Movie review - "Night of the Iguana" (1964) ****

 Tennessee Williams' last hit on Broadway was also his last hit in the cinemas. He's helped by gorgeous casting: Richard Burton as a defrocked priest (apparently the original choice was James Garner who wouldn't have been anywhere near as perfect), Ava Gardner as a lusty woman running a hotel in Mexco, Deborah Kerr as the seemingly prim woman with fire underneath.

I love its naughtiness - Sue Lyons is so keen to bonk Burton who's fighting her off, and Burton is this boozy loser who is still charismatic, and Gardner has these beach boys with maracas. A big role goes to Grayson Hall who is the antagonist, crucial to the story. John Huston clearly adores his characters and he's obviously loving working in Mexico.

This is a funny, fun joyous film. The constrant references to Burton sleeping with young girls is maybe a little dubious if you think about it too much. And like a lot of these William adaptations it's half an hour too long. But one of the best adaptations of the work - if you get the cating right there's a lot of fun to be had.

Movie review - "The Barefoot Contessa" (1954) ***

 Fascinating, flawed piece. Mankiewicz's attempt to do a cinematic All About Eve or his own version of The Bad and the Beautiful - it actually feels most like the latter, which was a version of Citizen Kane. This starts at a funeral of a movie star (Ava Gardner) and tells the story of her life, ish.

There's some memorable dialogue and acting and it was enjoyable, despite Mankiewicz's dodgy sexual politics - I know he used to root actresses with mental health issues eg Judy Garland.

It feels as though it needed an edit - the part played by Humphrey Bogart (who looks like he's dying) surely should have been combined with Edmund O'Brien and that character should surely be in love with Gardner and impregnate her.

There's not a lot of depth to Gardner's character, is there? She wants to fall in love before having sex. Marries an impotent man. Is there anything more?

Her character doesn't deserve to die. She is lonely. And gets shot because she has an affair. That feels so unfair. All the men live.

Key support roles feel undercast - Warren Stevens as Howard Hughes type, Marius Gordin as a Aly Khan type. (These roles feel as though they should be merged too). It takes some fun swipes at admittedly easy targets - film people, the idle rich, aristocrats.

Movie review - "Whistle Stop" (1946) **1/2

I wanted to enjoy this more than I did. Great things about it - small town atmosphere, some slangy Phil Yordan dialogue, atmospheric direction, and a top cast: George Raft, Ava Gardner, Tom Conway, Victor McLaglen. 

Raft is really too old to play a loser who is so irresistible to Gardner - either that or Gardner too young because she's beautiful and vivacious and way way too good for Raft's character. It would make sense if she hadn't left town but she'd been to Chicago and still wanted this guy back. A Raft ten years younger who still danced maybe....

But anyhow, it is good to see him. The plot felt patchy - McLaglen tries to persuade Raft to kill Conway, Gardner stops it, then Conway tries to frame McLaglen and Raft. Raft acts like an idiot for a long time. Really his character should have died.

The story was confusing - it probably should have been turned into a film noir, but they had this happy ending and all this set up. Or it could have been a melodrama built around Gardner but they had to give Raft a big part I guess. Still it's of interest in part because they don't make movies like this any more and the cast is full of so many icons.

Movie review - "Mogambo" (1953) ***1/2

Remake of Red Dust which works on its own terms - they keep the basic story but give it a fresh location, in Kenya, and while Clark Gable is back, his age means the interpretation of the role is very different.So too does the casting of Ava Gardner as Jean Harlow and Grace Kelly as Mary Astor.

This film needs stars to work and has great ones. Gable is perfect as an aging old rogue. I like Gardner as a shady lady off to see a Maharajah - her character is softened from Harlow, who was just a hooker; Gardner is given this backstory how her husband was killed in the war, and is basically a decent person. It's not as fun as the original but it does work on it's own terms.

Kelly is superb - the good girl with a fire in her loins. She really comes alive in her kissing scenes with Gable - she clearly wants him. It's very sexy. You can see why this turned her into a star and it's amazing MGM could never find her another role as good (she would be wasted in decorative parts and play her great roles outside the studio).

