Movie review - "The Spoilers" (1930) ** (warning: spoilers)

 First sound version of the famous tale. Not very widely seen. Not bad. Confusing. Gary Cooper has youthful charisma. He still plays a sook when he thinks a woman has betrayed him.

Cooper aside lacks stay power - Kay Johnson is a bland heroine, Betty Compson a dull saloon gal, William Boyd a bland baddie. The death of Cooper's friend had an impact. The brawl at the end is fine.

Director Edwin Carewe doesn't do much of a job. The tension going to sound is an issue but the movie didn't have to be as confusing as it was.

Book review - " Strictly Dynamite The Sensational Life of Lupe Velez" by Eve Golden

 I'm mostly familiar with Velez as a punchline in various Hollywood stories - rooting Gary Cooper, marrying Johnny Weismuller, Mexican Spitfire movies being on a double bill with Magnificent Ambersons, suicide in Kenneth Anger's book. So I'm glad Golden gave her a bio.

She did a good job. There's probably a few too many reviews and recaps but a strong picture does emerge. Velez was lively, fun, nice, with a sex drive... she became a star quite quickly (stage appearance, then picked in The Gaucho) and Golden argues she had potential to do more than she did. I haven't seen enough of her work to comment but she definitely kept employed for her life as a name, which is not be be sneezed at.

Golden admits that Velez maybe wasn't her own best ally - she kept leaping from bad relationship to relationship, was involved in domestic violence situatiosn - but the author makes a good case as to Velez films to check out, which I will. She made a lot of them and not many are well known.

The ending is moving. The suicide seems to have  caused by a number of things - pregnant, getting old, career going downhill.

Book review - "Wild Bill Wellman : Hollywood rebel" by William Wellman Jnr

 Not bad look at the life of the should-be-better-known director. I would've liked more personal insight and memoir of the writer's relationship him being his son. It waffles on a bit - for example there's a lot of plot recapping. The book could've done with a more vigorous edit.

Still, Wellman's an interesting guy - war service, great skill as a director. He seemed to make a classic every five films or so.

Movie review - "They Came to Cordura" (1959) **

 Odd choice for an epic from Columbia, who were presumably influenced by the fact they could have one of their great old stars, Rita Hayworth, a legend star, Gary Cooper, and Robert Rossen, who'd made All the King's Men (and I guess Island in the Sun had been a big hit). 

Set in Mexico during the Pancho Villa expedition, Gary Cooper is an officer who while supposed to have been a coward is shown to be brave and professional - but Cooper's inherent weakness and clear ill health (he looks crook) work for the part. Cooper is escorting a bunch of soldiers who have displayed bravery in battle and tries to figure out why they are brave. 

It's an odd concept - I get what they were trying to go for thematically, the set up is just a little odd (pulling out top soldiers during a campaign... I know they're trying to make PR out of it, it just felt weird).

The troops include Richard Conte, Tab Hunter, Michael Callan (in his debut), Van Heflin. Robert Keith shines as an officer desperate for medals and promotions, willing to blackmail Cooper - he gives the film a dash of venality and I missed him when he left early on.

This movie was so dull. Truding along in the desert. All the uniforms made everyone look alike. Cooper was creepy. I kept forgetting what the characters did. 

I appreciate its ambition. It failed to live up to that.

Thoughts on Michael Callan (1935-2022)

 I was thinking of doing a piece on Callan but I'm not sure there's one in me at the moment. Still, I felt I should jot down a few thoughts.

An interesting quasi-star, was Callan. He had looks and the backing of a Hollywood studio but the studio system was in decline. 

He was born "Martin Calinoff" in Philadelphia in 1935 - dad ran restaurants - and was something of a showbiz baby, taking singing and dancing lessons at an early age, and appearing on local radio shows. He was a very good dancer, later saying his idol was Gene Kelly. “I thought unlike Fred Astaire, Mr Kelly has that double whammy of sex appeal… Not that I even knew what sex appeal was, but I liked athletics and he moved like an all-star athlete.”

By the age of fifteen he was dancing professionally in local nightclubs. Two years later, when he graduated from high school, he moved to New York, got work in summer stock in St Louis, performing under the name "Mickey Calin".  Callan/Calin/Calinoff successfully auditioned for a small part on Broadway in The Boyfriend with Julie Andrew (you might've seen the Ken Russell film version), playing various parts over seven months; he was then in Catch a Star. He also danced on television and in nightclubs. 

Then came the big big break - Riff in West Side Story. "“There were a great many kids like me up for that part,” said Callan. “I was told I was too cute! Imagine! But I really wanted it, I was asked if I could backflip, so I did a backflip, and eventually, after a year of rounds, I got it. Riff set me on my way.”

Riff is one of the best parts, if not the best part, in one of the greatest musicals of all time and really established Callan, who was in it for seven months. During the show's run he was spotted by Joyce Selznick a famous casting director (her discoveries included James Darren) and she signed Callan to a seven year contract to Columbia off the back of his appearance. 

The studio system was dying off but there was a bit of a revival of signing young talent in the late 1950s, especially at studios that made a lot of television and continued to make B pictures, like Columbia. The studio also signed Evy Norlund, Glenn Corbett, Carol Douglas, Jo Morrow, Margie Regan, Joby Baker, Rian Garrick, Joe Gallison, and Steve Baylor... not a big list of future stars.

