Some more interesting careers ?

Another selection of thumbnail career portraits, in the style of one of our Sixties favourite magazines "Who's Who in Hollywood". 

Don Murray. In his late 80s now (born 1929), Murray started out in 1950, and got his big break co-starring with Marilyn Monroe in Logan’s BUS STOP in 1956 – he may have been fine, but it’s the character of the cowboy who is so annoying. He met his first wife Hope Lange here. He followed this with two I have not seen: BACHELOR PARTY and A HATFUL OF RAIN, and then two westerns which I liked as a kid: the engaging FROM HELL TO TEXAS in ’58, and the more sprawling THESE THOUSAND HILLS in 1959, with young Lee Remick, and that other 20^th Century Fox boy, Stuart Whitman. 
Gritty realism followed with THE HOODLUM PRIEST and the very Irish saga SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL in 1959. Maybe his last interesting role was as senator Brig Anderson in Otto’s ADVISE AND CONSENT in 1962, who commits suicide when his wartime gay affair is about to be exposed – and we get that first look at a gay bar in American film, as Brig reels back in horror, leaving his wartime buddy lying in the gutter. (review at Murray label).

He was back with Lee Remick in BABY THE RAIN MUST FALL in 1965, but now Steve McQueen was the lead, and it was the era of the new boys like Beatty and Redford. He did a rubbish British film in 1967: THE VIKING QUEEN – we avoided it at the time, but I have now ordered a copy as it seems delirious fun, a certified Trash Classic. Murray continued in a long career, in lesser films and lots of television (like KNOTS LANDING), but like many others had a good late Fifties era.

Richard Beymer, now in his late Seventies (born 1938) was a child actor – he was Jennifer Jones’ son in De Sica’s INDISCRETION OF AN AMERICAN WIFE in 1954, and then after a lot of television, came his run of 20^th Century Fox movies in the late Fifties and early Sixties: George Stevens’ THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK in 1959, WEST SIDE STORY, Fox comedies HIGH TIME and BACHELOR FLAT (which we liked at the time), THE STRIPPER with Joanne Woodward and Carol Lynley in 1963 (review at Woodward label) and the lead in HEMINGWAY’S ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG MAN in 1962, as per recent review, below), plus FIVE FINGER EXERCISE and THE LONGEST DAY in 1962. Perhaps Beymer wasn’t distinctive enough, and Fox already had the likes of Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter under contract …. He continued keeping busy, returning to the limelight in David Lynch’s TWIN PEAKS in 1990, and it was interesting seeing him ageing well in items like MURDER SHE WROTE.

Dean Stockwell. Another child actor, born 1936, has clocked up over 200 credits according to IMDB. He was in ANCHORS AWEIGH with Gene Kelly in 1945, Losey’s THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR in 1948, KIM with Errol Flynn, then came those “sensitive” roles in COMPULSION in 1959, SONS AND LOVERS in 1960, LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT in 1962, RAPTURE in 1965, as well as TV roles in the likes of WAGON TRAIN, DR KILDARE. Later films include that terrific thriller AIR FORCE ONE, PARIS TEXAS, DUNE, TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A., BLUE VELVET, THE PLAYER and more.

Brandon De Wilde (1942-1972). Another child actor, but less fortunate, in that he was killed in a traffic accident when aged 30, after being a child actor on Broadway when aged 9 in THE MEMBER OF THE WEDDING, which role he repeated in the 1953 film.. We have already covered his career in detail, at label, and those films we like, such as ALL FALL DOWN and HUD, and those westerns like SHANE and NIGHT PASSAGE where he has some nice scenes with James Stewart.

Pamela Tiffin. Pamela, born 1942, was the delightfully daffy and attractive alternative to those blondes like Sandra Dee or Carol Lynley, and had some good years in the early Sixties. She started as a model and came to attention in SUMMER AND SMOKE in 1961, when we loved her in Billy Wilder’s ONE TWO THREE. Some zany comedy roles followed in COME FLY WITH ME, THE PLEASURE SEEKERS, STATE FAIR, THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL and HARPER in 1966. She the decamped to European comedies in Italy, co-starring with the likes of Marcello Mastroianni, before giving up acting to concentrate on family life.

