The Sheila Variations

In praise of Sanaa Lathan

Wonderful actress. Fluid, emotional, easy on the eye, funny, deep, unconventional in some of her responses, she creates characters - and very specifically - she does not repeat herself - and you also don't catch her working. It looks easy. I've been a fan for some time (my writeup of Love and Basketball is here). I saw Something New last night and fell in love with it, and with her specifically. She's the kind of actress your heart goes out to. You want her to succeed. You want her to be happy. This is the kind of thing all great romantic female leads have - from Irene Dunne to Marilyn Monroe to Kate Winslet. You worry about these people a little bit - they don't seem self-sufficient, not completely anyway ... and so your heart goes out to them, you hope for them, you invest. It's a rare kind of contract between an audience and an actress ... and not all romantic female leads can pull it off. I think it's somewhat intuitive ... it's a thing that cannot be taught. Whether or not you agree with my choices of female romantic leads is not really the point. The point is that when you are an actress in a romantic film, and you are the lead, it is crucial that the audience want what you want, that they leap into the action (in their hearts) and root for you ... as though it were a sports film. Sanaa Lathan has always had that, and I will look forward to seeing her work for years to come. I'd like to see her hit the big-time, although her last couple of years have been pretty damn spectacular, what with movies and a Broadway hit ... She's a damn fine actress. The character in Love and Basketball, the fiery-tempered tomboy, is nothing like the uptight vaguely sad and yet driven career woman she creates in Something New. Not the same person. I love to watch her work. Her face, even with that scar on her right cheek, maybe even because of the scar, is made for the movies. It's a very beautiful face, but human, open, itself. Emotions are not strived for, or sought after ... they are experienced organically. You don't catch her pushing. Ever. She goes through the gamut of emotions in Something New, and although the movie itself has some issues (mainly with the direction) - the acting, across the board, is a delight. But it's Lathan's movie, and I'm happy for her.

I'm a fan.

What can I say, I'm invested.

The Books: "Cary Grant: A Celebration" (Richard Schickel)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

Cary Grant: A Celebration, by Richard Schickel

This book and Pauline Kael's essay "The Man From Dream City" are indispensable to understanding Grant. Both are brilliantly written, first of all, and second of all - both provide fascinating interpretations and analysis of Cary Grant's persona, his thing ... and this is harder than it looks. If you've seen the body of work, you can get a sense of how complex it is ... the Cary Grant of Affair to Remember put up alongside the Cary Grant of Bringing Up Baby ... Is there a thruline to the career? An organizing principle? What the hell is it? It's easy enough to say Grant was elegant, or funny, or talented, or had star power ... but to dig into the nuts and bolts of the exact elements that made up Grant's particular persona ... Pauline Kael gives it a shot, as does Schickel, in this book-length analysis of Cary Grant's career. Schickel came up with one of the best lines about Grant - which I reference here in my piece about Jeff Bridges: Schickel is talking about Grant's portrayal of Geoff Carter in Only Angels Have Wings:

Grant's character here isn't playing hard to get. He is hard to get.

This goes a long long LONG way towards explaining the specificity of Grant's particular appeal ... because not all leading men have that particular energy - but I had never heard it put so well, so perfectly. The difference between "playing hard to get" and actually "being" hard to get is huge. Grant has something un-gettable in him. This is what Pauline Kael focuses on in her essay - how Grant was usually the "object" in any love story, it was always the woman who did the pursuing. I think Kael called him "the most pursued man in Hollywood". He truly IS hard to get - it's not a GAME to him ... and so, of course, women, like men, love a challenge. They are off chasing him because he IS hard to get ... in the same way that men chase women who seem un-gettable ... It's part of the whole love-chemistry thing. But Grant embodies a particular aspect of it that really is his own, if you compare it to his peers. Gary Cooper, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable ... These are not interchangeable men. You couldn't really plop Bogart into a Cooper role and have it work. Each one has a staked-out territory. Grant, though, remains elusive, and therefore flexible. He made his name in the screwball comedies of the 1930s ... but Hitchcock had always sensed a darkness beneath the crazy humor, maybe a remoteness ... who knows what it was he sensed. So he put Cary Grant in Suspicion. Hitchcock was not altogether happy with the results, since he was forced to tack on a last-minute happy ending. So he tried again. This time he hit the jackpot with Notorious. Cary Grant had never been asked before to reveal so much, and my God, what a fantastic movie. He is so so good in it. Everyone is good in it. Grant is truly remote in this film ... without the softening aspects of romantic comedy ... and to allow yourself to be revealed like that ... Grant wouldn't trust just anyone with his persona, but he trusted Hitchcock. Hitchcock is responsible for some of Grant's greatest hits, and it is amazing to look at those films side by side with the films Grant did for Howard Hawks. It is only then that it becomes clear as day just how versatile this guy really was. Untouchable, really.

Richard Schickel, in his book, analyses all of this as though it is a science experiment. Or, more accurately, a recipe. In this film we had a smidgeon of this, a dash of that ... in THIS film we added a tablespoon of this, took out the smidgeon, and poured on a dose of THIS ... It's truly obsessive, a book for true obsessives, and for me it was a revelation. I had already seen all of Grant's work by the time I found Schickel's book, and once I read the book I had to go back and watch it all again. So that I could see it at work.

One of the best sections of the book is Schickel's analysis of what happened in Cary Grant's career in the early to mid 40s. Screwball comedy is over. Notorious hadn't happened yet. It's not that Grant lost his way, but there are a couple of "transition" movies in there ... which probably didn't feel like "transitions" to Grant ... He was just trying to continue his career in the new more serious 1940s. Would he survive? Many screwball comedy actors did NOT survive the transition. But Grant not only survived, he went on to dominate. How did that occur? What choices did he make that helped him survive? One of the key aspects of talent and a long career is flexibility. To know when you need to change. I guess that's one of the definitions of evolution as well. The creatures that survive are not, perhaps, the strongest, but the ones who are able to change. Grant always had a madcap level to his humor, but the styles of movies had changed in the 40s ... He adjusted. Some of the movies are more successful than others, and when Notorious came out, a whole other aspect of Cary Grant was shown to the public - who all said, in unison, "WE LIKE!!"

Two of the "transition" movies are Talk of the Town, with Jean Arthur (his costar in the earlier Only Angels Have Wings) and Ronald Colman (a wonderful performance) and Mr. Lucky - a movie I absolutely adore. I included it in my Under-rated Movies list.

Richard Schickel analyzes both of these films in the following excerpt. Brilliant.

EXCERPT FROM Cary Grant: A Celebration, by Richard Schickel

And so Cary Grant, having skipped blithely through the depression, his social conscience entirely unburdened, came at last to concern, involvement, the big issues: in The Talk of the Town (1942) and Mr. Lucky (1943). They are not bad. They are better, for example, than Once Upon a Honeymoon (also 1942) in which he was a newspaperman trying to get a stripteaser out of Europe ahead of the advancing Nazi hordes, or Once Upon a Time (1944) in which he was seen as the manager of a dancing caterpillar, two travesties which a merciful memory now almost entirely veils. By contrast, The Talk of the Town and Mr. Lucky are both well made. If they ground his spirit they ground it gracefully, with a certain intelligence. In the first, co-written by Irwin Shaw and Sidney Buchman, with George Stevens directing, he is Leopold Dilg, who has been a nuisance, a classroom cut-up in the town where he was born. Somewhere along the line his anarchical spirit was politicised. ("Some people write novels. Some people write music. I make speeches on street corners.") One does not quite believe it - Cary Grant on a soapbox! - but since the film does not actually require us to contemplate this depressing spectacle, we can perhaps ignore the naggings of disbelief. In any event, he has been falsely accused by the town's leading citizen - the owner of its principal factory - of arson and murder, and the film opens with him escaping jail and taking refuge in a country house owned by Nora Shelly (Jean Arthur) which she is preparing for a new tenant, Prof. Michael Lightcap (Ronald Colman), a legal scholar and civil libertarian - Justice Douglas with an English accent - who is moving in to write a book in peace. We are on the bring, here, of violating one of the madcap comedy's most sacred conventions. The green place is about to be polluted by politics, the disorders of the world are about to intrude upon the retreat, the purity of which was essential to the restoration of bedevilled perspective. There is, however, some nice knockabout as Arthur tries to keep Grant hidden from her visiting professor, some nice irony when, her secret revealed, the two men take a liking to one another, and begin discussing the gap between the law as theory and the law as reality - the idea being largely to disabuse the professor of his innocence on the latter point. That's good populist stuff. And his involvement in Dilg's case, which includes doing a little rough-and ready private detective work before taking it to court, gets him out from behind his books and will surely make him a better, more humane Supreme Court justice, which is what he becomes at the end of the picture.

Grant makes a good fugitive. He can use his natural wariness, his alert passivity, to advantage. And sometimes when the talk is thick we can see that he is not paying attention to it. What does all this chat have to do with the fact that the cops are on his tail, and have previously demonstrated but small interest in defending him from a lynch mob? It is right and good that his mind wanders from abstractions to survival. Archie Leach's would have. If he has a problem here, it is not with his playing but with his image. That he is a man of mischief has been long since established; that he is a man of the serious left, a true radical capable of inflaming a whole community, no, that does not quite go down.

Mr. Lucky is, on that ground - but only on that ground - shrewdly calculated, for it does not discover Grant committed to anything. His Joe Adams is at the outset a gambler with a boat, a floating casino which he anchors offshore to conduct his business, with an eye fixed exclusively on the main chance. Nor is his history an open book. "Nobody ever knew what he was - except tough," says his friend, narrating the story after it appears that the criminal had died a heroic wartime death, torpedoed at sea. Especially since the lighting is noir-ish, it seems that what we are about to witness is Grant's Casablanca, the story of a shady soul regenerated by popular front idealism. But as we move into the tale, the mood brightens and the pace quickens. Looking for a respectable cover, Joe aligns himself with a war relief organisation managed by a group of society ladies, and is soon enough smitten by its deputy director, Dorothy Bryant (Larane Day). We are now suddenly in the country of romantic comedy - society dame and a mug from the wrong side of the track (or docks) falling for each other. Whereupon we fall over into the land of the screwballs. The ladies set Grant to work knitting in a window where passers-by can see him. It is a great Grant moment - a drag scene without a drag outfit, and charmingly goofy. Not long thereafter, Joe and Dorothy head in the classic manner to the green world - Dorothy's family home in the country. We expect a romantic peacefulness to fall over their scrappy affair. Wrong again. When she proposes marriage, he fires back the opening barrage in what will quickly turn into class warfare: "To people like you, folks like me are animals ... We're so bad and you're so very good ... You look through me like I was a dirty pane of glass ..." and so on. Then, however, a priest tells him tales of children suffering under wartime hardships and the filthy pane is cleansed; one can see through it now to a heart of gold. A plan by some of Joe's mob pals - to steal the take from a gambling concession Joe is managing at a charity ball managed by Dorothy's organisation - is foiled by him and ... It is by this time like a breathless tale made up by a child, all hasty twists and turns, eager to please at any cost.

It is amazing. It is weird. It defies description. What is this movie? What is its main line of business? It never makes up its mind. And that reflects its curious beginnings. The original story is by one Milton Holmes, who was a tennis pro at a club where Grant played. He approached the star with the basic idea and the actor got the studio to buy it and assign Holmes to turn it into a script. Given his inexperience, however, it was thought prudent to bring in a more seasoned partner - none other than Adrian Scott, who would soon enough find a larger fame as one of the Hollywood Ten. There must be one of the great unwritten farces in this situation - the tennis bum and the gentlemanly communist sitting down to collaborate on a comedy for one of the world's most glamorous stars.

And one in which he was taking a personal interest. For there is a third element of interest in the film - a minor but palpable autobiographical note. Grant occasionally uses Cockney rhyming slang (most notably "Lady from Bristol" which means "pistol" in the argot). There are references to a poverty-stricken past and of a mother going hungry so that her child would be fed. His character is also given a rationale for not entering military service, which was something of a touchy subject for Grant who, despite his age - he was close to forty - seems to have felt guilty about not entering the service. "I had my war," says Joe, "climbing out of the gutter. I won that war. It's the only war I recognize."

It might have been a recipe for disaster, this unlikely collaboration between a man who had been a servant in the upper class world that madcap comedy had purportedly represented, a critic of that world (educated on a scholarship at Amherst, Scott's background was working class) and an actor, who besides trying to breathe new life into the genre that had given him life as a star, was also, at this moment, as we shall shortly see, interested in expressing something of his own lower-class roots in his work.

The result, perhaps surprisingly, was not a disaster. If Mr. Lucky is hardly a great movie it is not a bland one or a stupid one either. It is in fact more memorably dislocating than many of Grant's smoother and better loved movies. At least on the subject of class it is, for example, more abrasive, more emotionally honest, than something like The Philadelphia Story.

But of course, it is critically a dangerous movie. The mixture of personalities in the writer's office, the resultant mixture of moods and motives in the film itself, have such a tempting historical symbolism - that one perhaps finds it more interesting than it really was. But if one must guard against claiming too much for the picture, this much is certain: it is an apt and convenient place to mark the end of an era, an end to the giddy delights of a kind of movie making for which we lost the taste for seeing, then the knack for making.

Grant lost something almost immediately - his main line. He would, in time, find another one, though never one as interesting, as quirky, as full of surprises for us, for himself, as the comedies of this period had provided.

Blue and white

This past weekend we threw a bridal shower for my sister Jean who is getting married in September. It's all very happy and intense. I love my family so much, and I love Pat's family (the groom) ... and Jean's friends - many of whom I have known since they were toddlers rolling around with Jean on a blanket in the backyard covered in popsicle juice - are phenomenal women. Siobhan and I got up at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday and drove up to Rhode Island to meet up at Leslie's house where the shower would take place. It was a blazing blue and white day. You can feel the ocean in the air. Leslie lives walking distance from the Atlantic. As I wrapped streamers around the fence, smeared in SPF 70, I could feel the caravan of cars converging from all over New England - aunts and cousins and friends - coming to celebrate our dear Jean's wedding. This is not an unambiguously happy time. There are things in our lives that put a shadow over the event. A big family thing. Which does not temper our joy, but seems to bring it out into even starker relief. It's so intense that I am considering Xanax as a coping mechanism. Jean is a beautiful woman, and Pat is a beautiful man ... a member of our family from almost day one ... so to be on the brink of "making it official" is glorious indeed.

It was a good day.

Oh, and Jean and Pat got great gifts. There are many funny stories from the shower. Sarah, hugely pregnant, sitting with her feet in the pool, watching Jean open identical glasses from a box - Jean was blabbing on, caught up in the moment ... opening each glass, even though they all were the same - and suddenly out came a booming voice from the side of the pool: "STOP OPENING GLASSES!" commanded Sarah. We are all still laughing about that. Let's keep the event moving, keep it snappy ... STOP OPENING GLASSES.

Us four bridesmaids worked our ass off to make this thing happen, and happen right ... so once people started showing up, the event stopped being a phantom in my mind, something I worried about ... and started becoming something to revel in, to enjoy.

Especially the acute happiness of seeing my sister so happy.

Xanax, please.

The Books: "Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart" (Charles Higham & Roy Moseley)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

Cary Grant, The Lonely Heart, by Charles Higham & Roy Moseley

What confuses me is how it took TWO authors to write such a yawn of a book!

This is what happens when you try to "explain" your subject, as opposed to just describing his actions - and letting the actions speak for themselves. The Lonely Heart isn't a smear book. But it is interested in pulling Grant down off the pedestal. Now, I'm cool with that, in some ways: he was a man, after all ... and the practical choices he made, the everyday choices, went a long way towards creating that spectacular persona we all recognize. But all these two authors can really come up with in the end is, "Wow, Cary Grant is contradictory! THIS wife said he was loving, and THAT wife said he was paranoid! How can that be??" Uhm, maybe because Cary Grant was a human being, and we all have contradictions within us? Irreconcilable? We aren't just the same, through our lives - and if we are, we probably wouldn't get biographies written about us, because it would be the most boring biography ever written. I'm shy in some circumstances, and a raging extrovert in others. Some people would call me a bitch or cold, and then other people would declare to the moon that I was the best friend a person could ever have. That's life. If you fall down in shock over that, then you need to get out more. You need to expand your consciousness about, oh, what it means to be a human being. Higham & Moseley want to iron Grant out and in so doing completely miss the mark. It is, indeed, possible, to be two contradictory things at the same time. One woman reports that Grant was a sensitive caring lover. One woman reports that he was abusive, cold, and cheap. Yeah? So? Maybe he had chemistry with one, and felt threatened by the other. Who knows. I had to force myself to finish the book. I guess, in my opinion, you're better off not coming to conclusions about a person. Just let them be. To quote Philadelphia Story: "The time to make up your mind about people is never." I totally agree with that. Tell us what they did, and let the story speak for itself. I am thinking of the really good biographies now: Berg's Lindbergh, McCullough's John Adams, Ellmann's Joyce ... These are massive accomplishments. Each subject is highly complex. Alexander Hamilton thought one thing about John Adams, Abigail another. But of course. David McCullough does not try to reconcile those contradictions because they aren't to BE reconciled. Hamilton wasn't right, and Abigail wasn't wrong. They both are right, because, uhm, you know, we all have different perspectives in life, and different goals. Hamilton thought Adams was truly dangerous, and mentally unstable. Adams was also in his way. So of course he would have a negative reaction to Adams. Abigail was Adams' partner, his wife, his adviser in many ways. She also had a tribal sense of family, and if you dissed her husband, even if you were an old dear friend (calling Thomas Jefferson, call for Thomas Jefferson) - she would cut you out forever. That makes sense from HER perspective. McCullough doesn't seem baffled by this. He lets it stand. It's not for us to judge, or decide. Maybe it's for us to bring someone to the forefront (as has happened in the last 10 years with Alexander Hamilton, who is in vogue now) - and correct some misinterpretations that are out there in the public space ... But life is complex, we are all mixed bags, we cannot be nailed down to one or two adjectives ... because usually we are different in different situations. One of my boyfriends thought I was the best thing since sliced bread and still yearns for me to be in my life. One of my other boyfriends has let me go completely, probably thrilled that he escaped with his heart intact. I don't know. Doesn't confuse me at all.

So The Lonely Heart isn't good, is basically what I'm trying to say. It also really skimps on the movies. It's more interested in Grant's personal life, which, again, is rather interesting - I understand that ... For example: Can we please talk about Randolph Scott and the Christmas cards that they sent out to all of their friends?

This is just one example. The photos of those two together - roommates for many years - working out together, cooking, one of them wearing an apron ... This isn't tongue-in-cheek, either. What it is is "out" - no pretense, realizing the impression it made - and doing it for that reason - it fascinates me!

But then our co-authors have no idea how to talk about acting. They skip over it because they are completely out of their element. "Grant did a good job in North by Northwest and the public loved it." I'm not exaggerating. The movies are skipped over, they are just the context for the larger story about how CONFUSING it is that Cary Grant was so CONFUSING!!

And look, I'm fine with talking about that confusion. I think it is an essential part of Grant's long-lasting appeal. People like Pauline Kael and Richard Schickel - in their essays and books about Grant - go deeply into these contradictions, and how it either informed his work, or stayed out of his work, how he compartmentalized, but also how he knew which aspect of himself to bring forward in each particular role. They know how to talk about what it is that actors do. They also just flat out know how to write, and know how to make Grant's biographical details (that bit with his mother disappearing, and his possible long-term gay relationship with Randolph Scott) into fodder for his work. It becomes interesting, rather than prurient. Higham & Moseley are out of their element. And I guess I feel like: if you're going to talk about Cary Grant, you had BETTER be prepared to talk about acting in an intelligent way. You don't see David McCullough skipping over the whole "politics" section of his book, because he doesn't understand how politics work. You're gonna write about John Adams, then you had best learn it!

So. These are my thoughts. Take 'em or leave 'em. The Lonely Heart came out in 1989 and since then there have been many in-depth biographies (which are a bit more in vogue now than they were then) of Grant - some taking one focus, some taking the other ... there are books about his sense of style, or the gay esthetic of his life - closeted Hollywood and all that, his business sense, his development of the screwball comedy ... There's way more out there on the market now. The Lonely Heart has pretensions of importance, and to me, it comes off as banal. More than anything else, it made Cary Grant boring, and THAT I can't forgive!

I have always been interested in his long-term friendship with playwright Clifford Odets (one of my posts about Odets here).

By the time Grant and Odets met, Odets' star had fallen quite a bit from his meteoric rise in the 1930s. His reputation preceded him, but he had fallen short of what he had dreamt for himself. He was a huge drinker. He was volatile. He was a working-class boy who loved nice things and glitter and high-end nightclubs. Because of his plays which defined, in many ways, the "Left" in America in the 1930s - there had always been some kind of expectation placed on him, almost like he should be a pamphleteer or propagandist, rather than an artist. It nearly killed his art. He sat in Hollywood, struggling, fighting, writer's block, stymied by the business ... unable to function (Barton Fink, anyone?) He and Grant became friends (and remained so until Odets' death) - and Grant took a chance with Odets (and Grant was extremely cautious as an actor ... he only worked with directors he trusted ... reluctant to place himself in unknown hands - he was stubborn) - and starred in the first (and only) movie that Odets directed: None But the Lonely Heart.

If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. I think it has some major problems but it has much in its favor. First of all, there's Odets' language. It gives me goosebumps. I LOVE Odets' style. Sylvester Stallone has clocked Odets as one of his major inspirations for the script in Rocky - that mix of street poetry and rough-and-tumble romanticism. Odets was an idealist. Much of his stuff can seem naive now, in our more "knowing" eyes, but the language stands alone. "Don't give me ice when your heart's on fire," snarls one of his characters. Odets is very difficult for actors to play. You cannot wink at the audience as you are onstage. You cannot condescend to it. You have to "go there". In None But the Lonely Heart, Cary Grant goes back to his roots (never far from his consciousness) and plays a Cockney drifter, kind of a mama's boy, struggling to get a leg up in the world (classic Odets). Grant was a giant star when he made that film, and he was more often in a tuxedo than any other kind of clothing. In None But the Lonely Heart he wears a cap, a vest, baggy pants ... he has the accent - not HIS accent that he created - but how he actually spoke, how he grew up speaking. It's a dark film. Large forces are at work, the world occurs as a grinding crushing entity, there to keep the good and honest man down. Odets was all about compromise - sometimes to a fault (Golden Boy with his Brute Force on the one hand and Sensitive Artist on the other - is a good example) - but to Odets that compromise was always there for an artist: can you be an artist in a capitalist society that only values money? ("Life isn't printed on dollar bills!" shouts one of his characters) Or ... can you succumb to the lure of money, just to get a leg up, an escape, and THEN go live the life of your dreams? Odets struggled with these issues and None But the Lonely Heart is all about that. Another thing to watch, and it's astonishing: the LOOK of the film. God, is this a great-looking movie. George Barnes was the DOP, so much of the credit goes to him, but part of the director's job is to convey his idea, his dream of the film, to his DOP ... and so None But the Lonely Heart, with its noir-ish darkness, and gleaming cobblestones, and smoky streetlamps ... shows Odets' vision as a director. Each frame is a work of art. Makes me wish Odets had directed more.

The public wasn't wacky about the film - nobody wanted to see Cary Grant in a downtrodden Cockney part ... but it did get critical acclaim and Ethel Barrymore won an Oscar for her portrayal of Grant's mother. And Grant was nominated. It was an experiment ... and it was also a project dear to Grant's heart. Years and years later, when Grant finally got his Honorary Oscar - Peter Bogdanovich was charged with putting together clips of Grant's films through the years. Grant didn't care about any of that, he let Bogdanovich do his thing ... but his only request was that the clip of him crying by his mother's bedside in None but the Lonely Heart was included. He had never been asked to show such emotion, and he really wanted it to be remembered.

Odets and Grant were unlikely friends - at the opposite ends of the spectrum, politically ... and Grant was frugal (to a fault), and cautious, and committed to physical fitness his entire life. Odets could be a mess. Grant would lend him money, would sit by him when he was sick near the end ... remained a friend even when all of Odets' other friends had faded away. It was a deep friendship. I would love to know more about it. Higham & Moseley are not the ones to tell that story, however ... but I figured I would pull out an excerpt having to do with this topic.

Tip of the iceberg.

But when you're talking about Cary Grant, it is my opinion that you are always only at the tip of the iceberg.

EXCERPT FROM Cary Grant, The Lonely Heart, by Charles Higham & Roy Moseley

Clifford Odets, a reigning playwright of the American stage, was in town that season, following a stormy protracted divorce from Luise Rainer and a disastrous relationship with Frances Farmer. Author of a string of highly praised plays written under the aegis of the Group Theatre, he had recently scored a great success with Golden Boy (which was filmed in 1940 with the twenty-two-year-old William Holden). Tall, dark, brooding, capable of flashes of wit and charm, but more often morose, difficult, and profoundly introverted, Odets fascinated Cary as few men had ever done. He was the first serious intellectual with whom Cary had come in touch. Odets was well read in a number of different cultures he had a commanding knowledge of music and painting; he had a fluent, sometimes pretentious, but always stimulating line of speech. Peering through scholarly spectacles, he would rivet people but then exhaust them with his excessive knowledge, which made them feel uncomfortable. He was in every possible way out of place in the movie community. Yet his hunger for the bodies of beautiful young girls was insatiable, as burning and fierce as his talent in its demands upon him. At the age of thirty-four, he was at the height of his physical strength and of his power as a dramatist, and few women could resist his fame, his looks, and his lean, athletic physique.

Odets would remain the one human being who reached into Cary's soul and understood it. Clifford Odets's son Walt comments upon his father's relationship with Cary. In conversation, he told Charles Higham:

Although I do not believe they had a physical relationship, I think I am right in saying that they had an intense love for each other. My father was also bisexual, and I know he and Cary discussed this. Also, it tortured both of them. Yet at the same time, whereas my father was extremely repressed in private, never revealing anything of the other side of his nature, Cary often acted quite overtly effeminate in our home, startling me and my sister. Of course, I'm talking about years later; I wasn't born until the late 1940s.

Some part of my father - that part of himself which came from his very ambitious, immigrant father - clearly aspired to be Cary Grant, so to speak. This is partly what kept him in Los Angeles hanging out with movie people. Cary, on the other hand, must have aspired in some serious way to be like my father ... Both men seem to have been quite conflicted and pained about ... private parts of themselves. This was one of the reasons their friendship was often difficult; each was especially sensitive to the other's expectations, because those expectations also came from within.

Although it would be several years before they would work together, they remained in touch even when Odets was in New York and even though their politics were in opposition. Odets was a creature of the traditional left, Cary was still a dyed-in-the-wool Republican.

Steel magnolia

It's been scary times in my friend Alex's life. And scary for all of us who know and love her. Emails flying through cyberspace yesterday - "have you heard anything??"

Thank God Jan is on the scene.

My love to you and Chrisanne, dear Alex.

Master of LEGOs

LEGOs perform "Whiplash".

I love the shots of the gyrating "crowd". I love the guitar solo.

Who knew that LEGOS would remind me to get excited for the upcoming Metallica tour?

The Books: "Evenings With Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best" (Nancy Nelson)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

Evenings With Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best, by Nancy Nelson

I can imagine that this is pretty much a book only for hardcore fans. It's almost an oral history, the biographical details are slim - everything is swayed in favor of the adulation of Cary Grant (the foreword of the book is by his last wife Barbara and his daughter Jennifer) ... but what is so terrific about it is that there are first-hand anecdotes about the filming of all of his movies - from his co-stars, his directors, his friends ... stuff that may seem trivial and might not make it into a "serious" biography, but THIS is the stuff I want to hear: what was it like on the set of Notorious? How did Cary Grant work on his part in Suspicion? What did Mae West have to say about him? There are funny stories about improvisational moments, and mistakes that turned into gold ... all of the stories of what it was like to be Cary Grant, as an actor. I loved this book. I still dip into it from time to time, when I want to write about Grant and one of his movies - because there's not a movie here that is not covered in detail, and I love it because the narrative voice of Nancy Nelson is completely unobtrusive. She basically gives bullet points to set up the anecdote ("On April 9, 1964, Grant started working on Father Goose") - and then she lets the voices take over. She lets Leslie Caron speak, or Cary Grant, or Cy Coleman ... lengthy first-person monologues ... I just love that crap.

Grant fans, you don't want to miss this book. It may not be "serious" but it is my favorite of all of my Grant books. It's the one I "use" the most, in my writing.

