Actors want to act

A pleasant surprise watching the latest episde (5th of 6) of the superior BBC comedy series REV, this week, when a surprise guest star turned up - Liam Neeson, as God, no less (its already been transmitted, so hardly a spoiler) - to comfort our troubled vicar Adam when everything is going wrong for him, as this third series gets more sombre. 
I hope there will be an uplifting climax next week. Olivia Colman is also superlative of course, again playing Adam's wife who now has a busy career of her own and in fact we see less of her this time around .... It was good to see Liam and Tom together again - they were the original Oscar and Bosie in that play THE JUDAS KISS which was a successful revival last year, with Rupert Everett, as per my posts at the time - theatre label. Joseph Fiennes (right) too is effective in REV as the bishop. [I have been corrected, thanks Mark - its of course Ralph Fiennes!].

It all reminded me of how much actors want to act (Tom Hollander has just finished playing Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in a new drama) and of course Liam is now an action star, his last one set on the airplane seems a must see when on dvd. I was thinking about how even legendary actors like Jack Lemmon (post below), James Stewart, Henry Fonda et al kept working into old age, when they really didn't need to any more, on the stage as well as film. At least they didn't do too much material of lesser value to damage their reputations - unlike say Ray Milland or Joseph Cotten who ended up in all kinds of dreck, and we won't even mention Joan and TROG !  Right: the 1998 JUDAS KISS with Neeson and Hollander which I saw in London before it went to New York.

I am of the opinion that most fortunate actors who come along at the right time get "ten good years" (that delicious song Nancy Wilson sang in her live cabaret act), certainly the likes of Stephen Boyd and Laurence Harvey did - mid-'50s to mid-'60s, or Michael York (mid-'60s to mid-70s), York being one of the fortunate ones who was able to continue in lesser supporting roles, whereas Harvey's and Boyd's careers had died before they did. Fortunate indeed are the likes of Dirk Bogarde or Alain Delon or Jean Sorel who can go on for decades, whereas in the theatre actors like Jeremy Brett or John Stride can transcend their good looks as they get older. Is there the curse of the very good looking actor who starts out well but then fizzles out ? (Whatever did happen to Jeremy Spenser, Leonard Whiting, Graham Faulkner, Martin Potter et al...?). Left: the kind of period movie actors must like appearing in: Michael Redgrave, Richard Warwick, Martin Potter, Tom Baker in NICHOLAS & ALEXANDRA, 1971.

Sometimes one sees an actor who started out well and seems reduced to nothing parts some years later, like John Philip Law - so promising in the mid-60s as the angel in BARBARELLA, in HURRY SUNDOWN, DANGER DIABOLIK etc, having literally nothing to do in the all star CASSANDRA CROSSING in 1976, as an aide to Burt Lancaster, right, with Ingrid Thulin. Well I dare say JPL (who died aged 70 in 2008) had that 10 good years.

Ditto Barry Coe, left, who was a promising 20th Century Fox contract player in the '50s and early '60s - Rodney Harrington in the 1957 PEYTON PLACE, the hero in 300 SPARTANS (looking fetching in a mini toga) etc. 
but in 1966 he is an un-named "communications aide" repeating commands in FANTASTIC VOYAGE - an amusing watch last week. He was also Carroll Baker's boyfriend in the 1959 comedy BUT NOT FOR ME with Clark Gable and Lilli Palmer. Coe went into television in shows like GENERAL HOSPITAL and continued acting to 1978. Other tv actors like George Maharis or Gardner McKay fared less well in the movies.

Barry, centre, in FANTASTIC VOYAGE

Brett Halsey (left) was another of the Fox pretty boys (RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING etc) as was future producer/tycoon Robert Evans (one of the cads in THE BEST OF EVERYTHING), though Robert Wagner and Jeff Hunter were the main Fox contract players, Joanne Woodward and Stuart Whitman too of course. Ditto Fabian - see HOUND DOG MAN post below.
A Fox film like NO DOWN PAYMENT (Jeff Hunter label) is stuffed with their contract players. Jeff Hunter unfortunately died too young too, in 1969, but found his imperishable role as Martin Pawley in THE SEARCHERS, which is always on view somewhere (as it was here yesterday). Robert Wagner was the most successful of all, with some good movies in Europe (THE PINK PANTHER) and successful in television. The Universal-International pretty boys like Rock and Tony Curtis worked hard through supporting parts to build careers and achieve A-list movie status, as before them did Guy Madison and Jeff Chandler and ...while Warners had those blondes Troy and Tab, and Tony Perkins (Tab and Tony tried singing too with some success - see labels), and Kerwin Matthews over at Columbia ... 

One has to feel sorry though for Richard Davalos, over at Warner Bros: the role of Aaron, the other brother in Kazan's EAST OF EDEN must have been a plum role, but with James Dean as Cal, Davalos was completely over-shadowed. At least the DVD contains those screen tests with Dean and Davalos and young Paul Newman who also tested, and was soon doing Dean roles. Davalos's other credit that year (apart from a bit part in a Jack Palance film) was a small part in Warners THE SEA CHASE, a John Wayne-Lana Turner starrer, where sailors Davalos and Tab Hunter go for a swim in shark-infested waters - guess which one the shark heads for.... ?  He contined acting until 2008 with small parts in films like Newman's COOL HAND LUKE, and lots of television. Right: Davalos, Dean & Julie Harris in EAST OF EDEN.

Heavyweight stuff coming up: Finney in Huston's UNDER THE VOLCANO, Frears' PRETTY DIRTY THINGS with this year's best actor nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor, LOVE IS THE DEVIL with Derek Jacobi as Francis Bacon and Daniel Craig as his criminal lover .... more impersonations with the Liberace film BEHIND THE CANDELABRA and Helena Bonham-Carter a surprisingly effective Elizabeth Taylor in BURTON AND TAYLOR ....  
Left: Jeffrey Hunter / right: Jean Sorel.

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 ...