our psyches depend on them always proves puzzling. Classics such as Casablanca (1942), Vertigo (1958), The Third Man (1949 U.K.; 1950 U.S.) and even the fictional romance in a more contemporary hit such as Titanic (1997) wouldn't carry the same stature or mystique in popular culture if they somehow had been pleasantly resolved. Life often disappoints and turns out unpredictably, messy and frequently filled with loss. Even though many people claim they don’t like sad stories, it comforts somehow to know that we aren’t alone — that others understand and feel similarly as we do about life’s experiences. It’s what makes us human.

Make Way for Tomorrow serves as many things. It’s a movie about family dynamics and the Fifth Commandment. Gary Giddins points out that it’s also a message film about the need for a safety net such as Social Security — which hadn't been fully implemented when the

picture was released. It’s a plea for treating each other with more kindness — in a culture that increasingly pushes the old aside to embrace the young and the new, and it’s one of the saddest movies ever made. At its most basic level, it’s a tender love story between two people who have spent most of their lives together — knowing each other so well that words often seem unnecessary. However you choose to look at it, Make Way for Tomorrow remains one of the greatest American films — certainly a strong contender for the best classic Hollywood movie that most people have never heard of. Leo McCarey would create highly successful hits that were more sentimental later on in his career — including the enjoyable romance Love Affair (1939) and its subsequent color remake An Affair to Remember (1957), starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. He also would direct Bing Crosby as a charismatic priest in 1944’s Going My Way (7 Oscars — including picture, director, actor) and its superior sequel, 1945’s The Bells of St. Mary’s (8 nominations, 1 win), co-starring Ingrid Bergman, but he never forgot about Make Way for Tomorrow, which remained a personal favorite until the day he died from emphysema in 1969. Leo McCarey did not live to see his masterpiece fully appreciated, but that wasn't necessary. In 1938, he knew the film’s value.

It’s a marvelous picture. Bring plenty of Kleenex.

Labels: 30s, Bellamy, Bogdanovich, Capra, Cary, Deborah Kerr, Ebert, Fields, Ingrid Bergman, Irene Dunne, John Ford, Luise Rainer, Marx Brothers, McCarey, Movie Tributes, Oscars, Renoir, T. Mitchell, Tracy, Welles

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Saturday, March 10, 2012

“Here’s my hope that we all find our Shangri-La…”

By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
With the publication of his novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips in 1934, a book penned by author James Hilton a year earlier, Lost Horizon, also began to garner attention from the public and soon would obtain the similar success of Chips. In fact, it became one of the first and best-selling “mass-market” paperbacks as well as one of the 20th century’s most popular and beloved novels. The story concerns a British diplomat who stumbles onto a utopian paradise known as “Shangri-La” — a civilization free from war and want, where its inhabitants are able to live long, peaceful lives well past the usual life expectancy. The title, “Shangri-La,” refers to the lamasery in the novel but soon was adopted as shorthand for any sort of utopian existence; Franklin D. Roosevelt even borrowed it for the nickname of the presidential retreat in Maryland (that we have come to know as Camp David).

Motion picture director Frank Capra read the novel while he was making his Academy Award-winning comedy It Happened One Night (1934), and vowed that Lost Horizon would be his next picture. Capra knew precisely whom he wanted for the protagonist of the novel: actor Ronald Colman. Colman wasn’t available, so Capra made Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) in the interim and when he finally cemented Colman’s participation he convinced Columbia studio head Harry Cohn to pony up a hefty $1.25 million to finance his production — the largest amount ever allocated to any Columbia film at that time. Beginning in 1936, the filming of the movie that was released to theaters 75 years ago on this date would run over that amount by more than three-quarters of a million dollars and though it would be another five years before the film finally recouped its initial cost, it also provided audiences with another outstanding work from one of the greatest of American film directors.

It is 1935, and in the Chinese city of Baskul, diplomat and foreign secretary candidate Robert Conway (Colman) has been assigned the task of rescuing 90 Westerners before civil war breaks out in the region. Conway manages to catch the last plane out along with his brother George (John Howard) and three disparate passengers: tubercular prostitute Gloria Stone (Isabel Jewell), fussy paleontologist Alexander P. Lovett (Edward Everett Horton) and Henry Barnard (Thomas Mitchell) — whom we later learn is the alias of fugitive embezzler Chalmers Bryant. The plane on which these individuals are traveling is hijacked by an Asian pilot and flown toward the Himalayan Mountains, where it runs out of gas and crashes, killing the man at the controls. The group is rescued by a mysterious man (H.B. Warner) who identifies himself as “Chang”; he and his men take the travelers to a lamasery known as “Shangri-La,” an idyllic paradise remotely separated from the outside world.

Perplexed by their surroundings at first, the members of the group gradually are enchanted by Shangri-La and find themselves becoming as content as its inhabitants — particularly Robert, who learns from Chang that the paradise was founded by a priest named Perrault, who accidentally stumbled upon the lamasery in the 1700s. Conway also is introduced to the de facto leader, the High Lama (Sam Jaffe), who is revealed to be Father Perrault himself! The High Lama announces to Conway that despite the longevity bestowed upon Shangri-La’s inhabitants because of its relaxing atmosphere (temperate climate, healthy diet, etc.) he is dying, and on the recommendation of Sondra Bizet (Jane Wyatt), a native resident who has read many of Conway’s writings, has decided that Robert possesses the wisdom and knowledge of the outside world to continue on as his successor. He then expires in a manner later described by Conway as “peacefully as the passing of a cloud’s shadow.”