To me, it gives the most complete picture of the mystery that is Cary Grant - and that is because it doesn't try to pin down the mystery, it doesn't try to 'explain' Grant ... It just lets the movies speak for themselves, and also his behavior on the set - toward his co-stars, directors, leading ladies ... The man begins to emerge. Sort of. It still doesn't "explain" him, and I actually prefer that. Books that are hellbent on explaining him ("He was gay and THAT'S why he became Cary Grant!") are annoying (although sometimes interesting) - because they cannot handle the mystery, they must decide on a THEORY and then back that up ... I am not interested, for the most part, in that kind of thinking. Especially not when it comes to human beings. Based on the known facts, it seems that Grant probably was at least bisexual, who knows, I don't really care - Or I care inasmuch as it affects his work. That's what interests me. I'm also, though, suspicious of those who seem adamant that Cary Grant was straight as a board ... I'm talking mainly about fanboys/girls, naturally. You know, the types of fans who will go to the MAT that Clay Aiken is not only straight, but a gift directly from the Lord to help the downtrodden people, and he's a good boy, he's good to his mother, he just hasn't found the right girl yet! Claymates, I believe they call themselves. They are FEROCIOUS at any suggestion that their beloved Clay is Gay. It's odd. (Especially because ... hmmm .. I'm thinkin' the Claymates are headed for a pretty awful revelation one of these days and their entire worldview will come crushing down.) But there's a similar faction in Grant fan-land, because of the rumors that he was gay, had a long relationship with Randolph Scott, even some of the comments he made himself in his life ... I don't know, there are the fans who will get ENRAGED that you suggest their beloved idol was, perhaps, gay. I don't get it. What do you care if he was gay, straight, bi, whatevs? Isn't he still Cary Grant? Why are you so invested in him NOT being gay? I get annoyed at the Team America "everyone is gay gay gay" theme (Allison was laughing recently reading a bio about Hepburn, and she got annoyed at the author's insistence that everyone was gay - she found herself rolling her eyes at it) ... but I am also curious at those who seem vehement against it. I don't know. I don't know Cary Grant. I have my theories like everyone else (the man was bi), but that has nothing to do with who he is as an ACTOR. (Or, perhaps it does have something to do with it ... perhaps that "mystery" I keep referring to is part and parcel of Cary Grant keeping aspects of himself separated off ... something he did repeatedly, throughout his life. Nobody knew all of him.) Whatever, none of this is here, there, anywhere. If Grant was bisexual, it still doesn't explain the magic of his appeal on screen, and the continuous awe he inspires, as an actor. He was a top box office star for, what, 3 decades? Unheard of. And I believe it would have continued, if he hadn't retired. Cary Grant was never going to be an old guy with 2 lines in a movie. Sean Connery is similar. There's something still so vital about the man, he's still a valid leading man ... you don't want to see Connery in the background, or in a bit part ... it just wouldn't seem right. Grant decided to step down. And he seemed to do so with zero bitterness. He just amazes me. There's nothing about him that is even remotely like anyone else.

I decided to choose an excerpt from the book that had to do with the filming of Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby.

EXCERPT FROM Evenings With Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best, by Nancy Nelson

In February 1938 Bringing Up Baby was released. The first of four films Grant made with director Howard Hawks, it has become one of the classics of screwball comedy. His costar for the second time was Hepburn, and the two now were working as a well-practiced team.

Both Grant and KATHARINE HEPBURN were meticulous about details. She recalls: "We wanted it to be as good as it could possibly be. Nothing was ever too much trouble. And we were both very early on the set. Howard Hawks was always late, so Cary and I worked out an awful lot of stuff together. We'd make up things to do on the screen - how to work out those laughs in Bringing Up Baby. That was all Cary and me."

CG: Kate's a joy. At the end of Bringing Up Baby she climbs up high on a ladder next to the brontosaurus, to apologize for what has happened. The ladder falls, and she climbs to the back of the brontosaurus, where I'm standing on a platform. She had to get over the brontosaurus. As she moves, the brontosaurus starts to collapse. I told her when and how to let go. I told her to aim for my wrists, an old circus trick. You can't let go of that kind of grip, whereas if you go for the hands, you'll slip. She went right for my wrists, and I pulled her up. Kate was marvelously trusting if she thought you knew what you were doing.

Brontosaurs were one thing, but HEPBURN knows that Grant never warmed up to the leopard in Bringing Up Baby: "He didn't like cats, so he would have none of it. I was the only one who would work with the leopard because Cary was so scared of it. I was too dumb to be afraid. They blocked the scene and caged in the leopard. Olga Celeste, the trainer, was hidden off camera - with a whip. I had three scenes to do with the leopard. The first was a walk-through. In the second I'm in a negligee with the leopard trailing after me. And in the third I'm in a short dress with weights on the bottom, so when I turned, the skirt flicked. And by jiminy, when I turned - and I was much too sure of myself - the skirt flicked. The leopard sprang at my back. I didn't see it. That was the end of shooting the leopard with an actor.

"During the filming we dropped a fake leopard through the top of Cary's dressing room. He was furious at us - but amiable, of course."

(Decades later Grant had noticeably overcome his fear of cats. ROY, of Siegfried and Roy, relates that "Cary and Barbara came to our home in Las Vegas, where we have about twenty animals - leopards, tigers, great Danes - living freely. Cary would sit with us in the garden room, with a tiger sitting at his feet and watch the others swimming in the pool. He was fascinated with our commitment to preserving the white tiger, which is almost extinct.")

KATHARINE HEPBURN appreciated Grant's humor offscreen as well as on: "Cary was a lovely, very generous actor. A good comedian. And so funny. He had a wonderful laugh. When you looked at that face of his, it was full of a wonderful kind of laughter in the back of his eyes. Of course, he was also very serious." Howard Hawks was fully aware of Grant's wider range, as he told PETER BOGDANOVICH. "Cary is a great comedian and a great dramatic actor. He can do anything."

When LOUIS JOURDAN first saw Cary Grant on the screen in Bringing Up Baby, he found him irresistible: "I discovered this extraordinary presence. I was in awe of this persona on the screen - the look, the walk. But mainly it was his extraordinary, innate sense of the absurd. He was a master of the absurd, a pioneer before the theater of the absurd arrived. The Cary Grant I fell in love with on the screen hadn't yet discovered he was Cary Grant. He was absolutely in the raw. All those mannerisms - everything that has been imitated for forty years - he didn't know yet.

"Pauline Kael, the critic, made me see what makes Cary unique. At the same second that he is delightful and charming and irresistible, there is also the threat he could have a black side. He is constantly in conflict. Behind the construction of his character is his working-class background. That's what makes him interesting. That's what makes him liked by the public. He's close to them. He's not an aristocrat He's not a bourgeois. He's a man of his people. He is a man of the street pretending to be Cary Grant!"

Grant confided to JACK HALEY, JR. the origins of one of Bringing Up Baby's funniest sequences: "It was the scene in which Cary steps on the tail of Katharine Hepburn's dress and tears out the rear panel. He based it on a real-life happening. He went to the Roxy Theater in New York. Sitting next to him were the head of the Metropolitan Museum and his wife. At some point he gets up to go to the men's room and returns. A little while later the woman gets up and crosses in front of him. They're right at the edge of the balcony, he starts to stand, and he sees that his fly is open. So he zips his fly shut and catches her frock in it. They had to lock step to the manager's office to get pliers to unzip his fly from the dress. He told Howard Hawks the story, and Hawks used it. He couldn't use the fly joke, but he used the lockstep."

Hawks liked to tell another story. "It may be apocryphal," explains PETER BOGDANOVICH, "but Cary never refuted it. There's a scene where Cary's supposed to get angry, and Howard said, 'That's pretty dull. You get angry like Joe Doakes down the block. I know a guy, when he gets angry, he kind of whinnies like a horse. Why don't you do that?' So Cary went like this ... [makes whinnying sound]. And then that became a part of his persona. Now, you could say that Hawks could have given that direction to anybody. But it wouldn't necessarily have worked. It wouldn't have worked with Bogart or Cooper or Gable. It worked with Cary Grant. Perhaps Hawks was inspired by the qualities Cary brought to the scene and knew Cary could make it work."

3 songs that really upset me as a child

These songs haunted me. I couldn't let it go. I kept going back to them in my mind, over and over, asking the same questions, trying to find a loophole in the lyrics ... Maybe THIS time the song won't end the same way ... maybe I can find the way out to a different ending.

-- the song "You take the low road and I'll take the high road ..." I never listened to it without feeling an ache in my heart and without trying to talk TO the song, and ask it why it had to be that way. I always just wanted to intervene and say, 'No, no, can't you BOTH take the low road, you and your true love? So you don't have to separate?" A small 7 year old intervention. The song really upset me, and I kept trying to negotiate with the song itself ... trying to figure out a way for the lovers to stay together

-- Little Jackie Paper's betrayal (that's how I saw it) and the last moment when Puff the Magic Dragon crawled into the cave. Can't even talk about it. To this day.

-- John Henry and his hammer. I learned that song in 2nd grade, I think there was even a picture book, and I remember the illustrations - particularly one very dark one, which showed John Henry - in the tunnel - swinging his hammer ... and I knew he was a big strong man but the illustration made him look very small, in the distance, coming through with his hammer. I hated that he died and it seemed so unfair, I remember sitting at my little desk in 2nd grade in a total funk about it. There was a line in the song about how his heart gave out - he had worked so hard - and it just made me sick to think about. It was another song where I wanted to intervene. I wanted to run through the tunnel in my little Keds sneakers, and drag John Henry out by the hand before his heart gave out. Not fair. Learning the lyrics to that song ruined my day. I still have a strong reaction to that song (which now comes up on my iPod all the time, thanks to Bruce Springsteen) and part of it is because of how upset it made me when I was in 2nd grade.

Geek Love in ink

A pretty spectacular slideshow of tattooes.

The slideshow came to my attention because of Book Slut's post about the tattoo of Leona the lizard girl from Katherine Dunn's Geek Love:

God.

Geek Love is one of the most shattering books I have ever read (excerpt here) - and I still believe that the less said about it the better (although I LOVE to run into people who have read it ... it's like we're members of some small elite cult). My friend Mitchell always thought it should be made into a film - but not live-action - he thought it should be a dark surreal cartoon, which I still think is a brilliant idea. With images like that tattoo ... wow.

The Books: "Goldwyn: A Biography" (A. Scott Berg)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

Goldwyn: A Biography, by A. Scott Berg

I made a mistake and skipped ahead to "Grant" ahead of "Goldwyn" and now must go back. It would have haunted me otherwise. I have a ton of Cary Grant books, and my OCD would not allow me to pretend any longer that "Gr" came before "Go".

Besides, this is a terrific book, and I highly recommend it. Hard to imagine any other biography needing to be written, after the detailed analysis of A. Scott Berg's book. (On a sidenote: I would like to be A. Scott Berg. I would love to be a biographer who hits it huge and then gets to just choose which subject interests him next. His Lindbergh biography is a high-water-mark for biography in general, but this book on Goldwyn is up there as well). He uses the same tireless research methods on Goldwyn that he used on Lindbergh - and the results are amazing. There is nothing about Goldwyn (nothing important, anyway) that is left out of this giant book. Read it.

Born in Warsaw in 1879, Schmuel Gelbfisz made his way to the United States (a circuitous route) and worked in the clothing business for a while, making a nice success for himself before throwing his hat into the ring with the brand new motion-picture business. Involved in vaudeville and film (which was then based in New York City), he already put his focus into forming partnerships - some more successful than others - but eventually, of course, he became his own corporation.

(Naturally, he had changed his name from Gelbfisz - to Goldfish - and then to Goldwyn).

The man died in 1974, so his career and influence spanned decades, the entire birth of the motion picture industry. Goldwyn was a notorious tyrant, cold, calculating, and jealous of his power. He held on tightly to what he had, and manipulated events to the best of his ability. He was not just a businessman. He also had a desire to make good pictures and be given a stamp of approval (which is why the worldwide uproar - all positive - about The Best Years of Our Lives was so emotional for him). When Best Years swept the Oscars in 1947 - well, it was one of THOSE years ... when no other film (and there were same damn good ones that year) stood a chance. There's an anecdote told in the book by A. Scott Berg which really struck me. Goldwyn was well into his career by the time of Best Years. He had made a reputation for finding and developing new talent (he really is responsible for Gary Cooper getting his start - but there are many others) ... and for ruthlessness in his business dealings. We have gotten to know Goldwyn, through Berg's book, and we feel we understand him, or perhaps can anticipate his reactions to things. But there was a moment that really surprised me. After the Academy Award ceremony, when Best Years won everything ... Goldwyn went home, sat down, clutching his Oscar, and sobbed.

Always a bit of an outsider, as so many of those penniless Jewish immigrants were at the time, he made it his business to not only assimilate, but dominate. He was terrifying, could be cruel, did not suffer fools ... and a visit to his office was something people trembled about beforehand. There's a VERY funny story of Billy Wilder going to his office to pitch a story-idea to Goldwyn, a movie based on the life of ballet dancer and notorious madman Nijinsky. Berg describes the meeting:

"Mr. Goldwyn," [Wilder] said at the meeting, "why not do a picture about Nijinsky?" Goldwyn looked puzzled. Wilder explained that Nijinsky was the single most famous ballet dancer in the world, a Russian witih a "marvelous, touching story." Wilder proceeded to talk about this peasant with a passion to dance who met Diaghilev, the impresario of the Bolshoi, and of their becoming homosexual lovers. "Homosexuals! Are you crazy?" Goldwyn interrupted. But Wilder proceeded, insisting the story got better. He told of Nijinsky's going insane, and that every day, while exercising in a Swiss asylum, he believed he was a horse. "A homosexual! A horse!" Goldwyn interrupted again, rapidly losing interest. But Wilder plowed through to the end of the story, detailing Nijinsky's marriage to a woman, Diaghilev's revenge, and Nijinsky's neighing for the rest of his life. Goldwyn shooed Wilder from the office, shouting at him for wasting his time on such a miserable story. On his way out the door, Wilder poked his head in with an afterthought, "Mr. Goldwyn," he said, "you want a happy ending? Not only does Nijinsky think he's a horse. But in the end ... he wins the Kentucky Derby."

hahahahaha Goldwyn was very interested in Billy Wilder, since he had written the screenplay for Ball of Fire (bestill my heart!) - one of Goldwyn's pet projects, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper, an endearing sexy romantic comedy. But as that anecdote suggests, Goldwyn was not one to sit around being polite if he thought an idea was shit. And often Goldwyn missed the mark. He was baffled by what Hollywood had become at the end of his life. His fights with the Breen Office earlier in his career (detailed below) were now in reverse. He wanted more censorship, more limits ... He was out of touch with the times. I guess that'll happen when you live to be 546 years old.

Berg details this fascinating man's life journey and in its way it becomes one of the classic American narratives. All of those guys who created Hollywood - the early moguls - were Jewish immigrants, hard workers, determined to create something out of nothing, and profit from it. They were the smartest guys in the room. Always. Goldwyn had no education (a fact he was quite touchy about), and people tell stories of his terrible table manners, and rude jokes. He was not polished. He was rough. He could be brutal. But for 40 years, people tripped over themselves to get involved with Samuel Goldwyn, to be discovered by him, to be under his protection. He was that powerful.

He also wasn't afraid to be gobsmacked by something. So often when someone is in a position of great power, they are impervious to change ... perhaps they fear admitting they are wrong, perhaps they begin to believe their own persona ... who knows. Goldwyn certainly had a little bit of that himself - but when his eyes were opened to someone, to someone's talent, even an unknown ... he made it his business to step in and take that person under his wing. He was known for it. William Wyler probably wouldn't have had a career if it weren't for Samuel Goldwyn. And then of course there is the famous story of the "discovery" of Gary Cooper, and Goldwyn's no-nonsense summing up of the work of the glorified extra: "That kid is the greatest actor I've ever seen in my life."

The excerpt I chose below has to do with the filming of The Best Years of Our Lives, directed by William Wyler, and starring Fredric March, Myrna Loy and Teresa Wright. Oh, and Dana Andrews, too, in his big break. It was a phenomenal success. Way too long - but nobody felt they could afford to cut any of it ... the audience response was so emotional ... and Goldwyn backed up everyone on that. He screened it privately, and thought - well, it's a risk, but we're going to send it out into the world as is.

It was an enormous risk. It paid off tenfold. It is one of the biggest hits in Hollywood history (not just critically, and in terms of the awards it won, but in box office receipts).

Here's the excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Goldwyn: A Biography, by A. Scott Berg

Even Goldwyn, who was never interested in the mechanics of filmmaking, understood that Toland's cinematography in this picture was exceptional. He rewarded him with his own full frame in the credit titles, and he displayed Toland's name in most of the advertising posters.

Yet another moment in the film captured the spirit of the entire nation as it came home from the war in all its pain and glory: It practically summed up the decade. Fredric March arrives at his apartment, his children answer the door, and he shushes them, asking where their mother is.

INT. LIVING ROOM

It is small, but attractively, comfortably furnished.

We are looking out through open French windows to a small terrace, where MILLY is setting the supper plates on a card table. It is just about sunset. There are three chairs. Milly looks young and alluring and very much alive.

MILLY Who was that at the door? (she turns to look in the living room) Peggy! Rob! Who was ...

Suddenly, instinctively, she knows. Throughout these years, Al has always been there, in her mind, and she has been thinking of the moment when he would walk in that door.

She puts down a plate, hard, and goes to the French windows leading into the living room. She sees Al, as he comes through the door from the corridor on the other side of the room.

For a while, both of them just stand there, looking at each other appraisingly, almost suspiciously, as though they were strangers. Their silence is strained, intense ...

Wyler recalled his own reunion with his wife at the Plaza Hotel, their walking down the corridor toward each other, and he staged it exactly that way. The emotion of every wife awaiting her husband's return could be read on Myrna Loy's face. Teresa Wright told the actress she thought it was so effective a moment because there was "real love in that scene". Later Miss Loy revealed the "motivation" that made it work. She said, "They just can't wait to get into the sack."

Halfway through filming Best Years, Wyler panicked. His doubts this deep into the picture started to rub off on Goldwyn. They both liked everything that had been filmed so far, but they feared that the scenes were not building to a climax. They grew anxious for Sherwood to write new pages that would punch up the end of the movie. Sherwood was not concerned. He believed all the characters arrived at dramatic and logical conclusions and that the three men meeting at Homer's wedding to Wilma, with the suggestion of Fred and Peggy pursuing their romance, was a resounding finale. For day,s frantic communiques between the two coasts filled Goldwyn with qualms. Wrestling with the script one midnight, he instinctively reached for the phone and dialed Sherwood in New York, oblivious of the time differential. As soon as Sherwood picked up the receiver, Goldwyn started in with his latest thoughts - stopping only when a groggy Sherwood asked, "Sam, do you have any idea what time it is?" The next thing Sherwood heard was Goldwyn's calling out, "Frances, Frances ... Bob wants to know what time it is!"

Sherwood stood by his script as written, talking Goldwyn and Wyler through the remaining scenes so they might appreciate the impact of the simple ending and all its implications. What Sherwood could not convince Goldwyn of, the Breen Office could. It found the film's ultimate message more than potent. It was poison.

The Production Code Administration, under Joseph I. Breen's iron hand, had many objections to the script of The Best Years Of Our Lives. They suggested that the scenes having to do with the breakup of the marriage between Fred and Marie be rewritten, "in order to get away any suggestion of a condonation of this tragedy." A subsequent letter from Breen's office said that Peggy's home-wrecking intentions would have to be eliminated. The rest of the Breen Office litany cited such cinematic sins as a "passionate" kiss between Milly and Al, a "vulgar" belch after Al downed a Bromo Seltzer, and any scenes involving alcoholic beverages. Producers were "free to accept or disregard any observations or suggestions" made by the Breen Office, but the Motion Picture Association fined a producer $25,000 for releashing any picture without the seal of approval of the Production Code Administration.

As late as sixty days into production, the Breen Office was still trying to impose its morality on the film - what Ben Hecht called "Mother Goose platitudes and primitive valentines ... [where] there are no problems of labor, politics, domestic life or sexual abnormality but can be solved happily by a simple Christian phrase or a fine American motto." Goldwyn replied that he would make no alterations - "since we believe this ending is honest, true, and within the bounds of decency and good behavior." When it realized Goldwyn had no intention of backing down, the Breen Office retired its objections, leaving an irreparable chink in the code.

Best Years wrapped on August 9, 1946 - with 400,000 feet of film "in the can". While the Goldwyns vacationed at the Moana Hotel at Waikiki Beach, Danny Mandell, in concert with Wyler, assembled a rough cut of the film that was 16,000 feet, about twice the length of most movies. Goldwyn knew that two hours and forty minutes of motion picture was too long to release, but when he watched it upon his return, it never felt long. On October 17, they sneak-previewed the film in a small neighborhood house, the United Artists Theater in Long Beach, hoping the audience would indicate where they might cut an hour out of the film. Goldwyn's staff sat in the back of the theater with stopwatches, at first timing between audience responses, then discovering long patches of rapt silence. Danny Mandell said "people stopped chewing their gum". There was a pregnant hush after the lovers' clinch at the finale, then a burst of applause that did not quit for several minutes. The audience's response cards were overwhelmingly favorable, almost unanimous in unqualified praise. Out on the curb, the Godlwyn staff held its conference - Sam and Frances, Mandell, production head Leon Fromkess, and a dozen others. Wyler approached them and asked if they could release a film that long. Goldwyn said they had no choice, that there seemed to be but one hundred feet to trim at most. After each test screening that followed, someone would timidly suggest a scene that might be sacrificed. "If I'd listened to them all," Goldwyn commented later, "the only thing left would have been the credits."

Goldwyn's decision to release the film in its entirety was more than a $2.1 million gamble. Theaters would be naturally loath to exhibit the film not only because of its unusual subject matter but also because its length would dictate half the number of usual screenings. He secured a booking at the Hollywood Pantages Theater for January 1947 and looked forward to opening it in New York shortly after that. When Wyler learned of these plans, he lit a fire under his producer. He suggested that Best Years would almost certainly get nominated for some Academy Awards, and they stood a better chance if they opened in Los Angeles before the year-end deadline for qualification, rather than waiting until the following year and risking its being forgotten.

A New York tycoon named Robert Dowling owned the Astor, which prided itself on screening prestigious films; his approval was needed before he would run a film. Goldwyn took a print to New York to show to him. In exchange for a pair of theater tickets, he rented Ben Sonnenberg's Gramercy Park house for the night and ran the film in his private screening room. When the Sonnenbergs returned, they all drank champagne to celebrate the November 22 opening of Best Years at the Astor. While Dowling was still awestruck by the film, Goldwyn finagled one of the best rental agreements out of him he had ever gotten from any theater - 40 percent of the gate. The producer used that to finesse other favorable contracts across the country.

In his $400,000 worth of advertising, Goldwyn created an air of distinction about Best Years. Certain theaters, like the Astor, would sell tickets only on a reserved-seat basis, some for as much as $2.40. Goldwyn arranged a screening of the film for Norman Chandler, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and got him to promote the film in the paper's news section if the first night's Los Angeles proceeds were turned over to charity. The managing editor of the rival Hearst paper, the Herald-Examiner, said it would do the same if Marion Davies's pet charity was the recipient. The Reader's Digest announced a symposium - "Which are the Best Years of Our Lives?" - and Lynn Farnol lined up a team of famous writers to contribute responses. A representative from Louisiana took the floor of the House and said The Best Years of Our Lives should be "required seeing for every American. It is a credit to the United States, and I should like this made a matter of record in Congress." Virginia Mayo and Teresa Wright were photographed for covers of Life. Hoagy Carmichael plugged the film on his radio show; and it seemed as though all the other radio stars in America wanted Myrna Loy or Fredric March or Dana Andrews to appear on their shows.

Bob Hope wanted Goldwyn on his show. A few days before his appearance, Goldwyn asked one of his writers, Harry Tugend, what he ought to say on the air. Tugent wrote an exchange that Hope's writers liked. The comedian would say, "Well, Mr. Goldwyn, how have things been going since I left your studio?" Goldwyn would reply, "I'll tell you, Bob. Since you left, we've had the best years of our lives." Exactly as rehearsed, Goldwyn stood before the NBC microphone and Hope fed him his line: "Well, Mr. Goldwyn, how have things been going since I left your studio?"

"I'll tell you, Bob," he said confidently, "Since you left, things are better than ever."

The Best Years of Our Lives opened as scheduled at the Astor in New York and Christmas week at the Beverly Theater in Los Angeles. Goldwyn was petrified after the first noon show at the Beverly, which played to an almost empty house. For reasons he never figured out, a crowd gathered three hours later, and the evening show was packed. "The public doesn't know what they want until they see it," Goldwyn often said; "but it's a mystery to me [why they're drawn in the first place] - they smell it." In selling a picture, Goldwyn was ultimately certain of but one thing: "You can't beat the word of mouth."

He received unparalleled notices. Abel Green of Variety called the film "one of the best pictures of our lives". The New York Times said the film "sets the highest standards of cinematic quality and meets them triumphantly." Newsweek spoke of it as "epic" art; Time said Goldwyn had put together a "sure-fire hit ... with good taste, honesty, wit - and even a strong suggestion of guts." James Agee grudgingly doled out words of praise on a story he found inherently pat and timid. He granted that "this is one of the very few American studio-made movies in years that seem to me profoundly pleasing, moving, and encouraging." In a follow-up article two weeks later in The Nation, he wrote: "I can hardly expect that anyone who reads this will like the film as well as I do ... But it is ... a great pleasure, and equally true, to say that it shows what can be done in the factory by people of adequate talent when they get, or manage to make themselves, the chance." After the film had its Christmas-week qualifying run in Los Angeles, Goldwyn pulled the picture until its nationwide opening in the spring - at which time he hoped to garland the advertisements with Oscar nominations.

Best Years grossed close to ten million dollars in its first year of release. It became the second-biggest moneymaker in talking-picture history to date, bettered only by Gone With the Wind.

For months, letters both adulatory and congratulatory crossed Goldwyn's desk - from Rene Clair to General Omar Bradley, who told Goldwyn, "You are helping the American people to build an even better democracy out of the tragic experiences of this war." Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal said it was "a credit to both you and Industry." War correspondent Bill Mauldin said it was "the first real, honest-to-God sincere thing I've seen about the war and its aftermath."

The film had a healing effect on the wounds of the nation and, it seemed, of every citizen who saw it. No message moved Goldwyn more than the seventeen words Western Union relayed on the night of November 21: "I HAVE JUST SHED THE BEST TEARS OF MY LIFE. YOUR LOVING AND VERY PROUD DAUGHTER, RUTH." "When it is all said and done," Goldwyn wrote her back, "it's what our own think of us that really counts, and I don't mind admitting that I love being told you are proud of me, and I will always do my best to keep things that way."

On December 14, 1946, he and Frances had sailed from New York on the Queen Elizabeth for England. The Goldwyns spent the holidays with Sammy and arranged the London bookings of Best Years. The film opened there in the spring and played to crowded houses for over a year, grossing as much in its twenty-second week as it did in its second. It became a similar phenomenon everywhere in the world, from Sydney to Rio de Janiero. It received the British Academy's award for the best foreign or domestic picture of the year, and several international equivalents - the French "Victoire", the Danish "Filmprisen", the Japanese "Hannya".

The Goldwyns returned to New York on the same ship, ringing in 1947 with the news that the New York Film Critics had voted Best Years the best picture of the year. On January 6, Goldwyn picked up a bronze plaque from the Newspaper Guild of New York, their Page One Award for his "outstanding presentation of the responsibilities of society to the returning servicemen." The Hollywood Foreign Correspondents Association presented him with their "Golden Globe".

Upon returning to Los Angeles, Goldwyn learned that he was for the seventh time in the running for the one prize that still remained beyond his grasp. The Best Years of Our Lives led that year's Academy Award nominations with eight - Best Picture, Best Actor (Fredric March), Best Supporting Actor (Harold Russell), Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Sound Recording, Best Scoring of a Dramatic Picture, and Best Film Editing. The Jolson Story received six nominations and The Razor's Edge four, including Best Picture. The three other competitors for the top honor were Olivier's Henry V, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, and The Yearling. Goldwyn was not the favorite. The Yearling and The Razor's Edge were products of major studios, MGM and Twentieth Century-Fox, which voted in blocks; and Darryl Zanuck had already made it known that he intended to campaign hard for his Oscar.

I had forgotten:

... when you vacuum the rug, and you have a cat, it is as though you have unleashed a Balrog on an unsuspecting feline populace.

Poor Hope. It's been 24 hours and she still has not recovered. I go to the closet door (where I keep the Balrog) to get something else, and Hope sees where I am going and FREAKS, racing around the apartment, scampering under my bed, where I can see her green eyes gleaming out maniacally.

Accompaniment

I want to take a moment to point you to Afshin - who has taken the time to set some of my photos to music. I watched what he had created and found myself strangely moved.

Also you picked one of my favorite photos: the green-paneled storefront in Soho, reflecting the sunset light. I feel like I didn't even do anything to catch that shot. It was magic hour, the streets of New York flamed into beauty and magic, and I happened to have my camera. But I do love how that shot came out.

Thank you, Afshin. It's been a rough day. Your beautiful video was a gift to me.