Callan was, however, given what those actors weren't - a nice support part in a big budget film, They Came to Cordura, playing one of several seemingly heroic soldiers escorted through the Mexican desert by Gary Cooper along with Rita Hayworth. The studio put him in a low budget circus picture for Sam Katsman, The Flying Fontanes. They also put him in a Dick Clark teen film, Because They're Young (as a delinquent trying to go good who romances Tuesday Weld) and he danced in Pepe. In Oct 1960 he left Columbia's record arm to sign with Paramount (see here) but he never enjoyed Darren's success as a singer.

Callan had looks, and could move, and act. But I think the main thing holding him back was he gave off a sort of intense swaggering self-love vibe. I'm not saying he was like that in person, not at all - but he lacked the sensitivity of say a Tony Curtis or Rock Hudson. He had charisma and was a potential star but needed careful handling.

Callan auditioned for the film version of West Side Story but didn't get it - possibly due to his Columbia contract, possibly they wanted a fresh slate. But he did dance in the film Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961), opposite Deborah Walley as Gidget. He was one of the troops in Mysterious Island .

He was well cast as a thug tormenting a puffy Alan Ladd in 13 West Street and romanced Deborah Walley again in Disney's Bon Voyage! The latter film demonstrates the issue with Callan - he lacked the affability of Tommy Kirk and when he rough houses Deborah Walley it's really scary. As I wrote in a piece on this film "he was a good looking guy, Callan, who could act, and dance, but his performances often had a strand of cruelty about them, he looked like a villain, and I really didn't want him and Walley to wind up together."

However he had a big hit with The Interns as a compromised doctor. Callan was in this alongside a lot of other Columbia contract talent like Cliff Robertson. It was a fun role with some meat in it - Callan plays a super ambitious intern, who dates a rich girl but also sees an older nurse on the side so she'll help his career; this gives him a packed schedule which leads him to take drugs... it's very well done and handled, leading to Callan breaking down at the end. The film was a hit and would have rejuvenated Columbia's faith in him. 

David Merrick offered Callan the lead in a Broadway musical, I Can Get it for You Wholesale, but they couldn't agree over money apparently so Elliot Gould took the part instead - and wound up marrying his co-star Barbra Streisand.    In November 1962 he talked about how he had his own publicist - see this here.

Callan had a showy small part as a pimp in Carl Foreman's cynical war picture The Victors - he's not in the film for very long and the leads went to other new faces (George Hamilton, George Peppard), and Callan presumably thought "hey why not me" but at least the film was a big hit.

The did The The New Interns, one of the few to return (along with Stefanie Powers and Telly Savalas with Dean Jones playing James MacArthur's role). He didn't have as much to do in this one, which hurt the film - in the original his character was comic and romantic but also serious, here he's just comic (in drag for one sequence) and romantic (Barbara Eden); the film hints it's going to deal with his character's past as a druggie, which would've been great, but throws it away. It's a NAGOATO sequel (not as good as the original).  Still it encouraged Columbia to sign him to a new six picture contract. Jack Lemmon had started his film career at Columbia and many pieces from this time would refer to Callan being a new Jack Lemmon.

Callan was announced for a film musical remake of Cover Girl which was never made and a Broadway musical Kelly. See here. But Callan was lucky to miss out on the Broadway Kelly which shut after one night

There was talk of Callan starring in King Rat from the novel by James  Cavell about a smooth operator in Changi during World War Two.He would've been perfect. But he lost out to George Segal who was also in The New Interns which must have really really hurt. Because that film, while considered something of a commercial and critical disappointment, kicked up Segal to a higher plane that he never really left. In fairness, Segal had more acting chops than Callan - he'd done heaps of Broadway and TV.

 It wasn't over yet - He did guest stints on television, Breaking Point and Twelve O'Clock High, then had his biggest hit to date as Jane Fonda's love interest in Cat Ballou but most of the attention for that movie went to Fonda and Lee Marvin. 

He was sent to England for You Must Be Joking, a farcical army comedy for Michael Winner - Callan was cast at Columbia's insistence but didn't do much for the film's box office. He doesn't fit in the movie, he sticks out - the whole film is like a trial run for Winner's better The Jokers.

In August 1965, Callan signed a four-picture deal with Columbia. Jackie Cooper, former actor turned exec at Columbia's TV arm, Screen Gems, offered Callan the lead in a pilot for a sitcom Occasional Wife. Callan asked Cooper what he needed TV for: Cooper replied, "This year we're asking you to do the series. In three years you may be asking us?" The deal was a good one -  $100,000 a year plus a percentage according to this. This didn't last long.  TV Guide did a profile on him here which refers to a partying lifestyle, "a reputation along the Sunset Strip-Vegas axis as one of the great new swingers. He had a Sinatra-like coterie of hangers on and regularly made the columns."

A1967 interview with him is here. Occasional Wife only lasted a season but marked a major shift in Callan's private life as he left his wife for his co star, Patricia Harty. 

After the sitcom was axed Callan might've been expected to return to movies or television but instead he appeared in a musical in Las Vegas, That Certain Girl. See here

In 1968 he was in a TV version of Kiss Me Kate with Robert Goulet.