The location shooting in Kenya helps and it's nice that Kelly's husband Donald Sinden is on a science exploration not shooting people. Africa seems genuinely dangerous here - snakes everywhere, rain, hot weather. The blacks of course don't get much of a look in.

It doesn't feel obviously like a John Ford movie. But it is enjoyable.

Book review - "Seduction" by Karina Longworth

I got into Longworth's work via her excellent "You Must Remember This" podcast - a really fresh way of looking at old Hollywood. In particular recommend her episodes on Raquel Welch and Charles Manson. The standard has dropped off a little in recent months, I think because her focus has been on this book.

Another look at Howard Hughes, you might ask? There's a lot of them. The fresh take here is that Longworth looks at him from the female point of view - his first wife, Billie Dove, Jean Harlow and the many that came afterwards - Ava Gardner, Linda Darnell, Jean Peters, Katherine Hepburn, Faith Domergue.

The material at the beginning and end of the book - the start and end of Hughes' life - is solid, though not exceptional. Where it gets exceptional is looking at the women - not so much the first wife (I get the impression Longworth didn't care much about her) but Billie Dove onwards. In particular there are some superb pieces on the acting and persona of Jane Russell, Jean Peters (the first decent writing I've read on Peters), and Terry Moore (ditto).

Well researched. Engrossing. Made me want to revisit many of the films. Terry Moore and Peters should be better known as actors among film buffs - their work was really varied.

Book review - "The World and Its Double: The Life and Work of Otto Preminger" by Chris Fujiawara

To say Preminger has a variable reputation is putting it mildly - before I'd seen any of his movies I was familiar with several stories: a harsh bully on set, a brave fighter of censorship, capable of making classics and an inability to direct comedy.

All the stories turned out to be true. There were many fine things about Preminger: the man had guts; he was a fighter; he had some admirable progressive politics (I stress the word "some" - Robert Mitchum called him a "Jewish Nazi"); he took on the censor board; he made some great movies; he had a surprisingly large amount of success on Broadway; he was a decent actor.

Other things were less admirable - he was a horrid bully - not for the benefit of the work, he clearly did it for his own sadistic enjoyment, especially to tyro actors (Jean Seberg, Tom Tyron, John Philip Law); he couldn't direct comedy; his last batch of movies were stinkers; he was possibly a better producer than director.

He's a flawed, fascinating figure and he gets a very good book from Chris Fujiwara. It focuses on Preminger's art as director - there's lots of discussion how scenes are framed and camera movement and so on which to be honest I wasn't that interested in; I was more into the biographical stuff.

I didn't realise how many financially unsuccessful films Preminger made at Fox - Zanuck seemed to like him though (he'd fired him earlier but rehired him and enjoyed success with Laura); he was the ing of the noirs for a while but his great days were from the early 50s to early 60s where he seemed to hit the zeitgeist: The Moon is Blue was just sexy enough, The Man with the Golden Arm was just gritty enough, Advise and Consent just political enough, Anatomy of a Murder was just legal enough etc etc. He tried to keep up with changing times but ultimately didn't get the new liberation - also he was old.

Interesting bloke, interesting book.

Movie review - "Seven Days in May" (1964) ***1/2

The 70s didn't invent paranoid thrillers - this is one that stemmed from the early 60s anti-Commie nutbag generals running loose. You think today is a divisive time but back then there was everything we have now and nuclear weapons.

Frederic March is an unpopular president determined to push a nuclear treaty with the Russians through. Burt Lancaster is fabulous as a general who is secretly plotting a coup with Kirk Douglas solid in the thankless role of the officer who figures it out.

The best bit about this is the first half as Douglas figures out - relatively quickly, I should add - what's going on, and March and his team of advisers figure out what the hell to do. It's all very early 60s adult, which means a lot of craggy character actors smoking and black and white photography. Ava Gardner's part - an ex flame of Lancaster's - feels badly "tacked in" to get some glamour.