The offer to remain in Shangri-La is quite tempting to Robert, who also is in love with Sondra, but there is dissension in the ranks in the form of brother George, who has been distrustful of Shangri-La since the moment he arrived — despite having fallen for young Maria (Margo), a resident who was brought to the lamasery as the survivor of an expedition in the late 1800s. George convinces Robert, who is still a bit shell-shocked from the High Lama’s passing (and is loyal to his brother), that the tales told to him by both Chang and the Lama are lies and that they have an opportunity to escape the confines of Shangri-La with the help of a team of porters if they leave in the morning (the remaining members of their party have elected to stay). Both Conway brothers and Maria experience several days of travel in grueling conditions and, succumbing to the elements, Maria falls face down in the snow and expires. George learns to his horror that what Chang had told his brother — that Maria was much older than she appeared and was “preserved” by the magical properties of life in Shangri-La — is indeed true, Maria’s countenance is that of an old woman…which causes George to go mad and leap into a ravine. Robert manages to continue on through the horrific weather to be rescued by villagers from a nearby hamlet.

In an epilogue to the adventures of Robert Conway, an explorer named Lord Gainsford (Hugh Buckler) relates to members of his club in Old Blighty that Conway’s experiences had been wiped from his memory as a result of amnesia but that the recollection of Shangri-La returned while Conway was returning by boat to England. Jumping ship, Conway obsessively made it his mission to return to the tranquil paradise, and Gainsford informs the club members that his ten month attempt to pursue Conway resulted in failure. But in the film’s final scenes, it is apparent that Conway “has found his Shangri-La.”

The characters of Sondra and Lovett are not present in Hilton’s original novel, but were added merely as romantic interest and comic relief, respectively. In the case of Lovett, the addition of the persnickety academic added a touch of humorous whimsy to what would otherwise be a dreary fantasy excursion; Horton — the silver screen’s embodiment of what was then known as the “sissy” — was a perfect choice for the role, and director Capra wisely let the actor improvise much of his onscreen business (including the scene with the lacquer box mirror). Horton’s rapport with Mitchell’s “Barney” Bernard also is priceless; Bernard refers to him as “Sister” and “Toots” before finally deciding to call Lovett “Lovey,” a nickname that soon is adopted by some of the children in Shangri-La as well.

Capra, as a rule, hated screen tests…and made it a point to develop the characters in his films around actors he already had in mind for the roles. But this wasn’t always set in stone; he tested both Louis Hayward and David Niven for the part of George Conway before deciding upon John Howard two days before shooting was to begin, and he cast the part of the High Lama twice before deciding on Sam Jaffe (the other two actors he had in mind, A.E. Anson and Henry B. Walthall, passed away before he could utilize their services). As stated, Colman was his first and only choice for the movie’s protagonist, Robert Conway (changed from Hugh in the novel), and though Colman was hesitant about Capra’s methods of film direction the two men eventually were able to form a rewarding collaboration.

The final cost to make Lost Horizon was $2,626,620. Its production history was a troubled one, which goes a long way in explaining why Capra went over budget and why ultimately his partnership with Columbia studio head Harry Cohn suffered a tremendous strain (Cohn’s insistence on edits to the film resulted in Capra’s filing suit against the studio that same year, charging “contractual disagreements”). Horizon’s snow scenes and aircraft interiors were shot inside the Los Angeles Ice and Cold Storage Warehouse, where the low temperatures wreaked havoc with the camera equipment; cinematographer Joseph Walker would discover to his horror that the extreme cold often damaged the film stock. The Streamline Moderne sets designed by art director Stephen Goosson had been constructed near the busy thoroughfare known as Hollywood Way, with the daytime activity forcing the production to shoot at night and accelerating overtime expenses. Other film locations included the Mojave Desert and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the cost of transporting cast, crew and equipment expanded the budget’s waistline as well.

There also were problems related to casting — Cohn hated Sam Jaffe as the High Lama (he thought Jaffe was too young and the makeup used to make him appear older unsuitable) and demanded that Capra replace Sam with Columbia stock thespian Walter Connolly. Capra succumbed to re-shooting all the Lama’s scenes (an additional expense was added in that Cohn also insisted on constructing an expensive new set to accommodate the switch), only to discover that Connolly-as-Lama simply didn’t work (Capra would remark later that Connolly was too hefty to play the part of a 200-year-old character who was supposed to be an ascetic). So Capra had to re-shoot the High Lama scenes upon the return of Jaffe and of the footage he shot, only 12 minutes of the Lama made it into the actual film. Overall, Capra’s insistence on shooting scenes using multiple cameras to cover multiple angles resulted in multiple zeroes being added to the final budget tally.

Capra’s “director’s cut” originally was six hours long, and though the studio toyed with the idea of releasing Lost Horizon in two parts, it was eventually whittled down to 3½ hours (by Capra and editors Gene Havlick and Gene Milford) for a 1936 preview in Santa Barbara, Calif. The audience reaction to that preview was disastrous (though in all fairness, it followed a showing of the comedy Theodora Goes Wild — a film Capra’s crew worked on during the delays in making Horizon) and Capra continued to hack away at his film, becoming more and more distraught in the process. By the time of its official release, Lost Horizon’s official running time was 132 minutes…and in its early engagements was promoted as a “roadshow release,” meaning that tickets had to be purchased in advance and that presentations were limited to two screenings per day. Capra would later argue that Cohn’s continued slashing of Horizon was perpetuated because the studio head wanted to guarantee more daily showings and generate the needed revenue for the expensive production. In its initial theatrical release, the critical response to Horizon was mostly positive despite its poor showing at the box office; the prestige surrounding the picture allowed it to snag seven Academy Award nominations (including best picture), winning for Goosson’s art direction and the best editing trophy for the team of Havlick and Milford.

Horizon only managed to pay for itself upon its re-issue in 1942, when it was re-titled The Lost Horizon of Shangri-La. Since it was being re-shown during wartime, Columbia cut a scene of Colman’s character drunkenly railing against war and diplomacy on the hijacked airplane — something the studio felt wouldn’t go over well with the pro-war sentiment at the time. A further re-trimming saw a slimmed-down version of the film in 1952 at 92 minutes, with the attitudes displayed toward the film’s Chinese characters muted (due to tension between the U.S. and China following World War II) and the “Communist” elements of the utopian society dissipated. The slicing and dicing of Lost Horizon over the years came back to haunt Columbia in 1967, when the original nitrate camera negative of the film has found to have deteriorated and no copies of the full length version of the film were known to survive.