The Books: "Cary Grant: A Class Apart" (Graham McCann)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

Cary Grant: A Class Apart, by Graham McCann

I have written more words on Cary Grant than on any other topic, I believe. It's an inexhaustible obsession.

So the question for me, the fascination, (with Cary Grant more so than any other actor) has always been:

How did this:

become this?

There's a mystery at the heart of Cary Grant, which is why I believe he is our greatest movie star, and why he stands head and shoulders above his peers. He's not pin-down-able. He's a true odd duck. But odd ducks don't usually look like THAT. I mean, imagine the career he might have had, if he wasn't ... well ... who he was. Just based on his looks (excluding his bizarre now-you-see-it now-you-don't personality) it all could have been conventional and forgettable. His looks (especially as a younger man, before he filled out) were of the soft squishy leading-man quality, he was handsome, yes, but he did many films where he didn't "show up", to coin a phrase. Meaning: if you watch his earliest films, it's strange to see him before he found himself ... It's almost like he's not in his face yet. What a transformation! He showed the promise of his later movies in such early films as She Done Him Wrong with Mae West. The way Cary Grant says "You bad girl" in the last moment of the film is prophetic of the movie star he eventually would become. You can see it ALL, there, in that small moment. The gloves come off, and out comes this reeeaaaallly masculine tough sexy guy ... sexy by today's standards, sexy by any day's standards. He was basically hired to be the hottie to stand around for Mae West to ogle ... Cary Grant is usually "the object" in all of his films (see Pauline Kael's great essay about that) ... but in the "You bad girl" moment, you're suddenly like, "Who's that??"

Stars had personas in those days. They did not only play one thing (watch Joan Crawford in movie to movie, and you will see how deft she was at manipulating her persona, highlighting this or that aspect) ... but they were "types". Acting, back then, was not about how versatile you could be with accents or rubber noses or limps or total transformation ... Humphrey Bogart always LOOKED like Humphrey Bogart ... and what I love so much about these early films is how much variety is in each persona (if the actor is good, I mean. Many actors were just their "types". Nothing wrong with that ... that's the definition of "character actor". You want a crazy leering sweet drunk in a film? You call Walter Brennan. Who else you gonna call?) What is fascinating about Cary Grant is how deliberately he set about creating his persona. This is a man with a pretty dark damn background. He was born into lower-class Bristol in England, and there is some mystery surrounding his birth. Is he Jewish? People need to know! His mother is a mysterious character. One day, when Archie Leach was 9, he came home from school and his mother was not home. He was told his mother went away on vacation to the seaside. He wondered about that. Why would she go on vacation without the family? His mother never returned. She was never mentioned again. It had to have been devastating, what the psychologists call a "break in belonging". A moment when you are forever changed. Years and years later, when Cary Grant was now a major movie star, he found out that his mother actually was alive, and had been alive all this time. His father had had her committed into a mental institution - where she still lived. !!! Cary Grant reintroduced himself - the oddity of being a man the entire world knows, but unknown to his own mother. He had a relationship with her until she died. She was an odd woman, but probably NOT mentally ill. Maybe emotional, maybe a little unstable, but hell, I'm emotional and unstable! Whatever the diagnosis ... his mother was virtually erased from his life when he was a tiny boy ... and his father was a rather cold man, not someone Grant could lean on ... so when he was about 15, he ran away and joined the circus. Literally. He joined a tumbling troupe (Grant was always an incredible acrobat) which took him to America ... and the rest is history. But still: Grant's background is not at all clear. Even to himself. After all, his childhood was based on a lie: "Your mother is on vacation ..." I'm going on about these biographical details because it's so interesting to me, in lieu of who he would become: this was not a man who grew up belonging anywhere. He was a low-class Cockney. He had no mother. He went backstage once at the Bristol Hippodrome, when he was a young kid, and was blown away by the atmosphere:

The Saturday matinee was in full swing when I arrived backstage; and there I suddenly found my inarticulate self in a dazzling land of smiling, jostling people wearing and not wearing all sorts of costumes and doing all sorts of clever things. And that's when I knew! What other life could there be but that of an actor? They happily traveled and toured. They were classless, cheerful, and carefree. They gaily laughed, lived, and loved.

I think it's interesting that he used the word "classless", a very British sensibility ... and something that would obviously be very attractive to a young boy born to poor parents. BUT: he didn't come to America and play British people. Yes, he did create an incomprehensible accent (which just cracks me up - it is so HIM) - but he wasn't like, say, David Niven ... or the other "Brits" in Hollywood at that time. Cary Grant created an amalgam of British-ness and American-ness and neither side could be pinned down. That's what I think is so fascinating about Grant: his slipperiness. Gary Cooper was pretty straight-up who he was. (Thank God.) He was Grant's main competition when they were starting out (notice that Cary Grant chose a screen name with the same initials, only in reverse, as Gary Cooper). But Cooper wasn't slippery in the way Grant was. Usually someone as mysterious as Cary Grant comes off as "shady" on film, which can be a very literal medium. Films like to nail things down. Grant won't BE nailed down.

He is a great chameleon.

Not to mention the fact that that persona he created was his, and his alone. He worked at it consciously. He practiced posing in the mirror, putting his hand in his pocket. This was not a man who felt at home in the world. So he practiced poses (imitating people like Douglas Fairbanks and Noel Coward) who SEEMED at home in the world. How extraordinary. So often when we try to act like something we are not, the results come off stiff, stilted. And in Grant's earlier films, you can see some of that. He's not owning it, yet. Mae West leers at him, and he is vaguely cranky (Grant's characters are usually a little bit cranky) ... but apart from that (and the toe-curlingly sexy last moment, "You bad girl ...") - nothing indicates that this is going to be one of the biggest stars the world has ever known. Grant talks about the creation of his persona, which fascinates me no end:

To play yourself -- your true self -- is the hardest thing in the world. Watch people at a party. They're playing themselves ... but nine out of ten times the image they adopt for themselves is the wrong one. In my earlier career I patterned myself on a combination of Englishmen -- AE Matthews, Noel Coward, and Jack Buchanan, who impressed me as a character actor. He always looked so natural. I tried to copy men I thought were sophisticated and well dressed like Douglas Fairbanks or Cole Porter. And Freddie Lonsdale, the British playwright, always had an engaging answer for everything.

I cultivated raising one eyebrow and tried to imitate those who put their hands in their pockets with a certain amount of ease and nonchalance. But at times, when I put my hand in my trouser pocket with what I imagined was great elegance, I couldn't get the blinking thing out again because it dripped from nervous perspiration!

I guess to a certain extent I did eventually become the characters I was playing. I played at someone I wanted to be until I became that person. Or he became me.

9 times out of 10, such self-conscious effort will show in the results. But Cary Grant was a genius. It's like he created the space for himself before hand ... and then, when he was good and ready, stepped into it. Inhabiting it like he had been there all along. To say this is "rare" is to completely under-state what the word "rare" means.

Graham McCann's book is not, strictly, a biography. And you can tell from the title that it's biased towards its subject. Biographical details are discussed, of course, with lots of nice quotes from people who knew him when ... but I loved the book for its analysis of the creation of Cary Grant - by Archie Leach. Almost like an entirely other personality. Astonishing. And to have it work so well!! McCann takes a look at the steps Grant took to being so successful at this self-created personality (there's a whole chapter called "Inventing Cary Grant") - and I very much appreciated that aspect of the book. It made me see Cary Grant's in another light. I'm a "fan" of Grant, yes, but as anyone who reads me knows - when I get obsessed, I need to learn more. I need to watch all the films chronologically first of all, so I can watch the development. I need to read the critical studies of him, as well as the current-day reviews ... so I can see the response to his efforts. Graham McCann's book was hugely important to me when that obsession-thing came over me. He was able to articulate, in elegant yet every-day language, what it was that happened in, say, Sylvia Scarlett, with Katharine Hepburn, that was such a breakthrough. I saw it in a new light then.

I am going to excerpt today from the chapter about The Awful Truth, which really began Cary Grant's spectacular 1937-39 run (I would call it more successful than any other actor at any time, ever). In those years, Grant appeared in The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, Holiday, Gunga Din and Only Angels Have Wings. Excuse me?? Then of course in 1940 came His Girl Friday and Philadelphia Story ... so it was just an incredible time in his life, which dovetailed with the height of the studio system, and the golden age of movies, and screwball comedy, and all that ... Seriously. Can't get any better.

In George Cukor's weird little Sylvia Scarlett, Cary Grant played a Cockney conman named Jimmy Monkley - and although he's the "bad guy" (in a movie where no one is truly bad - everyone's weird and on the edge ... it's like Midsummer Night's Dream) you miss him when he's not on screen. Cukor said that it was the first time Grant "felt the ground beneath his feet" as an actor. Sylvia Scarlett was not a hit, but it gave Grant more confidence. That was in 1936.

In 1937, Grant appeared with Irene Dunne for the first time, in Leo McCarey's screwball to end all screwballs The Awful Truth.

And it was with that film that Grant suddenly became important. A giant star. No turning back. You watch those early Mae West films, only a couple of years before, and it is amazing to think that it is the same person. And whatever it was that Grant did in those intervening years remains somewhat mysterious ... he can tell us he practiced putting his hand in his pocket and imitating Douglas Fairbanks ... and that probably made sense to him ... but to us? It can't explain everything. Putting your hand in your pocket does not always end up with Cary Grant. You have to leave room for magic. Genius. Invention. (Not to mention Cary Grant's unerring sense of business smarts - which played no small part in his success. He never had an agent, for God's sake. He was a freelancer!! In a time when NOBODY freelanced. And he negotiated that extraordinary deal for himself.)

The Cary Grant persona was breezily upper-class, full of privilege and assumptions. Martinis, tennis whites, tuxedoes. That was the world of the screwball comedy. But Grant came from poverty, his background was harsh and rough ... nothing was handed to him ... and I am sure that a lot of his far-seeing business decisions (getting himself Producer credit, for example - which now is done all the time - but then??) came from the deprivations of his childhood. He didn't forget being poor. He was notoriously cheap (it became a joke amongst his friends), and he, unlike many actors at that time, planned ahead. Later in life, he became good friends with Quincy Jones (who is quite eloquent about their bond and where their mutual affection and understanding came from - that the Cockneys in the England of Grant's youth were like the blacks of America in Jones' youth - and so they felt comfortable with one another, very similar attitudes towards life) ... but anyway Jones tells a funny story about money and Grant:

The way I expressed things cracked Cary up because it was so un-British. For instance, I would say, 'I'm getting to the age where I've got to start making some more horizontal money.' He asked me what that meant. I explained, 'Well, when I'm up in the studio conducting, that's vertical money. But when you're at home watching TV and An Affair to Remember comes on, that's horizontal money.' Cary talked about that for years. He told all his friends.

Grant, way back when in the 1940s, began "producing" his films - which meant he would always have "horizontal money", even as an old man. He would not rely only on ACTING to pay the bills. He would make his acting career a business.

A phenom, that guy.

The excerpt below has to do with The Awful Truth, and Grant becoming a star. It's a star performance ... but let's not forget: he WASN'T a star when he made it. It's my favorite kind of moment in an actor's life: when he, unaware that he is about to become a star, gives a star-level performance. And you can see - in his face - the years and years of work that will follow. Not every actor has that moment. But when one does? I love to pick it apart, look at it closely, examine ...

So does McCann.

(Excerpt below, as well as a clip from The Awful Truth - hard to choose a favorite part, but this sure is at the top of the list. Cary Grant busts into a room, thinking he will find his soon-to-be-ex- wife in another man's arms ... only to find that ... well, she's singing a private concert for an uptight group of people. And Grant does a pratfall which goes on FOREVER - at around the 3 minute point ... which I never ever get sick of. And make sure to watch Irene Dunne ... singing and starting to laugh ... and she finds herself laughing in tune. Brilliant!)

EXCERPT FROM Cary Grant: A Class Apart, by Graham McCann

It is a delightful moment: in a nightclub, on the dance floor, a large, cumbrous man is engaged in a frenzied jitterbug with his slight, refined, embarrassed-looking partner; a handsome young man in evening dress has just bribed the orchestra leader to repeat the music, thus sentencing the embarrassed-looking woman - who is actually his ex-wife - to further public agitation opposite her dancing partner - who is actually her over-eager new suitor; the handsome young man in evening dress, having accomplished his scheming, pulls up his chair to the edge of the dance floor, sits down, crosses his legs, folds his arms, breathes a self-satisfied sigh, and smiles a broad, contented, joyous smile as he faces the dancers, and, implicitly, the camera, and us, his audience. This man - elegant, blithe, mischievous, delightful - carries the holiday in his eye; he is a man, quite simply, having the time of his life. This man is a star. This man is Cary Grant.

The movie in which this scene takes place is The Awful Truth (1937). It was the first of a remarkable run of five movies - the others were Bringing Up Baby (1938), Holiday (1938), Gunga Din (1939) and Only Angels Have Wings (1939) - which not only justified Grant's gamble on a freelance career but also established him, beyond any doubt, as one of Hollywood's most distinctive and popular movie stars. Each of these movies would come to be thought of as a classic of its kind, each one was quite different from the others, and each one added something extra to Grant's range as an actor. Two years, five movies and, at the end of it, one hugely successful performer, secure in his on-screen identity and confident of his ability to attract and entertain his audience. There would never be a better time for Cary Grant; there would, of course, be more good movies, more memorable performances, more box-office records, more critical plaudits, but never again would all of the crucial components - the roles, the story, the dialogue, the directors, the cast, the mood - combine so felicitously and consistently to provide Cary Grant wtih quite so memorable, so rewarding, so rich a succession of starring vehicles. This, more so than any other, was Cary Grant's moment.

This extraordinary period in Grant's career began, oddly enough, darkly, with Grant coming close to dropping out of The Awful Truth, demoralised, convinced that he had made a disastrous error of judgment. The critic Richard Schickel has described the movie as 'a kind of tuning fork; by its reverberations one can test the comic pitch of almost any movie on a similar theme - and find them, to varying degrees, just off the note', yet it was made in spite of the fact that all of the co-stars (Grant, Irene Dunne and Ralph Bellamy) spent the first few days of shooting in various states of nervous tension. The director, Leo McCarey, had made his name at Hal Roach's studios, first as a gag writer and then as the director of movies by Charlie Chase, W.C. Fields, Mae West, the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy. His methods, however, bemused and alarmed the cast of The Awful Truth. Ralph Bellamy remembers the unnerving sense of chaos early on in the production: 'McCarey came in every morning with a small piece of brown wrapping paper on which he'd written his ideas. He'd say, "Cary, you come in that door on the right, and Ralph, you come in over there on the left. I'll runt he dog through, and Irene, you come through ..." ' Hal Roach, who had worked with Grant on Topper, knew that he would be surprised and unsettled by McCarey's 'odd' methods: McCarey, said Roach, 'kept improving on things. He'd give Cary something in the morning and then tell him, "I'm not going to do that." Cary decided that Leo didn't know what the hell he was doing and tried to get out of the picture.'

'At the end of the first day,' Bellamy recalled, 'Irene was crying - she didn't know what kind of a part she was playing. Cary said, "Let me out of this and I'll do another picture for nothing".' At the end of the first week of filming, Grant sent an eight-page memorandum entitled 'What's Wrong With This Picture' to the head of Columbia, Harry Cohn. He also offered to pay five thousand dollars in return for being released from his contract. Cohn ignored it.

It was not long, however, before Grant started to change his mind. One of the things that helped reassure him was McCarey's eagerness to exploit certain aspects of his actors' own personalities in order to make the characters more believable: for example, when Bellamy told McCarey that he did not even know what his character should wear, McCarey told him, 'The jacket and trousers you have on are just what I want!'; when McCarey discovered that Bellamy could not 'get from one note to another', he tricked him into accompanying a strained-looking Irene Dunne in a rendition of 'Home on the Range' ('you just blast it out with your Oklahoma accent'). Grant began to see that McCarey was well aware of his strengths and more than willing to help him put them to good use. Once he trusted McCarey, Grant felt liberated by the absence of a settled script and seized the opportunity to improvise. 'Cary caught on quickly,' said Bellamy. 'It was right in his groove, his kind of comedy, of humor ... He could laugh with you as you were watching him. He knew you were laughing and he was encouraging it.'

The man in the mirror

You didn't think I'd forgotten, did you?

I forget nothing.

I still haven't written the damn thing but I now have a file folder on my desktop filled with screengrabs of men looking at themselves (or at somebody else) in the mirror throughout cinematic history.

More to come, including my thoughts about it all - having let it percolate for a year and a half. It's been a lot of fun.

Here's a glimpse of just some of the images I have compiled. The third one down is particularly creepy ... and makes a lot of sense, in the larger cinematic context of images of men-with-themselves-as opposed-to-men-with-the-world/reflections-in-general/self-awareness/fantasy ... But I'll get to that when I write the thing. I'm getting ready. I can always feel it when I start to gather my forces ...

To Have and Have Not: atmosphere

This is a continuation of my post about Only Angels Have Wings and the rich atmosphere set up in the first 10 minutes.

Now in To Have and Have Not, another Hawks movie, we're in Martinique. The hotel, the bars, the streets, the casinos in Martinique ... it's the same old Warner Brother's "tropical" set you've seen in a million different movies. There are a couple of shots (where the shootout happens in the bar) where you could swear you were watching Casablanca, especially because there's Humphrey Bogart and Marcel Dalio (who played the croupier in Casablanca) - and while there is no Sydney Greenstreet, you still watch thinking: hmmm. This looks AWFULLY familiar. It even starts with the image of a map - although there are no trailing lines of refugees like in Casablanca. But still. Same opening device. Same bar with stairway up the side like at Rick's, same upstairs hallway, same columned foyers where shootouts happen. Same bullshit ceiling fans, random "natives", swaggering sailors, Venetian blinds ... and it's fake fake fake. It's delightful! True make-believe. These guys, these directors, were masters. They were all directing films using the same damn sets ... and you even recognize some of the extras ... but it's the atmosphere created that is distinct. They just knew how to set up scenes and moments ... so that the entire place breathes to life. We KNOW we are not looking at Martinique, but who the hell cares about Martinique? It's not a documentary. Howard Hawks always filled his screen with action ... the random woman dancing by herself in the crowded bar, the drummer sitting back and then deciding he wants to join in the music, the people standing bellyup to the bar ... it doesn't matter that it was the same bar in a million other movies. Because it's the story that is paramount. Story story story. Who cares if you have a custom-made bar, or who cares if you travel to Martinique to film on location if the movie itself is shit? I don't mean to set this up as an either/or kind of conversation, because "either/or" usually isn't my game. It's just that when I look at To Have and Have Not, and I watch the same fake bunches of bananas go by that I saw in a million other movies, when I see that there is barely a pretense of making the bars look any different from the bar in Casablanca ... and when I realize that it doesn't matter ... I am a happy happy viewer. Keep it simple. Keep it simple. Hawks knew how to do that like nobody's business.

More screengrabs from Something's Got to Give

And more in-depth thoughts on the film here.

Screengrab

... from a movie that won my heart the first moment I saw it. I see it, on average, once every couple of months.

It always makes me cry, it always makes me laugh. Deeply satisfying film.

The Books: "In the Moment: My Life as an Actor" (Ben Gazzara)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

In the Moment: My Life as an Actor, by Ben Gazzara

It's my favorite type of career. Long-lasting, diverse, a little bit chaotic, not overly managed, with moments of brilliance, moments of just good workmanship ... and you can tell, you can just tell, that his career has been about acting, yes, but it has also been about forming relationships. He works with friends. He's a people kind of guy. He's a collaborator. He devoted his time and his focus and his love on John Cassavetes' films, starring in quite a few of them, but he had already been in the business for eons by that point, a highly successful Broadway actor, live television, movies (he was in Roadhouse, let's not ever forget) ... but I believe it is for his work in Cassavetes' films that he will be remembered. It was the most unconventional choice he could make, to throw his hat into the ring with someone like Cassavetes, and Peter Falk, and Gena Rowlands, and Seymour Cassel ... that merry band of lunatics.

He was in his 40s when he found himself on the cutting edge of the independent film scene in America. He wasn't a young, hungry guy. He was middle-aged. Married. With a kid. They all were married, with kids. It wasn't a hipster sensibility, or a Bohemian type of "let's make a movie with my friends" kind of thing. They were artists. Who understood compromise, they all had had extensive careers, but nothing compared to the roles that Cassavetes gave them. Gazzara had already been around forever. He had worked with Hitchcock, for God's sake. And Kazan. So to take that risk ... to sit in the theatre watching Cassavetes' Faces and admitting that he felt jealousy. Jealousy of Cassavetes' talent, and also - an ambition: I must work with that guy. Gazzara was no dummy. He had been looking for something in his life and his career - something that could make him feel creative again, a sense of agency in his own talent. So much of film acting is about hitting your mark, being a good boy, not being any trouble, and just doing what you're told. Lots of actors (Brando, Penn, Crowe, Mickey Rourke) have admitted that they find some of it emasculating, humiliating. Especially if the director, or the producer, or whoever ... is a moron. But that happens all the time. Gazzara's a tough guy. If you've ever seen interviews or met him, you know that he's a no-nonsense kind of tough Italian dude. Cassavetes allowed him to tap into the Gazzara-ness of his identity - his true self - in a way no other director had ever done. Cassavetes just let Gazzara be. With an actor like Ben Gazzara, it is my belief that the best thing you can do is just let him be. He'll come up with shit better than you ever dreamed. It's like Kazan's comment about how Brando re-did the taxicab scene in On the Waterfront, changing the focus of it:

"What other actor, when his brother draws a pistol to force him to do something shameful, would put his hand on the gun and push it away with the gentleness of a caress? Who else could read, 'Oh, Charley,' in a tone of reproach that is so loving and so melancholy, and suggests that terrific depth of pain? I didn't direct that; Marlon showed me, as he often did, how the scene should be performed. I never could have told him how to do that scene as well as he did it."

What generosity. To hand over credit like that. Cassavetes did not micromanage Gazzara (or any of his actors). He set them up in situations where they could behave naturally, and have accidents, messups, flaws, show up and be a PART of it, rather than something to be edited out. It is not true that his films were 100% improvised. There were scripts. All you need to do is read the script for Opening Night to know that those actors were letter-perfect with their lines. It's hard to believe. It looks completely improvised. It's astonishing.

Ben Gazzara loved Cassavetes. They were two tough guys, and their main bonding was about film and about sports. That was what they talked about, not their feelings for one another - but when Cassavetes died, Gazzara was devastated. He only realized at the very end how much he loved his friend. How much he relied on him, and also ... how much Cassavetes had done for him. Gazzara felt that Cassavetes had handed him his full talent and genius right back to him ... "Here you go. Play." it was as if Cassavetes had said.

Gazzara's career since Cassavetes has continued in that trajectory. I'm so happy when he shows up in something. Aren't you? Don't you feel in good hands? Watching him and Anjelica Huston battle it out in Buffalo 66 made me so happy. It was such a funny and ridiculous scene. I loved watching his smooth corrupt character operate in The Big Lebowski. You think he's one thing, then you realize ... oh no no no I have underestimated him. This guy is a bad dude. But Gazzara plays the whole thing with a bemused smile on his face. Almost gentle and kind. I loved his work in HBO's Hysterical Blindness (I loved everybody's performance in that film - great stuff all around) ... and it was particularly poignant to watch Ben Gazzara and Gena Rowlands, both of them old now, but friends for decades ... she is the widow of his best friend ... play scenes together ... There's one scene where they slow dance in an Italian restaurant and there is such intimacy between them, merely because the two actors know each other so well ... It killed me. Beautiful work, the two of them. Gazzara works quite a bit in Europe as well, and continues to do stage work (although his voice is nearly gone ... his famous voice). Recently, he did a one-man show about Yogi Berra that got great reviews.

So I just love him. I love the scope of his career, I love his dedication to his craft - he's an old-school crazy Method actor, and I love him for it ... and I also love his dedication to his relationships. He's not a careerist, although he is tremendously ambitious. He's one of those guys who has managed to have both in his life, and weaves the two together. Watch him and Cassavetes in Husbands, or in Opening Night ... and you can see how he's having it all.

His book is chock-full of anecdotes, enough to make a crack-ho like myself satisfied. Glimpses of Hitchcock, Tennessee Williams, Mariliyn Monroe - Gazzara was a member of the Actors Studio back in its heyday in the 50s ... He was an up and coming Broadway star. He got involved in an Actors Studio project (notorious to us theatre people) called Hat Full of Rain, by a playwright named Michael Gazzo. The script was developed out of improvisations at the Actor's Studio and if you read it, you can tell. The whole play not only starts in the middle of an argument, but mid-sentence. Now Clifford Odets had done this before, but Gazzo was a new generation ... Gazzara got the lead (he was also quite instrumental in developing the piece) and Shelley Winters played the part of his suffering wife. It's one of my greatest sorrows in life that I do not have a time machine so I could go back and see that production.

Gazzara is not shy about writing about his talent, or how difficult he could be. He did not suffer fools, and he's quite honest about how that got him into trouble. He's a hothead. Much of acting, obviously, is about "playing well with others' and Gazzara sometimes found that problematic. But his reputation was growing, and his performance as Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof on Broadway, with Barbara Bel Geddes, and Mildred Dunnock - was a sensation. OH TO HAVE SEEN THAT PRODUCTION. People still talk about it and talk about how even when Gazzara whispered he could be heard from the back balcony. His voice was quite striking - and he knew how to use it. He could modulate his voice perfectly, a la James Earl Jones, so that you either found yourself leaning forward in your seat to catch everything, or it seemed to go directly into your ear - a true instrument. I love the memories of people who saw Gazzara as Brick. He became a sex symbol, playing the part of that tortured gay man, drinking himself to oblivion, until he feels "the click". (What a great great line. Why don't you stop drinking?? people ask Brick. I haven't felt the click yet, he replies. Chilling.)

I was really torn on what excerpt to choose from his wonderful book. I loved the section about the filming of Husbands, the first film he did with Cassavetes ... but I decided to go further back, and take an excerpt from the rehearsal period and opening of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I love looking at those moments when people, to quote Mercedes Ruehl who quoted Joe Papp in her Oscar speech, "find their light". In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Gazzara found his light.

But I also love, in the excerpt, how he talks about the struggle he had with that part ... which, I believe, is the toughest role in the entire lexicon of Tennessee Williams' work. Tommy Lee Jones played it, and he is eloquent on the challenges in that role ... He feels that Cat is Williams' only "truly great" play, a challenging opinion, but one that interests me a great deal. Jones knew that Williams had read a lot of Nitsczhe, and he felt that there might be a clue there in that connection. An unthought-of connection, unexplored actually in critical examinations of Williams' work (which usually focus on either the hidden gay themes, or the sweeping Southern gothic tragedy/romance or Williams' artistry as autobiography). But Jones thought the key to Brick was Williams' reading of Nitzsche ... and found a lot of things to play off of, using that connection. I love smart actors.

One of the things that is so great about this excerpt is Gazzara's honesty about his continual struggle to "find" that part ... and how he got conflicting messages from people like "Gadge" (everyone's name for Kazan) and others ... don't show contempt for Maggie! But make it clear you don't like girls! But don't be overtly gay! You were in love with your friend Skipper - so try to SHOW that ... without really SHOWING that ... You love Maggie ... but not as a wife! I mean, playing ONE of those things would be difficult. But to get it all in?

I love love love Gazzara's talking about his process here. And how even when the show opened - he was far from DONE working on his character. He kept getting notes up until the last minute ... and he messed around, not sure what he was looking for, and then decided to 'go back' to what he had originally been doing. Easier said than done. He lost his confidence. He lost his vocal power (which he goes into below). He didn't know what the hell he was doing, and he was on Broadway! I would hazard a bet that it was that very uncertainty in Gazzara, that ... not being sure of himself ... that helped to make his performance of Brick so memorable that people who were in the audience still talk about it, they still remember the BLOCKING, they remember his voice ... even though it was almost 50 years ago.

Oh, and one last thing: he said that because of his confusion, he wasn't able to enjoy his big Broadway debut. He was more focused on figuring out what the hell he was doing. Having sat through many a Broadway show, where someone is making their debut, and that person's entire energy is: "HOLY SHIT. LOOK AT ME MAKING MY BROADWAY DEBUT. AREN'T I AWESOME???" ... I can say that I would prefer to see an actor focused on the matter at hand, meaning: the PLAY.

Anyway, enjoy the excerpt.

An amazing career, and a lovely book.

EXCERPT FROM In the Moment: My Life as an Actor, by Ben Gazzara

All the action in the play takes place in Brick's and Maggie's bedroom. The only furniture was a bed and a stand where Brick could refill his drink. He's been injured during a sporting event and he's drinking a lot. His leg is in a cast and he uses a crutch throughout the play. I had to find a way to move like the athlete he was. And I had to make his melancholy and reticence understandable. The audience had to be made aware of his painful secret.