By the late 60s Callan was out of fashion, Ric Dalton style - he no longer had the film offers or television lead offers. It was a very very quick fall, especially considering The Interns and Cat Ballou had been so popoular and not that long ago. I wonder if there were behaviourial/temperament issues. I have no proof of that - it's just conjecture.  But it does seem odd that a good looking, charismatic performer, who could act and move, didn't get any more leads. This was the time of spaghetti Westerns, war films in Yugoslavia, and telemovies. There were star parts going for former contract stars. But Callan didn't get any.

Not that he was unemployed. Callan kept busy on episodic TV like The Mary Tyler More Show,That Girl, The Name of the Game, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Ironside, Marcus Welby, M.D., Griff, McMillan & Wife, Barnaby Jones, 12 O’Clock High, Quincy, M.E., Charlie’s Angels, Simon & Simon, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, The Bionic Woman, four episodes of Murder, She Wrote, and eight episodes of Love, American Style. Callan also made the occasional feature like Frasier the Sensuous Lion, The Magnificent Seven Ride, Lepke and the Cat and the Canary. He did have the lead in 1974's The Photographer which was kind of remade as 1982's Double Exposure - in both Callan plays a psychotic photographer. See trailer here.  

He appeared in theatre around the country - a lot of musicals like Anything Goes, The Music Man (program here), George M, Bar Mitzvah Boy plus plays like Absurd Person Singular. He produced some musicals.

I don't think Callan was a great lost star. He was unlucky in that Hollywood made less musicals when he hit down  - at least less dancing musicals. He would've been fantastic as Riff in West Side Story  - too cruel to be Tony though.  The tide went out really quickly for him though. I mean, to go from a sitcom to being a permanent guest? I wonder if something else happened.

Callan appears as a character, in a way, in the novel version of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Agent Marv talks to Ric Dalton about Dalton's Western, Tanner, directed by Jerry Hopper, in which Dalton appeared alongside Ralph Meeker and Callan, and Dalton criticised Callan for "sounding like  a Malibu surfer".

TV Guide

Movie review - "Garden of Evil" (1954) ** (warning: spoilers)

 Not a very well known Western but it has virtues - CinemaScope photography is expertly used amongst some mountain vistas, there's decent star power with Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward and Richard Widmark, plus Cameron Mitchell as "sidekick turned rapist" and Hugh Marlow, it's set in Mexico near the coast. It's full of interesting bits. The story has elements of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Bernard Herrmann wrote the score.

I should've liked this more. The story is interesting in pitch - woman lures men into desert to find husband and gold. I think the woman was meant to be a femme fetale and logically she should die - she's responsible for Marlowe being crippled and Widmark giving up her life - but she's allowed to live and go off with Cooper. Cooper looks old and emaciated, as if he's dying. Hayward is competent but forced to be too restrained. She needed to be full vixen. Widmark is okay when given the chance - he often isn't given that chance. Mitchell's rapist cowboy is stock. He tries to attack Hayward, Cooper goes "bad boy" then scolds Hayward for leading him on.

A good movie in here struggling to get out though not without interest, especially for fans of the stars.

Movie review - "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife" (1938) **

 Early credit for the writing team of Brackett and Wilder had Ernst Lubitsch to direct plus Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert to star so got off to a strong start. I'm not a massive Cooper fan but he's not bad here, ideally-ish cast as a stiff American millionaire who falls for Colbert after they both try to buy pajamas (the most famous scene in the film). I know it's more a Rex Harrison part but I bought Cooper in the part - it helps that Cooper was still young and attractive here as opposed to the ageing near death figure he was in Love in the Afternoon. And there's plenty of awkward womanising American millionaires eg Howard Hughes.

I guess the plot does have Cooper harassing Colbert, though it plays a little better because she seems to be having fun. David Niven is terrific as a friend of Colbert's who is hired by Cooper to work as a secretary. Also good is Edward Everett Horton and Francis Pangborn.  Coopre sings a song.

In fact it's done with such high spirits that it takes a while to sink in that the film doesn't have any story but once that happens the film becomes annoying and when Cooper goes all Petruchio on Colbert it's more than that because slapping and hitting is just not that funny. And then it becomes less funny and fun as it goes on with Cooper in the mental hospital and jokes about violence at the end. I'm sounding like a cranky old man aren't I? I just didn't find it funny. It got worse as it went on. The actors are fine. I mean, even Cooper commits. I just think there was no story.

Movie review - "Love in the Afternoon" (1957) **

 Having struck gold with a really old actor a few years away from smoking related death playing a millionaire romancing Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, Billy Wilder repeats that here only with Gary Cooper instead of Humphrey Bogart. Cooper is filmed through gauze with careful lighting. Hepburn is fine. Maurice Chevalier offers some pep as a private investigator, Hepburn's father.

The film's Paris locations really needed colour and the story needed an extra twist. It's not much of a tale though the meet cute is fine: one of Chevalier's clients, John McGiver, wants to shoot Cooper, who is a lover of McGiver's wife. Hepburn goes to warn Cooper and winds up rooting him. A year later he returns to Paris and they start up again. She lies about having experience so he hires dad to investigate her. Dad reveals truth and asks Coop to leave. He's about to but feels sorry for her at the end end and takes her on the train.

And that's romantic because...? She's inexperienced and he's a lechy sleeze who is controlling and they're going to have a horrible life. And dad doesn't seem to happy at the end.