The American Film Institute, beginning in 1973, conducted an exhaustive combing of film archives from around the world in an attempt to locate the missing elements. Their efforts resulted in the finding of a complete soundtrack of the 132 minute film, and all but seven minutes of the visual portion of Horizon. To compensate for the missing video, Columbia and the UCLA Film and Television archive filled in

the gaps with freeze-frame images from the movie and surviving production stills, and the resulting product (which was completed in 1986) was made available on DVD in 1999. The disc, in addition to commentary on the preservation of the film, also contained an “alternate ending” which director Capra wisely chose to excise from the finished product (it makes the established ending less ambiguous with regards to Conway’s rediscovery of his paradise, but doesn’t quite “sync” with the rest of the film). Interestingly, in that same year that the AFI's restoration mission began, a musical remake of the movie made the rounds in theaters, produced by Ross Hunter (his final film) and starring Peter Finch, John Gielgud and Liv Ullmann. Despite tuneful songs by Hal David and Burt Bacharach, the production was an unmitigated disaster — its disappointing box-office earned it the nickname “Lost Investment” and film critic John Simon famously suggested that the movie “must have arrived in garbage (cans rather) than in film cans.” Despite its inclusion in Michael Medved’s The 50 Worst Films of All Time, the 1973 Horizon developed a kitschy reputation among moviegoers that a MOD (manufactured on demand) DVD of the film was made available in October 2011.

As for the original, critical acceptance of Lost Horizon is somewhat split in today’s quarters, with classic movie fans on both sides of the fence as to its merits. Speaking only for myself, the realist in me is inclined to dismiss Horizon because I know that the utopian society depicted could never come to pass, owing to man’s innate venality and stupidity. But the idealist in me has an equally powerful opinion, and finds that watching the film is every bit as idyllic as the paradise that is its subject matter; in addition, I love the performances (it’s my favorite Ronald Colman film) and the cinematography, and think screenwriter Robert Riskin is in peak form (Sidney Buchman also worked on Horizon, taking no credit for rewriting much of the High Lama’s dialogue) — it’s a shame that the movie’s problematic history created a rift in the fruitful alliance between he and director Capra. “In these days of wars and rumors of wars — haven’t you ever dreamed of a place where there was peace and security, where living was not a struggle but a lasting delight?” the movie famously posits in an opening title…and each time I visit the cinematic environs of “Shangri-La,” I respond with a most emphatic “yes.”

Labels: 30s, Books, Capra, Fiction, Gielgud, Liv Ullmann, Movie Tributes, Musicals, Niven, Oscars, R. Colman, Remakes, T. Mitchell

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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.

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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Saturday, November 12, 2011

“It’s all perfectly clear to me — that adorable young thing is an unholy terror on wheels…”

By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
Beginning with Leathernecking, her feature film debut in 1930, actress Irene Dunne staked out a lengthy career in motion pictures starting out as the epitome of the noble, long-suffering heroine in “four-hanky” films such as Back Street, Magnificent Obsession and The Age of Innocence. She also brought with her extensive experience in musical theater. Her initial foray into movies resulted, as it were, from her successful turn as Magnolia Hawks in the 1929 touring production of Show Boat (a role she later reprised in a 1936 film adaptation, considered by many to be the most faithful) — she was spotted by a Hollywood talent scout during her Chicago stop with the show — and her fine voice was marvelously utilized in vehicles such as Stingaree, Sweet Adeline and the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musical Roberta in which Dunne croons the now-standard “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”

In 1936, Dunne was ready to tackle her first feature film comedy, something that made her apprehensive at the time and, even though she proved in movies such as The Awful Truth and My Favorite Wife (both directed by Leo McCarey), that she was a first-rate screen comedienne, she acquiesced later that “comedy is more difficult than drama,” adding: “An actress who can do comedy can do drama, but the vice versa isn’t necessarily true. Big emotional scenes are much easier to play than comedy. An onion can bring tears to your eyes, but what vegetable can make you laugh?” At the risk of being facetious and suggesting “zucchini” (it just sounds funny), none of this really matters in the long run…because 75 years ago on this date, Dunne and co-star Melvyn Douglas brought forth tears of laughter in a screwball comedy classic that seamlessly blends satire with romance: Theodora Goes Wild.

Lynnfield, Conn., brags that it’s “The Biggest Little Town in Connecticut” — but if you’ve ever spent time living in such a burg, you know that “everyone knows when the neighbors cough,” to quote a lyric from a song by the female country music duo Sweethearts of the Rodeo. Jed Waterbury, editor of The Lynnfield Bugle, has arranged for his paper to serialize the risqué (and best-selling) novel The Sinner, penned by mysterious authoress Caroline Adams and the local contingent of bluenoses — collectively known as the Lynnfield Literary Circle — is predictably up in arms at this development. Spinster sisters Mary (Elisabeth Risdon) and Elsie Lynn (Margaret McWade) marshal forces with town gossip Rebecca Perry (Spring Byington) to force Waterbury into ceasing publication; Perry even going so far as sending the book’s publisher, Arthur Stevenson (Thurston Hall), a scathing telegram (“Fewer and stronger words, I always say”). Rebecca also asks Mary and Elsie’s niece, Theodora Lynn (Dunne), to take some cookies to Rebecca’s daughter Adelaide (Rosalind Keith) when Theo announces her intention to pay her Uncle John (Robert Greig) a visit in New York City.