The film suffers in the second half when Douglas pretty much disappears from the action and it becomes more about March and Senator Edmund O'Brien trying to stop it. Also once they figure out a coup was on I always got the impression everyone wasn't in that much danger... maybe when Martin Balsam dies, that was a bit of a threat to democracy, but the plotters were remarkably passive. I mean, heaps of officers must've been involved in the coup - none of them did anything?

This is one of those movies that could be remade - you use the powers of the plotters more, have them try to kill people (I think Balsam's death is an accident).

Awesome cast - people like John Houseman and Hugh Beaumont (as a Bill O'Reilly type figure) add class to little roles.

Book review - "The Life and Times of Mickey Rooney" by Richard Lertzman and William Birnes

Rooney was a fascinating star - someone who was born in a trunk, acting from the age of 2, a headliner at 3, a film star at six (in a series of short films), then washed up at 11, rediscovered by MGM and Max Reinhardt (who put him in Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream), became a star again at MGM particularly as Andy Hardy but also in a series of musicals with Judy Garland. By the end of the 1930s he was the biggest star in the US.

Rooney found the perfect studio in MGM - Louis B Mayer loved Americana and musicals, and Rooney thrived in both genres. He also did well in schmaltzy dramas such as Boys Town and The Human Comedy. Rooney earned a lot of money but spent it just as fast, on loans and gambling and other bad habits. He womanised like there was no tomorrow but fell for Ava Gardner before she was famous. His popularity began to ebb as he got older and he missed two crucial years of his career serving in the army.

Nonetheless he was still a draw when he came back - some of his post war films were popular such as Love Laughs at Andy Hardy and (surprisingly) Killer McCoy, where he played a boxer. Summer Holiday and Words and Music lost money however and Rooney and MGM parted ways - a stupid decision on Rooney's part because he missed out on the studio pension. He also ventured into independent filmmaking for which he was temperamentally unsuited and was soon washed up as a major star. Does anyone remember Quicksand, The Fireball, He's a Cockeyed Wonder, My Outlaw Brother, The Strip, Sound Off, Off Limits, All Ashore, A Slight Case of Larceny, Drive a Crooked Road, The Atomic Kid?

But he was still Rooney, still very talented, with a phenomenal work ethic. He did TV, radio, Las Vegas, made a reputation as a character actor (The Bridges at Tokyo Ri, Requiem for a Heavyweight). He was never out of work. A good thing too for his private life was a mess - constantly getting married and divorce, always burning through money, associating with gangsters (he played Vegas a lot and was always in hock to dodgy people) - a lot of people he knew wound up murdered, such as business managers and one wife.

Things turned around in the 1970s - Rooney had a run of genuine good film roles (The Black Stallion, Bill) and a stage smash with Sugar Babies. This earned him a fortune - which he proceeded to blow. His last years were a depressing mixture of lawsuits and allegations of dementia and elder abuse - one was never sure what Rooney was genuinely suffering and what he was making up.

This isn't a fun book - for all his talent Rooney seems to have been a pretty appalling person, constantly making stupid decisions and pronouncements, grasping for cash, turning on those who loved him, generally being insufferable. It's very sordid with it's gangsters, gambling, murder, abuse, dashed hopes and dreams. Rooney never learns his lesson and keeps making the same mistakes so he's a frustrating person to follow.

The book felt well researched though maybe over reliant on secondary sources. It "goes there" - there's descriptions of Rooney's lovemaking with Gardner including about her nipples. I wish they'd referred to primary sources more such as studio documentation. But generally this is a good book.

As an aside - I've sometimes wondered whether Rooney's status as a star could've been maintained after World War Two. If he'd stayed at MGM longer and they'd looked after him. It was a challenging time for Hollywood and Dore Schary was never going to be an exec who liked stars like Rooney but MGM did still make musicals and comedies. The last proper Andy Hardy film made a comfortable profit - I think it was a big mistake to end the series; there were plenty of stories to be had with Andy going through college, becoming a young lawyer and getting married. I'm not saying it wouldn't be a challenge but I think it could've been done. Anyway, we'll never know...