Maybe this works if you love Hepburn and Cooper. Hepburn is fine, just so naive it's uncomfortable. And Cooper I know in real life was a sophisticated lady killer but in this is just this decaying old lech who is going to hire a private investigator on Hepburn. At the end I kept saying "don't get on the train don't get on the train".

Some funny bits - Cooper is constantly accompanied by an orchestra and nice tunes but just yuck.

John MIlius' guilty pleasures

Milius, John. Film Comment; New York Vol. 18, Iss. 3,  (May/Jun 1982): 24-26,80.

Let us first examine this idea of Guilty Pleasures. When I was young, the world was so new with promise that it was impossible to find that feeling of self-conscious embarrassment in secrecy that could bring guilt to any pleasure. It is only in early adulthood that we come to measure our passions and, in time, forget them. So it was always in the first light that I was influenced by the movies I liked, as if seeing an ocean for the first time, or being taken to an airport to watch the planes land. There is no judgment good or bad, just noise and movement, intensity and rhythm. This is not to say that I have no guilt. But life hands out few enough pleasures.

Biker movies. This whole genre has been overlooked probably for good reason. One thing that can be said about all of these films, from The Wild One to The Losers, is that they have a rich tradition of social irresponsibility. I mean, these films should make you feel guilty. Of course, they have little to do with real bikers. Real bikers are like real Mongols -nomadic, simple hunters whose only crime is that they are the descendants of Genghis Khan. But the bikers in the movies and the ones on the road share one thing in common which has made them appealing, fascinating, and dreaded. They are free. Next time you drive up to a couple of bikers cruising slowly on their hogs, take a good look. They don’t live like you. They are outside your life, your law. They don’t share your morality, ethics, your humanity, or your conscience. They are free of all that shit.

Let’s talk about the movie that started it all, The Wild One. (1953, directed by Lazlo Benedek). This has to be one of the most important Marion Brando movies ever made. Forget your James Dean-Fifties-introverted-troubled-youth crap. Forget Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront. We’re dealing with guys that rode into town like Tamerlane-no ambitions, no apologies, and little restraint. Where else can you find such a pure sense of anarchy? Who else in modern culture really lived like Vikings? And what for? “What are you rebelling against, Johnny?” occasioned the best line in the movie: “Whaddya got?” That’s it, pure and simple. It’s never been said better in any movie. This is social irresponsibility.

As biker movies progressed, the life style itself changed and became more menacing. We soon learned that bikers were much worse than the mobile white trash we suspected. They were indeed packs of mutant, ursine predators, spawned by some hideous breach of social ecology, and they soon joined the ranks of irredeemable screen sociopaths, the way Indians used to be portrayed and Nazis still are. Soon, the plots simply had to show a horde of swastikafestooned, hairy, drug-crazed, sub-Neanderthals (led by William Smith) descending upon some worthwhile target area that gave ample opportunity for rape and pillage. The rest of the story usually had some reference to community guilt, parents who didn’t understand their daughters, etc., and a strong loner-hero, sometimes a biker himself (who could also be played by William Smith). The loners who stopped the barbarian hordes were, curiously, often Green Berets directly home from disillusioning experiences in Southeast Asia.

These men could only be pushed so far. (This stereotype also helped build the public myth that there were twentyfive divisions of loner-killer Green Berets, and no cooks or clerk-typists.) The loner prevails; a lot of virginity and private property are lost. And the Horde retreats back into the dark recesses of man’s pagan past, waiting. Great visual stuff. Low-slung choppers gleaming in early sunlight massing together gracefully as they come around that bend in the road. Fiends with their hair blowing back, wrapped in armor-like chains, being held by brazen felines who know no limits to promiscuous carnality. There simply are no other movies quite like these. They have titles like Chrome and Hot Leather, Angels from Hell, Born Losers, etc.

A superb piece from the end of the genre’s halcyon days was simply and appropriately called The Losers (1970) Directed by Jack Starrett (vastly underrated), this has the final twist on all biker movie plots: The bikers themselves are sent to Vietnam. That’s right. Bearded, leathern, latter-day Mongols astride gleaming hogs equipped with rockets and automatic weapons take on a rival club: the Viet Cong. They lose. Superb action, interesting political insight.

Another oddity is, of course, Easy Rider (1969, Dennis Hopper). In this, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper aren’t bikers at all, just ordinary citizens who close out their retail narcotics business in order to take a peaceful vacation ride across country. Their mistake is that they look like bikers to the prudish land apes that have seen the rest of these movies and are mistaken as the advance scouts of the Golden Horde. The community rights are upheld and they pay for the sins of William Smith.

Nobody makes these movies anymore. They’ve gone the way of Italian muscle pictures and blaxploitation movies. They will leave no mark even in the annals of trivia collectors. No French critics will ever enshine them in Cahiers du Cinéma. But next time you see that bro and his old lady heading off with the wind in their hair, the light dazzling from the lacquer and polished chrome, and the big V-Twin like a quickened heartbeat and thunder, give them a thumbs-up for poor Dennis Hopper.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper). Yeah, I know it has a cult following. But I really like this movie. It’s really good. Best of breed in my estimation. Made for nothing, extraordinarily inventive, it just reeks of style and other things. It has horror with the best of them. Nicely achieved in that nothing in the film is supernatural. Every object is common; lots of the film takes place in broad daylight.