The trip to the Big Apple proves revelatory in two ways: first, Adelaide is staying with “wicked” Uncle John because her husband left her (her mother does not know she’s married) and she’s great with child. Second, the novelist known as “Caroline Adams” is none other than Theodora herself! She’s quite upset that Stevenson sold the serialized rights of her latest book to Waterbury and, worried that the town will discover the truth, she declares that her writing days are over. Stevenson tries to assuage her fears about her secret getting out, but the two are interrupted by the arrival of his wife Ethel (Nana Bryant) and Michael Grant (Douglas), the illustrator of “Caroline’s” novel. Ethel and Michael pressure Arthur into convincing Theo to spend the evening with them and after dinner, drinks (Theo orders straight whiskey when Michael challenges her strait-laced demeanor) and dancing, both Ethel and Theo end up spiffed. Stevenson must escort his wife home so he reluctantly entrusts Michael with the responsibility of putting Theo back on the train to Lynnfield. Instead, Theo is brought back to Michael’s Park Avenue apartment and when he tries to put the moves on her, she flees in terror.

Back home in the comfort food-environs of Lynnfield, Theo gets a surprise when Michael turns up unannounced and lands a position as her aunts’ unconventional gardener (threatening to blackmail her with Mary and Elsie by his presence). Michael’s involvement with and courtship of Theodora starts the town’s tongues wagging but after spending a good deal of time with him, Theo realizes she’s in love. She screws up the courage to reveal this to the Literary Circle (who are naturally scandalized by this news) but when she confesses her feelings to her would-be boyfriend he is far from enthused. As a matter of fact, he takes the first bus out of that biggest little town the next morning. Theodora chases after him, heading back to New York, where she learns that in his efforts to get her to shake off the stifling conformity that is small-town Lynnfield he has forgotten to “heal thyself.” Michael, though equally enamored of our heroine, is trapped in a loveless marriage with wife Agnes (Leona Maricle) — they are estranged but keep up the pretense in order to avoid creating a scandal that could torpedo his father’s political career (Pop, played by Henry Kolker, is New York’s lieutenant governor).

Theodora believes that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander: revealing that she is the Caroline Adams, she plays the role of the scandalized novelist and hints to an anxious press corps that she is more than just a houseguest in Michael’s apartment. Not only is Lynnfield’s populace traumatized by this turn of events, but Michael’s family is equally stunned, particularly when it is intimated that Theo will be named co-respondent in divorce proceedings involving Arthur and Ethel Stevenson. Things comes to a boil when Theodora crashes the Governor’s Ball and Michael, upset by her presence, orders her to go back home and stop making a fool of herself. (Embracing Michael one last time, the press gets a juicy photo of Theodora in the bargain, prompting wife Agnes to announce she wants a divorce.) Returning to Lynnfield, Theo is surprised to see that instead of being ostracized she is now welcomed by all as a celebrity — until she steps off the train cradling a newborn infant in her arms. The baby, of course, belongs to Adelaide Perry (who sneaks off the train with her husband in tow) but it puts a hilarious scare into the now-divorced Michael until Theo reveals the truth.

To my shame, I don’t always tout the charms of Irene Dunne as loudly as I do other film actresses and Theodora Goes Wild is a glaring example of my slackitude. Dunne is positively captivating as the small-town caterpillar who transforms into a gorgeous butterfly; every moment she’s onscreen it’s impossible to take your eyes off of her. Among the highlights of Theodora is her delightful drunk scene (rhumbaing with co-star Douglas) that’s a precursor to a similar sequence in the later Truth, and the moment she finally “goes wild,” sporting an eye-popping wardrobe (the outfit she has on when she sits at the piano in Douglas’ apartment is breathtaking) and giving the news hounds an earful about her life story while previewing her salacious “new book.” My favorite moment from Dunne is an admittedly quiet one when she’s visiting Uncle John and young mother-to-be Adelaide, apologizing for the state of the baked goods she brought from Adelaide’s mother: “Oh…by the way, your mother made some cookies for me…but I met a hungry man and he ate them all up.”

I’m on the record at my home base of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear as admitting that I’m not particularly a fan of Melvyn Douglas’ work (though it’s mostly his early films; he had a callowness that he later outgrew, becoming a first-rate character thesp in films such as Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Hud and The Candidate); in Theodora, however, he’s not too intolerable, apart from several scenes when he annoys everyone within earshot (both on and off-screen) with his incessant whistling. He gets in a funny line now and then; a real beaut is when he’s settling in to his new quarters in the Lynn family’s tool shed and, annoyed by the presence of Mary and Elsie, puns “Say, this place is crawling with aunts.” My reservations about Douglas aside, I think he acquits himself nicely in this one — his romance with Dunne is endearingly sweet and very believable, an attribute not always present in a majority of screwball comedies.

The believability of the romance against the background of spirited farce is the work of scenarist Sidney Buchman, who adapted Mary McCarthy’s original story and showcased an affinity for small-town life in such films as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and The Talk of the Town. (The notion of individuals trying to escape being smothered by conformity also is touched upon in Buchman’s screenplay for

1938’s Holiday.) Author Hal Erickson has argued that Theodora doesn’t quite play as funny as it once did “only because most of its satirical targets (notably the shocked spinster aunts) have ceased to exist.” I take exception to that: I grew up in a town very similar to the one in the film and recognized all of its archetypes, particularly the uptight prude (a great performance from December Bride's Spring Byington) who’s got a few skeletons in a closet of her own. (It’s like how the “preacher’s daughter” always turned out to be the wildest in your group of high school friends.) Complimenting Buchman’s screenplay is the polished direction of Polish émigré Richard Boleslawski, who had a brief Hollywood career helming notable films such as Rasputin and the Empress, Les Miserables and Three Godfathers until his life was cut short at the age of 48 in 1937. Theodora Goes Wild remains one of his best pictures; he has a splendid way of punctuating the comedy with cinematic devices such as intercutting close-ups of Lynnfield’s old biddies discussing the scandal that is Theodora with shots of cats licking their chops. The laugh-out-loud scene in Theodora for me is when the town’s resident bluenoses are discussing Theodora’s return to Lynnfield, decreeing that the townsfolk won’t “step foot in that depot” and then we fade in to a SRO crowd at the station, complete with signs (“Caroline Adams — We Welcome You” and “Welcome Theodora”) and a brass band.