Movie review - "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" (1972) **

I think John Milius was a hard writer to film - at his best he wrote in such a big flamboyant style, that he needed characters and handing to match. Milius the director was never up to Milius the writer - he never quite conveyed visually the grandiosity of the scripts. Francis Ford Coppola got it right in Apocalypse Now but he's one of the few. (Just like Brian de Palma is one of the few directors to do justice to the operatic nature of David Mamet's writing.)

I can understand why they would have thought John Huston was ideal to direct The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean - like the central character, Huston was a rogue, a womaniser, a teller of tall tales. But the film he turned in is a sober, buttoned down version, with Paul Newman miscast in the lead. Oh he gives a nice enough performance, hitting all his marks, even being quite effective in the quieter moments - but he's still Paul Newman. You never believe he was an outlaw, or would grow a big beard, or be a megalomaniac. Huston himself actually would have been a better choice.

The plot consists of a series of vignettes - Bean's arrival in town, his revenge on the people who try to kill him, hanging murderer Tab Hunter (an effective performance), meeting reverend Anthony Perkins, getting a bear from John Huston, cavorting with said bear and beautiful Victoria Principal while a song plays on the soundtrack in a scene that throws back to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, taking on an albino gunman (Stacy Keach in perhaps the best bit in the film), knocking out Roddy McDowall, trying to visit Lily Langtry, losing Principal. 

The final act, where McDowall becomes an unconvincing villain and Bean/Newman returns to help his daughter, the not terribly American Jacqueline Bisset, feels very tacked on and is likely to try your patience - though I did like the epilogue with Ava Gardner as Langtry.

I get the feeling the filmmakers were torn about how "likeable" to make Bean. He needed to be compelling but he isn't. Victoria Principal is beautiful but it's a terrible role - pretty adoring simpleton who dies, like Debra Paget in Broken Arrow. There doesn't seem to be any real build - it's not about bringing justice is it, since Bean is mostly lining his own pockets.

I should add though, the script was a lot of fun to read, and some people love the movie. I just didn't enjoy much watching it.

Movie review - "Ghosts on the Loose" (1943) **

Bela Lugosi and the East Side Kids were well liked enough as a team in Spooks Run Wild for Sam Katzman and Jack Dietz at Monogram to reunite them in another comedy-horror. Well, comedy-thriller is probably more accurate, as this one has the Kids bust a Nazi spy ring.

The plot revolves around the wedding of one of the kids' sister - she's played by Ava Gardner! And she was stunningly beautiful even then. Unfortunately both Bela and Ava are hardly in it; most of the action consists of the East Side Kids poking around an old house, wondering if it's haunted, and the Nazis trying to scare them away.

There's not really enough story here for a feature - it's about 20 minutes worth. We do get the East Side Kids singing in a choir (for the wedding), some funny stuff as they help prepare the wedding - this whole film probably should have revolved around the wedding. Its a bit piss weak that all the Nazis are up to his printing propaganda leaflets - they should be making bombs and/or kidnapping or something.

Very light but amiable. Tom Weaver got stuck into this film in his book Poverty Row Horrors but I didn't mind it. Too light to be offensive.

Movie review - "The Cassandra Crossing" (1976) ** (warning: spoilers)

A relic of its era, and as a result it has a certain charm: a Europudding all-star disaster film about a virus loose on a train travelling through Europe, with a cast that features something for everyone: Richard Harris (then at the height of his weird 70s career as an action star, that also included Golden Rendezvous and The Wild Geese) as a doctor; Sophia Loren in a role that is actually superfluous to the plot even though the producer was her husband (this happened surprisingly often in Loren films producer by her husband); Lee Strasberg in just his second film role as a Jew who doesn't want to go to Poland and who makes the inevitable comments about gas, camps and showers (were there no other offers after Godfather Part 2?); Lionel Stander as a porter in a part that led to his casting in Hart to Hart; OJ Simpson as a priest but actually an FBI agent; Harris' then-wife Ann Turkel as a singer with long hair and a tendency to be seen in bikini briefs despite the fact the movie is mostly set on a, well, train; Ava Gardner as a woman of mystery accompanied by a drug addicted toy boy Michael Sheen (wide-eyed and long haired and quite good); Burt Lancaster as a general quite willing to have the train go off a bridge so that America's involvement in germ warfare won't be exposed. 