BRICK
Why can't exceptional friendship, real, real, deep, deep friendship between two men be respected as something clean and decent without being thought of as --
BIG DADDY
It can, it is, for God's sake.
BRICK
... It was too rare to be normal, any true thing between two people is too rare to be normal. Oh, once in a while he put his hand on my shoulder, or I'd put mine on his, oh, maybe even, when we were touring the country in pro football an' shared hotel-rooms, we'd reach across the space between the two beds and shake hands to say goodnight, yeah, one or two times we --

He's married to a beautiful woman, and I had to make it clear to viewers that rejecting Maggie doesn't come from his dislike or disgust, but instead from the death of Skipper, the friend he'd loved with a love he never admitted, even to himself. The loss of Skipper leads Brick to more and more booze and even greater disgust with people's mendacity, especially his own.

Gadge liked what I was doing. I had heard that he got his nickname, Gadge, from the fact that he often came up with the perfect gadget to make something work. He kept his direction to a minimum, letting me find my own way. I worked on reaching into myself to find the broken part of Brick. On the whole, rehearsals went well, but Tennessee thought that Barbara Bel Geddes, who played Maggie the cat, wasn't enough of a cat, not complex enough. She was much too wholesome for his taste. He was looking for something more neurotic, but I'm sure that Kazan had cast Barbara precisely for that wholesome quality. Theatergoers loved Barbara and therefore she would be able to make audiences embrace this complicated and not always likable character. Gadge was absolutely right about that.

But Tennessee felt there were problems during the scene where Barbara is on her knees embracing my legs and making a plea for me to take her to bed. Tennessee said something like, "Gadge, she's fuckin' with my cadence." He may have thought he was whispering but Tennessee had a deep, mellifluous voice which at that moment was too loud. And he'd been drinking. Well, I looked over and Barbara was gone. She'd run off the stage in tears, so I went after her to console her. When I came back Gadge looked at me for a long time and said, "You're a nice guy." I didn't understand. Wasn't it normal to help a lady in distress?

Mildred Dunnock played Big Mama. When she came onstage you saw a lean, almost frail-looking woman, but her vocal equipment was commanding. In most of her entrances she was followed by Pat Hingle, who played Brick's brother, and Madeleine Sherwood, who had the part of Pat's wife. Here again, Pat was the only southerner in a play about the South. There was an innocence in his performance that made his character's greed less melodramatic. I was shown Millie Dunnock's motherly affection both as Big Mama's son Brick and as Millie's fellow actor Ben. I will never forget her warm, comforting smile.

Before leaving for out-of-town tryouts, we had a run-through on the stage of the New Amsterdam Roof. This was the first time I met Marilyn Monroe. This time she came backstage, she wore no makeup, her hair was windblown, she was girlish and very pretty, and she was ecstatic about what she'd seen. She arrived with Lee Strasberg, who liked it - in fact, he was very enthusiastic, which made me proud.

We opened in Philadelphia to great reviews. William Faulkner came to see it, as did Carson McCullers and John Steinbeck. One day in the bar of the St. James Hotel where we were all staying, they were seated at the same table. Kazan invited me over and as I sat down, I thought, My God, look who I'm sitting with. I felt pretty inadequate. But they were pleasant and complimentary about my work. They talked about fishing, hunting, and good restaurants, but not one word about literature. They do it, so why should they talk about it?

Only two days before we were to open on Broadway, Tennessee and Kazan came backstage. Tennessee said, "If you like Maggie too much, Ben, then we have no play. If Brick likes her, we have nothing." In those days you couldn't be open about homosexuality on Broadway. It would not sell. So Tennessee clouded the matter masterfully. What probably disturbed him was that I was not cold enough toward her. Gadge said, "Distance yourself from her, Ben."

So I tried something I didn't have much faith in but took a chance on anyway. At the time of the New York opening my performance was still pretty much intact. The play received terrific notices and the critics raved about my acting, using words like "marvelous". But that confused me even more. What the hell was going on? Why were Williams and Kazan asking me to tamper with a good performance? Even though I didn't fully understand what the hell they wanted, I tried to do it. I tried to distance myself, but didn't really believe it, so I never found a believable way to do it.

A month into the New York run, I decided I couldn't make their idea work. I needed to reverse direction to find my original performance. I'd felt that it had always been clear to the audience that Brick won't go near his wife because he's mourning the loss of his friend Skipper. To me, mixing the affection that had once existed between Brick and Maggie was far more interesting than the changes I was being asked to make. But when I tried to get back to that original performance, I found myself being tentative and my vocal energy was low, so low that it resembled my work in the beginning of rehearsals, when I was still finding my way, working to get ahold of the character. One night, from the balcony of the Morosco Theatre, someone yelled, "Louder!" It happened on other nights, also. It was the actor's nightmare, the audience demanding something you can't give. I knew Barbara heard it, too. What was she thinking? I felt a hot blush of embarrassment. I was mortified, but I didn't know what to do, where to go for help. Kazan was in Greece on vacation. The character of Brick had been my creation but I felt Gadge and Tennessee had damaged it. In fact I never got it back to what it first had been. I was starring in my Broadway debut and I should have been thrilled. But instead of Cat being an event for me to enjoy, it had become a problem. Going onstage was no longer fun. I had to find my way back. I was determined to slow things down, to simplify my movements and remain in the moment until Brick was again fully realized. I knew then that oly by going moment to moment would I recapture what I'd lost.

Blyton is one of my "best-loved" authors, too

The winners of the 2008 Costa Book Awards have been announced and children's book writer Enid Blyton (along with Roald Dahl) has been named the UK's "best-loved author".

I've never done a post on Enid Blyton - and sadly, I no longer have any of her books, although I used to own them all. And that was quite a hefty collection, girl was PROLIFIC. As a child - from about 8 to 10 - I was obsessed - obsessed I tell you - with the "Adventure" series: Island of Adventure, Mountain of Adventure, Valley of Adventure ... wherein 4 children continually got mixed up in international intrigues, involving smugglers, gun runners, counterfeiters, and God knows what else. I'm pretty sure Osama bin Laden was somehow involved. Children were kidnapped and thrown in trunks of cars. They emerged in captivity in an unknown location and had to somehow find their way out. They are ADDICTIVE books - and I was totally obsessed. Like so much else in my childhood, I have my cousin Susan to thank for my Enid Blyton mania. We lived those books. We would play-act them out. Like I've mentioned before, I was quite an Anglophile as a child (not knowing that I was embracing what should be my mortal cultural enemy as an Irish person! Ha!) - I think it began with Oliver Twist and Alice in Wonderland ... but, in general, if it was a book about kids and it took place in the UK, and people used words like "frocks" or "macks" instead of "dresses" and "raincoats", I was hooked. It also helped if it took place between the World Wars. Hence, my adoration of all things Noel Streatfield (excerpt here). Enid Blyton's books have that echo of grimness Vera Drake sensibility ... with rationing still a memory, and people saving their big brown paper bags, and the rain pouring down as everyone put on their macks ... oh, it was all very British. But the scrapes these kids got into! I LOVED them.

Lucy Mangan has written an article about Enid Blyton, in response to her winning the prize, that made me cry. Yes. Yes. She gets it!

She opens with:

I myself can barely bring myself to talk about my Enid Blyton years. Who wants to let daylight in upon magic?

Mangan talks about how the Blyton books don't quite hold up to adult scrutiny ... but I was very interested to hear Blyton's own words about her process, and her extraordinary output:

She describes having her characters always walking and talking in her head, and needing only to look in on their dialogue and actions for her next story. It is, she says, "simply a matter of opening the sluice gates and out it all pours with no effort or labour of my own. This is why I can write so much and so quickly - it's all I can do to keep up with it, even typing at top speed".

And you know what? That's how I read all of her books, too. So quickly it was like I was inhaling them and it was all I could "do to keep up with it".

Blyton has not been voted the "best" English author. That would be a travesty, in my opinion. But "best-loved"?? Oh, hell yes.

At a certain stage of development, you ask for nothing more than a satisfying story and an unbroken contract of delivery from your author. You care not a jot that stumbling across a smuggling ring would be unlikely to end as well in real life. Although I do remember, even at the age of eight, feeling in some vague, inchoate way, that you could go a long time without ever coming across a more unforgivably prosaic, deadening and literal title to a series than The Five Find-Outers and Dog.

But this latest nomination is not for best children's writer, it is for best-loved writer, full stop. Blyton's gold medal position in this table, along with the high preponderance of children's writers elsewhere on Costa's list (Roald Dahl took second place and JK Rowling third, while JRR Tolkien and Beatrix Potter made the top 10), is evidence that it is the books we read, wholeheartedly, passionately, uncritically, in childhood to which we remain most firmly and irrevocably attached. The flaws we see in them as adults, the criticisms - and some pretty hefty ones, in the shape of accusations of sexism, racism and class snobbery have been flung Blyton's way over the years - do not weaken those bonds. For hundreds of thousands of us, Blyton was the wedge that cracked open the pleasure-filled world of reading and allowed us in. Our rational adult sides reject and mock Kirrin Island and all the adventures played out there; our inner children remember it rightly, and gratefully, as the promontory from which we caught our first glimpse of the promised land.

Tears.

Oh please go read the whole thing!

Everything is Everything

Wonderful thoughtful review of Lauryn Hill's first and only solo album "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill", which was certainly one of my favorite albums in the last 10 years. I'll never forget watching her break down into tears during a performance on MTV Unplugged. It was gripping ... but it wasn't supposed to happen. It reminded me of that infamous blurry concert footage of a grown Judy Garland dressed up in the tramp outfit trying to get through "Over the Rainbow" and you truly feel that she won't make it through. You also feel (or at least I did): "Wow. I hope she's going to be all right." The feeling that comes up in the performer is so raw and unbidden that you definitely feel like: I probably shouldn't be watching this.

What's most remarkable, in retrospect, as the cult of Lauryn Hill grows stronger (sporadic concert appearances becoming the stuff of myth) is how slight some of her songs are on record. For being almost 80 minutes long, Miseducation is a surprisingly easy listen, coasting mostly on Hill's simple repetition of phrases to emphasize a mood. By album's end, a cover of "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" (with beatboxing) seems obligatory but still a part of what she does best: Like Amy Winehouse, Hill gets at the heart of '60s soul while slyly turning it into her own postmodern art project. The album's simple authenticity is one of its strengths, turning backup vocals into rap refrains and stripping bare much of soul music's bullshit. She casually tosses off lines like "C'mon, baby, light my fire" on "Superstar" with the awareness of someone who also knows how little those words can mean.

A beautiful article about a wonderful album.

Video of "Everything is Everything" below (which came out when I still, you know, cared about videos). Love this song.

Romance

In keeping with the book excerpt today.

I love this photo so much.

One of my "happy place" posts was about Carole Lombard. Love that lady. So did he. Gable did eventually marry again (twice, actually!), but he had it put in his will that he would be buried beside Lombard. Thankfully, his last wife, Kay Williams, was apparently a sensitive (and sensible) lady who totally "got it", knew that Lombard had been the love of his life, and whatevs. Clark would be buried where he wanted to be buried. And that was beside Lombard.

Their faces here. Yum!!

Erin and Zachary: an ongoing project

Revisiting it after not looking at it for over a year. Most of it is offline ... I don't "share" my writing in that way, that's not how I use my blog - it's for other kind of writing... but sometimes I dip into something I've written and post a bit online.

More in this same story:
the rocking chair soliloquy
answering machine messages
what did they talk about
he only had one fork
the haircut
things
tenderness

work in progress ... the parts as of now do not add up to a whole, but I'm workin' on it. Most of my friends have read this whole thing, they will recognize it.

the ice cream cone

She and Zachary walked through the drizzle, side by side, heading to her bed three blocks away. Erin didn’t worry about making nice chit-chatter with him. They did not hold hands; Erin felt that that would have been ridiculous. Erin’s fingers were jammed in her pockets, face down as she walked. The rain beaded up on her glasses, pointless to wipe the drops away. They strolled beneath the coliseum walls of darkened Wrigley Field.

Zachary suddenly said, breaking their silence, "It must be pretty cool to live so close to Wrigley Field." He stared up at the looming quiet structure in the middle of the block.

"Well, it gets kind of nuts, actually."

"Can you hear the roar of the crowd at your apartment?"

"Totally."

"Wow. That's great. I'd love that."

And then her scuffing sneakers squashed something on the wet pavement. She turned back to look, and saw a soggy flattened ice cream cone. It looked so pathetic, so forlorn. A whole world swam before her blurry eyes: baseball games, fathers and sons, joyous sunny afternoons, a child weeping over dropped ice cream. A day ruined.

"Ohhhhh," she breathed, as though it were a crushed Monarch butterfly.

Zack turned and squinted at the object of Erin’s pity. He saw what it was, but said not a word, only straightened up, and the two of them continued on, Erin leading the way across the empty avenue.

A block and a half later, Zack said, without looking at her, "Uhm … excuse me … but did you just feel sorry for an ice cream cone?"

The empathic moment with the soggy cone was already completely forgotten by Erin. She had moved on and had no idea what Zack was talking about. Then she realized and burst into laughter.

"Yes! Yes! I did!"

He grinned down at her sideways, husky eyes gleaming in the shadows of the side street. "Yeah. I thought so. Just checking."

Erin's brother Nate said to her once, "Erin, you idolize men. Don't do that." Good advice. Which Erin proceeded to completely and repeatedly ignore.

She made an idol of Zack, and his subtle acceptance of her.

But there was no subtlety in the way he attacked her in the elevator ride up to her apartment. He pounced, jamming her up against the wall, holding her head still, kissing her. She resisted for about two seconds, attempting to maintain some decorum, after all she had just met the man, but then it was useless to resist and she attacked him back, in true sex-starved librarian fashion. The night felt like it lasted eons; or a millisecond. There were more dinosaurs, bursts of laughter, timeless wordless stretches of liplock, Chinese food ordered in at 3 a.m., an intense discussion about the difference between meteors and comets, more liplock, lazy eternities where she lay with her head in the crook of his arm, the two of them breathing together, not talking, and a spooning formation as they passed out as one.

Erin was accustomed to boyfriends who treated sex as something precious and sacred, who read The Kama Sutra and suggested new positions to keep things interesting. To be honest, this did nothing for her. In the middle of the Bounding Kangaroo, or the Downward Anteater Maneuver, her mind wandered off, going through her To Do Lists. But the anarchy of sleeping with Zachary never gave her a moment to ponder, "Okay, so when will I go grocery shopping tomorrow?" The thought of doing this was ludicrous, actually. Also ludicrous was trying to imagine Zachary showing her a Kama Sutra diagram, saying, "That looks cool – Wanna give it a go?" There was nothing conscious in his sexual behavior. It was all instinct. And listening. On a supersonic level. But Zachary would never have talked about it in this way. He was too busy doing whatever the hell he felt like doing, when he felt like doing it.

Erin's face was rubbed raw the next day. She had a hickey, for God's sake. It was June, and she was forced to wear a turtleneck to her downtown-Loop temp-job the next morning. There were tiny grey bruises on her twig wrists. On the L-ride, she kept bursting into laughter like a crazy person. She was completely unable to concentrate and kept transferring calls to the wrong people. "Hi, Erin, that last call is supposed to go to Dave in HR …" "Erin? Who was that person you just transferred back to my phone?" "Yes, hi, I have someone on hold here who is looking for someone in R&D … could you handle it, please?" Erin spent the entire day murmuring, "Sorry … sorry … sorry … Yeah, I'll handle it … sorry …" She felt transparent, as though everyone on the planet had Infrared vision and could see the lingering hand-prints of Big Z all over her body. Glowing redly through her black turtleneck on a humid summer day. The Mark of Zorro.

Lifeguard off duty

Charlestown Beach.

The daily Hope

When a paper bag is lying on the kitchen floor, there really is nothing else one can do but crawl into it. And start gnawing on it ferociously. With intermittent breaks for feverish bathing and introverted contemplation.

The Books: "Clark Gable: A Biography" (Warren Harris)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

Clark Gable: A Biography, by Warren Harris

Warren Harris also wrote a book about the romance of Carole Lombard and Clark Gable (she famously said once, "Lord knows I love Clark, but he's the worst lay in town ..." Ha!) ... and so now Harris has taken all of that former research and honed in on Gable. Within 1 or 2 pages, I felt a familiar pang of disappointment, realizing that despite the nice matte-cover, the well-done production of the book - it wasn't written well. It's amateur hour. I am not aware of a big serious biography out there about Clark Gable, and I had hopes for this one. But nope. He uses the word "umpteenth", for example. Time and place, Harris. Time and place. This isn't supposed to be the rantings of a fanboy. Put your "umpteenth" away. He describes conversations as though he were there. At one point he says, "Gable blanched" at some bad news. That's a description. You can't do that. You weren't there. Unless it's a quote from someone else, you can't say "Gable blanched". Or, you CAN, but then you certainly lose MY trust as a reader. You're making shit up, sir. He also reports rumors. "Rumor has it that ..." No, no, no. Joan Crawford very well may have had an abortion due to getting pregnant by Gable, or a few abortions, who knows, but don't set it up with "rumor has it ..." Do your legwork, Mr. Harris. That's your job. Get quotes from people to confirm or deny. Don't just repeat the rumor. Bad form. It's kind of a bummer, because I really wanted to like the book. I liked the information, but I didn't appreciate the writing at all. It didn't make me MAD like Peter Manso's axe-to-grind style, it's relatively harmless, and hell, I can enjoy a good fangirl ranting with the best of them (Cooper's Women, anyone?) - but this book was packaged to look like something else. Unlike Cooper's Women, it has pretensions. It doesn't hold up.

Gable's origins are a little bit unknown - many of the details lost - even his birth certificate is wrong. I think he was even listed as a girl. And the date and time were wrong. It's indicative of the difficulties in putting together a picture of Clark Gable's childhood. He had a lot of sadness as a boy - his mother died, there was some wrangling over religion - the two sides of the family fighting over baptisms and the like, and Clark Gable (which probably wasn't his real name at the time) got a little bit lost in the shuffle. He seems to have been a mixed bag. He was great with cars and machines, loved working on them. He had ears that stuck out to here. He was shy.

Gable actually got his start in stock companies - he had no experience, he was a teenager, and needed to make some money. He learned his craft on his feet. He didn't even know it was a craft, until he encountered some pretty damn fine actors in stock ... who showed him the way. Or he learned by observing. As he filled in, and started to grow into his tallness (although his ears always stuck out) - women started to take notice. There are a couple of quotes in the book from colleagues and directors - basically saying that his sex appeal couldn't be denied - he walked onstage and you could FEEL the reaction in the audience. (Which makes Carole Lombard's quote about him not being a good lay even more interesting. He had grown up basically sleeping with prostitutes, that was his experience ... and Lombard understood that, she had had plenty of sex, she knew he was no good, but that he was a good man and that he loved her.) He was never quite the same after her untimely death.

But back to his sex appeal: It was electric, and visceral - what went on between Gable and an audience (particularly a female audience) - and it was only a matter of time before Hollywood beckoned.

The stories about Gone With the Wind are well-known, the stuff of legend, so I thought I'd pick an excerpt having to do with something a little bit earlier in Gable's career - either Red Dust with Jean Harlow (her husband of, what, one day? killed himself while filming Red Dust, or maybe just after wrap) or It Happened One Night with Claudette Colbert, one of my favorite movies of all time. Ironically, the Best Picture From the Outside In series is going on now - (that's where two film critics and writers "screen and compare two best pictures from either end of Oscar's 80 year timeline until eventually we meet in the middle in the 1960s several months from now") - great idea, right? I've been really loving it. So the latest installment is It Happened One Night, Oscar- winner in 1934 and A Beautiful Mind, Oscar-winner in 2001. Quite a jarring contrast, no? I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who was annoyed by Beautiful Mind but that's another post entirely. I LOVED reading the thoughts about It Happened One Night, and so I pulled out the book today and knew I had to choose an excerpt dealing with the filming of that classic.

Here's an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Clark Gable: A Biography, by Warren Harris

A Hollywood legend claims that Louis B. Mayer loaned Clark Gable to minor-league Columbia Pictures as punishment for the problems he caused during Dancing Lady, but that's not true. Between his illnesses and his suspended salary, Gable had been "punished" enough. It was simply a business deal that benefited both studios. MGM had no project of its own ready for Gable, and it also earned $500 per week by charging Columbia $2,500 instead of the $2,000 he received at home.

Undercapitalized Columbia couldn't afford a large contract roster like MGM, so president Harry Cohn was always borrowing stars for the "A" releases that he produced to upgrade the studio's image as a factory for cheap programmers and short subjects. While borrowing Gable for Night Bus, Cohn also took MGM's Barrymore for Twentieth Century. From Paramount he obtained Claudette Colbert for Gable's costar and Carole Lombard for Barrymore's.

To Gable personally, going to work at Columbia probably seemed like punishment after the posh comforts of MGM. He remembered the small sstudio in drab central Hollywood from his struggling actor days. He used to frequent the nearby intersection of Gower Street and Sunset Boulevard, known as "Gower Gulch" because shoestring producers came there daily to hire extras and bit players for westerns.

According to Frank Capra, who would be his director for the four weeks of the Columbia loan-out, Gable had to fortify himself with booze before he could face reporting to the studio. When Gable arrived for a script conference, he called him "Mishter" Capra and said, "I've always wanted to visit Siberia, but why does it smell so bad? And why ain't you wearing a parka?"

Infuriated, Capra said, "Mr. Gable, you and I are supposed to make a picture together. Shall I tell you the story, or would you rather read the script yourself?"

"Buddy, I don't give a shit what you do with it," Gable replied.

Capra saw that Gable was too intoxicated to reason with, so he simply handed him the script and escorted him to the door. As he left, Gable started singing the old saloon favorite "My Gal Sal".

Once he'd sobered up and read Night Bus, Gable decided that it wasn't any worse than some of his MGM scripts. Ironically, the original short story by Samuel Hopkins Adams had once been optioned by MGM after it was first published in Hearst's Cosmopolitan magazine, but when the studio decided to pass, Harry Cohn purchased it for five thousand dollars for Capra and scriptwriter-partner Robert Riskin.

Due to a recent flurry of bus movies, including MGM's Fugitive Lovers and Universal's Cross Country Cruise, Cohn ordered Capra and Riskin to find a more provocative title. The It in It Happened One Night could really stand for almost anything, although the neuter pronoun had been widely used as a euphemism for sex since the Middle Ages.

Retaining only the shell of the original short story, Robert Riskin wrote a script that started or at least perfected the genre known as screwball comedy. A hot-tempered newspaper reporter, just fired for impertinence while on assignment in Miami, heads back to New York by bus to find a new job. Sitting next to him and traveling incognito is the runaway, spoiled-bitch daughter of a millionaire. Daddy has posted a ten-thousand-dollar reward for her return, so it's not long before the reporter recognizes her and realizes his good luck. Besides collecting the reward money, he can also write a juicy story about her and sell it to the highest bidder. To make sure that others don't recognize her, he persuades her to leave the bus and to travel the rest of the way to New York by hitchhiking on the back roads.

Much of the script was left open to suit the improvisational style of Frank Capra, who had learned the ropes by creating visual gags for Hal Roach and Mack Sennett slapstick two-reelers and who had done his first feature directing the silent comedy star Harry Langdon. Since joining Columbia in 1928, Capra had directed nineteen comedies and/or dramas. From his first collaboration with writer Riskin on The Miracle Woman in 1931, his films had become increasingly laced with social comment that championed the ordinary citizen and moral goodness.

Gable had met Claudette Colbert during his Broadway period; she was an established stage star by the time of his debut in Machinal. He also knew that she was a lesbian in a sham marriage with gay actor-director Norman Foster, so he never tried to make a pass or to entice her into the temporary dressing suite that Columbia gave him.

"Clark had a ball making the film," Frank Capra remembered. "He was playing himself, and maybe for the only time in his career. That clowing, boyish, roguish he-man was Gable. He was shy, but a lot of fun with people he knew. He was very sensitive about those goddamned ears, but he made jokes about them. After a shot, he'd ask, 'What'd they get - an ear?' He didn't look like anyone else. It was not only physical. He had mannerisms that were all his own: ways of standing, smoking, and a great flair for clothes. Whatever came natural to him, I let him do it."

"Gable, I believe, idolized Capra," said the director's longtime sound mixer, Edward Bernds. "Gable's initial hostility was gone by the time we started, which was with a night scene at the Greyhound bus depot in downtown Los Angeles. Gable very quickly became friendly with the crew. I think he found that with Capra, picture making could be fun."

The story builds to a scene where Gable and Colbert must share overnight accommodation in a one-room tourist cabin. Colbert's actual reluctance to undress in front of the cameras gave Capra the idea for the "Walls of Jericho", a blanket hung from the ceiling to divide her bed from Gable's. While undressing behind the blanket, she drapes some of her clothes and undies on it, which turned out sexier than if she'd actually revealed herself.

As Gable stripes down in the same scene, he removes his shirt and has nothing on underneath. In real life he never wore undershirts, so he didn't want to be bothered with one for the film. Capra went along with i.

During the filming of the "Jericho" scene, Gable and Capra pulled a prank on Colbert. The director called her over to Gable's side of the curtain with "We've got a slight problem here. Clark wants to know what can be done about it." When she came around, Colbert found Gable under the bedcovers, smirking, with a large bulge rising from his crotch line. He'd taken a prop kitchen utensil and positioned it under the blanket.

"Awww!" Colbert laughed. "You guys!"

In his handling of Gable, Capra erased the dividing line between hero and comic. He gave Gable routines that were usually reserved for slapstick comedians. Gable teaches Colbert how to dunk a doughnut and also how to thumb a ride. She does him one better by sticking out a shapely gam and getting a passing car to stop immediately. The audience could laugh at the hero as well as admire him.

The thirty-six-day filming ended just before Christmas and cost $325,000. "Clark and I left wondering how the movie would be received," Claudette Colbert recalled. "It was right in the middle of the Depression. People needed fantasy, they needed splendor and glamour, and Hollywood gave it to them. And here we were, looking a little seedy and riding on our bus."

No. No. No. No.

Special Ops has heard a rumor, and Special Ops says in response: No.

Go.

Away.

I'm not yelling or hysterical. I'm just telling you firmly, MK, because I almost care about you: Your time is done. Give it up. Go away.

“I have a silver and a bronze, and you how everyone says there’s something missing?,” [Michelle] Kwan said. “I don’t know what that is, but I feel like something is missing, as well.”

Oh, cry me a river, Kwan. I feel something's missing in my life too. Like love, peace of mind, financial flexibility and overall emotional contentment. Oh, and my address book is missing too. That's the way it goes. You can't always get what you want. Life's unfair. Tough. Suck it up.

I have expressed myself on this score before. I don't want to go through another Winter Olympics listening to your bitch-bitch whining about your missing gold, and how you have every medal but a gold!!! (aboo-hoo, aboohoo), somehow thinking (incorrectly) that the "outrage" about this is universal ... No. It ain't, Kwan. You don't have a gold because you didn't skate well enough the last 35 times you competed in the Olympics. Oh, and also: it would help if you didn't do the same routine TWO OLYMPICS IN A ROW. Why should you be congratulated for such stupid (and cautious) behavior? Those little teenage girls skated circles around you. That's the flat truth. I roll my eyes, knowing I will have to watch you swoop around the ice with your damn leg in the air as everyone cheers for ... what reason? No idea. I was bored by that move of yours in circa 1987.

"Signature moves" don't win the gold, Kwan. Go join the Icecapades if you want to be congratulated for that kind of thing.

I KNEW this moment would come. I KNEW I was not done with Kwan.

"You know, I've left all doors open and I haven't closed any doors yet."

Hey, Michelle. Let me close that door for you. For all our sakes. There ya go!

To quote Mitchell's long-ago haiku that he wrote for Tonya Harding:

Pink spandex falters
Guilty skates have no rhythm
The world is unmoved.

That haiku NEVER grows old. Mitchell, my dear. It's brill.

And so Special Ops says:

The world is unmoved, Kwan.

Vintage advertising

I love stuff like this.

I particularly like the illustration to the ad for the "Lux toilet soap". The guy in a silk dressing gown, the woman still in her pearls and furs ... THAT'S what you wear when you go to wash your hands. But of course!

I just love those old drawings.

A Providence kind of night

Beth and I drove up to Providence on Sunday night. We dropped off her daughter and her daughter's friend at an all-ages show at The Living Room, and then went to meet up with Michele. It's been a long time since I've hung out in Providence. We went out for appetizers at Ri Ra, an "upscale Irish" place that I remember going to in Dublin, so it must be a "chain". There was an Irish band sitting around at a table, playing. Then we walked along the Providence River at sunset. We saw a tepid protest having something to do with socialism, we saw a man walking around wearing a headdress, we saw a traveling merry mariachi band, with bells on their boots. The statehouse caught the side of the sunset glow and just struck my heart with its beauty. I've always loved that building. Then the three of us went up to Federal Hill (you know, where the colors of the flag of Italy are painted down the middle of the street) and sat outside at an Italian restaurant, with a fountain nearby, and a Frank Sinatra impersonator (pretty damn good), and yummy food and wine. Then we walked through the soft summer night to Pastiche, a great dessert place, for coffee and dessert. We were basically waiting for Ceileidh's show to get out, and there was much texting back and forth between mother and daughter, but still, it was great to get out and have time to spend with my old dear friends. We missed Meredith and Betsy! Beth and I then made our way back to the club, through the wandering throngs of post-concert mania ... and picked up Ceileidh and her friend ... and drove back down to the southern part of the state.