Things happen you just don’t expect, like the girl with the sexy backless halter-top being hung up on a meat hook. You just don’t expect that. The guy in the wheelchair being chainsawed and the great scene in the barbecue store also take you by surprise. It’s not that the scenes are unexpected, it’s just that they go so far. But what I like best is the irresistible visual humor, so sick you don’t believe it’s really happening. Leatherface-gigantic, masked, aproned-wielding the great sputtering snarling title weapon, is chasing the one surviving girl. She is nubile, buxom, and agile as a sports car as she darts in and out of the trees in headlong terror. He follows, but like a truck out of control, spinning out on the corners, shattering branches, kicking up dust, always trying to keep the saw pointed in the right direction.

Also, the great ending shot where Leatherface holds his chainsaw up to the rising sun in some ritual dance to the harvest god. I could go on and on, but see it for yourself. It deserves its rep.

Return to Paradise (1953, Mark Robson). After my other two guilty pleasures I feel I should swing the pendulum the other way. This is undoubtedly one of my favorite movies. It is faithfully adapted from a James Michener story of the same title and shot entirely on location in Fiji or Tonga or somewhere using non-actors for most of the cast-giving it a rudimentary authenticity that is to me thoroughly enchanting.

I don’t know when I first saw this film, but it was probably at a particularly idealistic and emotional stretch of adolescence, during which I was a fanatical surfer. Being a suffer in those days was like belonging to a hallowed brotherhood-a noble tribe of timeless drifters and beach bums that shared a solemn adventurism and a longing for primitive tropical places that lay in the path of the great swells. These places often had rich-sounding names, and were sparsely populated by strong simple men and lithe, brown-skinned women. White men there were regarded as higher beings and often went bad with the weight of that responsibility. All of this was majestically set forth in the works of Melville, Conrad, Stevenson, and Gauguin. I would sit in the winter classroom, spin the globe, and read the names of the islands: Atuona, Rarotonga, Manihiki, even Guadalcanal. Rich stuff, and it was all still there, all of it possible.

When I saw Gary Cooper wading ashore through the waves in the first minutes of Return to Paradise, he became an immediate role model. He is put ashore, to be exact, for reasons we’re never told, except that he has an intense dislike for authority. On the beach he is met by a crowd of exotic, innocent islanders, who are being ruthlessly suppressed under the regime of a misguided Christian missionary and his gang of truncheon-wielding wardens. All manner of oppression is levied on these children: They have to wear clothes, work steady hours, not breed freely, and attend church daily and sing hymns. Mr. Morgan (Cooper) only wants to be left alone, but he is a glaring example of individual will to the others, and must be made to bow and kiss the ring. Not Gary Cooper, no way. You’re dealing with Yankee independence, the reason America was founded and settled. Besides, he has a shotgun. His hut is eventually torn down and he asks the community, “Who will help put it back up?” In a scene that’s etched in my memory forever, a simple dark-eyed girl steps forward where all the others cower. This is romance. This is love. Nothing else will really do. Where are these women, these men? How many of you have wives, husbands, or lovers who will step forward when the odds are thrown down, when the community, the police, Fortune, and God are on the other side? With nothing in it, who will stand by your side?

With the aid of the shotgun, Mr. Morgan becomes the unwitting instrument of revolt. The people are freed, the wardens banished, and even the old missionary left in peace with his church because he was only misguided. An idealized society, no government, lots of food, sex, surf, and the intoxicating sound of the drums and the dances. Of course, it is here that Conrad always warns us that white men go bad-at the point of moral choice. They either lose control like Mr. Kurtz, or drift on because they have no anchor and can’t really be, just left alone. Mr. Morgan is the latter. He never marries the girl. She dies bearing him a daughter; he realizes he’s lost the only thing he ever had, and leaves, embittered.

It’s here that the story seems to take on an added dimension. Cooper wanders the winds, becoming a hardened, friendless man. World War II starts and something brings him back. He returns to the island to find himself a legend of the past, a part of their history and folklore. He also finds his daughter and, eventually, himself.

In this final sentimental confrontation, he discovers what all adventurers and drifters really seek, that which most people had all along-a home. It’s a simple powerful emotion, one that the cynicism in all of us constantly tries to reject. But it gnaws at the back of my heart and has colored all of my work. I’ve written parts and shades of this story into everything I’ve ever really cared about, from Jeremiah Johnson to Conan. I guess I do it unconsciously. Maybe it’s just because I, too, really want to be like Gary Cooper at the end of the movie: standing on the dock, listening to the music with my arm around my daughter, and letting the boat sail away without me.
AuthorAffiliation
 

Copyright Film Society of Lincoln Center May/Jun 1982

Vale Stuart Whitman

I remember once reading a list of the richest actors in Hollywood - it included names you'd expect like Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra... and Stuart Whitman. I thought "what? Stuart Whitman?" But it was true... he did engineering in the army and when he got out and went into acting, he needed a day job like a lot of actors. His day job was he bought a little bulldozer (he learned how to drive one in the army) and would hire it and himself out for the day/week to clear land It was the 1950s and there was a property boom on in LA... Whitman soon figured out where it would be good to pick up some land himself for developing/re-selling. Over time he was worth $80 million. But he kept acting because he loved it. Indeed, he was a compulsive actor and took everything going when maybe a little more choosy-ness might have been ideal (or at least using some of that $80 million to maybe option a decent book or screenwriter).

