Some interesting careers ....

Hope Lange / Tom Tryon / Keir Dullea / Lola Albright. 

We are fascinated here at The Projector as to how some acting careers pan out, who gets the breaks and who keeps working into old age.  Here are some interesting ones .... maybe more later. 

If you were asked who co-starred with Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Montgomery Clift, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, would you come up with the answer? And if told it was Hope Lange would you be any the wiser?

Hope Lange (1933-2003) was one of 20^th Century Fox’s players who came to prominence in the mid-50s and had a good career into the 1960s, maybe not individual enough to be a top line star, but a pleasing presence (rather like Vera Miles) in several hits of the time. She studied dance with Martha Graham, and was the young ingénue in BUS STOP in 1956, having scenes with Monroe, and then was Selina Cross in the Fox hit PEYTON PLACE in 1957, when she was also in the western THE TRUE STORY OF JESSE JAMES, with Robert Wagner and Jeff Hunter,  and in IN LOVE AND WAR, and then Montgomery Clift’s love interest in THE YOUNG LIONS in 1958. She was the lead and top-billed in a favourite of ours, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING in 1959, teamed with Stephen Boyd, with Joan Crawford in the supporting cameo role as her boss. 

She was the main lead opposite Elvis in the Fox meller WILD IN THE COUNTRY. Her scenes were cut out though from HOW THE WEST WAS WON in '62. Then Bette Davis had a supporting role in the 1961 A POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES  where Lange starred with her then amour Glenn Ford, after her marriage to BUS STOP star Don Murray. She then married directed Alan J. Pakula, and had a successful TV series from the film of THE GHOST AND MRS MUIR, among other television roles. Later films included the 1974 DEATH WISH and BLUE VELVET.

Keir Dullea, born in 1936, now 80, was a very individual young actor with those striking looks and eyes, and in interesting films like DAVID AND LISA in 1962 (for which he won the Golden Globe as “Most Promising Male Newcomer”), THE HOODLUM PRIEST, the comedy western WEST OF MONTANA and the lead in Preminger’s BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING in 1965 (where co-star Noel Coward famously said "Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow"), plus the Lana Turner classic MADAME X in 1966, and THE FOX in 1967. He is immortalised for posterity as Dave Bowman, the surviving astronaut in Kubrick’s 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY (and certainly looks better now than his co-star Gary Lockwood – see below). 

The 1969 DE SADE (see review – Dullea label) is a hoot now,

Dullea also did several stage roles and we saw him on stage in London in 1976, as that annoying cowboy in a revival of BUS STOP, with Lee Remick as a world-weary Cherie. - right.

He has kept busy with 84 credits and is still working now. Like Michael York, Terence Stamp and others he shows how actors can keep working as they get older, and the next crop of actors take over.

Tom Tryon (1926-1991) aged 65, clocked up 39 acting credits before becoming a best-selling author. The tall dark and handsome actor was very individual in early roles like I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE in 1958, and in THE UNHOLY WIFE, THREE VIOLENT PEOPLE, THE STORY OF RUTH (see below), MARINES LETS GO, THE LONGEST DAY. 
He was the lead as THE CARDINAL for Otto Preminger in 1963, and also in Otto’s IN HARM’S WAY in 1965. There were lesser roles after that for the gay actor, who had been a marine in the South Pacific during the war, but his novels which were filmed including THE OTHER, HARVEST HOME,  CROWNED HEADS – a great read, which included the short story FEDORA (which became Billy Wilder’s last interesting film) brought him a lot more success and money than acting! He would have been the sailor marooned on a desert island with Marilyn Monroe in SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE, in 1962 – if the film had been completed.