(There's a strong strain of anti-Americanism through the movie which may have helped up the American bagging of the film... a similar thing happened with the much superior Quantum of Solace.)

It's a bit of a mess of a movie with a bunch of subplots and no one seems really at home but everyone appears to try. I think it was a mistake to stop the train and have everyone inspected- it slowed down momentum. And the ending isn't that satisfying - I wanted Lancaster to get more of a come uppance or to more clearly get away with it.

The film does get points for sending half the train over the bridge and killing heaps of passengers. And that cast is always likeable.

Movie review - "The Killers" (1964) **1/2

For a long time the reputation of this movie lived in the shadow of the more famous 1946 version (which made Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner stars) but it has risen in recent years. I wasn't wild about it, though it has an amazing cast, led by Lee Marvin in outstandingly good form. Maybe modern day viewers are attracted to the idea of rehabilitating its reputation as well as the misogyny in the story (a lot of cult films are misogynistic).

The idea of the killers looking into the past of the man they have killed may have seemed fresh, but having raised a vaguely plausible reason for them to bother - they are keen to get their hands on a million dollars - this is basically dropped and it feels like the killers investigate out of interest, which doesn't make sense. While Lee Marvin's performance is excellent it's just weird that he's acting like a cop and also that Clu Gulager (as his very 60s hitman offsider - sunglasses, talking jive) goes along with it.

Its not really a complex story: a woman is responsible for all the bad things, here played by Angie Dickinson. She's mistress to Ronald Reagan, but leads on driver John Cassevetes, and eventually betrays the latter. Everyone gets what's comin' to 'em.

Dickinson is beautiful, Cassevetes does the doomed tormented victim thing, Norman Fell and Claude Akins flesh out the support cast. There are some effective moments, such as the finale, lots of slapping and the opening scene where Marvin and Gulager threaten a school principal then make their very public way to track down Cassevetes (NB I thought hired killers were a bit more subtle). But it's an ugly looking movie - with garish colour and that flat Universal TV appearance - and Ronald Regan isn't that good, despite the novelty of him playing an out and out baddie.

Movie review - "Ride Vaquero" (1953) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

Robert Taylor in his anti-hero mode - he's a dangerous gunfighter aligned with a coarse, ruthless Mexican bandit (Anthony Quinn hamming it up in fine style). It's set in New Mexico, where the Mexicans are getting annoyed at the whites moving into their territory after the Civil War - as led by settler Howard Keel and his wife. So the Mexicans are the baddies, really - rather like the cattlemen in Shane, standing in the way of progress, which is a bit dodgy. They are loud, rumbustious thieves partial to using the gun. The Anglos are victims and on the side of law and order - there's none of the complexity of, say, Broken Arrow.

Taylor kind of gets the hots for Ava Gardner but the love triangle here is really between Keel, Taylor and Quinn, with Quinn and Keel battling over Taylor. Quinn goes into a big sook when he thinks Taylor has changed sides - he's like a lover scorned. Taylor talks about how he and Quinn used to share a bed growing up. Both men end up killing each other. Gardner does kiss Taylor - but then he slaps her. Because you know, that's not on. The Western has to be the most homoerotic genre in the history of American cinema.

Taylor is quite effective wearing a bit of stubble and glowering in black, even if he doesn't really look like someone who's lived among Mexicans his whole life. Quinn channels the ghost of Wallace Beery and has a good old time, and Keel is solid in a role that isn't that big (it would have been a better film if there had been more shades to his character - or if they had combined the characters of Gardner and Keel into one). Ava Gardner is wasted. Jack Elam is fun. There is a wise Mexican Catholic priest who hangs around being the conscience for everyone, who gets on the nerves and smacks of the influence of John Farrow.