The performances of Dunne and Douglas are complimented by a splendid array of character actors at a time in films when supporting players were the “glue” of any successful picture. Thomas Mitchell is super as the sarcastic editor Waterbury (I love when he tells off Byington in the depot scene that he’s responsible for the brass band: “Now you get a lawyer and try to stop me from spending my own money any way I like!”), Thurston Hall is solid as Dunne’s slightly shady publisher, and Robert Greig as the “black sheep” of the respectable Lynn family, Uncle John. I've already mentioned that Byington is a delight (her fainting reaction to the news that she’s a grandma is hilarious) but I really enjoyed the performances of veterans Elizabeth Risdon and Margaret McWade as Aunts Mary and Elsie. Prim, proper and ever-so-cautious about besmirching the family name, they eventually begin to thaw (and you can literally see this happening as they ride through Lynnfield with Theodora and the baby, with Elsie snapping "You'd think they'd never seen a baby before" and Mary returning “So help me Hannah…this town gets more narrow-minded everyday…”) because while nobody invites a “scandal,” families close ranks and stick together when the chips are down.

With the success of Theodora Goes Wild, Irene Dunne embarked on a new career in motion picture comedy (though she did continue in dramatic roles as well), and her utterly beguiling performance in Theodora nabbed her an Academy Award nomination as best actress, her second following her heralded turn in 1931’s Cimarron. Dunne is considered by many to be the best actress never to win an Oscar. She’d follow her Theodora accolades with three additional nominations for The Awful Truth (1937 — the film for which she should have won), Love Affair (1939) and I Remember Mama (1948). Theodora also picked up a best film editing nomination for Otto Meyer, who also was shut out from ever receiving an Academy trophy, receiving a second nomination for Talk of the Town. Meyer also worked on three additional pictures with Dunne — Penny Serenade, Together Again and Over 21.) Biographer Wes D. Gehring, author of Irene Dunne: First Lady of Hollywood, once remarked in a USA Today article: “I would be especially happy to join her in the screwball world of Theodora Goes Wild…and never come back…” That’s as fine a diamond anniversary tribute to a superlative example of the screwball comedy genre as could ever be, and I welcome readers to follow suit.

Labels: 30s, Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Irene Dunne, McCarey, Movie Tributes, Musicals, Oscars, T. Mitchell, Theater

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Thursday, September 15, 2011

After 40 years, I have far more than just one thing to say about Columbo

"That's me — I'm paranoid. Every time I see a dead body, I think it's murder.…But that's me. I'd like to see everyone die of old age." — Lt. Columbo, "Étude in Black" (Season 2, Episode 1)

By Edward Copeland
Actually, television audiences met Lt. Columbo three times before his series debut 40 years ago on this date as part of the NBC Mystery Movie — and the first time he wasn't even played by Peter Falk. Though most who are old enough probably remember the series as part of a Sunday night rotation with NBC's other mystery series, McMillan & Wife and McCloud, the "wheel" actually started on Wednesday nights. The troika didn't move to Sunday until the second season. As far as the Columbo character goes, actor Bert Freed first played

the cigar-chomping lieutenant in an episode of NBC's The Chevy Mystery Show , a summer anthology series hosted by Walter Slezak, that aired July 31, 1960, titled "Enough Rope." William Link and Richard Levinson, the creators of the Columbo character, adapted the teleplay from a story "Dear Corpus Delicti" that they published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine with Richard Carlson playing a murderous doctor. Two years later, the writers expanded the story into a stage play called Prescription: Murder which starred legendary Oscar-winning character actor Thomas Mitchell as Columbo with Joseph Cotten as the homicidal physician. By 1968, they decided to return Columbo to television with a movie version of Prescription: Murder. They sought Lee J. Cobb to play Columbo, but he was unavailable, but consider this frightening possibility: Their second choice was Bing Crosby. Fortunately, Bing's golf game proved more important to him than a television series and, though they thought he was too young for the part, Peter Falk

won the role with Gene Barry playing the killer. They did a second TV movie, Ransom for a Dead Man, that aired in early 1971 with Lee Grant as the murderer (for which she received an Emmy nomination), and come that fall Columbo became a regular series as part of that mystery wheel and Falk's portrayal of the scruffy homicide detective with his junky car, tattered raincoat and ever-present cigar became an irreplaceable TV icon. In the first season episode "Lady in Waiting," a socialite mother (Jessie Royce Landis) arrives at her son's mansion after he's been shot to death and doesn't immediately recognize exactly who or what Lt. Columbo is. When he introduces himself as a police detective, she says, "I must say you hardly look the role." That may have been true, but no one but Peter Falk could have played the role any better.

I was too young to catch the early years in first run, but I remember how excited Henry Mancini's spooky theme music for The NBC Mystery Movie with the unknown figure waving a flashlight in all directions at whatever shows were in the rotation at the time followed by the announcer's booming voice announcing, "Tonight's episode —" It always punctured my balloon if he finished his statement with McMillan & Wife, McCloud or even Hec Ramsey. Thankfully, in this example, it is Columbo.