It was a lovely night. It was very nice to see my friends, and also very nice to reacquaint myself with the beauty that is Providence.

Yesterday morning

11 a.m.

Breakfast on the deck of the Ocean Mist.

The Books: "The Salad Days" (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

The Salad Days, by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

The first of his two autobiographies, The Salad Days takes us up to 1941. His second book has to do with his extraordinary experiences during WWII, and I have not read it, but I very much want to. The Salad Days is a self-portrait of a charming, intelligent, honest man ... not all that ambitious, but born to Hollywood royalty, and learning his craft as he went. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was not the swashbuckling giant that his father, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. was, but he was tremendously handsome, and had a nice career. (A long one, too.) He played small roles, starting out in the silent era, and then graduated to supporting parts. Meanwhile, he was married to Joan Crawford (or "Billie", as he called her) and focusing mainly on his personal life, and negotiating the sometimes difficult relationship with his famous father and his young stepmother, cinema giant Mary Pickford. Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Mary Pickford were really our first major movie stars - and in a way, just because of the time and the place, they were more famous than anyone had been on earth, ever. At least in terms of being instantly recognizable, due to this new-fangled medium called the "motion picture". Stardom was able to jump a notch in power, a couple of notches ... so that these people, who lived in that time, has worldwide cache of a level that the stars in past generations couldn't have even dreamed of. I mean, Ellen Terry was a huge stage actress - does anyone outside of theatre buffs know her name now? (Here's a quote from her, and some photos, for those who are interested.) We know John Wilkes Booth's name, but not because of his acting! Could you pick Eleanora Duse out of a lineup? These people were huge stars of the stage. But with motion pictures, actors joined the realm of the pharaohs, and they lived accordingly. Much of the money they made was not taxed (at that time), so the lifestyles were even more extraordinary than they are now. It was the Wild West of filmmaking. Pioneer spirit. Excess. Only one or two huge stars. They were a different breed.

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. grew up with his mother (who had gotten sole custody when she and Fairbanks, Sr. divorced), and his father had gone on to the greatest success possible in Hollywood, marrying America's sweetheart Mary Pickford. Fairbanks, Jr. was famous as a child, merely because of who his father was. Fairbanks and Pickford lived in a giant mansion and I suppose the name of the mansion reveals that the whole socalled currentday trend of calling famous couples as a blend of their two names (Brangelina, etc.) is nothing new. They lived in a mansion called Pickfair.

Based on nothing but his last name, Fairbanks was given a contract, and he started making pictures. It had to have been difficult, to have a father who was the most famous actor in the world - well, him and Charlie Chaplin (who was also his business partner). Fairbanks (Sr.), Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and DW Griffith formed United Artists in 1919, an extraordinary act of business acumen - and that studio flourished until it was brought down by the debacle of Heaven's Gate in 1980. The history of that particular studio, and its collapse, is one of the saddest in Hollywood (a book was written about it: Final Cut : Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film That Sank United Artists - an incredible book). What a loss. But Douglas Fairbanks and his colleagues had created it to get more creative control, first of all, and also to control the distribution of their films. Brilliant. They were far-seeing people. They were not just in it for the momentary flash of glory. These people saw the future - which was in distribution (and still is today) and did what they could to get some control. It's so rare to find artists who are also excellent businessmen/women ... and those four were.

But, sadly, here I am talking about Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. when this post is about JUNIOR'S book! Typical. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. had to deal with that his whole life. He even shared his father's name! How could he ever compete?

The most charming thing about Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (and I mean charming in the best most true sense of that word) is that he did NOT try to compete. He liked the good life, yes. But he liked it for the right reasons. He enjoyed nice things. He had a great sense of aesthetics, not just in how he dressed and behaved, but in how one should live his life. The Salad Days describes a world that no longer exists. A world of ocean liners, and white linen suits, and cocktails before dinner, and elegant manners, and a kind of bemused acceptance of the foibles of others. He was a gentleman to his core. He was married to Joan Crawford (the marriage did not last) but years and years later, when Mommie Dearest, the smear book to end all smear books, came out, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was quick to say how biased it was, and that was not the Joan Crawford HE knew. He was old-school. You are a gentleman. You do not bitch and moan about the ladies in your life. You treat your wife with kindness, and perhaps she exasperates you, and perhaps you do not understand why she has to have an entire room filled with bottles of moisturizer, but you do not make yourself undignified and unmanly by bitching, and you do not speak of her with contempt. You do not speak of anyone with contempt ... that's what good manners means. It is more important to comport yourself with dignity and grace, and try to have a little compassion, even for someone who might have hurt you, betrayed you, whatever. He stood up for her, in the crazy aftermath of that book's release, and I think that's pretty classy.

They were a young couple together. Glowing and beautiful. This is one of my favorite photos of them. It might be one of my favorite photos ever.

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was in Gunga Din with Cary Grant, and it was one of his most successful pictures. Grant offered him the part (Grant was another one of those rare actors with an acute business sense) ... Grant had admired Douglas Fairbanks Senior tremendously and had modeled much of his own behavior after him. The casual bon vivant glow, the easy grace, the immaculate wardrobe, the commitment to physical fitness, all of that ... he had seen in Douglas Fairbanks Sr. something he wanted to emulate, something he - a poverty-struck Cockney boy - was not born to. He had to imitate it (which is one of the most extraordinary things about Grant: his entire thing was a persona created out of wholecloth ... but it seems completely natural. He seriously has no peers). But anyway, due to his great regard for Fairbanks Jr.'s father (who died in 1939 - the same year Gunga Din came out) - he thought it would be wonderful to act with the son. The ridiculous results are one for the ages. Fairbanks, Jr. did not have the silent-screen swashbuckling melodrama of the father. But he did have a spectacular body, a rakish energy, and he was pretty much up for anything. Is there anything more fun than watching those three guys race around India and Afghanistan in Gunga Din??

Fairbanks, Jr. had a wonderful time on that picture, was very proud of it - and remained friends with Cary Grant until the day he died.

Check it out. Here are the two old friends with then-president and former acting colleague Ronald Reagan.

Amazing. The sweep of 20th century motion pictures embodied by two white-haired gents.

The Salad Days is an entertaining, gentle read ... He has no illusions about himself, and yet you also realize, as you read it, that you are in the presence of a thoughtful intelligent person, a man who is able to tell his own story without seeming gaga about his own life, an honest gentleman. In white linen and bucks. Ready to put on his swimming trunks and do a perfect dive into the blue swimming pool. A cocktail on the nearby table. A glimpse of an America - pre World War II - that is gone for good. A time-machine this book is.

It's not just wonderful for the show-biz anecdotes, but because it's really nice to hang out with him for a while. He's a lovely companion, a trustworthy guide.

Here's an excerpt involving his wife "Billie" and other matters.

EXCERPT FROM The Salad Days, by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

Neither Billie nor I had much opportunity to settle down in the conventional sense; we both worked too hard and hectically. Never, before or since, have I known any other professional who expended more personal energy on self-improvement courses and on her relations with her fans and the press as did the girl known as Joan Crawford. With one or two really dear friends from Kansas City, she kept up a loyal handwritten correspondence. But if she decided that some particular fan was consistently ardent and devoted enough, or if someone in the studio made a voluntary slave of himself for her (as some certainly did), they were favored by her frequent thoughtfulness and extravagant generosity.

Inclined as she was to exaggerate in so many ways, Billie went about physical fitness in typical fashion. She went to dance classes (when not filming) once or twice a week, took swimming lessons and daily exercises and massage. The cubes of ice she rubbed over her body were always as handy as her face creams and cosmetics. She did not have a notable sense of humor, and was memorably indignant when anyone pulled one of her famous legs about this routine.

She had a chosen few favorites among the members of the press with whom she shared confidences, knowing just how far they would go in printing them. Sometimes her pet fan-magazine writers submitted their articles in advance so that she could amend them if she chose. She paid fake-friendly obeisance to Louella Parsons, the shrewd and vengeful syndicated movie columnist for the then-great Hearst chain of newspapers. But then so did most of Hollywood, including me.

"Lolly" Parsons had been a friend of Marion Davies in Chicago, long before Marion had gone to New York and found her most loyal and magnanimous patron, the press titan William Randolph Hearst himself. Everyone - and no contrary voices were ever raised - loved Marion personally, although her films never quite caught on. She was delicious, irreverent, and generous. There were some who liked Hearst and some who admired him, but almost everyone feared him. His power in those days can hardly be believed in these. I recall my father once asking him, "Tell me, W.R." - as he was called by those who knew him - "now that you've got your own film company for Marion, and your own newsreels are shown everywhere, why don't you concentrate your energies more on motion pictures? That way you can have a worldwide public, instead of just the city-to-city fame that comes from journalism."

Hearst thought a moment and then, in his high, piping voice (so strange coming from that towering giant of a man), answered, "Well, Dough, I have thought about it but I've decided against it. Movies aren't that powerful, really. Why, you know, you can crush a man with journalism but you can't with motion pictures."

When Orson Welles made Citizen Kane, the brilliant, fictional story of Hearst, he was virtually blackballed from the American film world his talent graced so well.

Warner Brothers, once a quickie company and now nouveau-riche because of their successful pioneering investment in sound movies, took over First National (and me with it, of course). My total credits for that work year of 1929 amounted to six pictures. As indifferent as the Crawford pictures had been, mine were several notches lower. MGM at least mounted their trash well. Warner Brothers didn't; most were just mediocre. I did make one picture that, though not very good, may be of some interest to movie buffs. It was called The Forward Pass and it was a football story, with myself as the quarterback hero and Loretta ("Gretch") Young as the heroine. It so happened that I was a fervent fan of the USC Varsity Football team and felt no honor could be greater than to be allowed to watch practice or visit a fraternity house. Many directors and producers who were also fans did what they could to help the USC athletes get summer jobs to help pay their tuition (that should indicate how long ago all this was). And that was how we happened to hire the whole USC football team to be the "school team" in The Forward Pass. Most of them were nice fellows who were unimpressed by movie people. When the cameraman began to shoot, the players thought it great fun to rush through my so-called protective linemen and, instead of letting me run with the ball or pass as rehearsed, to crash into me, set me down hard on my backside, pile up on top of me, and then apologize. The director, Eddie Cline, was in on their joke and thought it fun too. So did everyone, except me. It was summer, it was hot, and I was not prepared for such rough going. But I knew if I so much as cried, "Ouch!" I'd never hear - or feel - the end of it.

Two of the fellows on the team were friends of mine, one a quarterback, Marshall Duffield, and the other a huge guard, named Marion Michael "Duke" Morrison. Three years later, I got Morrison a job in another picture of mine called The Life of Jimmy Dolan in which he was to have one spoken line, perhaps his first. As one of my fight trainers, he came in while my gloves were being tied on, slapped me on the back, and said, "You okay, boss?" I nodded and he exited. Morrison decided to stay in films, but under the name John Wayne.

It is impossible for me to recapture the degree of happiness or compatibility that existed between Billie and me that first year or so. I should say we were both sufficiently imaginative so that, inasmuch as we firmly decided we would "damn well be happy..." we were. This is not to suggest, however, that we were content - which is, of course, a more important state of mind and more impervious to passing influences.

There are accounts that after our marriage the atmosphere at Pickfair reverted to the marked chill Billie had caught the year before. It was said she was tense and unhappy whenever we went up there and that I had been neglectful of her when my father asked me to join him and his friends for a game of "DOUG" or a steaming first, meeting her at the house later.

Dad and Mary had been away again (he was beginning to make occasional trips alone) but had now returned. He was deep into the production of The Iron Mask, a sequel to The Three Muskateers, with another chance to play D'Artagnan.

I admit there was a discernible coolness emanating from "the Big House on the Hill" and invitations were few. Indeed, I myself was rarely relaxed there. I often felt I was "on sufferance" and I do remember Billie being occasionally uncomfortable about it. But as the outside world was not aware of this, she did not seem to take it with any real seriousness. There was certainly no outright unpleasantness between my father and me, but there was no great warmth either. Some said that Dad's fetish of youth made the reality of my marriage to a spectacular young star a disturbing factor. He and I hardly ever discussed personal or family matters. Nor did he seem to know or care much about my professional progress. Usually our conversation was limited to sports and the news.

It may well be that I have up to now been a shade too "understanding" of my father's variable feelings toward me. Perhaps, in balance, I have been too impatient with my mother's overdemonstrative devotion. Probably, because Dad had been my "hero of heroes", I overlooked many slights and rebuffs noted by others just because I didn't want to think they had happened.

Putting myself in Dad's shoes, I could see that, despite Mary's poise as wife and hostess and her shrewd business acumen, he preferred her public image of a little girl. Dad had created a child-bride for himself. He was always a very jealous man, and Mary and her world were the principal targets of that jealousy. He never let her sit next to anyone else but him at any dinner table. Nor could she dance with anyone else. He had built his career on a vision of himself as the ever-young champion. I belonged to him reluctantly - biologically, if not financially or emotionally. But I was by now physically bigger than he and becoming fairly well known to a new generation, so he couldn't exactly shake me off, or hide me.

Dad was never overtly unkind or unfair. Only rarely did he openly show anger or irritation - and then, with cause. He tried hard to be a conventional father but just couldn't quite bring it off.

He could not have enjoyed hearing Billie's frequent talk about having children. In fact, I never quite believed her. She often claimed she had had two miscarriages, but I had done some medical snooping that indicated nothing of the sort had happened. As she frequently voiced her fears that child-bearing might affect her figure, I suspect that was the real reason she never had children or her own. I was still too young to give it much thought. There was plenty of time for fatherhood and I was certainly not averse to it.

Nevertheless, the hint of a grandchild in the offing would not have been warmly welcomed by my father at that time - nor, I suspect, by Mary either. They enjoyed a status in the world's imagination that is totally inconceivable and incomparable by today's standards, and it was their serious business to keep it that way. I may have been uncomfortable in the private role of an unwitting threat to all of that, but I never realized the full extent of my influence on their lives until I heard family talk of it many years later.

In 1929, Billie made four pictures and none quite measured up to the best of the six she had made the year before. Our Modern Maidens (the one I was in too) was the most successful, though Untamed, late in the year, brought a splendid young actor, fresh from New York theater, as her leading man. Robert Montgomery and I became great companions and would share many agreeable adventures over the next dozen years. In order to get better stories and better parts, Billie carried on as hard a battle with the front office as she could without getting into trouble. She was too much in awe of Garbo to be jealous of her, but she made no bones of her jealousy of Norma Shearer, who was unquestionably given most of the plums. Since Norma was the wife of Irving Thalberg, boss of production, there was little Billie could do except grouse and protest, discreetly, to the press.

I have read that Billie tried to work single-mindedly at her career but found it difficult because of my insistence on a more "social life". Though reluctant to dispute the views of a revered person who no longer can rebut my rebuttal, I must say that that is so much rubbish. Billie let nothing stop her admirable though humorless dedication to professional advancement. It was useless to remind her that such other star actresses as Mary, Garbo, Gish, Hayes, Fontaine, or those younger ones who came later, like Hepburn, Leigh, and Davis, hardly ever bothered to curry favor with producers, directors, critics, columnists, or groups of fans. They learned their trade thoroughly, allowed their personalities full professional exposure, exploited their best qualities, and generally stayed away from all the circuising. Billie Cassin lacked some of the natural magic of some of her peers. Yet by dint of bloody-minded determination, intelligence, and guts, she invented Joan Crawford - and in that guise she stood proudly as an accepted equal to the best of all the others.

Although I doubt if she ever heard of Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theater or "the Method", she was one of a group of motion picture actors who really believed that to play a happy scene once must first get into a truly happy mood. For instance, she could not believe that Lynn Fontaine might feel physically dreadful yet be able to perform high comedy with supreme and subtle wit. Nor could she believe that a great actress like Helen Hayes could consciously reduce audiences to uncontrollable tears while she thought about having a juicy steak sandwich after the performance. Joan relied more than most silent movie actresses on the "mood music" created by a small two- or three-man combo that was, in those days, a regular part of a company's production crew. Her great saucer eyes could spill over with tears at the first chord of "Humoresque" or whatever sad incident she chose to think of at that moment. She was so very canny about the great size of her eyes that not only did her makeup carefully exploit them but in a picture she almost always tried to hold her head down and look up so that they looked even larger.

Sleepaway camp

My cousin Kerry watched Hope while I was in Rhode Island for the last 5 days. I think Kerry sent me more photos of Hope during that time than I have actually taken of Hope myself.

I am also happy to see that Kerry set to work indoctrinating Hope into the traditions and customs of the O'Malley clan right away.

Hope is now a true convert.

I believe she is bowing towards Fenway Park.

Time well spent at the O'Malley Sleepaway Camp.

The moonpath, and Justin Timberlake's awesomeness ...

Mitchell, Rachel and I sat on the sea wall last night, and the ocean was as flat as a lake. There was a full moon and the glimmering path of white in the water stunned us. If only I could have followed that path. A yacht lay anchored out a bit, close to the sea wall ... I've never seen one so close ... normally that area is much more rough ... and off in the distance we could see the lights of the Newport Bridge glowing. We had gone out to dinner, we went and got some homemade ice cream, and then we sat and talked ... about Mitchell's trip, about my writing, about horrible bug stories (prompted by Alex's recent apocalyptic struggle with a grasshopper) and about Rachel's most recent adventure in the employ of Justin Timberlake.

Rachel is a humble person, so I hope I'm not embarrassing her too much but here goes: any time Justin Timberlake has to do anything, host an awards show, show up and blab, Rachel is called in to help write the material. JT loves her and she has written a ton of stuff for him so far. We loved hearing all the INSANE stories about Rachel's recent experience writing the material for the ESPY's, which Timberlake hosted. INSANE. The project was a hydra, in many ways - a multi-headed beast - and it was also a beast with many masters. The folks at ESPN, the producers, the athletes themselves, and Justin Timberlake.

One of my favorite parts of the story was Rachel saying, "At one point, we realized that we needed a breakaway tuxedo, and a copy of Matlock and Debbie Does Dallas." The randomness of it. So off someone was sent ... to create a breakaway tuxedo, and someone else was sent off to track down copies of Matlock and Debbie Does Dallas. hahahaha Mitchell said to her, "I swear to God, if you say 'breakaway tuxedo' one more time ..."

Mitchell's analysis of what it was that is so great about the "I Love Sports" number which was the big production number at the ESPY's (written by Rachel and her writing colleagues) ... will be left for another post. Needless to say, I completely agree with him ... about the entertainment value of the number, and how the whole variety-show entertainer aesthetic is pretty much dead in American culture - due to a fear of seeming cheesy, perhaps? - but once upon a time, we had entertainers like Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin who knew how to handle themselves as entertainers. And Justin Timberlake does, too.

Watch him in the number. This is a hard number. He had a week to learn all those lyrics. And the dance moves. And "making it work". It looks effortless.

So he deserves the kudos, obviously ... and he also deserves the kudos because he's nice to my friend, he's a hard worker, he takes advice, and he treats her well. If it's a challenge? Justin Timberlake wants to do it. But I'm biased. I think RACHEL deserves the kudos, too. Brava!!! She was responsible for a couple of the best "bits" in the number ... but I won't point out which ones, since this was also a group effort. But if something seems to really "pop", that seems really funny? It's probably Rachel's idea.

LOVE. IT. Old-school. It's old-school variety-show entertainment.

Enjoy! (If you haven't seen it already) ...

Tickets on sale: Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival

One of these years I'll go! Last year, the artistic director of the festival contacted me to write something about Camino Real (one of the shows being done last year) for their program, which was a great opportunity for me. This year it's impossible for me to go, for such and such a reason, but they have a great program lined up. The Olympica Dukakis night in particular intrigues me.

Tickets just went on sale. More information here.

The Books: "The Kid Stays In the Picture" (Robert Evans)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

The Kid Stays In the Picture, by Robert Evans

Great book. Great great great. You want to know how Hollywood works? Read this book. Read the story of a man who RAN Hollywood for a good decade, and then had one of the most spectacular (meaning: awful, on a Greek-tragedy level spectacular) falls in Hollywood history. Don't look for a cool unbiased voice here. It's Robert Evans, in all his snarly "here's lookin' at you, baby" cheesiness. But there's a brilliance here. A shining brilliance, and honesty. You love him. You're glad you never married him, and you glad you never crossed him, but you love him. This is a book so full of great lines that you can't even process it. Even with all the coke and the bad tans and the ridiculous ubiquitous glasses and the women ... Evans was an old-school mogul, along the lines of Louis B. Mayer, with the wisecracks, and the power - but also, let's not forget, the intelligence.

Most people who get into the movie business are eccentrics. Not the middle level people, perhaps - but the talent, and the big power guys. Now Michael Ovitz may be a "suit", but you cannot tell me that that guy is not deeply eccentric. I'm not saying good/bad ... that's not what eccentric means. I mean, the guy is out there. This may be a minority opinion, but that's how I see it. Perhaps all really really successful CEO types and moguls are, on some level, deeply eccentric people. It's not easy to break ahead of the pack. Or to decide to break ahead of the pack, to make breaking ahead be the main focus of your life. We're human beings, we're collective, we instinctively group together ... we are not sharks. So those who DO act like sharks ... I don't know. I see a deep eccentricity there. An individualistic spirit. Don't assume I'm equating "good" or "bad" with any of this.

Robert Evans started out as an actor (that's where the awesome title for his book - perfectly, really - comes from) ... but his dream was always to be a producer. He grew up in New York City, of hard-working parents. His father was a dentist. Evans always worked his ass off, at whatever he did. He did a little bit of this, a little bit of that ... working for his brother's clothing company, where his gifts were recognized, and doing a bit of acting. He moved to Hollywood. He was a gorgeous man. Not my type, but absolutely gorgeous. Sleek and smooth and very slick. A poor man's Cary Grant. He was noticed immediately, he had "movie star looks". So he got into pictures, and I've never seen any of them - no idea if he was any good - but it certainly wasn't his passion. He was always very smart (all of his problems notwithstanding) and in the 60s he bought the rights to a novel he thought promising and ended up producing the film of the book - and it wasn't a shoddy production. Frank Sinatra was the star. Evans was in his element. He knew how to produce. He knew movies. Some of his comments about movies and production remind me of Hal Wallis, in my opinion one of the greatest producers of all time. (His memos during the filming of Casablanca are masterpieces of cinematic insight.) Anyway, Evans was going places fast. The New York Times profiled him, mentioning his aggression as a producer, and so it began.

Charles Bluhdorn was one of the main players in making Evans the mogul-phenom that he became. Bluhdorn headed up Gulf + Western, of which Paramount Studios was a part. Paramount was not doing well. Heads were gonna roll, and they did. It was a bloodbath, and Blurdorn, who had had his eye on Evans for a long time, hired him to head up Paramount and turn that ship around. It was an incredible decision on Bluhdorn's part, very risky. Evans was a young man, only in his 30s. He hadn't been tooling around Hollywood for 20 years, he was a relative newcomer. He didn't climb his way to the top. He was plucked out of the crowd and placed there. There was always a lot of resentment towards him, and yet at the same time, once his reputation began to skyrocket, nobody cared about that, and everybody just wanted to get involved in his projects. He was Midas there for a while, he really was.

Evans went to work. Paramount was not successful at the time, but at the end of Evans' time there, they were responsible for some of the most giant hits of the time - as well as some films which are now considered classics, and among the greatest American movies ever made. Harold and Maude, Love Story, The Conversation, The Godfather, etc. He also produced things independently (with Paramount's permission - which was a hugely unpopular decision at the time) - and finally stepped down as head of Paramount so that he could focus solely on producing. He is responsible for Chinatown, let's not forget.

He was one of the golden bad boys of Paramount. His friends are Jack Nicholson, Joe Esterhauz, Warren Beatty, Roman Polanski ... famous enfant terribles. Evans, actually, had always been kind of a straight guy, didn't really drink ... It was drugs that did him in. Well, that and The Cotton Club.

His relationship with Francis Ford Coppola had always been stormy. Evans insists that much of The Godfather came from his head. He had Mario Puzo write the book, he saved Coppola from himself many times (according to Evans) - but Coppola was very much interested in being seen as an independent auteur, and so having Evans take any credit at all for any of The Godfather was enraging to Coppola. Evans felt he deserved more props. A lot of the book is him telling his side of the story - because he has been so smeared ... but at the same time ... well, you have to read it. It doesn't come off as whiny. It comes off as pissed. If you've ever heard Evans speak, then you know that he wrote every damn word of this book ... he wrote it as he speaks. Wouldn't surprised me if he dictated the book, it sounds so much like him. Example. He takes Ali McGraw (his future wife who he then lost to Steve McQueen) to lunch. He wants her to star in Love Story. Listen to how he tells this tale. There are moments where I want to laugh, because he's so ... earnest, even in his vague sleaze ... and then at the same time, he comes out with these zingers (like the "plan" line) which show his smarts and why he became who he became.

I set up a lunch date with Love Story's mentor and star, MacGraw, at La Grenouille. By the time dessert was served, I would have made the phone book with her. Would you say she got to me? I sure in hell knew I didn't get to her. With all my props, my position, my "boy wonder" rep, she was as turned off to me as I was turned on to her. My competition was a model/actor she had been living with for three years, sharing the bills in a 3 1/2 room apartment on West 77th Street. Almost purposefully, she kept on interjecting how in love she was. Leaving the restaurant, I hailed a cab. As it pulled up she gave me her last zinger.

"Hope we shoot in the summer. Robin and I are getting married in the fall. We plan to spend October in Venice. Ever been there?"

"Nope."

"Then wait. Only go there when you're madly in love."

That's it. I grabbed her arm, whispering, "Never plan, kid. Planning's for the poor."

She tried to snap back. "No way--"

"Let me finish, Miss Charm. An hour ago, Love Story was even money to end up in the shredder. You win, I lose. Got it? Stop being Miss Inverse Snob, will ya? It doesn't wear well. Don't turn your nose down to success. If anything goes wrong with you and Blondie between now and post time, I'm seven digits away."

"Never plan, kid. Planning's for the poor"?? I LOVE that. The whole book reads like that. Whether or not he actually said it becomes irrelevant. He's riffing, he's telling it like he remembered it. Like I said, he does come off as "sleazy" at times - but he never comes off as anything other than himself. There's a self-deprecation to Evans, believe it or not, that makes him funny. Also, and this is one of the best things about the book: he does not protect himself by trying to be politically correct, or hanging his head. This guy was a shark. Sharks do not apologize for who they are. They act according to their nature. On the flipside of his wacko personal life, there is his WORK ... and his comments about movies are phenomenal. He knew how to put projects together. He took huge risks ... which sometimes worked out, sometimes failed ... but without a sense of risk, you're never gonna make something like Rosemary's Baby.

Evans flew HIGH. Listen to him here:

Let's get down to facts -- like agents, managers, lawyers, money. Writing about where it's at is easy pocket money; about how it feels, that's different. Not only does it take talent, which most of these penholders don't have, but writing about feelings takes a helluva lot more time. We're in the business of deals, not excellence. The ten percenters know their clients can write three concept scripts a year. To write texture takes time; time is money and money is what pays their light bills.

You may not like Evans, and often I didn't ... but I'm not interested in him because I like him. He's got one hell of a story, one of the great (and awful) Hollywood stories ... and thank God he decided to tell it.

It was The Cotton Club that ruined his reputation. He was supposed to direct the film, and at that time he still had a ton of cache. But things started to go badly during the production (it's one for the books, really, all the things that went wrong) - and Francis Ford Coppola was called to come in and save the production.

Costs escalated. The money was being spent - but it wasn't on the screen. Evans was not doing well at that time. He had already been arrested for cocaine once - and things were spiralling out of control. Some of the folks who invested in The Cotton Club were really sleazy, unlike Evans - who was Hollywood sexist sleazy. Like, these people were the criminal fringe. One of them ended up getting murdered. I'm sure we all remember the trial. I won't go into it. It's too complicated for me to recount, and Evans goes into it at great length in his book. The feeling at the time, and I was barely paying attention and I got that feeling (as Vincent Bugliosi says, with certain trials, certain things are "in the air") ... that Evans was somehow involved in the murder. It seemed like he was on trial. Joan Didion wrote a great essay about that phenomenon called "LA Noir - where she analyzes the trial, and Evans' peripheral part in it ... but how the feeling "in the air" was that somehow he was involved.