Lola Albright, born 1925, now in her early 90s – Considered one of the most stylish, sultriest and beautiful actresses in Hollywood, with one of the throatiest, smokiest and most distinctive voices in the business, she starred with Kirk Douglas in the 1949 hit CHAMPION, after uncredited appearances in THE PIRATE and EASTER PARADE, and a bit part in THE TENDER TRAP in ‘55. From 1958 to 1961 she played nightclub singer Edie Hart in the popular TV series PETER GUNN. She also made TV guest appearances on ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS (1955) – he should have made her a Hitchcock blonde. She played Constance McKenzie in the TV series PEYTON PLACE (1964) after Dorothy Malone became ill. Lola received critical acclaim for her performances in A COLD WIND IN AUGUST in 1961, and was in Rene Clements’ LES FELINS with Alain Delon in 1964, and was terrific as Tuesday Weld’s mother in the hilarious LORD LOVE A DUCK in 1966. A great example of a stylish actress under-used by Hollywood, but who kept busy with lots of television work.

Next:  Richard Beymer? Don Murray ? Tuesday Weld? Carol Lynley? Pamela Tiffin ? Vera Miles ?

Summer re-vews: favourite Spartacus moments

Though I have the dvd and have seen it several times, it was on television again (with no commercials) so it seemed a good idea to record it and watch again -and I liked it again as much as ever. Its certainly up there with BEN HUR, EL CID, CLEOPATRA and FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE as one of the great epics of that epic era. Kubrick may not have thought much of it (Douglas hired him - they had already done PATHS OF GLORY in 1957 - to replace Anthony Mann, who at least had EL CID lined up next, and teamed up with Douglas again for his HEROES OF TELEMARK in 1964, one of those movies I just never needed to see), but it has several Kubrickian moments on themes on power corrupting. It has some great set-pieces too (I like the scenes with the Romans led by Crassus visiting Ustinov's slave school, which sets the revolt in motion) but it is that cast that delivers. Olivier as Crassus is one of his great performances of that time, Laughton and Ustinov are fascinating scene-stealers, Jean Simmons is ideal, and so is Kirk (he is 100 this December!) and Tony Curtis too as Antoninus. We get that bath scene now between Crassus and Antoninus (with Olivier voiced by Anthony Hopkins) which was considered too suggestive at the time!. Here are some favourite moments and behind the scenes shots:  Tony with Jean and wife Janet Leigh ... Olivier and Jean together again, after their HAMLET in 1948, and John Gavin showing his marvellous chest at the baths .....

Speaking of epics, word on the street has it that the new BEN-HUR is not going to be a success. It seems its just another run of the mill mainly CGI shallow blockbuster for a week or two at the multiplex, and lacks the complexity and richness of the 1959 Wyler film, still wonderful after almost 60 years. Even that TV version of a few years ago (with Ray Winstone as Quintus Arrius) is totally forgotten now. Arrius is not even in the new version (which is 90 minutes shorter than the 1959 one, no Nativity prologue either as it plays down the religious aspect...) as they make more of Sheik Ilderim - Morgan Freeman - the only big name in the cast - but can a black man be a realistic sheik back in this Roman era? Just asking ..... the supposed homoerotic tensions are also gone - Ben and Massala are almost brothers now. But the main question is how will the chariot race look now?

I saw the 1925 silent version last year too (Epics label) and it was nothing compared to the 1959 film, looks like this redundant one will not be around much longer either, another mediocre remake of a classic film. That old quip comes back: "Loved Ben, hated Hur". 

Tab & Fab in '59

Youngsters Tab Hunter and Fabian listen to advice from old timers Frank Sinatra and Gary Cooper back in 1959. Frank was probably shooting CAN CAN on an adjoining 20th Century Fox lot, when Fabian was making his debut in the pleasant HOUND DOG MAN - while over at Warners co-stars Coop and Tab chat on the set of THEY CAME TO CORDURA. Tab and Fab went on to decent careers, see labels - Tab also sang a bit, and Fabian posed for "Playgirl" in the 70s. Here they are at a later date. 

Don Siegel's HOUND DOG MAN is a pleasant diversion and worth seeking out - as per review (Fabian label).

Image de jour: Antoine et la mer ...