If you have never seen an episode of Columbo (and if that's the case, I must ask what the hell you've been doing with your life), you needn't worry that for a mystery series I'm being so carefree in identifying the various killers because what made Link & Levinson's creation (in this case the series, not the detective) so great was that you know from the outset who the murderer is. Spoiler alerts aren't necessary here because Columbo begins by showing the culprit plotting and carrying out his and her crime and Falk's intrepid homicide detective doesn't

show up until later to play cat-and-mouse with the killer. In the first season, the movies (which, in essence, is what they were more than a series) ran 90 minutes with commercials while in later seasons they alternated between 90 minute and two hour installments. Sometimes, Columbo didn't turn up until as late as 30 minutes into the show. In the first episode when Columbo was a regularly scheduled series, "Murder By the Book," Falk's lieutenant first appears as a faint figure at the end of an office hallway as he approaches the wife (Rosemary Forsyth) of apparently kidnapped and possibly dead mystery writer Jim Ferris (Martin Milner), who is getting a drink from a water fountain. It's about 15 minutes into the story and the audience already knows that Ferris' soon-to-be-ex-writing partner Ken Franklin (Jack Cassidy) has lured Jim to his lakeside cabin, killed him and staged the entire kidnapping. Cassidy will be one of the show's favorite actors to cast as a killer: he'll play the villain two more times. Others in this rogues gallery include Robert Culp (three times as a murderer, once as the father of a murderer) and Patrick McGoohan (a killer four times, taking home Emmys for two of them; he also directed five episodes, one of which he wrote). It's also one of several Columbo mysteries that involve writers. Most interesting of all, the series premiere was written by the show's story editor at the time, Steven Bochco, who would go on to co-create Hill Street Blues, and was directed by a 24-year-old kid named Steven Spielberg.

Many directors whose names you'd recognize helmed a Columbo, though no one else who'd become a Spielberg. The other director who would probably go on to the most notable career would be Jonathan Demme, who directed an installment in its seventh season. Many known better for their acting gave it a try as well as some whose names might not ring a bell but who did direct some interesting features such as Jack Smight (No Way to Treat a Lady), Boris Sagal (The Omega Man), Richard Quine (My Sister Eileen, The Solid Gold Cadillac), Robert Butler (The Barefoot Executive, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes), Jeannot Szwarc (Somewhere in Time), Ted Post (Hang 'em High, Magnum Force) and James Frawley (The Muppet Movie). Other writers who would pass through included the prolific Stephen J. Cannell, Dean Hargrove, who went on to create or co-create The Father Dowling Mysteries and Matlock, and Larry Cohen who would go on to write and direct such quirky horror films as It's Alive and Q.

While the two previous made-for-TV movies had set the basic mold for what a Columbo mystery would be, it

truly wasn't until it became a regular network fixture that Falk could really cut loose as the lieutenant and the show could become a comedy as much as it was about catching the bad guy. That's really why I think Tony Shalhoub's Monk gets compared to Columbo so often — it's not because Columbo has a mental disorder but because Columbo and Monk both emphasize comedic elements. In fact, Monk tends to be more dramatic than Columbo with Monk's underlying mourning for his murdered wife while Columbo just got funnier the longer it went on. "Murder By the Book" really sets the template for the entire series and even if you have no interest in Columbo, it's fascinating to watch just as one of Spielberg's earliest credits. "Murder By the Book" opens with the sound of typing (sigh…typewriters) while the visual shows a car driving down an L.A. street. We soon see that Milner's Jim Ferris busily types away. On the wall, (Homage to Rear Window or not? You decide.) are plaques, painting and photos charting the partnership of Ferris and Ken Franklin (Cassidy). As the typing continues to be the only sound, the car we're watching pulls into the building's garage and parks on the roof. A hand reaches inside the glove compartment and removes a gun. A man exits

the car and shuts the door and we see it is Franklin whom Spielberg films at a low angle as credits continue. The director throughout the episode uses a lot more adventurous angles and quick cuts than I've seen from him in years, but he was young and trying to gain notice. Upstairs, something only a grammarian or a copy editor would notice — Ferris types a quote but places the period outside the quotation mark. It turns out the gun was a joke — it's not even loaded — and he's not wearing gloves. Franklin was just trying a good-natured ruse to show Ferris that there aren't any hard feelings about severing their partnership and asks him Jim to his lakeside cabin near San Diego to mark the end of a fruitful relationship. Ferris doesn't know that it also will mark the end of his life.

It's obvious why they would re-team Falk with an actor such as Jack Cassidy more than once because some performers' chemistry with Falk's Columbo reached a perfection that you expect came from a lab and since the interplay between the lieutenant and the killer drove the show, why not go back to a proven winner as they did with Cassidy, who would return in seasons 3 and 5. He might have appeared again if he hadn't fallen

asleep with a lit cigarette and died in 1976, 10 months after his third Columbo aired. Cassidy excelled at what was the most common Columbo scenario — a villain who's not only a killer, but a snob. In most cases, class comes into play with the murderer always assuming he or she is smarter and better than that rumpled lieutenant, but no one plays dumb on purpose better than this detective so when he makes the case on the cultured killer, they inevitably are surprised that this little man in the tattered raincoat, always seeming to be forgetful and driving that Peugeot 403 convertible that looks as if it could crumble into a million pieces at any moment beat them. In "Murder By the Book," it takes 35 minutes for Columbo to say his first, "There is one more thing." The comic highlight, harbinger of many to come in the series, occurs as Ken Franklin is being interviewed by a magazine writer and her photographer tries to take photos of him while in the background Falk does some great slapstick as Columbo, juggles an armful of books, cigar stuck in his mouth, looking for a place to put the books down.

The second episode of its first season had another three-time killer, Robert Culp, as Brimmer, the head of a big private investigation agency hired by Ray Milland to find out if his much younger wife (Patricia Crowley) is

cheating on him in "Death Lends a Hand," which won Columbo creators Levinson & Link the Emmy for outstanding writing in a drama series, the only writing Emmy the series ever received though it earned a lot of nominations in that category. Brimmer proves she did, but lies (with the wife in a nearby room) and says she's faithful. She asks why he would do such a thing. "Oddly enough, I'm a moralist," he tells her. So moral that he lied to her husband to hold the truth over her head so she can feed him information about her husband's powerful friends and business interests. She balks, saying she'll expose the private eye instead and he kills her in a rage — the cleanup and coverup of which gets wonderfully filmed as reflections in the lenses of Culp's glasses. He stages her death to look like she was

robbed and dumped in a vacant lot. Some interesting facts about L.A. life in 1971: 187 already was the police code for a homicide and when Brimmer tries to woo Columbo to take a job at his agency, Columbo learns a top position there can pull in $30,000 a year. That doesn't seem like much and in the first episode of season two, Columbo says his salary is $11,000 a year, which is the start of the poverty line for a single person today and the oft-mentioned Mrs. Columbo is a housewife. When they tried to spin her off in the form of Kate Mulgrew when Columbo ended the first time in 1978, she had a part-time job writing for a weekly neighborhood newspaper, until they decided to change her name to Callahan and forget that she was supposed to be related to Columbo at all (though at the start of Mrs. Columbo she even took their unnamed basset hound Dog with her).