Movie review - "The Little Hut" (1957) *1/2

This has a reputation of being a flop, but it actually turned a tidy profit - due, one supposes, to the drawing power of its three stars and the fact its play source was so successful. 

It's heavy going, though - 1957 was too early to properly adapt the story, and so the censor's influence is all too felt. David Niven and Ava Gardner haven't been having an affair - Niven's just wanted to, but hasn't acted on it, despite the fact best mate Stewart Granger doesn't seem that interested in Gardner. Gardner enjoys having men chase after her but things with Niven don't progress beyond kissing.

Niven and Gardner were famous for their sexual exploits in real life, which adds a bit of tang to the story. Gardner's hard living was beginning to catch up with her (her figure was starting to fill out), but she's very sexy with that husky voice, and she takes to island life with disarming ease - putting a flower in the hair, wearing a swimsuit most of the time, enjoying the men chasing after her. Her eyes light up at male attention, helping give this some badly needed sexual undertones.

Granger and Niven are professional but the material defeats them. It's so light and weak - there's this extended sequence where they do a mock divorce being particularly painful. 

No one acts like a recognisable human being: not Niven with his love from afar, Granger with his reactions to Gardner's flirting, the fact the whole affair is "pretend", the trio on the island. The studio setting gets annoying after a while (surely they could have at least stumped up for some second unit)

Walter Chiari pops up as the fourth member of the cast - she and Gardner had an affair in real life.

 This shouldn't have been made until a few years later when the censors would have allowed a bit more freedom. Or until they could have gotten a better adaptation.

Movie review - "The Sun Also Rises" (1957) **

One of Daryl Zanuck's super productions when he was an independent producer - an all star cast, literary background, CinemaScope, racy subject matter, exotic locations, expensive look, one of his mistresses in a prominent role. For the most part the handling is all wrong in this version of Hemmingway's famous early novel - it's not really a Cinemascope story, even if the Paris and Spanish locations are pretty. It's not an epic tale rather one of a group of friends.

Some of this is hideous - the awful exposition of Power's first scene with a soldier, Power and Mel Ferrer's first scene. It's too reverential and important when these people are not really important. A lot of the casting is weak - Mel Ferrer is a poor actor, Tyrone Power does his best in what is a horrible role (how do you make impotence interesting?), Eddie Albert is whatever, Robert Evans is spectacularly bad (he has this laughable goofy look on his face - I can't believe they didn't cast a European in this time when European heartthrobs were emerging on the Continent). Juliette Greco is fine but she comes on with this big entrance and you think she's going to be a major character then she disappears. No one looks like a writer except maybe Albert, and he just looks like a cheerful newspaper reporter.

Ava Gardner is perfect as Brett - well, not exactly perfect, she's not vaguely English, but she's got the earthy, love hungry quality of the part down pat. (In real life she would develop a taste for bull fighters). I believed her love for Tyrone Power - and his for her. (Didn't quite buy her as a nurse, though).

As for Errol Flynn... Well, his presence is striking and he gives a good performance, all elegant wastrel, a drunken gentleman. I'm not sure he gives the right performance though - it doesn't make sense that Garner would want to marry him, he looks so wrecked and drunk and awful, no sexual threat (especially once we know he's broke). It's fascinating work, he has a few good moments - drunken self-pitying scenes - but for me he threw the film off balance. He fitted in a lot better in The Roots of Heaven.

Occasionally this does hit the mark - when the friends are walking around, talking to each other, having drinks, deciding which party or club to go to, running into old acquaintances, squabbling, falling in love with the one girl, etc. It was then the film created that vibe of schoolies, or ending exams, or just a big Friday or Saturday night - guys cruising on the town, looking for something and never quite finding it. And I couldn't help feeling it's a shame this novel was never filmed by someone like say John Cassevetes or Peter Bogdanovich - someone good with male ensembles and actors and atmosphere, something this lacks.