Anyway here's a top ten:

 

1) Ten North Frederick (1958) - Whitman has a small but shiny role as an abusive musician in this Gary-Cooper-has-a-midlife-crisis melodrama... it helped get Whitman a contract at Fox who tried for a few years to turn him into a star

2) Hound Dog Man (1959) - ostensibly a Fabian movie this film really more belongs to Whitman, who plays a ne'r-do-well... the part really needed the star power of Elvis or even just Tommy Sands but Whitman is effective

3) The Story of Ruth (1960) - part of a sub-genre, Biblical spectacles that no one remembers - interesting to watch. Whitman plays Boaz.

4) The Mark (1961) - Whitman was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for this movie where he plays a child molesterer... only he doesn't actually molest children he only thinks about it (he does abduct a girl but doesn't go through with it) and then gets "better"... but the film does get points for tackling a big issue in 1960

5) The Comancheros (1961) - a really fun John Wayne western with Whitman as his rival and Ina Balin giving perhaps her best performance

6) Shock Treatment (1964) - mental illness-sploitation with Whitman faking illness to go undercover (not the Sam Fuller movie which used the same idea)

7) Sands of the Kalahari (1965) - Cy Endfield and Stanley Baker's fascinating follow up to Zulu has Whitman stepping in to a role that George Peppard walked out on as one of a group of passengers who crash in the desert and deal with horniness and killer baboons

8) Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965) - really fun, lovely movie, a deserved hit... it's a little odd to see Whitman in it (original choice Dick Van Dyke would have been more at home) but he's fine

9) Night of the Lepus (1972) - a killer bunny rabbit movie, no kidding - the sort of movie where David Del Valle would do a killer commentary - kicked off the horror cycle of Whitman's career, which included films about cannibals (Welcome to Arrow Beach), killer alligators (Eaten Alive), cult leaders (Guyana)

10) Crazy Mama (1975) - part of New World Pictures cycle of films about outlaw women and their trashy daughters (eg Big Bad Mama) this one has Whitman hook up with Cloris Leachman and Linda Purl... directed by Jonathan Demme

Audrey Hepburn age gaps with her co star (it's approximate)

Roman Holiday - 24 to Greg Peck's 37
Sabrina - 25 to Bogart's 55 and Holden's 36
War and Peace - 26 to Fonda's 50 and Mel Ferrer's 38
Love in the Afternoon - 28 to Gary Cooper's 56
Funny Face - 28 to Fred Astaire's 56
Green Mansions - 30 to Tony Perkins' 27
Unforgiven - 31 to Lancaster's 47
Breakfast at Tiffany's - 32 to Peppard's 33
The Children's Hour - 32 to James Garner's 33
Charade - 33 to Cary Grant's 59
Paris When it Sizzles - 35 to Holden's 46
My Fair Lady - 35 to Rex Harrison's 56
How to Steal a Million - 37 to Peter O'Toole's 34
Two for the Road - 38 to Albert Finney's 31
Wait Until Dark - 38 to Effrem Zimbalist's 49
Robin and Marian - 47 to Sean Connery's 46
Bloodline - 50 to Ben Gazzara's 49
They All Laughed - 52 to Gazzara's 51

(Again I stress these are approximate ages - I don't know exact shooting dates - but it will give you some idea of the gap.)
 

Movie review - "If I Had a Million" (1932) ***

These films work better I feel if you recognise all the stars - some I did, others not so much, but it did come out in 1932. Because there's something like eight chapters it's hard to dig in to any of them - but they were generally entertaining and full of variety.

There's quite a few with older protagonists, befitting a time when Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery were big draws - Charles Ruggles smashes up china, Charles Laughton blows a raspberry, May Robson leads a mutiny in an old folks home. Alice Skipworth and WC Fields amble about. George Raft is quite funny as a con man who can't cash his check; Gary Cooper, for all he irritates me, does radiate charisma as a soldier on leave with Jack Oakie and another mate. Gene Raymond is touching as a man on death row - I liked the seriousness of this. Because it's pre Code they are allowed to do one about a hooker who gets to go to bed alone.

Book review - "Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B De Mille" (2010) by Scott Eyman

Scott Eyman's written a bunch of fantastic books but it's hard to see how he can top this one, an exhaustive and brilliant account of the life of one of the most famous directors of all time.

De Mille wasn't just a director, he was a celebrity (hosting his own radio show), and he was a genre. He was also hated by baby boomer film critics who dominated film criticism from the late 60s onwards and ensured his reputation went into eclipse while those of Hawks, Hitchcock, Nicholas Ray, etc shot up. This was in part because De Mille died in 1959 so wasn't around to do self promoting interviews to the boomers in the 60s like the others. But also because he was a right winger.

I started to re-appreciate the director after reading George MacDonald Fraser write about him so well in Hollywood History of the World. (Eyman quotes Fraser here). And rewatching his films you see there's lots more to De Mille than was commonly accepted in film buff circles.