Falk won the first of his four Emmys (out of 11 nominations) for playing Columbo for that first season. The sole time the show won an Emmy for best series, it actually was shared ith the other NBC Mystery Movie members for outstanding limited series. Throughout its two runs (the original NBC run from 1971-78 and the ABC return from 1989-2003), it earned 38 Emmy nominations and won 11 awards. Because of the shared time

slot, it also meant shorter seasons than a regular series. Where a normal network show would be producing around 26 episodes a year at that time, Columbo only had seven installments in season one. Some of the other actors who played killers that year were Eddie Albert, Ross Martin, Susan Clark (in "Lady in Waiting" which featured Leslie Nielsen when he could still play it straight and was directed by veteran actor Norman Lloyd, who fell off the Statue of Liberty in Hitchcock's Saboteur and would play Dr. Auschlander on St. Elsewhere), Patrick O'Neal, who played a homicidal architect in "Blueprint for Murder," the only Columbo episode that Falk directed himself, and perhaps most fun of all, Roddy McDowall in an episode titled "Short Fuse." Did you hear the one about the exploding cigar? You will in "Short Fuse," where we also learn aboute Columbo's famous fear of heights. Because McDowall's character Roger Stanford is a playboy and a prankster (oh — and there is that murder), he does fool around with things such as those cans that spray strings of sticky colored plastic. When Columbo snoops around his darkroom, he accidentally sets it off on himself and an entire scene consists of McDowall picking the goo out of Falk's hair.

As I mentioned when I sadly had to write my appreciation of Peter Falk when he passed away in late June, there was much more to the actor than just Lt. Columbo, as great and iconic as Columbo is. Between the time he made his first Columbo movie Prescription: Murder and prior to filming his second Ransom for a Dead Man and beginning the series, Falk began another important creative relationship — with John Cassavetes. The two actually had worked as actors in 1969 first in the Italian gangster flick Machine Gun McCain, which also featured Gena Rowlands but didn't open in the U.S. until October 1970. The important film they made together though was Husbands (subtitled A Comedy About Life, Death and Freedom) that was written and directed by Cassavetes and co-starred Ben Gazzara. Falk became a vital part of Cassavetes' unofficial repertory company appearing in A Woman Under the Influence, Opening Night (as himself) and Big Trouble. The two also co-starred in Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky. The Cassavetes troupe all played with Falk on Columbo in some capacity. Rowlands appeared as the wife of a killer, Gazzara directed two episodes and Cassavetes starred as the killer in the second season premiere, "Étude in Black," one of the series' best episodes thanks to chemistry these two fine actors already had with one another.

Cassavetes plays gifted conductor and composer Alex Benedict who kills his pianist mistress (Anjanette Comer) after she threatens to tell his wife Janice (Blythe Danner) about their affair if he doesn't leave her. Benedict

tries to make it look like a suicide, but Columbo sees through the ruse rather quickly. He and Mrs. Columbo also are big fans of Benedict, who is prepping a big concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The scenes between Cassavetes and Falk prove positively electric as their relationship switches from a killer who thinks Columbo's swooning will save him until he figures out that the lieutenant actually has more on the ball than he ever suspected and he starts challenging the cop to find the evidence. The episode has time for laughs as well as Benedict stumbles upon Columbo waiting for him on stage at the Hollywood Bowl playing "Chopsticks" on a concert piano. The cast also includes Myrna Loy as his mother-in-law and patron of the orchestra, concerned over the P.R. when another member of the orchestra who was the murdered woman's ex-boyfriend turns out to have a criminal past. Benedict defends the musician, telling the woman who played Nora Charles that it's not like she didn't drink gin during Prohibition. This excellent episode was written by Bochco from a story by Levinson & Link and was directed by none other Nicholas Colasanto, best known as Coach on Cheers. This also is the episode where Columbo gets the basset hound that he never bothers to give a name.

For a network series to have more good episodes than bad, especially when it involves a set formula that they didn't tinker with much, Columbo truly stands as a monumental television achievement. Of course, I refer only to NBC years from 1971-1978. In a way, they had the luxury that cable series have now by not having to deliver so many episodes a year. While they call it seven seasons, it only adds up to 45 episodes. The sixth season only produced three episodes and no season made more than eight. In a way, it was the Curb Your Enthusiasm of mystery shows: A formula and a limited number of shows per season. When ABC revived Columbo in 1989, they tried originally to pair it with other mysteries, but they all eventually flopped and it just turned into occasional movies. Some were OK, but they had a hard time getting worthy killers except for the two appearances by McGoohan and had some silly outing where Columbo went undercover in disguise with accents and one where there wasn't even a murder but a kidnapping. Faye Dunaway won a guest actress Emmy for what really was a controversial one, "It's All in the Game," because Columbo purposely lets the killer get away because of the victim's loathsomeness. They had two seasons where they were regularly scheduled between 1989 and 1991 and then just TV movies. They made 24 in all.

However, those first 45, I could go on about them all. While it wasn't unusual in the NBC version to have killers who turned out to be more sympathetic than their victims, Columbo still took them to jail. Donald Pleasence's wine maker in "Any Old Port in a Storm" may be the best example. His playboy half-brother plans to sell the vineyards to another wine company, taking away his pride and joy and he kills him in a rage. He also was one of the few cultured characters who didn't look down on Columbo. When his longtime secretary (Julie Harris) figures out his guilt, she proposes he marry her to keep her quiet. Columbo solves the crime first and he gratefully confesses — finding prison preferable to marriage. "Freedom is purely relative," he tells Columbo, who brings out a special bottle of wine when he arrests him, which his high tastes approve. "You learn very well, lieutenant," he says.