Inside the system, the fact taht no charge had been brought against the single person on the horizon who had a demonstrable connection with The Cotton Club was rendering Cotton Club, qua Cotton Club, increasingly problematic. Not only was Robert Evans not "on trial" in Division 47, but what was going on there was not even a "trial", only a preliminary hearing, intended to determine whether the state had sufficient evidence and cause to prosecute those charged, none of whom was Evans ...

There was always in the Cotton Club case a certain dreamland aspect, a looniness that derived in part from the ardent if misplaced faith of everyone involved, from the belief in windfalls, in sudden changes of fortune (five movies and four books would change someone's fortune, a piece of The Cotton Club someone else's, a high-visibility case the district attorney's); in killings, both literal and figurative. In fact this kind of faith is not unusual in Los Angeles. In a city not only largely conceived as a series of real estate promotions but largely supported by a series of confidence games, a city even then afloat on motion pictures and junk bonds and the B-2 Stealth bomber, the conviction that something can be made of nothing may be one of the few narratives in which everyone participates. A belief in extreme possibilities colors daily life. Anyone might have woken up one morning and been discovered at Schwab's, or killed at Bob's Big Boy. "Luck is all around you," a silky voice says on the California State Lottery's Lotto commercials, against a background track of "Dream a Little Dream Of Me". "Imagine winning millions ... what would you do?"

Evans paid a huge price for the Cotton Club debacle. It's okay if you're a sleaze in Hollywood, most people are, it's the culture ... but when you get dirty and involved with something shady, people drop you like a hot potato. And that's what happened. Evans dropped off of the radar completely, and became a recluse. People like Jack Nicholson stuck by him, his friends would come visit him where he was holed up in his mansion, hiding from the world ... and it is my impression that Evans spent about a decade in that manner, until he wrote Kid Stays In the Picture, which was a giant hit, and garnered him quite a lot of good will. A documentary was made of the book. That was a hit, too. I wouldn't say his reputation was rehabilitated, but a lot of the memory of The Cotton Club has now vanished with time ... and what remains is Evans' body of work.

He's a complicated character. He is easy to spoof. I mean, the prose of the book is sometimes laugh out loud funny. You think: He can't be serious! But he is.

I can't recommend it highly enough. Self-serving? Hell, yes. He deserves to defend himself in the public eye. Sleazy at times? Yes, this is a Hollywood story. But it's never anything less than riveting. And man, is it about the business. To Evans and most people in Los Angeles, there is only one business, and that's the business of making movies. The Kid Stays In the Picture is one of the great movie-business books of all time.

Here's an excerpt about The Cotton Club, and his fallout (his 10th or 11th fallout) with Coppola.

EXCERPT FROM The Kid Stays In the Picture, by Robert Evans

The circuslike trial with its surprise knockout-punch victory, caused mucho media interest. More important, it illustrates, through the verbatim quotes, the difference between man and man.

Walking down the stairs of the federal courthouse, Channel 11's Larry Atteberry asked me, "Do you think the picture will be a success despite all these problems?"

"Francis's work is brilliant. And I hope we'll be working together. We've fought together many times, only it wasn't in court. I just hope we have the same luck as we had in The Godfather."

Catching Coppola, Atteberry had a question for him. "What you were saying, that Evans would second-guess you if he were back in command."

"That's his middle name ... that's what he does all these years."

Coppola had taken the stand earlier to defend the Doumanis and assert that "Evans caused chaos". He had never experienced anything like this before, he stated.

How do you cause chaos when you're barred from the set? Unquestionably the chaos was deeply lodged in Francis's cerebellum. Yet I wouldn't dignify his malicious diatribe. Publicly, I continued defending him and the brilliant work he had done on The Cotton Club.

Through good times, friendship comes easy. But when you have to weather grit, threats, and disasters, coming out friends is what true friendship is all about. Today both Ed and Fred Doumani and Victor Sayyah remain my close friends.

On October 1, 1984, Orion had its first preview of The Cotton Club in San Jose. Though I wasn't invited, I was there, stared at as if I were a leper. Two hours later when the curtains closed and my blood pressure was way up, I grabbed the Doumanis. "Come back to the hotel with me, please."

Their heads between their legs. Full depression time.

"Fellas, it can be saved. There's a great picture there, but it's not on the screen - it's on Coppola's cutting room floor. The guy went double budget and gave us half a picture. He took eleven musical numbers out - the most important one, 'Stormy Weather', cost over a million to shoot. The fucker didn't put it in. He's made a collage out of an era."

The Doumanis now knew they'd been Elmer Gantryed by the Prince. I felt bad about it; whatever our fights, our arguments, I was the one who brought them in. Forget the fact that I had no points, no involvement. I wanted to help.

Like two prepubescent kids they looked up. 'What should we do?"

From the darkness of night till the midday sun, I wrote a letter to Coppola, pouring my heart out to the maestro. Problems are easy to criticize, but solutions don't come easy. Thirty-one pages of solutions, and fourteen hours later, I signed off.

Starting with the opening credits, I enthusiastically expressed how our original vision - The Godfather with music - could evolve into reality.

If the "Making of The Cotton Club" were a book rather than a chapter, I'd insist by contract that this entire critique be part of the text. For good reason hyperbole comes easy; the critique's text, however, pinpoints the importance of what is commonly thought of as a nondescript profession - producer. What follows is the cover letter and the first paragraph of the thirty-one page critique, which exemplifies the spirit in which the entire document was written:

October 1, 1984

But now, you must know I have no personal financial involvement in The Cotton Club. If the picture does ten dollars or three hundred million it bears no effect on my bank account. It does on yours, however. My involvement now is totally one of pride, professionalism, moral obligation to the investors, and from a selfish point of view to our audiences who are anxiously awaiting your vision of the Cotton Club era. When Francis Coppola takes on a subject matter which combines the richness of the roaring Twenties, the Depression that followed, and interweaves as the foreground the struggle, birth, and sense of discovery to the world of the black entertainer and the greatness of his music, one expects an event. Anything less leaves you open to a backlash both from the audiences and the critics. Your pictorial investigation of it has been shot in the best Coppola fashion. And what are we left with? Montage followed by montage followed by montage followed by montage. What a cheat - to you as a storyteller ... to you as a director ... and to the audiences who expect more than MTV when they pay their five dollars ...

You have shot, and brilliantly so, an 'era film'. What we are left with, however, is a slick flick that is only somewhat entertaining. If Phil Karlson made The Cotton Club and it cost twenty million dollars, you could get away with it, but Francis Coppola's name is on it instead, immediately making the audiences and critics anticipate something magical ... Phil Karlson would not have had the brilliance of film that you have shot, but unforutnately much of that film is presently on the floor and not on the screen.

The picture has been shown twice. The consensus of the cards more than evidences what I'm saying. This is not Orion patronizing you, whose sole interest is to get the picture for Christmas. This is me telling you cold, hard facts that will affect your future even more than mine. There have been six pictures previewed that are being released for Christmas. Our picture has had the lowest audience ratings of the six. If it went out for bidding today, we would get theaters - not the ones we want, and certainly not the terms we want. This I know for a fact. I have spoken to two of the biggest exhibitors in the country. They already know the disappointing reaction to the film. And their hard-ons have become very soft. And these are friends, Francis - close friends. For Orion it is fine. With their deal they will get their money out if you delivered them a postage stamp. Believe me, Francis, their entire concern is to get their money out. For the Doumanis it means bankruptcy. They will never see one dime from the film. The renegotiation of the Orion deal gives Orion all first monies and leaves the Doumanis holding the bag. The only hope they have is that The Cotton Club is a smash - a big one. In its present form it is not, Francis. It is lackluster, not blockbuster. Let us not be ostriches. The audiences have told us. The exhibitors have told us. Bad word spreads quicker than good ...

Am I negative on The Cotton Club? I most emphatically wish to express to you I am not. I would be less than candid, however, not to say that I am worried. Very worried. And terribly frustrated by not being used to my fullest abilities at this pivotal moment to help make The Cotton Club the smash it can be. It is your film, Francis, not mine. [But] not having communication at this very pivotal moment is very counterproductive. My god, Francis, if Gromyko and Reagan can meet and have an exchange of dialogue, who can't we? You owe it to yourself - if no one else - to put personal feelings aside. use me. Use my objectivity, which you cannot have at this moment, being so closely attached to the film. Francis, you are shortchanging yourself, and badly. I state to you unequivocally that there is a great film here. I know it. I see it. A film that can be remembered. Unfortunately and understandably, you are running scared, not sure of what you have. You are taking shortcuts and by doing so you are irreperably damaging your canvas. Allowing The Cotton Club to fall into the category of just another movie. Don't run scared, Francis. Go all the way. Give them a show. Give them the Coppola texture that is now on the floor. There is brilliance there. The longer and more textured the piece, the shorter it will play. Again, what better example is there than Godfather I? If I didn't think it were there I would certainly not be this passionate in my plea to you.

Credits: I think the credits that were on the film before which were handwritten on black had simplicity and style. The credits as they are now open the picture with the wrong note - they are a title company's jerk-off and more importantly they are most difficult to read. The simplicity of the other credits is far more you, and for that matter me, than the Deco credits presently on the film. Don't let some half-assed artist sway you into being overly fashionable. Style and simplicity always overshadow and outlast fashion.

Reading and rereading the pages, suddenly smiles crossed the Doumanis' faces, a first in months.

"What's in the letter, has it all been shot?"

"And more."

Like kids in a candy store. "We could have a winner!"

Holding the thirty-one pages in his hand, Ed spoke out. "Leaving now, driving up to Napa, delivering this by hand. Francis better listen, I'm gonna stand watchin' him read it."

With forty million of green on the line, Ed would have driven to Hong Kong. Napa was no short drive. At high speed six hours. For the first time the brothers saw light from darkness.

Twenty-eight hours later, the three of us sat together commiserating. After twelve hours of driving to and from and five hours patiently waiting for his highness to grant him an audience, he read the thirty-one pages. Ed related Francis's reaction to us.

"He would rather see the picture do three hundred thousand and not three hundred million than have Evans get credit for being the saving grace."

That December 8, The Cotton Club had its gala premiere in New York. The Prince purposely ignored my every written word, and the finished cut didn't include one of my suggestions. It had hardly changed from that first underwhelming preview in San Jose. Cotton Club the film, unlike Harlem's club, was not the talk of the town - any town. Somber would best describe its audience reaction. Somber as well described its box office results. Royalty always gets covered. Prince Machiavelli royally fucked all. He collected millions.

Film critic Ken Turran put it most succinctly when asked by Ted Koppel on "Nightline" what he thought about The Cotton Club.

I think that there's no coherent story there just for openers. It really feels to me as if the film was thrown together, as if Coppola didn't want to put in the work that goes in before, didn't want to have a coherent script, didn't want to take the trouble to do that. He wanted the exhiliaration of when you get on the set, which can be very exhilarating to a general in front of all those people. But I think you can't just wing the movie. Movies have to be thought out ahead of time. They have to have, as The Godfather did, a book with a very solid plotline. You just can't make it up as you go along.

What did I learn from this failure, this disaster, this five-year nightmare? A fat fuckin' nothing! To say you "fucked up but learned from it" is bullshit, a cop-out. You can learn from a mistake. A mistake done twice is not a mistake, it's called failure.

At an early age, a man of great wisdom gave me the key to making it.

"You learn from success, kid - not failure. If you've only touched it once, a term paper, a temp job, hitting a homer, dissect it. Was it timing, focus, homework? Get to the core. Find out the whys, the hows. That's the key. Use it ... go with it, don't be afraid. When you get your shot, then you'll be ready. Success ain't easy, kid, but the more you taste it, the easier it gets. No different with failure." The wise man smiled. "The more you taste it, the more you get it." Putting his finger to his lips, "Shhh ... Don't spread it. It's tough enough out there. Keep it to yourself."

Spectacular spectacular

So the Pioneer Woman has been posting some stunning photography of the dawn hours on her ranch. Here are some more. These are photos you can just fall into. Melt into. I've always preferred the dawn to, say, the dusk (and I prefer anything to midday) ... so it's a shame I'm not up often enough to revel in it. But when I do catch the dawn? I mean, come on. It's enough to make you fall to your knees in gratitude.

It has a bit of a different feeling than a quiet pond and field on a ranch ... but the dawn is the same. Love it.

In lieu of a bird or a mouse ...

Hope has discovered the deadliest and most persistent of enemies in my own apartment. The wilyness of her foe cannot be overestimated. It is a cunning opponent, keeping her on her toes, and Hope has not yet been the total victor in their many MANY battles.

Besides the windowsill and the sink ...

this random spot on my floor is Hope's favorite place in the world. She can be found there at any given moment, sometimes sleeping, sometimes chasing her own tail, sometimes bathing, sometimes glaring at me with resentment, othertimes staring at me with outright curiosity and wonder, and sometimes just Sphinx-ing away the long hours of her afternoon.

More from La Dolce Vita

Because it makes me happy.

No time for my big post right now, but plenty of time to upload some luscious screen grabs from the first 15 minutes of the movie.

The Books: "Are You Anybody?: An Actor's Life" (Bradford Dillman)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

Are You Anybody?: An Actor's Life, by Bradford Dillman

One of the side effects of being obsessed with Dean Stockwell is that you suddenly find yourself needing (yes, needing) to buy the autobiography of Bradford Dillman, who starred with Stockwell in 1959's Compulsion (a movie I wrote about here) - just in case Stockwell was mentioned Dillman and Stockwell were not friends. As a matter of fact, they didn't get along. Stockwell had done the play on Broadway with Roddy McDowall (post about that here) - and McDowall was not asked to do the film (not because he wasn't good, but because the studio had a contractual obligation to Dillman, so they put HIM in the project) - and apparently Stockwell was, how you say, less than gracious to this interloper!! (In a beautiful moment of dovetailing narratives, McDowall, years and years later, would play a part on Quantum Leap in the final season ... when Al is threatened, by a moment in his past, to no longer be in charage of the project in the future ... and suddenly Roddy McDowall shows up to help Sam Beckett - played by Scott Bakula - and Bakula is like, "Where's Al???")

But is a small connection between Stockwell and Dillman any reason to buy an entire book, Sheila?? Well, yes, it is. Obsession follows its own pathways. Just find a used copy on Amazon for 20 cents and grab that sucker up.

I think Compulsion is terrific (not perfect, but a terrific psychological thriller, quite daring in the context of its day) - and while I think Stockwell far outshines Dillman (who does a lot of maniacal laughing - "indicating" that he is crazy) - somehow the pair ends up working. There's a scene where Orson Welles interviews the two boys after they have been arrested. Stockwell is chain-smoking, pacing in the small cell - but it's not "actor" pacing. It's not cliche. He is pacing because he has so much nervous energy that he must move. He's cranky. Welles asks questions that seem to imply that Stockwell's character might, uhm, not be into girls (it's 1959, so it's subtle and coded ..."No girls?") ... and Stockwell is sliced open, psychologically, in that moment. Meanwhile, sitting over on the windowsill, is Dillman, at first cocky and assured, and you can already feel how the boys are separating ... Dillman's character leaving Stockwell's out to dry. "Sure, I've got alibis ..." croons Dillman. So while some of Dillman's work here seems "showy" to me, and unnecessarily so, it ends up working for the character. He's also a "showoff" - that's his whole thing. He's a big phony, a liar, a con artist, and a manipulator. One of those Ivy League boys who had everything handed to them ... and so, because things were so easy, he ends up having contempt for the whole world. Dillman really does play that well. I think Stockwell is riveting, however ... and acts Dillman off the screen.

(If you haven't seen Compulsion, I highly recommend it.)

I bought Dillman's autobiography on this slim-pickins basis. But it's actually a hoot. I loved it.

Dillman has 3 kids, was married to the same woman for 40 years (an actress - who passed away a couple of years ago), and - very much like his character in Compulsion was being bred for upper-class greatness when he horrified his family by deciding he wanted to be an actor. Like so many other people at that time (early to mid 50s) he gravitated towards the Actors Studio. That was the place to be. It was the kind of work that everyone wanted to do now. Everyone wanted to be Brando. It seemed like if you took 1 or 2 classes with Lee Strasberg, perhaps you could BE Brando?? No? Maybe?? But it was also a place to study, to get serious about your craft outside of the public glare, to stretch yourself, etc. etc. Dillman was no dummy. He knew it was the place to be.

He had his big break on Broadway, where he appeared as Eugene Tyrone in O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night (a very famous production, with Jason Robards and Fredric March). Another weird Stockwell connection: when the play was finally filmed, Dean Stockwell played Eugene, the role Bradford Dillman had originated on Broadway. Ouch. But regardless, that was a big big moment for Dillman - in 1956 - being in this huge hit show, that won accolades left and right, prizes, literary and theatrical - the production was a sensation. Fredric March (who played James Tyrone) took Dillman under his wing a bit, mentoring him, teaching him about the business. And Dillman's career was off and running.

He was being groomed for stardom - but as so often happens in this life - he didn't quite make it. His "star" slipped very quickly. He had been in big important projects, and then a couple of years later ... not so much ... However, Dillman kept working, and was involved in some pretty cool films (look him up!) as well as appearing in guest spots on every television show known to man. He had a recurring role on Falcon Crest, for example. Dillman's career was LONG. I love guys like Bradford Dillman. They're the ones who were "disappointed", by perhaps not becoming as famous as their peers ... but who kept at it. I know so many people like that, and it's truly inspiring to me. Stockwell was one of them for many years. He has famous as a child, famous as a young man - and then dropped so completely off the radar as a man in his 30s and 40s that he finally moved to Taos and got his real estate license. Couldn't make a living. He didn't count on David Lynch resurrecting his career, and he didn't count on being more famous at the age of 50 than he ever was as a little kid. Love that! Dillman remained good-looking and dapper, perfect for shows like Murder She Wrote and Love Boat, and despite his good looks there was always something a little bit ... sketch about him ... which worked in his favor. It worked in his favor early in his career (that character in Compulsion is the epitome of "sketch") and it worked in his favor later. He could play the dashing shallow man accused of murdering his wife, and you thought, yeah, that guy probably did it, and he'll probably get away with it. You can have a nice career playing things like that!

Now let's talk about his book. There probably isn't one serious word in it. Sometimes it feels like he's writing a How-To book for young actors. He dispenses advice on how to deal with criticism, or how to concentrate on a busy movie set ... and yet at the same time, it's NOT an advice book, it's also just a long compilation of funny anecdotes about his famous co-stars ... So it's a mixed bag. But some of his anecdotes are so hysterical ... and you still get the sense that Dillman was like, "Can you believe how lucky I was that I got to work with so-and-so???" Not in an obnoxious way, but like a little kid gets excited. I find that kind of non-seriousness very refreshing, and also, as I've mentioned, I'm a sucker for an awesome anecdote.

For example, he recounts this famous anecdote, one of my favorites in Hollywood lore:

In The Greatest Story Ever Told [John] Wayne was cast as a Roman captain who visits the scene of the Crucifixion and says, standing at the feet of Christ, "Truly this was the son of God."

Director George Stevens was riding a crane when the actor stepped in for a take. Wayne said, "TrulythiswasthesonaGod."

"Cut. Duke, let's remember you're talking about Jesus here. You might want to take the speech a bit slower."

"You got it, George."

Take Two. The Centurion says, "Truly. ThiswasthesonaGod."

"Cut. Duke, not reverent enough. Let's try it again, and this time give us a little awe."

"You got it, George."

Take Three. The superstar says, "Aw, truly. ThiswasthesonaGod."

Now why Dillman is relating this anecdote that has nothing to do with him is unclear to me. The book is full of stuff like that. It seems to me that he is relaying the story because it pleases him, and I don't know, seems like a good enough reason to me.

So although there is little to no Stockwell in Dillman's book, I had a lot of fun reading it. You'll see why in the CHATTY excerpt below.

First of all, he relates one of my favorite anecdotes ever about Robert Mitchum, and he also relates a story about Orson Welles. Neither Stockwell nor Dillman had good things to say about Welles' behavior (his acting is another story) ... by that point in his life, Welles was a big mess in terms of his personal life, could only work on certain days on the month because he couldn't be in America for longer than that time due to tax problems ... so he would sweep in, be a total nightmare, sweep out, leaving everyone to ... clean up, basically. Stockwell, who had been in the business forever by that point, although he was a young man, always felt that kind of bullying was unnecessary. There was always a trickster element to Welles ... and you can see it operate here, in a less than benign manner.

If you like a gossipy book (well written), full of anecdotes about all the greats - with little to no segue between anecdotes - they serve no POINT, they are just amusing stories... I would recommend Are You Anybody? It's a lot of fun.

Oh, the places you've led me, Dean Stockwell.

EXCERPT FROM Are You Anybody?: An Actor's Life, by Bradford Dillman

For the past fifty years Robert Mitchum has been captivating filmgoers with his sleepy demeanor. He was the first actor to be jailed for marijuana, and it's no state secret he's enjoyed a cocktail or two in his time. But his toughness is no pose.

Before beginning a film with him, Henry Hathaway, a director acknowledged as a card-carrying sadist, felt impelled to explain himself.

"Listen, Mitch," he said. "I got this thing. Sometimes I get a little excited, call actors names and cuss them, but I want you to know it's nothing personal. It's just me."

"I hear you, Henry," Mitchum replied. "I know how it is. I've got this thing, too. See, whenever somebody calls me names or cusses me out, I haul off and bust him in the mouth. Nothing personal. It's just me."

Yet few know what an intelligent, articulate man Mitchum is, how charming he can be. He's also a prankster. When I worked with him on location in Hong Kong, our director was hearing-impaired. In the briefcase used for transporting his script he carried several hearing aid battery replacements. We'd rehearsed a scene in an office, we were doing Take One, I'd fed Mitch his cue, when he mouthed his response. No sound.

"Cut." The director was pounding his ear. "Damn," he said, removing the device, opening his briefcase to install a fresh battery. "Okay, let's go again."

Take Two. I give the cue, Mitch mouths his line.

"Cut." The director pounding his ear anew. "Who makes these things, anyway?"

It took four takes for him to realize he'd been victimized by an imp.

The imp struck again during a scene in the lobby of the Hotel Peninsula, he and I seated at a table. Normally spectators keep a respectful distance as they observe the moviemaking process, but a blonde plumper spilling out of her pink pants suit couldn't restrain herself. Between takes she rushed over and did a five-minute number on how Robert Mitchum ruled her life, how jealous he made her husband, how her friends teased her about her crush. It went on and on, the actor grunting occasionally before pretending to nod off.

The lady's moving lips were right in his ear when Mitch jolted awake. Feigning shock, he thundered, "Suck what?"

**

Orson Welles was a genius. In my judgment Citizen Kane is the greatest motion picture ever made, and I told him so. Its innovations will be copied by filmmakers to the end of time. He transformed the medium forever.

Welles' experience in radio taught him to "hear" a scene. When he directed he was as much conductor as filmmaker, asking his actors to overlap one another in such a way that only pertinent dialogue emerged. Out of seeming confusion he created clarity.

Orson was also a creative bully. I worked with him twice, in Compulsion and in a movie where he, Juliette Greco and I each played two roles. It's called Crack in the Mirror.

During our weeks doing Compulsion, Orson was cordial and helpful, but evidently he neither anticipated nor appreciated that Dean Stockwell and I would earn critical acclaim to equal his.

When we began shooting Crack In the Mirror in Paris he was laying for me. The plot involves a love triangle at two levels. The first is a wealthy older barrister whose wife is having an affair with an ambitious young lawyer. The second is an older laborer whose wife is having an affair with a young punk. After the latter two conspire and kill the laborer, they are prosecuted and defended by the upper-crust attorneys.

The dual roles required special makeup. As the lawyer my hair was sprayed blond. As the punk I inserted plugs to expand my nostrils and my hair was ironed into tight dark curls. Orson noted the difference daily; depending on the schedule, he either called me "Blondie" or "Curley". More than once he ruffled the carefully sprayed hair or ironed curls in what was purportedly a good-natured gesture. But it required time to repair.

Orson did his own makeup, working from a makeup box that must have dated back to his days at the Mercury Theater. Inside he had all his paints and putty noses, an unsanitary mixture that caused my fastidious makeup artist to sniff and whisper, "C'est une boucherie." A butcher shop.

One early morning, seated side by side in makeup, Orson remarked, "You seem damn cheerful this morning."

"Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I'm pumped up. My wife's arriving from California today."

Orson put down his powder brush to study me. "You're kidding. You're married?"

"Sure."

He snorted.

"What about it?"

"Well," he said. "No offense. I always thought you were a fag."

I looked to see if he was joking.

He wasn't.

I gave some sort of light-hearted response but I was badly upset. My stomach churning, I went downstairs to the soundstage. As I walked on the set it hit me: I was about to play my most important scene in the movie.

And he knew it.

More than a courtesy, it's important when doing coverage on a scene that an actor give off-camera dialogue to the person performing his close-up. The eye contact is essential. On opening day Welles demonstrated his despite by waving me away. "Stand over there," he directed. "Get me a gobo." A lighting stanchion was set in my place. Unseen, I fed him his cues.

But bullies are usually cowards, and Orson was no exception. I cherish Darryl Zanuck's story about sitting with Welles in a restaurant, listening to an ongoing diatribe about the injustices done the director by some studio executive, how much he hated the man, what he'd do to the swine if he ever saw him again. A waiter interrupted to present a card. It was from this selfsame executive, inviting Zanuck to join his table for a drink. A feisty, combative man, Darryl showed Welles the card, then went over to the table, listed a bottle of champagne from its bucket and doused the villain with its contents. Triumphant, he turned to Orson for applause.

Welles had vacated the premises.

**

Frequently, live TV shows were rehearsed in a ballroom on the lower East side, a few doors away from Ratner's, an outstanding Jewish restaurant. When I was rehearsing There Shall Be No Night I ate there almost every noon.

I was impersonating the son of Charles Boyer, one of the most charming men I ever knew. Tempted as he was, Charles would never agree to join e for lunch because he was fearful of being recognized. As Gallic sex symbol he'd had some unfortunate brushes with overheated ladies.

One day I had an idea. "Charles, if you'll forgive a rude suggestion, I think you'd be perfectly safe to join me if you'd, ah, leave your hairpiece behind."

He must have been hungry because he wasn't offended. Instead he put the toupee aside and we marched arm in arm over to Ratner's, where we were seated at a table in the middle of the room. Delighted with the menu, Charles ordered a sequence of specialties, beginning with the chicken soup. He was delighted, too, that his disguise was so successful no one had given him a second look. I was congratulating myself when I glanced over his shoulder to see a large, beaming woman rush across the room, homing in on him from behind. Charles was about to bring matzohs to his mouth when she crushed him in a linebacker's embrace, causing the spoon to fly, inundating him with soup.

Hugging him, she cooed, "Cholly, Cholly. Take me to the Kezbah!"

**

Before he became an actor Burt Reynolds was a stuntman. In his early TV series he liked to be seen participating in a lot of action because it was what he did best. In those days, he wasn't much of an actor. But as one series led to the next he became more confident, more magnetic.

I was a guest on what he thought would be his swan song, present the day his show Dan August was canceled by the network. "That's it," said Burt. "I'm dead. This is the third horse I've had shot out from under me. I'm history."

The problem was, he'd never been given the chance to flaunt his sense of humor. But after he posed for a male centerfold and appeared on all the talk shows to jest about it, he built a whole new career as a lovable, laughable guy.

Why I love Judge Judy:

The following clip.

I just think she's magnificent.

The last time I was in LA, Alex and I talked about going to see one of her tapings. Because along with a love of roller coasters, admiration of Lana Turner, obsession with kitty cats, the Manson family, Lucille Ball and American history, making fun of morons, adoration of great theatre, hatred of people who use air quotes and a fascination with all things $cientomogy ... we also share a love of Judge Judy. But alas it didn't happen. Next time in LA, I WILL GO SEE JUDGE JUDY. SHE CANNOT ESCAPE.

SHE IS MAGNIFICENT.

In praise of Len Cariou

One of the reasons I love bloggers who write mainly about film is that (unlike in the print-world, you don't have a word count, and you don't have to focus on only the "new" or the "fresh") we can pretty much write about what we want to write about. If I want to devote 4 months out of my life to ONLY writing about Dean Stockwell, I can do that. And you know what? If you build it, people will come. Sure, you lose people along the way, but who needs those people anyway? You write about what you love - people will show up. The right kind of people. True passion has triumphed! Long live Dean Stockwell!

To my point:

Jonathan at Cinema Styles has a generous and in-depth post about Len Cariou. You may not recognize that name, but you definitely know the guy. And theatre-goers definitely know him.

I loved The Four Seasons when I was a teenager - it's been years since I've seen it but many of the scenes remain almost word for word in my head. ("Shalimarrrrrr? Thank you!" "Danny ... are you telling me that you are afraid of your underwear?" "MY WIFE'S ITALIAN!!") I think I first saw it at Mere and Jayne's house. Those were the days when you had to RENT a VCR in order to see a movie! So we would choose verrry carefully what we wanted to see. What's Up Doc was a favorite. I remember watching Fame on one of those fun sleepover-movie nights. And The Four Seasons - a great ensemble piece, with some first-rate acting.