His shoddy treatment by cineastes made me angry because reading this De Mille was such an influential figure in Hollywood - he helped create the place, shooting The Squaw Man, was clearly a gun director in his prime and artistically bold, especially in the 1920s (I've never seen these films but have read this from numerous sources). He enjoyed great success but had a dip in the late 20s and early 30s, before backing himself and recovering with The Sign of the Cross. Thereafter he became more a brand name and producer than top flight director, but the films are consistently strong. He was famous for spectacle but always understood the human story needed to be paramount.

Eyman points out that the main reason his reputation suffered was his anti-communism, particularly the famous DGA fight where he tried to kick out Joseph Mankiewicz. This story has been inflated - Eyman pulls it back into focus.

De Mille was a flawed man certainly - bit of a hypocrite, a bit rabid during the Cold War, while personally generous he loved to keep his income tax rates down. He was very nineteenth century - he had several long running mistresses but never left his wife, he was influenced by the theatre of David Belasco. He was skilled with publicity, story, acting and producing - he learnt his trade on the theatre circuit. He was a paterfamilias - running his movie company like an actor manager.

Eyman had access to De Mille's papers and there is superb insight into the man - notably his relationships with his brother William (smarter but less skilled) and mother (pushy and a spendthrift), his mistresses, his wife (Eyman's account of De Mille's final moments, holding his wife's hand - she had Alzheimer's and couldn't remember him - is very moving), his son in law Tony Quinn, his niece Agnes, his staff.

The book is excellent. It's thorough, well written, has true epic sweep but doesn't get lost. It's funny too - especially with De Mille's exasperation with Victor Mature on Samson and Delilah. It's surprising - Paulette Goddard kept trying to be cast in his films.

A fantastic book.

Movie review - "The Last Remake of Beau Geste" (1977) ***

In the 70s Hollywood went spoof crazy, kicked off by the popularity of the Mel Brooks films - so much so that Gene Wilder then went and turned director for some spoof movies and also Marty Feldman.

This is an insane, joyous, off the wall movie - very surrealistic at times. It's dense with jokes, which is great. It doesn't have heart and a solid basic story, which I feel feature length comedies need - so we care.

It has a solid source material - Beau Geste - but every thing is so broad. Michael York is perfect and brave until he does a 180 at the end, Ann Margret is seductive and vixenish until she does a turn around at the end. Feldman has pop eyes and is nutty but I was never sure of where his character was coming from. He seems to like York, and... that was about it.

The cast is great  Peter Ustinov as a sergeant, Spike Milligan as a servant, Terry Thomas as a warden, James Earl Jones as an Arab.  Ann Margret is great fun. Sinead Cusack feels wasted - I wish she'd had more of a character to play.

There are also brilliant gags: a bling legionnaire reading braile centerfolds, the bug eyed kid who plays little Marty, Feldman meeting Gary Cooper from a film, the horse with a fake leg (comic props and art department are very big in this film).

Still, there is something hollow at the core.

Movie review - "Ten North Frederick" (1958) **1/2

Ah, the Buddy Alder regime at 20th Century Fox. CinemaScope. Best selling novel source material. Lush photography. Young players under contract of various quality.

This was written and directed by Phil Dunne, who had many major successes when working just as a writer, but none as a director, not really - and he directed ten films. This is perhaps his best known.

Its part of that genre of 50s novels about angsty middle aged men - often their wives were bitches and they had affairs and were unhappy at work and had a lot of money: The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, Executive Suite, Patterns, From the Terrace.

In this one Gary Cooper is a successful lawyer whose wife Geraldine Fitzgerald is a bitch who wants him to go into politics, whose daughter Diane Varsi marries a musician (Stuart Whitman), whose son Ray Stricklyn wants to be a musician, and who has an affair with his daughter's flatmate, Suzy Parker.

Spencer Tracy was originally cast in the lead but Cooper is far more appropriate. Cooper specialised in playing weak, impotent neurotics so he's totally at home here - he punches out someone but it's not very convincing. He's more handsome than Tracy and was a noted cocksman so its more believable that Parker goes for him.

This actually was the best bit of the film - Cooper comes alive in these scenes, he's charming and decent. Parker is a bit wooden but I liked them as a couple. At least Cooper is active in these scenes - he's weak and passive for the rest... which I've got to say is what the role requires. I normally loathe Cooper and can't say I'm a massive fan even after this but he is, as I've said, well cast.

Fitzgerald does what she can. In fairness the character is given some depth because Cooper and her daughter have thrown away his political career - so she suffers and because the times are what they are she can't go and get a career.

I'm not a big Diane Varsi fan - her hysterical performance is okay, but I kept wishing, say, Hope Lange (also under contract to Fox at the time) had the role. Ray Stricklyn is terrible - what did they see in that guy? Did they imagine he was a sort of junior Jack Lemmon? He has this awful drunk acting scene where he tells everyone off.

In a weird way this film feels British - Parker and Cooper do act on their feelings but then pull back. There's no confrontation with the mother, with the sister while dad is alive, with the brother, with the girl's boyfriend or father.

It's a star vehicle - it needed someone like Cooper. It also needed better actors to play the kids. After a slow start where Cooper's character was really pathetic this got better, and I found the end where he drank himself to death quite touching.

Movie review - "Vera Cruz' (1954) ***1/2 (warning: spoilers)

Fun Western which I think I'd really love if it didn't have Gary Cooper in one of the lead roles. I've developed such an intense dislike for Cooper - he's so gaunt and worn out here he looks like he already has cancer (maybe he did), and he's so weak and whiny, playing a, gee, poor old Confederate who's lost his land so is moving around Mexico. He seems to be after a pay day but he's as honorable as anything - you never think for a moment he might do the wrong thing.