Carol Lynley. Another young model, also born 1942, had a longer career, starting with Walt Disney in THE LIGHT IN THE FOREST in 1958, and then at Fox in that favourite, HOUND DOG MAN with Fabian and Stuart Whitman, THE STRIPPER, HOLIDAY FOR LOVERS, BLUE DENIM with Brandon De Wilde, RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE, THE LAST SUNSET. I did not want to see UNDER THE YUM YUM TREE where she co-stars with Jack Lemmon, and she was also in Otto’s THE CARDINAL in 1963, and the lead in his BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING in 1965, with Olivier (right) and Keir Dullea (also featured here, see label). She was later in THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE in 1972 in hotpants, and was a long time companion of David Frost’s. She kept busy in lesser films (THE SHUTTERED ROOM wasn’t too bad), but then there was that 1965 cheapo version of HARLOW … reviews of some of these at Lynley label.

Vera Miles. Now in her late 80s and retired for years, Vera Miles is probably the biggest name featured here – it was a long if fairly ordinary career but her two each for John Ford and Hitchcock will ensure she is long remembered, as THE SEARCHERS, THE WRONG MAN, PSYCHO and THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALLANCE will always be screened somewhere. She began in 1950 and early roles included some routine westerns, ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS television shows (he had her under personal contract – like he had Tippi Hedren – and was building VERTIGO for Miles, but she had got pregnant by husband Gordon Scott – she had done one of his TARZAN pictures. She wears that unflattering wig in PSYCHO as she had done a downbeat war movie FIVE BRANDED WOMEN for Martin Ritt in Italy and had her head shaved for it. She is glamorous though in A TOUCH OF LARCENCY in 1960, and suitably nasty in AUTUMN LEAVES with Crawford in 1956, and BACK STREET in ‘61. Other leads included 23 PACES TO BAKER STREET, HELLFIGHTERS with Wayne in 1968, and lots more television.  

Next lot to include Tuesday Weld, Carolyn Jones, Paula Prentiss, Barry Coe, Farley Granger, Earl Holliman,  and some Europeans and British ....

Advise and Consent, 1962, and that Sergeant ...

1962! - is it really 50 years ago? I was 16 and mad about movies, books and magazines and music; I see my 16 year old nephew now just as mad about his computer games and all his gadgets - he had his own laptop and internet since he was 15, I just had the radio and the two local cinemas and bookshops and library ... see 1962 label for other posts on that fascinating year - of course there is Marilyn's 50th anniversary too...

 One of 1962's big hitters, Otto Preminger's ADVISE AND CONSENT remains a fascinating re-watch now. Its from one of those important novels of the time by Allen Drury, purporting to take the lid off American politics and the inner workings of the Senate.  It was the ideal subject for Preminger after the success of ANATOMY OF A MURDER in 1959 (somehow his EXODUS in 1960 just does not do it for me), and is another great black and white film with good scope compositions and that fascinating cast: Henry Fonda as the proposed Secretary of State who may have communist leanings, Charles Laughton (his last role) as the wily Southern senator Seb Cooley trying to smear him, Walter Pidgeon has a good roles as the Senate Majority Leader, along with Peter Lawford, Gene Tierney (Otto's LAURA) as an elegant Washington hostess, Franchot Tone as the ailing President and Lew Ayres as the Vice President, Burgess Meredith and Don Murray as the blackmailed senator Brig Anderson with Inga Swenson as his uncomprehending wife.

"Films & Filming", October 1962 -
click to enlarge

What is fascinating now is that Anderson, as President of the Senatorial sub-committee considering the nomination of Leffingwell (Fonda), is being blackmailed [by Cooley's minions] over a gay relationship during his youth in wartime Hawaii - will the ambitious young senator crack under the pressure? Instead he goes to New York and tries to reason with his old army buddy, so we get that gay bar - maybe the first in a mainstream American film? - with those shadowy denizens of this strange underword; we see the senator recoil in horror and flee in a taxi, leaving his ex-pal lying in the gutter ... we soon realise due to the music and shadowy camerawork that the senator has only one solution open to him, and that involves an open razor ...