Anyway: go read Jonathan's post. It's a great tribute to an under-rated really solid actor.

As a wise man once said:

I am beginning to understand the deep truth behind those words.

Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman, and Edmund Burke look on ... in approval or dismay we cannot be sure. Perhaps The Federalist Papers will have something to say on the matter.

The Books: "James Dean: The Mutant King" (David Dalton)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

James Dean: The Mutant King, by David Dalton

I described my obsessive-compulsive response to seeing East of Eden here in this post about Carroll Baker. James Dean was the first. He was the first time I went off the edge into obsession - at least in a way that I now recognize. I had been obsessed with things before ... but with James Dean, I went to work learning about him. That was a first. I could not believe my eyes. I had to know more. I had to know everything! The Mutant King was in the library where I worked, and I devoured it. Much of it went over my head, but not a hell of a lot. It's quite a good book, and THE book I would recommend for anyone who wants to know more about James Dean. It does not take a cynical eye towards his talent, it is not trying to turn him into a gay icon, it does not have an axe to grind - it does not fall into any of those traps of biographies ... But it does attempt to explain the "myth" of Dean, and where that all came from (besides his dying at the age of 24, I mean). David Dalton is not afraid to speak about that myth in a serious way, and there are sections of the book that almost feel like literary criticism, or film theory, or an art-critic's in-depth analysis of one particular image. Dalton "goes there". There's a whole chapter about James Dean's face and how he, as a young unknown actor in New York, learned how to be photographed. It was a process with him - and you can see the stilted good-boy smile results of his early photos, as compared to the iconic images of him in the ripped sweater (taken before he was famous):

Dalton analyses the transformation, taking an objective eye - trying to see what exactly it was that had changed in James Dean, in terms of him allowing his soul, his interior, to be showed by the camera. This is not a surface "he was born on a cold dark day" type of book. This is analytical.

Dalton also delves into each one of James Dean's films, and puts together as full a picture as is possible of each experience. First of all, he interviews everyone. You get to know people who were in Rebel Without a Cause who barely had lines - but they were in crowd scenes and have good stories to tell. So you learn about the shooting of each film, on an almost day-to-day basis. But Dalton also analyzes the films themselves. He calls out certain moments, and speaks of their symbolism - but also speaks of how such a moment (Dean with the milk bottle in Rebel, for example) added, later on, to the Dean myth. Dalton looks for the small gesture that reveals psychology, and points it out. It was QUITE an education for me, as a 13 year old kid ... to look at movies in this way. I had seen East of Eden and it blew me away. From Dean's first entrance on the railroad tracks, I could not look away. I didn't know what I was seeing, I couldn't analyze it - I just knew that every moment just killed me. I wrote about it extensively in my diary. (Here, here, here ... that's just the tip of the iceberg!) I remember tears streaming down my face the first time I saw the scene when James Dean tries to give his father all the money - it is such an unexpected moment ... The father (played by Raymond Massey) rejects the gift. He doesn't just reject the gift, he rejects the son. (You know. The ol' Cain and Abel story). And Dean's response ... It could have been conventional, a regular old scene of betrayal that we have seen a thousand times ... but Dean, always a master, even at a young age, at gesture ... takes it to the next level. He picks up all the money and tries to give it to his father, his father rejects, Dean starts to fall apart, he's moaning and whimpering ... his father is even more embarrassed ... and Dean sort of gently falls into his father's chest, pushing the bills at him, as they fall to the floor ... It is a deep swoon of grief, truly mortifying to watch ... and apparently Massey was horrified by the scene. It works. His embarrassment is real, Dean's Greek-tragedy level of betrayal is real ... I just couldn't believe it when I first saw it.

David Dalton picks apart each film methodically. He backs up his theories with quotes from the actual players. For example: the red jacket in Rebel, and what it meant ... and how deliberate that was on Nicholas Ray's part. Here's how Dalton writes, it's a good example of the feel of the book:

Color plays an important thematic role in Rebel, as it does in all of Ray's films: the purple and gold in Party Girl, the red and green in Johnny Guitar and the red and blue in Rebel - the blazing red of rage, passion and fire, and the cool blue of space and isolation. The tones are raw and the combination as abrasive as adolescence itself.

Ray's use of color has been described as apocalyptic, "une palette en feu" as a French critic called it. The colors in Rebel change like banners, symbolizing the evolution of the characters.

"I started Jimmy in this neutral brown and he graduated to the blue jeans and red jacket," said Ray. "And Natalie graduated from the gauche red in the beginning to a soft, pink sweater. When you first see Jimmy in his red jacket against his black Merc, it's not just a pose. It's a warning. It's a sign."

Often, biographers focus on the details of the life. That is all well and good. But they neglect to look at the work, and how it adds up, and how it explains why we need yet another biography of, say, Cary Grant. It's interesting, Cary Grant's business acumen, his seriousness about money, his ability to negotiate for himself ... but without understanding what it was that made him such a giant movie star ... or without attempting to understand, the book can feel tepid. (There are a couple of Cary Grant biographies that short-shrift the acting. I know it's difficult to talk about acting. It's difficult to describe why something is good, or why a performance lasts. But it seems to me an essential job of anyone taking on a subject such as Grant, or Bogart, or Dean.) David Dalton works on multiple levels. He digs into the details of Dean's short life, he analyzes what it was that was striking in him as an actor, he looks at what it was in the performances that added to the myth that came up later on ... and then, he just flat out analyzes the films themselves. The Rebel Without a Cause chapter is as good as any "director's commentary" track on a DVD. It is its own "special feature". Any fan of the film (or anyone who's interested in film analysis) should check it out. It's one of those things where you think, "Yeah, yeah, I did notice that in the film ... but I wasn't aware how much THOUGHT went into it ..."

Dalton doesn't just keep his focus on the details of Dean's life. He analyzes, and you only realize how rare that is when you read a lot of other actor biographies, which tend to focus on the off-screen shenanigans. I've never been interested in that stuff ... only in how all of that impacts the work. The Mutant King stands alone, in my opinion. It could be taught in any film appreciation class. It makes you see things. It was a revelation to me as a teenager. It changed how I looked at films. It helped make me serious about them.

My thoughts about James Dean have changed over the years. The impact he had on me did not last past adolescence, although I still love those movies. Elia Kazan, who directed Dean in East of Eden, said that he always felt that Dean was a "sick kid". There was something wrong with him. Self-destructive, yes, but also manic, depressive, wild highs, crushing lows ... His friends sensed this in him too. He was not developed as a person. He was competitive as an actor, much of what he did was attention-getting (and that's not a bad quality in an actor, it's actually a job requirement!) - and because of a mixture of lucky breaks, chemistry with a camera (which cannot be taught), and innate ability - Dean surged ahead of the pack. He wasn't well-liked. Lots of people found him annoying, childish, and nearly impossible to have a conversation with. Who knows who he would have developed into, had he lived. I would have been VERY interested to see. I think he had something innate, a true gift ... but was he in control of it? In the way that Marlon Brando (his arch rival) was in control of his? I'm not sure. We'll never know, I guess.

One of Dean's big breaks was in the Broadway play See the Jaguar in 1952, with Arthur Kennedy:

Dean played a boy who had been locked in an icehouse for the majority of his life, and finally emerged ... a neophyte Mowgli-type, uncivilized, feral, unbearably sensitive ... He apparently was magnificent, and I would have loved to have seen it.

Instead of choosing an excerpt about one of Dean's three movies, I decided to choose an excerpt having to do with See the Jaguar.

EXCERPT FROM James Dean: The Mutant King, by David Dalton

See the Jaguar begins as a young boy about sixteen, who has been kept locked in an ice house all his life by his mother, wanders out for the first time and stumbles into town. His only connection with the outside world is a note his mother gave him before she died, addressed to the town's good-hearted teacher: "Dear Davie Ricks: This is my son Walter that I hid from all the meanness of the world ... Maybe I was wrong to hidden him this way - maybe I was right. But I loved him dear and didn't want for hurt to come his way."

Dave takes a look at this boy and says, "I've always wondered, if I could see it new what would it look like?" And Wally, says, stretching out one hand to the bigness, "You can't touch nothin'."

Director Michael Gordon said, "He can't understand why everything is not within his grasp. To be someone who's discovering that for the first time was what Jimmy could do. He was able to use that magical quality, that as if I were, and make it happen to himself."

Jimmy had no trouble learning the part of Wally Wilkins. But since he was tone deaf, he found it practically impossible to sing the little song which Alec Wilder had composed for the show. "Rehearsals helped him with his acting, but nothing could help him with the singing," Bill Bast said. Bill and Dizzy spent long torturous hours going over it with Jimmy and would often hear him in the middle of the night moaning it over and over again, trying to get it right:

I won't cry in the daytime.
I won't think of Ma.
I'll think of her at night time
And cry then.

Other than this, Jimmy seemed delighted with his role. He fit the part perfectly, and the producer and director were behind him. But during out-of-town tryouts a story circulated that Jimmy pulled a knife on someone during a rehearsal.

"In Hartford, the ruckus began during the rehearsal of the third act," said Michael Gordon. "The tension during that scene was pretty high and Jimmy took out after a prop man. I was sitting down in the audience. I jumped up on stage because there was a commotion, but by the time I got there it was all over. I think Jimmy actually pulled a switchblade on the guy, but I never did find out."

Arthur Kennedy, who played the benevolent Dave Ricks, later told writer Ed Corley that Jimmy had pulled a knife, the same switchblade Jimmy had bought with the money Nash had given him for glasses. "Kennedy supposedly took the knife out of Jimmy's hand," said Corley, "and broke the blade, with stern instructions 'not to pull any of that crap in my show!' Jimmy, who was impulsive rather than violent, may have been relieved the matter was taken out of his hands and his 'number' had a quick resolution."

When See the Jaguar opened in New York, Jimmy felt as if it were the first Broadway opening night in history.

"His feet never touched the floor," said Dizzy Sheridan, who went with Jimmy to Sardi's for the opening-night party. "He just flew from table to table, talking, laughing. I watched people's eyes pouring adulation all over him; they loved him.

"But it was a very crushing night for me. We left together, we wanted to be together, but he was staying at the Royalton that night and after we got upstairs they called and told him he couldn't have a woman in his room. So we ordered something to drink and then he walked me downstairs and put me in a cab. I had the feeling that things were starting to move for Jimmy and I would never be able to catch up. I saw him two or three times after that and then I left for Trinidad."

Reviewers found the play obscure and silly, "a contrivance of jejune symbolism." The critic for the Daily Mirror said, "The advance notices spoke of this play as an allegorical western without a horse. Come to think of it, maybe that's what was missing." The reviewers pretty much agreed that the plot was torn between forthright story and lofty parable that it was completely unsuccessful in both.

But James Dean was recognized for his wraithlike portrayal of Wally Wilkins: "overwhelming as the boy from the ice house" ... "played the part with sweetness and naivete that made his tortures singularly poignant" ... "makes childish young fugitive believable" ... "adds an extraordinary performance in an almost impossible role ..."

It's revealing to look at the photographs of him as Wally Wilkins. Although the character so closely matched the conditions of his own life, he has created an inner character who has his own face. It's not just the way his hair is combed down, but his expression, the aperture of his eyes, his loose jaw and open mouth. Jimmy has regressed here some five years, just as he later aged himself over twenty years for the part of Jett Rink in Giant.

Jimmy's growing restlessness, his taking things to the edge and his inherent sense of fatalism are expressed in an interview he did with Jack Shafer for a New York radio station the Sunday night before See the Jaguar opened.

Jimmy showed up at the interview with his glossy Golden Mentor paperback on the Aztecs and startled Shafer by talking about Aztec sacrificial dramas, a people who sang under torture, a culture where suicides were sacred beings and had their own heaven and patroness, Ixtab, goddess of the rope:

"Well," he [Jimmy] somewhat reluctantly explained. "I've always been fascinated by the Aztec Indians. They were a very fatalistic people, and I sometimes share that feeling. They had such a weird sense of doom that when the warlike Spaniards arrived in Mexico, a lot of the Aztecs just gave up, fatalistically, to an event they believed couldn't be avoided.

"Like the Arab philosophy of Kismet?" I [Shafer] asked, "what is written, is written?"

"And for them, the arrival of the Spaniards was written!" Dean went on, his enthusiasm bubbling to the surface. "They had a legend that their god Quetzalcoatl had predicted they would be conquered by strange visitors from another land."

"Well, no wonder they were fatalistic about it then," I [Shafer] said. "But what's this about your being fatalistic, too?"

"In a certain sense I am," Dean admitted. "I don't exactly know how to explain it, but I have a hunch there are some things in life we just can't avoid. They'll happen to us, probably because we're built that way - we simply attract our own fate ... make our own destiny."

"I think I'm like the Aztecs in that respect, too. With their sense of doom, they tried to get the most out of life while life was good; and I go along with them on that philosophy. I don't mean the 'eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die' idea, but something a lot deeper and more valuable. I want to live as intensely as I can. Be as useful and helpful to others as possible, for one thing. But live for myself as well. I want to feel things and experiences right down to their roots ... enjoy the good in life while it is good."

In the Journal American, the reviewer ended his story with the advice that "if you want to 'See the Jaguar' - you had better hurry." The play closed after five performances.

Screengrab

Because I love it.

Perceptions of Portrait

I loved this 1958 essay by John Kelleher about James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It is a book I have read probably 4 times, all the way through, and I feel that I am never done with it. I can never say, "Okay, won't be reading that again, probably." There are only a few books like that, for me.

Portrait continues to morph, and grow - in my perception as a reader. It never seems like the same book twice.

Kelleher writes about this:

I remember that when I first encountered Stephen Dedalus I was twenty and I wondered how Joyce could have known so much about me. That is what I mean by the sort of reading the book will continue to get, whatever literary fashion may decree. Perhaps about the third reading it dawned on me that Stephen was, after all, a bit of a prig; and to that extent I no longer identified myself with him. (How could I?) Quite a while later I perceived that Joyce knew that Stephen was a prig; that, indeed, he looked on Stephen with quite an ironic eye. So then I understood. At least I did until I had to observe that the author's glance was not one of unmixed irony. There was compassion in it too, as well as a sort of tender, humorous pride. By this time I was lecturing on Joyce, and I was having a terrible time with the book. I could not coordinate what I had to say about it; and the students; as their papers showed, were mostly wondering how Joyce could have known so much about them--which was fortunate, for the lectures made very little sense, and it was well that the victims had their own discoveries to distract them.

Beautiful!

I also very much appreciated Kelleher's thoughts on Joyce's technique and themes. Because Joyce is often misunderstood. As Joyce himself said in regards to Ulysses:

The pity is that the public will demand and find a moral in my book [Ulysses], or worse they may take it in some serious way, and on the honour of a gentleman, there is not one single serious word in it.

If you miss the fun, if you miss that part of his work ... you miss most of it.

Kelleher writes:

He was past master of the confessorial technique that confesses nothing because it blabs too much. He could rarely permit himself to write simply from the heart, though when he did--as in the ending of Finnegans Wake or in the poem, "Ecce Puer," on his father's death and his grandson's birth--a most poignant power was released. Such passages give the lie to his usual affectation of wearing his heart up his sleeve. Why, then, the affectation? Partly, perhaps, because his artistic discipline was primarily late nineteenth century, art for art's sake, absolute subordination of subject to form, and because his subject was usually his own, often bitterly unhappy experience. What impelled him, I think, to choose and continue such a discipline was not just his artistic proclivities or the fact that he grew up in a cultural province where that view of art and the artist was still high fashion, but rather that he had a very Irish nature (counter to another Irish nature) that instinctively chose mockery if the alternative was tears. It is useless to observe that tears might often have been better for his health or that there are many places in his work where open emotion could have been admitted without loss of integrity. He was what he was. He hated what he called the "whine" in Irish poetry. When he noticed the impulsive tear and smile mingled in Ireland's eye his instinct was to give it a rough wipe. He did his best to keep his own eye dry in public. If he sometimes succeeded all too well, that was only what he intended.

Marvelous insight, I think. It's a funny thing: the Irish have a reputation for being full of sentimentality and twee-ness ... but the opposite is also true. Joyce despised sentimentality. Kelleher's thoughts there are quite good.

And the ending of the article brought a lump to my throat. That is my response to his letters to his daughter Lucia as well. Upsetting. But full of love.

Joyce fans: Read the whole thing.

(Here is just one of my many posts about Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man.)

The delectable Jean Arthur

A montage. I love that site so much. What awesome photos she finds.

I'll always love Jean Arthur for Talk of the Town and Only Angels Have Wings - and I love her even more knowing that she had terrible stage fright and a lot of insecurities. Wonderful comedienne, I think.

And she and Cary Grant SIZZLE in that late-night bar scene in Only Angels!!

Hot!

I have discovered that, at times,

I live with the Platonic ideal of passive-aggressive behavior.

When she settles into her Cornish hen pose, I know the passive-aggressiveness has taken hold, and I need to watch my step.

Rainy days ...

... make me feel sleepy, too.

Uhm ...

Hope?

How ya' doin'?

Mr. DeMille ...

I'm ready for my closeup.

The Books: "Cooper's Women" (Jane Ellen Wayne)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

Cooper's women, by Jane Ellen Wayne

Okay, so this is not an "important" biography. It's not a biography at all, really. It is a list of Gary Cooper's many conquests, written in a chatty movie-magazine style, and I'm not gonna lie: I ATE IT UP. Jane Ellen Wayne has made a career out of writing books such as this one, and they all have titles like: Gable's Women, Crawford's Men, etc. etc. What cracks me up about Cooper's Women is that Wayne blithely reports word for word conversations, as though this is a novel, and even though the conversation happened in 1925, and it probably didn't happen exactly the way she reports it, at least not word for word, she doesn't care. She is going for a chatty as-though-you-are-there feeling. This is the kind of book that the stars themselves probably hate. BUT, at the same time: Wayne is the ultimate fan. She LOVES these people. Yes, she wants the dirt on them, but it is only because she loves them so much. It is vaguely psychotic, as most fangirl ravings are (I should know), but it is essentially kind. Also, frankly, I'm desperate for information about Gary Cooper and as far as I'm concerned, he has not been given his due - in terms of having a giant serious biography written about him. There are a couple of folks out there who haven't had that "treatment" yet, and I live in hope. Joan Crawford, anyone? I know there's a new one out about her, which I haven't read, but from what I've heard it is also not "serious". Come on. Let's slay that Mommie Dearest ghost. She's a great American actress. Her work deserves to be looked at seriously.

Same with Gary Cooper who was the biggest star of his day, and, actually, any day. He was the top box office star for YEARS. Cary Grant, no small shakes himself in the stardom department, had a funny theory about Hollywood and stardom being like a crowded streetcar. Peter Bogdonavich asked Cary Grant to elaborate. Grant said:

Becoming a movie star is something like getting on a streetcar. Actors and actresses are packed in like sardines.

When I arrived in Hollywood, Carole Lombard, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Warner Baxter, Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire, and others were crammed onto the car. A few stood, holding tightly to leather straps to avoid being pushed aside. Others were firmly seated in the center of the car. They were the big stars. At the front, new actors and actresses pushed and shoved to get aboard. Some made it and slowly moved toward the center.

When a new "star" came aboard, an old one had to be edged out the rear exit. The crowd was so big you were pushed right off. There was room for only so many and no more.

One well-known star, Adolphe Menjou, was constantly being pushed off the rear. He would pick himself up, brush himself off, and run to the front to fight his way aboard again. In a short time he was back in the center only to be pushed off once more. This went on for years. He never did get to sit down.

It took me quite a while to reach the center. When I did make it, I remained standing. I held on to that leather strap for dear life. Then Warner Baxter fell out the back, and I got to sit down.

When Gregory Peck got on, it was Ronald Colman who fell off.

The only man who refused to budge was Gary Cooper. Gary was firmly seated in the center of the car. He just leaned back, stuck those long legs of his out in the aisle, and tripped everyone who came along.

When Joan Fontaine got on, she stood right in front of me and held on to one of those leather straps. I naturally got to my feet, giving her my seat. Joan sat down and got an Academy Award!

hahahaha Isn't it funny and interesting the perception of Gary Cooper, as the most settled-in star at all? He really was.

His career spans decades. He got his start in silent films, playing extras in cowboy movies. There was no indication that he had any gift for acting. But he knew how to ride a horse. Then came a "big break" - in a scene that ended up getting cut - in The Winning of Barbara Worth, starring Ronald Colman. Now: I'm interested in the story because it seems to me to be the birth of the actor here. Who knows what was going on in Gary Cooper. Who knows what his dreams were (hello. That's why we need a big biography, thanks.) He had already lived quite an interesting life at this point, and he was still a young man. He had been taken under the wing by some countess, basically, who showed him the fine life, and the taste of good things, she taught him how to dress, and perhaps even how to fuck. Cooper always had women who wanted to help him. And if you see photos of him, even hanging out at his house, he always looks immaculate. Not in a dandyish way, just elegant, masculine, beautiful. He had been taught. But what else did he want out of life? Did he dream of being a star? It's not clear. He had wandered quite a bit before landing in Hollywood. So this story - of everyone on the set of Barbara Worth suddenly realizing that that EXTRA was actually an actor - and a better actor than any of them put together - gives me goosebumps. Oh, and that anecdote came out of Scott Berg's biography of Samuel Goldwyn, so I think it's a leeeeetle bit more reliable than Miss Wayne's book. I'm just sayin'.

Jane Ellen Wayne's book deals indirectly with Cooper's career. She's more interested in his girlfriends. Cooper slept with everyone. He was married, and never got divorced - and she ("Rocky") sounds like an amazing woman in her own right ... She gave Cooper the stability he yearned for, a beautiful home, a safe haven ... but he was not faithful. Somehow, the marriage worked. No judgment. When you read Patricial Neal's autobiography - you ache for Neal, who considered Gary Cooper to be the great lost love of her life. I mean, you ache for Neal in so many ways ... God. It's like God sent down wrath upon her life or something ... Like: ENOUGH. This woman has had ENOUGH. But you can tell how haunted she is by Gary, and the entire book ends with her and Gary Cooper's wife going to lunch ... finally, after so many years, after his death. Kind of extraordinary. Some of the women Cooper messed around with were basically party girls like Clara Bow (they were a notorious couple), and others were more serious - but the serious ones were the ones that got burnt.

This is so not like me to discuss an actor's personal life like this - forgive me. It's because I'm talking about a book called COOPER'S WOMEN, for God's sake. I read it in desperation because Cooper is one of my favorites, and there's not all that much out there.

So here I am babbling about his Little Black Book of fuck buddies. (shaking my head in shame). It is indicative that none of these women - not even Patricia Neal - has anything bad to say about him. Clara Bow, in her nursing home, near the end of her life, said something like, "He was the nicest man I ever met." I mean, people have long long memories ... and Gary Cooper had one of the best reputations in Hollywood, just as a working man - and also as a Lothario. Women didn't "turn" on him. They remained loyal, remembering him as kind and sweet. Also, let's face it. Dude was hot.

One of Gary Cooper's big breaks was in William Wellman's Wings, in 1927, starring Clara Bow. Gary Cooper is not the lead, but he makes an impression.

I chose an excerpt today from Cooper's Freakin' Women that deals with Wings. I very much like Cooper's generosity, in retrospect, towards his two male co-stars. Now that's class.

EXCERPT FROM Cooper's women, by Jane Ellen Wayne

But Cooper's riding and roping were once again interrupted because Clara Bow could not live without him for very long. He was the only man who could satisfy her in bed. Their reconciliation presented only one problem for Clara, and that was Gary's desire to marry her. She tried to discourage him by admitting she couldn't have children, " 'cause I don't have all my parts down there." Clara pouted. It wouldn't be fair to him, after all. He was the kind of fellow who deserved a family. Cooper didn't change his mind about Clara, but they were no longer inseparable.

At this time, 1927, Paramount was going all out with a $2-million budget for Wings, a World War I aviation spectacular with Buddy Rogers and Richard Arlen, both beginners with only three movie credits. The cast was all-male until Lasky decided it was crucial that he feature one woman. For box-office insurance he chose Clara Bow. Her contract allowed her the right to refuse any script she didn't like, and Wings was one of them.

"It's a small part," she told Lasky. "Who needs it?"

"Wings is a man's picture, granted, but you'll be outstanding as the only woman, and we'll give you top billing."

Clara snapped her gum and smiled coyly. "You trying to boost Rogers?"

"Frankly, yes."

"Arlen, too?"

"Maybe. We hope so, of course."

"Gary's had more exposure."

Lasky felt a headache coming on. "What are you trying to say, Clara?"

"I might consider doing the picture if Gary's in it."

"He's not finished with The Last Outlaw and I have another Western lined up for him."

"Gary and me or nothin'!"

"Swell ... "

Cooper wasn't unhappy to be out of the saddle. He wanted to travel to San Antonio and see the Alamo, anyway. Besides, he'd have the chance to work with Arlen. Another incentive was having Clara all to himself far away from her Chinese Den. The more he thought about it, the more he looked forward to the idea. As for Miss Bow, she couldn't get enough of Gary and hoped to change his mind about marriage. Her addiction to him was enough without bringing in the white picket fence, two-car garage, and baby carriage.

Twenty-nine-year-old rookie director William Wellman was assigned to the airplane epic. A former pilot, actor, and Foreign Legionairre, Wellman later became famous for his direction of A Star Is Born, Call of the Wild, The Story of G.I. Joe, and Battleground, to name a few. Wings was Wellman's first major accomplishment. Years later he recalled: "Clara was in her glory. She was the center of attention and the only woman on location. She and Cooper took off when they weren't working, but when Clara was filming she divided her time between Arlen and Rogers and Cooper, who was jealous as hell. There were others 'in her tent', too. Her timing was unique. Clara was concerned, however, when she found out her boyfriend, Victor Fleming, was directing a Western nearby. She managed to keep him happy, too, but didn't like seeing Coop and Vic becoming good friends on the set. Fleming was a man's man and I'm sure they were discussing hunting and fishing. Clara seemed more at ease when Vic returned to Hollywood."

In Wings Cooper had only one major scene. "I played the veteran flyer," he explained. "Dick and Buddy were cadets. The camera picked me up munching on a chocolate bar in their tent. I kinda salute, throw the half-eaten candy aside, and take off for some test flying. I'm killed, but all you see is the shadow of my plane. Then the camera focuses on the unfinished chocolate. I always give credit to Arlen and Rogers for their swell reaction to my death. They made me a hero."

Wellman shot the scene and was satisfied. Cooper was stunned when Wellman yelled, "Cut and print!" the first time around. Richard Arlen recalled, "Coop's mouth actually dropped open. I think he ran through it with such ease expecting to do it again." Wellman was surprised when Cooper came to his tent later that day to plead for a retake. "I didn't know the camera was rollin' and want to do it again," he asked.

"It was perfect," Wellman said. "What's the problem?"

"Well, ya see ... I mean ... well, I was pickin' my nose ..."

"You rubbed your nose two or three times with your thumb."

"No, sir. I was ... uh ... pickin' my nose."

Wellman laughed. "You go right on picking your nose and you'll make yourself a fortune."

Years later, Wellman tried to describe the effect Cooper had on the scene. "I think one is born with it," he said. "Gable with his ears had it. Bogart lisped, but he had it. Tracy wasn't handsome, but he had it. They all played themselves, mind you. If Cooper was clumsy or mumbled or picked his nose, it didn't matter. Like the others he had what I call motion-picture personality. I wish someone could describe this chemistry. These guys became top stars and made millions."

Wings won an Oscar for best picture the first year of the Academy Awards, 1927. Warner Brothers received a special one for The Jazz Singer, the first talking picture, which revolutionized the industry.

Charles "Buddy" Rogers became popular for a short time, but was not the leading man Paramount expected. Richard Arlen was established and Gary Cooper received some fan mail. Clara Bow as an ambulance driver was adorable in uniform, but none of the major players were acclaimed. The Literary Digest said it was a fine picture largely by virtue of its success in reproducing scenes of actual combat in airplanes.

A day in Montauk

... or should I say, a day spent getting to Montauk ... Allison has the whole tale.

Within 10 minutes of picking her up, we were laughing all over again about the two of us driving through Ireland together, and how we would "support" one another, no matter the circumstance. The job of the "navigator" (ie: passenger) was to emotionally support the driver. I would state, "I need to drive this slow right now. I'm sorry." She would say, "Do whatever you need to do." She would drive up to one of the endless roundabouts, and sit there for 20 minutes, looking back and forth, reminding herself which way it was necessary to look. She would murmur, "I'm so sorry. I just am afraid to turn right right now." I would say, "Do what you need to do." We very quickly discovered that the job of the Navigator was just as important as the job of the Driver. It is essential to have a non-judgmental atmosphere on road trips where neither of you know where you are going.