He's blown off the screen acting wise by Burt Lancaster who is superb as a smiling villain. Mind you Lancaster does have the best part - all flashing teeth, and eating like a pig, and getting offended easily, and having a bromance with Cooper, and being super brilliant fighter. You get the sense that Lancaster really likes Cooper but you never get the feeling Cooper likes Lancaster.

Super impressive gallery of supporting rogues including Charles Bronson, Jack Elam and Ernest Borgnine - you wish they'd been given more to do. Maybe that's unfair, they do have a bit to do, but they are generally lumped together and its hard to tell them apart.

Denise Darcel (countess) and Sara Montiel (local) have quite large roles but neither are particularly good actors.

The budget was big and the film was shot in Mexico. Aldrich uses it well - production values are high, and there's lots of shots from a distance with soldiers on the horizon.

Some clever bits of writing such as getting out of being surrounded by Mexicans by using kids. Aldrich's misogyny was already apparent - he's got Lancaster slapping Darcel, and a really uncomfortable attempted rape by Bronson on Montiel. I know everyone's tough and has a rough time in Aldrich films, but he doesn't have women inflicting the violence.

Still a good example of how to make a vehicle for two stars.

Movie review - "Elia Kazan: A Director's Journey" (1995) **1/2

Richard Schickel look at the famous director, similar to the one he did on Gary Cooper - some decent clips, lots of talk about themes, not that much on the actual life. This has the advantage of an extensive interview with Kazan himself, then still firey and virile. The blacklist is mentioned but not dwealt on in detail. We hear a lot about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Baby Doll, Streetcar, Brando, Waterfront, Wild River, Viva Zapata, Gentleman's Agreement, Splendor in the Grass and America, America - not a lot about The Visitors, Sea of Grass, Pinky, Man on the Tightrope, Last Tycoon, The Arrangement, his later stage work.

To be fair there's a lot to get through. I liked seeing his old screen tests. Would've liked more of a straight up narrative. Eli Wallach narrates.

Movie review - "Gary Cooper: American Life, American Legend" (1989) **

Gary Cooper is one Hollywood legend who always irritates me. He was meant to be famed as this stoic silent type who was a great movie actor and star - but I always found he played these whiny whingy characters who liked to sulk and his "aw shucks" routine left me cold.

This documentary was made by Richard Shickel. I like Schickel as a critic but as a documentarian he seems more interested in talking about his subject's persona and image instead of telling the story of his life. There is a trot through the main milestones. Clint Eastwood does a decent job as presenter. There's clips from the famous movies: High Noon, Wings, Mr Deeds, etc.

The best thing about it is some impressive archival footage including home movies of Cooper at Sun Valley hanging out with Hemingway. There's also vision of him at the HUAC hearings; the little turd used his aw shucks routine while giving evidence. What a loser. (Clint/Schickel get around this by saying Cooper was a "fair minded conservative embarrassed by the company he kept.")

Movie review - "Beau Geste" (1939) *** (warning: spoilers)

The best known version of the most famous French Foreign Legion tale of them all. The scriptwriters have culled the best of Wren's tale - the opening image of the fort guarded by corpses, the mystery of the missing jewel, the brothers having a naval battle, the brotherly love, the complex sadistic sergeant (mean, greedy, but smart and not without sympathy), the final attack, the brothers' funeral.

Gary Cooper is awkwardly cast as an Englishman - they should have just made the brothers American. Robert Preston is touching as the devoted Digby and Ray Milland is well cast as John. All three men seem to genuinely like each other even though Beau is never that brave and the characters never that individual. Susan Hayward adds prettiness and there are some colourful legion types such as Sam Jaffe, but the film is stolen - as inevitably happens in every version of this tale - by Brian Donlevy as the sergeant.

Some pretty vistas of the desert, faceless Arabs. Best scene is Preston giving Cooper a viking funeral. His death always seems tacked on.

Book review - "Hawks on Hawks" ed Joseph McBride

Do people still care about Howard Hawks any more? Once upon a time he was right up there on the auteur tree, along with John Ford and Hitchcock. He never quite enjoyed the high brow acclaim of either of those but was always respected - his films perhaps enjoyed more for sheer enjoyment's sake.

This is a highly entertaining collection of interviews with the great man where he reminisces about the films and espouses his philosophy. Some of it feels like typical exaggeration - everything was his idea, he takes credit for a lot of the writing, stock Hollywood stuff - but other feels fresh and true: the importance of getting bad scenes over and done with quickly, how to cast someone interesting and different, freshness in writing, the necessary of a good story.

He slags off Rio Lobo and Jennifer O'Neill (says she got too big for her boots), has some interesting things to say about discovering Lauren Bacall, chats a lot about the movie he hoped to make in the 70s with Starsky and Hutch, wonders (as everyone does) why Paul Prentiss didn't become a big star, doesn't mention The Thing, is candid-ish about his less successful pics (The Land of the Pharoahs, Redline 5000), loves Wayne, Grant, Cagney and Bogart. It's a shame Hawks never wrote a memoir but this is great to have anyway - we're lucky to have it.