Cooley and the others are left to sort out the mess as the film shows the workings of U.S. politics and seems to be shot in the real locations.  It is a very ambitious and entertaining work with a large cast, and certainly one of the best of that great year 1962. (see label).

The advertising tried to make it more sensational ...

More '60s gays: by 1967 Marlon Brando was giving us his closeted army major deep in the American south in Huston's REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE where he is married to deep south gal Elizabeth Taylor but hankering after that soldier who goes horseriding naked in the woods .... then Rod Steiger as another frustrated sergeant in, yes, THE SERGEANT, is that lonely man in an army base in France who does not realise how much he yearns for soldier John Philip Law until he fumbles a pass at the horrified soldier, so he has to go and shoot himself. Getting back to critic Pauline Kael again, as she said at the time: Rod Steiger chases after John Philip Law so long that when he grabs him and kisses him its the climax of the picture. Then Law slugs him and Steiger goes out and shoots himself, and that's it. If Steiger had grabbed Law and been rebuffed an hour and a half earlier, he could have said "All right, so I made a mistake", and maybe the picture could have gone on and been about something. Everyone is so "normal" here that only a monster could have such aberrant impulses. Except for the Sergeant's there is no passion or sexuality of any kind in this sterile movie (directed by John Flynn) .... A repressed homosexual seems to be outside his (Steiger's) range; he keeps his face prissy, with his lips pursed - does playing a homosexual paralyze him as an actor? He gives such a tense, constricted performance its almost as if he didn't want to convince anybody. He never looks at Law with love (he looked at Poitier with more affection in IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT) ... THE SERGEANT is so insufferably "tasteful" that ironically it has less homosexuality in it than many movies have had unconsciously due to casting or indifference ...

ADVISE & CONSENT

Frank Sinatra too as THE DETECTIVE in 1967 goes after that murderer of a swishy guy picked up in a luridly depicted (no black and white shadows here, but Fox scope and colour) bar - the malicious gay guy of course taunts the repressed married man who goes berserk and bashes him with an ashtray; the other gays are all lonely oddballs whom the cops despise and treat like dirt.  By 1968 though Steiger had loosened up enough to have fun with his gay hairdresser in NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY - one of the many disguises he used to murder lonely widows (Rod Steiger label). Its a hilarious treat and George Segal and Lee Remick are a perfect late '60s couple, as were Steve and Faye in THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. Then '69 gave us the dreadful STAIRCASE where Donen, Burton and Harrison were way off key - it was quite a good play on stage actually.

[Law too, who died aged 70 in 2008, had his 10 good years from the mid 60s - with Faye in Otto's HURRY SUNDOWN and Euro-fare like DANGER: DIABOLIK and of course Pygar the blind angel in BARBARELLA ... and trash classic THE LOVE MACHINE in 1970 (Trash label)].

The gals didn't fare so well either: Shirley McLaine as Martha Dobie in THE CHILDREN'S HOUR (or THE LOUDEST WHISPER), Wyler's second film of Hellman's THESE THREE, has to hang herself when she realises she really does love Audrey Hepburn - while in '67's THE FOX Keir Dullea's woodman comes between Anne Heywood and Sandy Dennis, also with fatal results ... but the '70s and liberation were just around the corner. Vito Russo's book and the film of THE CELLULOID CLOSET has all the details and lots more ....

ADVISE AND CONSENT remains a fascinating movie - THE SERGEANT played on TCM here a while back but I couldn't bring myself to look at it again, and Preminger's next one, tackling religion, THE CARDINAL from 1963 gets a re-run this Saturday - it could be another rainy afternoon movie here, not least of its attractions being Romy Schneider in one of her early American films as The Cardinal's love interest ...