"Thank you, sir. That's about the nicest thing anyone has said to me," Columbo responds. All the Jack Cassidy episodes are great, but in the second outing, "Publish or Perish," it's neat to see him play a book publisher losing his biggest author and that they cast Mickey Spillane in the part. The episode also sends Columbo to Chasen's to interview some people and has the high-scale eatery whip him up some chili. Director Robert Butler also includes an imaginative triple split screen that shows Spillane's character at work dictating his book while the hired killer approaches down a hall and Cassidy is elsewhere, establishing his alibi. "Swan Song" from the third season proves to be another favorite of mine with probably the most unusual casting choice for a killer ever — Johnny Cash. He plays a gospel singer blackmailed by his controlling shrew of a wife (Ida Lupino) and turns in a solid acting performance. Cash's character drugs Lupino and a young girl singer that he had sex with when she was

underage so he drugs the two of them when they are flying to the next concert site and bails out of the plane, making it look like a simple plane crash. As Columbo investigates, an air crash investigator asks Columbo if he flies. "My ears pop in an elevator. In fact, I don't even like being this tall," he replies. I can't leave out Patrick McGoohan, always great, but of his four I think his first episode, the one that got him the first Emmy, "By Dawn's Early Light," ranks first. His strict commandant at a boys' military academy would be a great performance on any series. Some of the best guest killers whose episodes I didn't have time or space to mention in detail (original 45 only): Anne Baxter, Leonard Nimoy, Laurence Harvey, Martin Landau (as twins), Vera Miles, Jackie Cooper, José Ferrer, Richard Kiley, Robert Conrad, Robert Vaughn, Janet Leigh, Hector Elizondo, Ricardo Montalban, William Shatner, Theodore Bikel, Ruth Gordon, Louis Jourdan and Nicol Williamson.

If I had to pick, the fourth season episode "Negative Reaction" might be my favorite Columbo of them all. Written by Peter S. Fischer, who would later create Murder, She Wrote and directed by Alf Kjelllin, it cast Dick Van Dyke against type as an asshole and a killer — even if what little we saw of his wife (Antoinette Bower) made it appear as if she had it coming. Van Dyke plays Paul Gallesko, an acclaimed photographer

reduced to shooting portraits because he's under the thumb of his wife. He fakes her kidnapping and gets a recently released ex-con named Alvin Deschler (Don Gordon) he met while chronicling San Quentin to photograph possible houses for him to buy, unaware that Gallesko is setting him up to be the fall guy and eventually kills him and shoots himself in a faked ransom exchange gone awry. What makes "Negative Reaction" so great in addition to Van Dyke being a bad guy is that it also may be the funniest Columbo as well. When the lieutenant arrives in the beat-up Peugot at the junkyard where it was staged, he passes a sign that says "WE BUY JUNK CARS." It seems that Gallesko had an unexpected witness — a drunk bum played by character actor Vito Scotti who appeared in six episodes in vastly different parts. (In "Swan Song," he was a funeral director trying to sell Columbo on post-life planning.) After he gets sobered up and gives his statement, the police let him slip away and Columbo has to track him

down at a Catholic mission where a nun (Joyce Van Patten, who will return in a later episode as a killer) mistakes Columbo as a homeless person and tries to find him a new coat and gets him a bowl of stew. Columbo keeps trying to explain that he's not homeless, but the nun replies, "No false pride between friends." When he finally finds the bum and talks with him, the nun returns with a coat and tries to take his and Columbo finally says, "I appreciate what you're doing ma'am, but I've had this coat for seven years and I'm very fond of it" and shows her his badge. The nun assumes he's undercover and compliments his disguise and promises not to blow his cover. Gallesko certainly isn't as friendly as the nun every time Columbo pops up to dig. "You're like a little shaggy-haired terrier. You've got a grip on my trousers and you won't let go. I can't turn around without you looking up at me with that blank innocent expression on your face," Gallesko growls. One of the other things that bothers Columbo is that Deschler was taking cabs everywhere until the

last day, the day of the supposed ransom exchange, when he suddenly rented a car. It would have been a lot less expensive to rent a car earlier than taking all these cab rides, but then it dawns on the detective: He didn't have a driver's license yet. Columbo goes to the DMV to check it out and it turns out the man who gave him the driving test that day, Mr. Weekly (Larry Storch), is stuck out on a street because a car broke down. Columbo goes and picks him up to see if he can identify Deschler, but Mr. Weekly keeps being distracted over worries about the safety of Columbo's car and his reckless driving. It's a hysterical scene — and they chose to break for this bit of comedy with only 14 minutes left. On top of everything else, "Negative Reaction" contains one of those classic endings where Columbo tricks the killer by using his own arrogance against him to give himself away. That's why this YouTube clip of conductor Alex Benedict's parting words to Lt. Columbo sum him and his series up.

Labels: Bochco, Cassavetes, Demme, Dunaway, Falk, Ferrer, Hitchcock, Joseph Cotten, Landau, Lee J. Cobb, Loy, Lupino, Nielsen, Nimoy, Pleasence, Ruth Gordon, Shatner, Spielberg, T. Mitchell, TV Tribute

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# posted by Edward Copeland @ 9:00 AM 15 comments

Edward Copeland's Tangents

Monday, May 07, 2012

Love Story

Saturday, March 10, 2012

“Here’s my hope that we all find our Shangri-La…”

Sunday, January 08, 2012

Centennial Tributes: José Ferrer

Saturday, November 12, 2011

“It’s all perfectly clear to me — that adorable young thing is an unholy terror on wheels…”

Thursday, September 15, 2011

After 40 years, I have far more than just one thing to say about Columbo

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