It's worth seeing if you're a fan of Flynn or Garner, or Hemmingway and don't mind seeing what they did to his novel. All others better skip it.

Book review – “Rage and Glory: The Volatile Life and Career of George C Scott” by David Sheward

I wondered why Scott never inspired a biography until now – he was a genuine box office star for a time there as well as being one of the most critically acclaimed actor of his generation, and a very colourful character. Maybe he was just too much of a wanker – constantly smacking women and getting drunk on location, wasting his talent in inferior films. I’ve always wished there was one, because he did an excellent interview reproduced on the Images website which piqued my curiosity. 

 

Scott discovered acting while studying journalism at the University of Missouri; his first acting job was the defence lawyer in The Winslow Boy and it’s not hard to imagine even a green George C Scott being sensational in the role. It’s hard to break into acting but easier for good looking, masculine men with tremendous presence – there’s always jobs going for bosses and presidents.

 

He married while still at uni (to an actor), soon fathering two children. This didn’t stop him from going off to New York to establish himself as an actor with his girlfriend (another actor), leaving the wife and kids back home. The girlfriend got pregnant, so Scott hit her and later tried to smother her with a pillow. Both the wife and girlfriend left him (and remarried), then Scott got married again (a third actor) and became a father again. 

 

A second move to New York saw his career finally take off via an impressive turn on stage as Richard III. He soon established himself off Broadway (William Goldman says when he saw him on stage in Children of Darkness it was like being hit with a powerful force, a recognition of greatness, only comparable to Al Pacino in The Indian Wants the Bronx and Brando in Streetcar). There was also small screen success in the Golden Years of TV. He left wife number three and their child for Colleen Dewhurst (another actor).

 

During all this time Scott was always getting drunk and into fights – he would hit strangers in bars, his wives and girlfriends. He constantly cheated (he tried to leave Dewhurst for Ava Gardner and later left her for another actor, Trish Van Dere), brawled (he seriously beat Gardner and Dewhurst) and gave magnificent performances. Always respected as an actor, for a brief moment Patton turned him into a genuine box office name and he enjoyed some follow up hits (The Hospital and New Centurions) before a series of flops reduced his status as a star… although never as a name actor. (He turned down a number of major films including Network and The Godfather.) He constantly returned to stage, having two big hits in Plaza Suite and Sly Fox. In the 80s and 90s the quality of his output (performances and works in which he appeared) steadily declined, but he remained in demand until his death.

 

I don't think I've ever read a biography were I kept thinking "this guy should have gone to gaol". A month or two behind bars in the 60s might have done Scott the world of good. Obviously a tormented man, but even after reading this I'm not sure why - I don't think Sheward is, either. But being a good biographer (solid research, lucid writing) he sets out the facts as best he can and lets the reader draw his own conclusions. The million dollar question - would Scott have been as good an actor without his demons?

 

It's a thorough overlook of Scott's life and career - marriages, family, kids, houses, directorial career (a lot more extensive than I'd thought). Sheward is particularly strong on theatre, with lively recreations of some of Scott's productions, including working with Nathan Lane, Larry Gelbart, etc. Scott was intelligent - but not as intelligent as I think he needed so be. Certainly not enough to lay off the booze or be a decent producer. Marvellous actor, though.

Radio review - Lux - "Showboat" (1952) ***1/2

Because radio is such an intimate medium, adaptations of musicals don't always work, especially when they're loud, like Showboat. Still, it's interesting to listen to, particularly as many of the cast from the MGM film version repeat their performances: Howard Keel (he's very loud for radio), Kathryn Grayson, William Warfield, Ava Gardner (do they actually use her voice here as she sings? She sounds fine), Marge and Gower Champion (I don't know why they bothered having these two, actually, as we can't see them dance - they do sing a song but it's not the same). Famous tunes, 'Ole Man River' and 'Can't Help Lovin' that Man' make an appearance, among others, meaning the story is cut right to the bone, but it works well enough. Producer Arthur Freed appears at the end to talk a bit about the movie.