A vivid memory from 1959 (I was 13) was seeing Truffaut's THE 400 BLOWS at my local cinema in Ireland. That ending was astonishing as Antoine Doinel, that neglected child (about my own age) drifting into petty crime, runs away from his remand home and keeps running until he reaches the sea, as the image freeze frames ....

Jean-Pierre Leaud made his name as Truffaut's alter-ego, and returned to the role of Doinel several times as we followed the misadventures and romances of the adult Antoine, in those agreeable Truffaut films like STOLEN KISSES (BAISERS VOLES) and LOVE ON THE RUN (L'AMOUR EN FUITE). 
A year after THE 400 BLOWS he played the 15 year old living on his own in a room in Pigalle, overlooking Paris, is Duvivier's enjoyable BOULEVARD. He was also of course the spoiled movie brat star of Truffaut's DAY FOR NIGHT in 1973.  Other movies included LAST TANGO IN PARIS, and Truffaut's ANNE AND MURIEL  - he is still working now. 

1959 was a pretty good year for French movies: there were also Chabrol's LES COUSINS, Mocky's LES DRAGUEURS, Franju's EYES WITHOUT A FACE, while Rene Clement was shooting PLEIN SOLEIL, and Godard was shooting BREATHLESS ... to join that new cinema world of  Hitchcock and Antonioni in 1960.

Its a serious charge boys

Some more deliciously old-fashioned British movies from the late Fifties and early Sixties, time capsules to a vanished world now: SERIOUS CHARGE, 1959; THE BOYS, 1962.

SERIOUS CHARGE

The blurb says: Cliff Richard makes his sensational debut in SERIOUS CHARGE, and sings 3 songs including his first UK Number One smash hit “Living Doll”.

Directed by Terence Young, SERIOUS CHARGE sees Cliff (in a small role) playing teddyboy Curley Thompson, a young tearaway in a small English town, looking for kicks. Everyone thinks he is bad – except local vicar Revered Philips (Anthony Quayle) who sees the good in Curley and stands up for him in court. Unfortunately Curley’s older brother Larry (Andrew Ray) is an out-and-out hoodlum, with a switchblade in his hand, and nothing but contempt for his hometown of “Deadsville, England”.

When Reverend Phillips first humiliates him in the local young club and then confronts him about his pregnant girlfriend, Larry snaps and accuses of Reverend of sexual assault – a serious charge that seems to have been witnessed by respected church-worker Hester (Sarah Churchill). Suddenly the vicar finds himself on the receiving end of a bitter hate campaign ….  

Hester is the spinster daughter of the previous vicar and has designs on Reverend Quayle and sees herself as the vicar's wife. His wise pragmatic mother sees how dangerous this could be and so it proves when Hester sides with the town's bullies and bigots against the beleagured vicar. Will he prove his innocence and turn the tables on his tormentors? Terence Young makes the most of this drama - he would soon go on to those first two James Bonds, and of course directed treats like ZARAK. 

We are left with the idea that the vicar and Hester may have a future - but perhaps there is a doubt over his sexuality - but if so surely the sulky pouting Curley (Cliff) would be a better bet than the nasty Larry ... Regular familiar faces here include Wilfrid Brambell, Judith Furse, Jean Cadell and again (see below) pop singer Jess Conrad. The surprise is that the young David Hemmings is not among the gang, as he was doing so many small parts then. He is in 1962's SOME PEOPLE, which would be a good companion piece to SERIOUS CHARGE  as both deal with bored wayward teenagers and well-meaning vicars with their church halls. Cliff (or Sir Cliff as he is now is still touring at 75, after surviving some serious charges of his own) had another good role that year in that 1959 treat EXPRESSO BONGO.

THE BOYS

Canadian Sidney J Furie had an interesting career, directing dramas like this and THE LEATHER BOYS in England, and that interesting first feature DURING ONE NIGHT in 1961, before moving onto spy fare and hits like THE IPCRESS FILE and LADY SINGS THE BLUES, and films with Brando and Sinatra, and is still directing now, 

THE BOYS begins well as we see a court case unfold with the four boys in the dock, accused of murder after the robbery of a garage goes wrong. Richard Todd and Robert Morley are the opposing barristers and Felix Aylmer the judge. The boys are Dudley Sutton, pop singer natty Jess Conrad, Ronald Lacey and Tony Garnett (soon to go on to producing films like KES).

The supporting cast is an endless parade of familiar faces: Patrick Magee, Roy Kinnear, Wilfrid Brambell (a lavatory attendant), Allan Cuthbertson, David Lodge, Rita Webb, Betty Marsden, Colin Gordon, Kenneth J Warren, barmaid Mavis Villiers (she was on the other side of the bar in VICTIM) and young Carol White, and music by The Shadows to boot. Tedium sets in eventually as we see the boys' night out from each point of view, taking in their dismal homelife with parents in that grungy block of flats and their night out 'up west' without much money. Finally we arrive at the truth .... its an interesting time capsule of that early black and white Sixties era, before the arrival of The Beatles and the explosion into sixties pop culture. 

More B-movie British thrills: Anthony Quayle, one of the UK's busiest stage and screen actors (THE WRONG MAN, WOMAN IN A DRESSING GOWN, ICE COLD IN ALEX, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, OPERATION CROSSBOW) also leads THE CHALLENGE, a nice little B-movie British thriller with Jayne Mansfield in 1960 and is sadistically evil in TARZAN'S GREATEST ADVENTURE in 1959. Peter Sellers is the nasty villain in 1960's NEVER LET GO where he terrorises car salesman Richard Todd; another pop star of the time Adam Faith pops up here, along with Carol White again. 

Some Like It Hot in 1959

The June 1959 issue of "Films & Filming" (from that batch of 1950s British movie magazines I acquired recently, as per my other reports on them) has a delicious review of SOME LIKE IT HOT which is worth sharing. An acknowledged classic for ages (and for me the best and best scripted comedy ever, I also think Jack and Tony should have shared the Best Actor Award that year, sorry Charlton).- but what did they think of it at the time?  This is by Peter Baker, the then editor of the magazine:

"Oh, those mad, mad Roaring Twenties. The tango bands, the yachting millionaires, the sack look,. Valentino, prohibition, Chicago gangsters ... and Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as the flappiest flappers of them all. As you will gather, SOME LIKE IT HOT is all - and more - than its title implies (with Edward G Robinson's son sending up George Raft, Monroe sending up herself, Curtis and Lemmon sending up each other; and director Billy Wilder sending up everyone).  

The story - and who's really going to worry about a little thing like that? - concerns two band boys, witness of the St Valentine's Day Massacre, who escape the mobsters by becoming band girls on a jaunt to Florida. Josephine ("not tonight") - played by Curtis - plays the sax while Daphne (that's Lemmon) plays for sex. Marilyn ("and there I was sitting on my ukelele") plays sister to them both.

Its when millionaire playboy Osgood (Joe E. Brown, at 67, not looking a day over 40) falls for Daphne and, when he proposes, decides "she" prefers to remain a girl that the campery reaches its climax, if that is not too indelicate an expression, for so fey a confection. (Come to think of it, we are never told Daphne's final settlement as "she" disappears in the night in Osgood's motor launch protesting her manhood to his assurances that he does not expect perfection).

In between, Josephine has time to masquerade as an oil magnate and persuade Sugar (thats M.M. if you didn't guess) to stop playing her ukelele to go on a midnight cruise long enough to help him overcome his Freudian complexes about women. 

If one can be serious about so uninhibited a romp, it is that Wilder lets his joke run on a little too long, and there is not always sufficient edge to the satire. The sense of period is impeccable. It had to be. I doubt if the censor (who must have been driven frantic spotting the double entendres and, on my account, has missed at least six which I suspect would have been cut if he had spotted them!)  would have passed the film in any category if the story took place today, in San Francisco, Brighton, Amsterdam, Paris - anywhere in fact where boys will be boys - and sometimes girls". 