Book review – “Farley Granger: Include Me Out” by Farley Granger

David Shipman once brilliantly summed up Granger’s career along the lines of “he was a nice looking kid with a neat line in wealthy weaklings and underprivileged heroes; another Clark Gable he wasn’t”.

Granger had one of those dream starts to a movie career – acting in a school play he was spotted by a talent scout, who signed him to Sam Goldwyn; he was loaned out to play male juvenile parts in prestige productions from Lewis Milestone (The North Star, The Purple Heart); his career was interrupted by war service, but it was pretty cruisy war service on Hawaii, then he went back to Goldwyn who loaned him out to Nick Ray to make They Live By Night, which took aged to be released but was seen widely around Hollywood, including by Alfred Hitchcock who cast Granger in Rope. Duly impressed, Goldwyn then tried to launch Granger as a major star in a series of flops (The Real McCoy, Enchanted); Hitchcock gave his career a spark with Strangers On a Train, but then it was more flops (The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing). Visconti used him for another classic, Senso, then some more flops saw him flee to live TV and a fairly average stage career. He’s still around, doing bits and pieces – TV, dinner theatre, soapies, etc.

Granger was also bisexual, which presumably prompted the publication of this book. He lost his virginity to a woman then a man the one night in Hawaii, then went back and forth between the sexes for a few years before settling down with a man. Among his relationships: Arthur Laurents, Lenny Bernstein, Ava Gardner, Shelley Winters, Jerome Robbins and Jean Marais; he knocked back Noel Coward, which seems just rude.

You don't think of Granger being a bad actor - indeed, he's been good in everything I've seen him in. But he really was a character actor rather than a star - he projected weakness rather than strength; he's best as someone to whom things happen as opposed to someone who makes things happen. Granger never seemed to recognise this about himself; indeed, he doesn't really have an idea about how he fit in the Hollywood scheme of things (he seems to imply that the drop in his film career was not due to his flops but rather due to (a) being blacklisted for turning down the lead role in The Egyptian, and (b) wanting to do theatre and TV work in New York).

He's also a bit of a whinger - whingeing about how Goldwyn misused him (to be fair, most of Goldwyn's films post-Best Years of Our Lives were pretty crappy, but Granger wouldn't have had any sort of career without him), about how restrictive star contracts were, about how his old Hollywood directors didn't offer him roles in the 60s. 

 

He spends too much time talking about his not very interesting adventures in the TV and theatre trade during the 50s to 70s, and about his travels in Europe. In contrast, he mentions his work in a Trinity film in one sentence - surely this was worth one anecdote? - and is surprisingly brief about his work in the Hitchcock's. It's like he's gone "I'm going to put things in proper perspective and not just concentrate on the well known stuff" - but the stuff that isn't well known isn't very interesting. (The exception was his piece about his panic attacks working on a soapie.) 

 

It was an interesting read, especially as you don't get careers like Granger any more - I just wish it had been more thoroughly edited.

Radio review – Lux - “Singapore” (1947) **1/2

Fred MacMurray isn’t the most ideal hero for a tale of amnesia and smuggling in the third world (it should have been Alan Ladd or Bogart or someone), but Ava Gardner is a perfect female lead, and the story isn’t bad. It works a lot better here than in the Errol Flynn remake Istanbul because of the whole fall of Singapore thing – that was a real excuse to bail on a country. Good junky exotica entertainment with a miscast star.

Radio review – Lux - “Whistle Stop” (1946) **

The introduction to this drama continually emphasises how popular the film version is at the box office – is that true or where they self conscious about adapting essentially a B picture? Mind you, it’s a B picture that has achieved some renown because it gave an early break to Ava Gardner – who doesn’t reprise her role here, Evelyn Keyes does. Alan Ladd steps in to George Raft’s role as a small town loser – he’s very effective, better than Raft. The rest of it is a decent enough drama, a sort of quasi-film noir.