Yes quite fun, reading this from a rather jaded gay 1950s perspective, but no mention of the clockwork perfection of the script with its constant reversals or the great supporting work of Joan Shawlee as Sweet Sue, or Orry-Kelly's costumes, or its gleaming black and white photography (it just wouldn't work in colour) and so much more we love about the film still - and those great scenes and funny moments, 
no wonder Jack's Daphne had to shake those maraccas in the "why would a guy want to marry a guy?" - "Security!" scene (to give the audience time to recover from the last zinger), or the boys having lost their coats to a horse out in the blizzard, or the girls on the train to Florida with that joke about the one-legged jockey, or Sweet Sue's "I want to remind all your daddies out there that every girl in my band is a virtuoso and I want to keep it that way" or the eager bellhop with a pass-key and the hots for Josephine, or Sugar's comment that the diamonds must be worth their weight in gold (she always gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop), and her father being a conductor - on the Baltimore-Ohio! And those delicious musical numbers. Then the older guys guying themselves: George Raft, Pat O'Brien, Mike Mazurki, and Nehemiah Persoff ! 
SLIH used to be a constant television staple here, always screened over Christmas. Curtis and Lemmon in their later years dragged up again too of course for one of the "Vanity Fair" Hollywood issues . Right: Monty Clift visits the set. The young Jane Fonda did as well and remembers (as per her memoirs) seeing M.M. being prepared for a scene and isolated in her stardom. 
Of course 1959 (one of my favourite years) was a great year for movies with lots of classics but BEN HUR swept the board, so Wilder got his Awards next year for THE APARTMENT (which I don't rave about that much, I preferred his next: that zany, madcap ONE TWO THREE! ). SLIH will always be in my Top Ten, but a lot of the later Wilders I just had no interest in seeing - see Wilder label.
Its on television again here tomorrow, I will be looking in again of course. It is forever a gleaming Rolls Royce of a film where every component works perfectly. 
More on it at Monroe, Lemmon, Curtis and Wilder labels.

Posters - an occasional series

Today's choice: LA NOTTE BRAVA, that 1959 Mauro Bolognini discovery I liked so much the other year. From a script by Pasolini featuring lowlife layabouts and prostitutes but glamorised by Bolognini by casting attractive people like Brialy, Terzieff, Milian, Demongeot, Schiaffino, Martinelli etc. The various posters give a taster.  I like that "The moral bankruptcy of desperate youth ... " Reviews at Bolognini, Brialy labels.
 It is on YouTube too: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5kjDFVL_Us&index=65&list=PLoiWwTmzdQ_8V3J9hQZ47wU19Q00DilnG

Next: the more wholesome Troy Donahue in PARRISH!

A treat indeed.

This was a pleasant surprise the other day, when I met my IMDB pal Jerry for our usual afternoon of drinks, chat, and swopping dvds. He gave me this rare 1959 booklet (in Portugueuse!) on Belinda Lee, one of our favourites here, as per my other blogs on her. 

Belinda died in a horrific car accident in 1961, aged 25, but was then established as a peplum favourite with movies like MESSALINA, APHRODITE, as well as English films for the Rank Organisation like DANGEROUS EXILE and MIRACLE IN SOHO and NOR THE MOON BY NIGHT. I liked those as a kid. 

Before her untimely end the very attractive Lee was turning into a good actress, playing opposite Marcello Mastroianni (GHOSTS OF ROME), and was one of the girls in the French new wave LE DRAGUEURS and in the 1960 Italian drama THE LONG NIGHT OF '43, all reviewed at Lee label.

We had similar style magazines in England titled Fan's Star Library, pocket sized and about 64 pages, published in 1958. I got them every month when I was about 12, titles on Grace Kelly, Marilyn, Elvis in the army, James Dean, Ava Gardner, Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds, and on pop stars like Pat Boone, Frankie Vaughan, even Perry Como! Thankfully I still have my Dirk Bogarde and Sophia Loren ones - collector's items now; and of course I got to meet Dirk and Sophia when I grew up !