But what a beautiful day it was!

I provide visual aids to her tale below.

Once again: here is Allison's amusing version of the tale.

Some thanks:

... to James Wolcott, for linking to my 2 Brando pieces on Friday - he's brought some great new people to my site, who have really added to the conversation here. Also, I have to laugh: Wolcott called me a "classy dame" (thank you again!) and he's linking to a post where the following paragraph occurs: "Who cares if he taped his lines to the ceiling of the cab in On the Waterfront? He's Marlon fucking Brando. If that helps him, who are you to be a little bitch about it?" Sigh. Classy indeed. No, but seriously: Wolcott's reading me is a great compliment, and I'm flattered.

-- to The Self-styled Siren (the other "classy dame" Wolcott references!) for her VERY nice post about me and my book excerpts - and she includes a great anecdote about John Barrymore from Garson Kanin's Hollywood, which dovetails with the Brando-using-cue-cards debacle. I love the story. Thank you, Siren, and have a wonderful trip!

All I can say ...

to this is: Amen.

I have linked to that archive before - and it's also in my blog roll, so that I can always dip into it if I need a good laugh.

I saw her do her one-woman show based on her experiences. It is writing not to be missed.

I float in the water ...

... and I contemplate things like my stock portfolio and existential issues surrounding my own mortality. I am deep in thought. I revel in solitude and the vaguely melancholy source of my own intellectual meanderings. Please do not disturb.

The Books: "Montgomery Clift: A Biography" (Patricia Bosworth)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

Montgomery Clift: A Biography, by Patricia Bosworth

I consider this book to be a high watermark in entertainment biography. I find myself comparing all other biographies to this one. In a similar way that Ron Chernow did with Alexander Hamilton, and David McCullough did with John Adams ... Patricia Bosworth does with Montgomery Clift. The book came out in 1978 and there hasn't been a big thorough biography of Clift since, because ... why bother? Bosworth dominates. This is not a smear book. It is not revisionist. It is not only focused on one thing (Clift's homosexuality - you know how so many books have one point to drive home and every story has to somehow dovetail into that point?? Bosworth avoids that) ... It is the story of a life. Told elegantly, with great compassion, but without avoidance. Clift's life was a tormented one. At the end, he was almost a recluse, drinking himself into oblivion, and cruising the docks of New York City for "trade". Rough trade. Alongside of this was Clift's brilliant early career, when his virtuosity stunned pretty much everyone who knew him. Bosworth is a member of the Actors Studio, a place Clift worked. At the time this book was written, many of Clift's contemporaries were still alive, and Bosworth had great access to them. Many of them are her friends, so they obviously trusted her to do the right thing by Clift, and therefore felt free enough with her to not gloss things over. Clift was deeply loved. He had lifelong friends, people who stood by and watched helplessly as he drank himself to a premature death. His acting speaks for itself. One need only to see what he was able to do in The Misfits, when he was already a wreck of a man, to know that this man's talent was transcendent.

The book is not an easy read. I have to admit that as we approached his final years, I began to be glad that it (meaning the book, meaning his life) was near the end. Enough pain for Montgomery Clift. Let him rest now. Let him just rest. Enough pain. It was like animal suffering, a deep chord of agony that ran through him ... and finally became unbearable.

He didn't make a lot of movies. Maybe 17 movies? But his debut was in Red River with John Wayne, and he played the lead of that film - so Clift hit the ground running, in his career. No one who knew him was surprised. He had done plays in New York where people still remembered, years and years later, little moments he had, great gestures ... and were able to recall, to Bosworth, with detail, performances long forgotten, from plays he had done in the 1940s. Amazing.

The details of Montgomery Clift's accident in 1956 are well-known. He left a party at Elizabeth Taylor's house, and, on the curvy drive, crashed his car into a tree. His entire face was basically ripped off, he had lost many teeth, all the bones crushed in his face - he nearly died. The recovery process was agony, and Clift probably never went a day in his life since that accident without some level of pain. His face had to be reconstructed. The before and after look of Montgomery Clift is so jarring as to take your breath away.

He had permanent paralysis in some areas, the side of his mouth, his eye was different ... and, more than all of that, he had lost the ease of his face, the flexibility, not to mention the extraordinary beauty. Even as a young boy, people would stop Montgomery Clift's mother on the street to exclaim over his beauty. This was no small part of his acting career, let's remember. To see him as a young man in Red River or Place in the Sun is to see something exquisite - not just his looks, but his looks add to the whole package. He's a wonderful actor. Brando always considered Montgomery Clift to be his only real rival.

Clift never really "bounced back" from what happened to his face. He couldn't recover. Now there had already been "issues" - there had been issues from the day he was born, just with the type of family he was born into, and the kind of expectations placed on him by his mother. Who knows what was going on inside Montgomery Clift half the time (and one of the best parts about Bosworth's book is that she doesn't speculate) - but it is known that Clift's mother raised her children (3 of them, if I'm recalling correctly) as though they were to the manor born. They were raised preciously, like small tsaritsas and tsarinas ... even though that was not their lifestyle at all. But their mother, boy, that was one strong-willed woman. And from an early age, the earliest, Clift got the message that whoever he really was would not be okay with this woman.

And so he split himself off. It's quite tragic. There was the Mamma's Boy, and then there was the guy cruising for rough trade. His homosexuality was not something he accepted. He was not like, say, Tennessee Williams, who never really hid who he was (and paid a price for it, often, in bashing incidents everywhere he went). Montgomery Clift (according to Williams) didn't really like Tennessee Williams, because Williams was "out" and Clift wasn't, and it made Clift uncomfortable. The two sides of Clift would NEVER be reconciled. He could not integrate. It was far too threatening.

I happen to think that it is that very split within him that makes him so riveting as an actor. It is not our health that always makes us good actors or writers or painters. It is the fucked up-ness that needs to be treasured, or at least not feared and rejected. (More shades of Ellen Burstyn's "shadow side" workshop). In Place In the Sun he plays George, a social climber (more ruthless than most), who is able to insinuate himself into the upper echelons on the strength of his beauty - rich people always want beautiful people around - and also through lying, deception, and cool calculated manipulation. It's weird, because his beauty was of a soft pin-up boy variety. He wasn't like, say, Marlon Brando - who was sexy ... Clift was beautiful to the degree that his face became a mask.

And Clift was a smart enough actor to either use the mask if it was right for the character, or completely ignore it - as though his beauty were just a freak of nature, don't pay any attention to it. Not all beautiful actors can do that. Many of them trade on their beauty - they don't know how to live any other way. They are congratulated for what they look like, and so they continue to perpetuate the situation. And hell, I don't feel bad for them, people can make a lot of money that way! But Clift was a psychologist, he could adjust his persona. In Red River it's not at all about how gorgeous he is. He's rough, cocky, arrogant, and most of the film is action scenes, or fight scenes, his beauty is not dwelled upon. It's just an accident that the guy looks like that, so we get over it and forget about it. But Place in the Sun makes a FETISH of his beauty - because HE does, as a character - and so do all of the other characters, who are duped by this horrible sociopath. He gets a pass - he gets in the door - because of his face, and Clift understood that power, and was able to use it in that role.

Bosworth, unlike Peter Manso, does not have a contempt for the actor's craft. She just gets the anecdotes, and let them speak for themselves. She does not add snarky comments. People were relating stories about, oh, the day Clift played his death scene in From Here to Eternity and how even crew members cried watching it. He was so so good.

The man had demons. He was dogged by tragedy and internal agony. When he was allowed to let it out (like in Judgment at Nuremberg), the results are shattering. But Clift's behavior in his final years was such that it's almost like you can feel him thinking, "You know what? I've had enough of life. I'm outta here."

A Hollywood press agent who knew Clift in the late 40s had this to say:

To survive being a star in Hollywood like Humphrey Bogart or Gary Cooper, you have to be sensitive and ruthless, humble and arrogant. Monty was sensitive. Period.

Bosworth's book looms on the landscape of entertainment biographies. It's the best of its kind.

Place in the Sun is a movie that Mike Nichols says he always watches, ritualistically, before going to work on a new picture. He watches it because he considers it to be that rare thing: a perfect movie. Perfect in construction, themes, execution, acting, set design, mood ... It reminds Nichols, every time he sees it, just how specific he needs to be.

Here's an excerpt about the filming of that movie. Bosworth refers to Clift throughout as "Monty", and somehow it doesn't bother me at all here, in the way it did in Manso's book about Brando, with Manso referring to Brando as "Marlon".

But Bosworth is a far superior writer. She weaves in quotes from people who knew Clift, who were there, with her own narrative - and it feels seamless. It's a great book. Any book that ever comes out about Clift from now on must reference this one.

EXCERPT FROM Montgomery Clift: A Biography, by Patricia Bosworth

Monty worked with such highly charged concentration and intensity as George that he would often finish a take drenched with sweat. "That's the worst part about acting," he told Elizabeth Taylor. "Your body doesn't know you're acting. It sweats and makes adrenalin just as though your emotions were real."

Throughout much of the filming he was tense and preoccupied. Believing Dreiser's tragic killer was essentially sympathetic, he played him with his head cocked to one side and drawn back like a turtle. "He's the kind of a guy who has some charm, but basically he conceals and dissembles about everything," he said. "He's tacky and not that bright," Monty told Robert Ryan, "but he's overwhelmingly ambitious." Motivated by the passion to make money and make it big in society, George, Monty felt, was also a quintessential mama's boy. "He has no style, no sophistication." In the film, Monty demonstrates that when he makes his entrance into the big party where he meets Angela (Elizabeth Taylor), his ideal woman - the rich, spoiled, pampered woman he's dreamed about. Somebody asks him, "Are you having a good time?" and he answers with a perfect blend of shyness of hostility - "How should I know? I just got here."

With Mira Rostova at his side, Monty worked out every beat in every scene in restrained and poignant detail.

In almost all his movies, "Monty, like Garbo and Brando, had the extraordinary faculty for giving you a sense of danger," recalled Richard Burton. "You were never quite sure whether he would blow his lines or explode."

Before completing the interior scenes at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, A Place in the Sun shot for two weeks on location at Cascade Lake, Nevada, as well as Lake Tahoe. It was near the end of October; the Sierras were so cold that snow had to be hosed off the trees and melted from the ground before Monty and Elizabeth Taylor could shoot their scenes lakeside.

Most of Monty's free time was spent conferring with Mira Rostova or arguing over interpretation with George Stevens. Stepherd Strudwick, who played Taylor's father in the film, recalled, "Monty came over to me after a disagreement with Stevens, shaking his head wearily and saying, 'I'm right, I know I'm right, but it doesn't make any difference to them. I'm right and I'll keep saying I'm right."

He was referring to Shelley Winters' approach to her role. "She played it all wrong," he told Judy Balaban later. "She played her tragedy from the minute you see her on screen. She is downbeat, blubbery, irritating." (Earlier, Monty had fought to get Betsy Blair the part, believing her wistful, sweet quality was better than Winters's pathos.)

He pleaded with Stevens to at least redirect Winters in the remaining scenes so that she would appear more sympathetic. If she was made more appealing it might also make the romance between himself and Taylor more bittersweet. Now, he said, the picture was very much off kilter.

Stevens told Monty he was being too sentimental. Alice Tripp, Winters' character, was supposed to be drab and pitiful, and Shelley Winters was being just that, and giving a marvelous performance (some say the best in her career).

Later, Stevens told the American Film Institute, "The thing that interested me most about Place was the relationship of opposing images ... Shelley Winters busting at the seams with sloppy melted ice cream ... as against Elizabeth Taylor in a white gown with blue ribbons floating down from the sky ... Automatically there's an imbalance of image which creates drama."

Because he wanted such imbalance visually as well as emotionally, Stevens was hardest of all on Elizabeth Taylor, who'd never really acted before. He demanded constant retakes of her scenes with Monty, and when he couldn't get the results he wanted he would argue or bait her until Taylor, unused to criticism, flared up angrily.

She had just completed The Big Hangover with Van Johnson and was being costumed for Father of the Bride on weekends, so she felt under particular strain. Also, her mother, Sara Taylor, was chaperoning her so relentlessly she could rarely be alone with Monty for whom she felt a growing attraction. Occasionally she would sneak into his dressing room, presumably to run lines with him while Mira Rostova held the script. But often she would lounge in a chair chewing gum loudly and complaining about her mother whom she called "a large pain in the ass".

Monty sympathized but he invariably changed the subject to A Place in the Sun. What did she think of George Stevens as a director? Why had she decided to play Angela Vickers and, more important, how did she see her as a character? Was she sweet, quiet, voluptuous, innocent?

"It was my first real chance to probe myself," Elizabeth Taylor wrote later, "and Monty helped me ... It was tricky because the girl is so rich and so spoiled it would have been easy to play her as absolutely vacuous, but I think she is a girl who cares a great deal."

Together they went over their roles, with Monty guiding her into the nuances, the objectives of the part. Angela wants George Eastman more than anything, he would say, but she is perfectly confident she will possess him - she is always confident. Just let the character unfold within you - keep thinking of this girl, and then she will suddenly grow and bloom in front of the camera.

Sometimes Monty would demonstrate by acting the part of Angela Vickers himself. He always had authority when he performed, and when he mimed a woman, he could almost conjure up a smoldering female essence. (Michael Billings, in his book The Modern Actor, says, "There is an androgynous bisexuality that underpins great acting." During most of his career Monty made the most positive and creative use possible of his femininity.)

His commitment to his work "affected Elizabeth almost physically - like electric shocks," wrote her biographer Richard Shepherd. "[Monty] gave of himself in a scene to such a degree that soon she began to respond in kind and the chemistry they produced eventually illuminated the screen like heat lightning."

Their memorable first love scene (shot entirely in close-up with a six-inch lens) is a record of how they responded to each other on film. Taylor is achingly tender and maternal; Monty presents a tantalizing paradox of a cool facade hiding great inner passions.

Stevens rewrote the dialogue for that particular scene at two in the morning. "I wanted the words to be rushed - staccato," he said. "Monty had to let loose - he was so enormously moved by her. Elizabeth must be compelled to tell him how wonderful and exciting and interesting he is all in the space of a few seconds ... Anyway, it had to be like nothing they had ever said to anyone before."

When Stevens handed her the new dialogue, Elizabeth looked at it and said, "Forgive me but what the hell is this?" Stevens told both of them to memorize it, then they'd rehearse and shoot, but when filming he wanted them to hurl the words at each other as fast and compulsively as possible.

"Elizabeth dissolved when she had to say 'tell Mama,' " Stevens recalled. "She thought it was outrageous she had to say that - she was jumping into a sophistication beyond her time." But Stevens insisted on that phrase. He wanted to create a mood that was at once primitive and basic, "a kind of preordained meeting."

When he edited the scene he did not use a movieola. Instead he set up two projectors and viewed the reels of Monty's close-ups and Taylor's close-ups simultaneously on a projector screen which covered an entire wall, then spliced the film in such a way that the camera seemed to roll from Monty's face to Taylor's face "thus creating a tempo - with the thing in which as fast as it could be said it was said. Monty had that kind of emotion - he got all steamed up," Stevens said. Taylor dissolved when she looked at him and spoke. "I wanted to get the feeling of them both being totally lost in each other."

What one finally sees on film is the almost jittery sensuality of the young lovers as they circle each other verbally, then swoon into a passionate embrace.

Andrei Rublev; dir. Andrei Tarkovsky

Not much is known about Andrei Rublev, the 15th century Russian monk - who was also a painter. Only one of his works has been actually authenticated (the Trinity, seen above) - but he has taken on mythical status in Russia, certainly, and in art circles.

I first became aware of his work because of Hopeful Monsters - one of my favorite novels (excerpt here). The works of Andrei Rublev take on gigantic significance in the book - especially during the early 1930s section of the book - when Stalin's terror is escalating, the famine in Ukraine is raging (but not being admitted) - and Max, one of the main characters, goes to study in Russia for a semester. He wanted to see for himself what was happening in Russia. Many things happen to Max, but one of his missions ends up being - trying to track down the Andrei Rublev Museum in Moscow, which is easier said than done. The state in Russia at that time did not want to deal with Andrei Rublev: Rublev brought up a memory of the Russians as an intensely faith-filled people - and the Russian Revolution, started in 1917, but really picking up steam in the 30s, was interested in bashing God out of existence. Max has many coincidental moments, in Moscow, trying to find this museum, and much of it begins to add up into his head ... He begins to feel that the key to Russia is held by Andrei Rublev.

Tarkovsky's film, usually called a "masterpiece", was filmed in the 1960s. It is over 3 hours long, but when it was first released in the United States, an hour or more had been cut, so many of the original reviews seem baffled as to what they should actually be reveiwing. They felt that they needed to see the whole thing in order to judge. The Russians weren't too pleased with Andrei Rublev, either ... If you look at it through the eyes of the Politburo (and why on earth would you want to do that?? But just for perspective's sake ...) you can see the issues therein. Churches had been closed and turned into pool halls and "museums of atheism". There was a concerted effort to get rid of religion. Andrei Rublev was a monk, living in a time of great strife and internal warfare in the great land of Russia. Tatars were invading. Rival princes were struggling for power. Many of them cooperated with the Tatars. The monks, in their monasteries, painting manuscripts and icons, lived separate from the mayhem, in some ways isolated ... yet the proof of the surrounding war is in the fact that so little artwork from that time remains. And what does is often burnt - because churches were torched, and very little survived.

Rublev himself is a great unknown. The facts are sparse. Tarkovsky fills in the blanks.

The film is a massive accomplishment, with, frankly, some of the most beautiful startling footage I have ever seen in a film. Yes: ever. It is hard to even describe some of it, because it is so bizarre, so once-in-a-lifetime, at times unsettling. A man floating above the landscape, tangled up in the ropes of some makeshift airborne apparatus ...

The man flies over the landscape, and we never see him from the ground - we only see the entire thing from his perspective, which makes it dizzying and rather sickening - going faster and faster over herds of reindeer, lakes, trees, guys in boats, until he crashes into the grass. (All one shot - from the guy's perspective - how they did it I'll never know).

There are unexplained shots of beauty that approach lyric poetry: a black horse lying on the grass, rolling on its back, this way, that, its thin legs up in the air.

The film slowed down slightly right then ... to accentuate the mysterious nature of the moment.

We are not meant to know what a moment like that "means". It is what it is.

Indelible images overflow the film, at times threatening to derail any sense of forward motion: a bell being hoisted up the belltower of a cathedral - with ropes and workers stretching off to the horizon - yes, to the horizon ... a riderless horse galloping through an empty ruined cathedral ... a group of naked pagan women standing in a river, holding torches ...

At times the film feels and looks like a documentary (a Russian film-making tradition and style, Soviet realism):

Some of those look like they could be by Walker Evans. The closeups, the grit of the faces, the almost blatant lack of artifice (which becomes a comment in and of itself) and the treatment of the individuals has much in common with that 1930s-style realism.

...and then there are flights of lyrical sentimentality (too many, in my opinion) - with the camera lingering over flowers and raindrops and snowflakes. It's over 3 hours long. You have time to settle in. It's not just one movie, or one style. It is many.

I am not sure if I consider it to be a "masterpiece". I think the thing that is lacking for me is the sense of Andrei Rublev as a real man. He is "Artist (TM)". He is a symbol, an idea, rather than an actual person. Now this is also a Soviet trait of storytelling (not Russian, but Soviet - which I think adds to a lot of the beautiful tension in the film - the two styles battling with each other): archetypes and symbols taking precedent over actual humanity. This may be WHY others call it a masterpiece, but for me ... it lacked in that area. It is too long. The "sentimentality" of some of the images were quite lovely, but they were too repetitive. (Sentimentality is different than sentiment. Sentimentality lingers, wanting us to notice it, comment on it, be struck dumb by it. It demands that we be moved in order to validate its existence. Sentiment exists whether we want it to or not. Example: The pulling-back of the camera to show the dead man's arm is a moment of reality, a vision of horror - and the camera pulls back, and we see a dropped satchel of paint slowly bleeding into the river - the light color dyeing the darker water of the river - and it is a lovely image, a piece of poetry, but when a film has several such sequences, 20 maybe, it begins to lose its power. It becomes apparent that this is the director's style, moving with his camera from the specific to the abstract - and again, maybe that works for some people. For me, I can recognize its beauty, but it leaves me cold. It remains intellectual.)

My response to the epic, in some ways, reminded me of my response to Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry (my thoughts here). The world went gaga over Taste of Cherry, and it left me cold. There are many beautiful sequences, and I loved the color palette used, and the visuals. But the character seemed like a cipher, and I couldn't invest in his journey. I didn't see what others saw.

Andrei Rublev (in the movie, anyway) is a monk, living a rustic simple life on a monastery when he is called by the Grand Prince to come to Moscow and help Theosophanes the Greek help finish painting the cathedral. Rublev's reputation already exists at that time - he is known for his icons, his religious paintings. So off he goes on his journey. The world he travels through, to get to his destination, is almost like the Judgment Day paintings on the walls of the great medieval cathedrals. A world of brutality and faith, with vicious cruelty, peasants huddled in the dark, fearful, and grand men with big boots stomping all over them. Rublev watches pagans being tortured, there are episodes with the Tatars - grinning ferocious men on magnificent horses - who come to villages, only to torch the entire place. We see women lying on the ground, surrounded by Tatar men, being raped repeatedly. Men are thrown off roofs. Innocent boys are pierced by arrows. A horse falls down a flight of stairs, stuck by a sword. Rublev, with visions of angels in his head, is horrified. He is a deeply interior kind of man (played beautifully by Anatoli Solonitsyn - he bears an incredible resemblance to Viggo Mortenson), not a fire-breathing religious fanatic, nor a hypocrite, like Theosophanes is portrayed to be (a man of NO faith, who is in charge of painting the cathedral).

Rublev is tormented by what he sees ... and at the same time, when it comes time for him to paint the Judgment Day on the cathedral wall, he cannot do it. He cannot force himself to paint the horrors of hell, and his creativity dries up. What is he to do?

Whatever it is that is inside Andrei Rublev - in terms of his feelings about sin, and forgiveness, and Christ, and God - are left opaque in the film. We see him kill a man. He kills him because that man is dragging off an idiot girl to rape her (idiot in the Dostoevsky sense - not a "she is a stupid person" sense) - and, by the way, it is a spectacular performance, with no dialogue, played by Irma Raush. Rublev has already seen something in her, something divine, the holy idiot, and he chases the man up the stairs of the cathedral - and we then see the man come tumbling down the stairs covered in blood. Is this a justified killing? Some of Rublev's colleagues seem to think it is. The guy had it coming. But Rublev descends into the silence of guilt, unable to deal with the implications of what he has done.

The film ends with one of the most extraordinary sequences I have ever seen put to film. A young boy, whose father was a bell-maker, and who died passing on his secrets to his son on his death bed - is charged with building a huge bell for a cathedral.

The land has been ravaged by Tatars, who barge into their churches, torch them, kill everyone hiding there. So the bell has deep religious and cultural significance. But that is not the focus of the last sequence. That is what I read into it, as a viewer. What the focus is is the making of the bell, and how it was done. Building a pit. Searching, endlessly, for "the clay" ... the mother-lode of clay that is just right for what they need ... work stops ... then starts ... what if he can't find the clay? He is about 14, 15 years old and is the foreman of the project - the workers are all much older than he is, and he has a lot to prove. The firing up of the kilns - another scene that takes on a hellish aspect, men with huge fire-red (well, it's a black and white film, but you know they are red) pokers, and ovens filled with glowing molten material, like the hellfires of Judgment Day Rublev had so much trouble painting:

hundreds of people at work, building the chutes where the molten material will flow, when ready ... the cast having been made of the giant bell ...

The bell-making sequence has to be seen to be believed.

Rublev is an old man at this point. He has descended into almost complete silence, and seems to haunt the young bell-maker. He glances up out of the pit, and sees Rublev standing there. Rublev is not working on the project, but it seems that what Tarkovsky is saying is that Rublev has become a patron saint of artists and artisans in Russia. His presence is there, on the outskirts of any big artistic undertaking. This is not told in an overt way. To be honest, the first time I saw it I was not aware what Rublev had to do with the bell at all. Was this the cathedral that we saw burnt earlier? Rublev is much older now. Have the villagers decided to build it up again? So this is seen as a triumph of religious faith? The Tatars and the rival princes could burn up their churches again and again ... but the people would continue to rebuild?

Rublev and the boy end up having a crucial (wordless) scene in a puddly deserted field, which speaks much to what is actually going on, in terms of catharsis, artistic commitment, and inspiration. Rublev, a quiet troubled man, is present for this young boy, in a way that has been building in him in the entire film. He is flawed. We are all flawed. Rublev strives for perfection and in that moment (it's just a moment!) - he achieves it. It is a truly holy moment between the two. Perhaps Rublev is actually dead, and he is appearing to the bell-maker as a guardian angel. There are other examples of this in the film which is not, to put it mildly, literal. Death is not an end. The dead haunt us still. Sometimes they help us. That might be the message being conveyed, but I'm not sure. It's okay that I'm not sure. I actually prefer not being sure, in a film of this kind. Leave the easy answers to other people. I think a film of this kind works in its vagueness, rather than in its specificity. But this is why Rublev had been created with more mood than detail. At the end of the film, there's a moment where he grabs a girl's mouth - she has been shoving it full of wild mushrooms - and makes her spit out the food. She is crying. He is violent. His behavior here, 3 hours into the film, remains incomprehensible to me. I still didn't feel that I knew him at all. This is not necessariy a bad thing. I was left with many questions after seeing it, and I pondered that mushroom moment (for example), turning it over in my mind, coming up with guesses as to what was going on. "People are starving in the countryside ... who are you to hog all the mushrooms to yourself ..." "We have taken vows ... to show such gluttony is not what we are about ..." Or: "I love you. I am a monk and I have feelings for you I cannot control. To see you at all in this human moment is too much for me, so I must punish you." It could be any one of those things.

But in the last sequence the project itself of making the bell takes centerstage over any symbolic or religious or, dare I say, existential considerations. We are now in the territory of a gritty "How To" manual, and I could not look away. I did not know anything about bell-making and bell-raising. I hadn't even thought about it. But you can bet I went online and Googled the SHIT out of "medieval bell-making" after seeing the film. It's fascinating, and exquisitely done. Tarkovsky makes me understand. I am involved in the process, and although I am ignorant about it ... he films it in such a clear open way that I totally "get" what is going on. When the camera pulls up, up, up, and back, back, back, showing the long thick ropes sweeping up over the landscape, up hillsides, down - with people all along them, people tiny as specks in our perspective - ready to "pull" when the command comes - It just takes your breath away. It's a sequence I will never forget.

David Thomson's article about Tarkovsky in his Biographical Dictionary of Film is well worth checking out. An excerpt:

The Sacrifice is a parable about nuclear holocaust being averted by some great personal sacrifice. It has some of the most glorious extended shots in film history. The mise-en-scene is relentless. The perfection has something monstrous about it, as if trouble had made Tarkovsky into a magnificent island gradually receding from the rest of the world. For this viewer, there is something tyrannical about it that spurs irreverent thoughts of resistance.

Much food for thought there, and I still have much to think on in terms of Andrei Rublev.

It works on a grand level - with spectacular swooping crane shots, starting at almost ground level and then climbing into the air until you can see the horizon - and it works on a small level, too - with the intimate moments between characters, and people who do come alive (not Rublev, but others). For example, there's a character of a jester, a 'fool', who wanders the villages, telling jokes, playing guitar, and occasionally dropping trou - to uproarious laughter from the crowd.

Something happens to him early on, a moment of violence out of nowhere, that was so upsetting to me I caught my breath. In 5 minutes of screen time I had already fell in love with the guy. I hadn't even realized it had happened until I gasped at the sight of him being hurt.

Filmed in CinemaScope - Andrei Rublev is MADE to be seen on a huge screen. All of the shots are long, thin, and chock-full of action and figures - like a mural in a cathedral. There are some shots where we have someone in the foreground, almost in closeup, and way in the background, we see tiny figures struggling up a snowy hill, or riding their horses by in single file - and it is structurally disorienting. We can't tell if the person in closeup is standing on a cliff, or how it is that those people in the background are also in the shot.

In a funny way, it looks as though those sequences were filmed during Andrei Rublev's time, before the "invention" of the vanishing point in art, and before three-dimensional reality was recreated on a canvas. Objects all seem to be placed on the same plane in Andrei Rublev, in the same way they appear on medieval tapestries and triptychs, the closeup face and the tiny specks in the distance seeming to live in a flat and two-dimensional space, identical ... It's a spriritual atmosphere, one of disorientation ... where humanity can start to look the way God must see it: tiny specks struggling up a snowy hill. Both kinds of vision: closeup and telescopic - happen at the same time constantly in Andrei Rublev, and in the same moment.

In Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Mosley, Max the narrator writes:

One of the sights I wanted to see in Moscow were pictures by the painter Andrei Rublev. Andrei Rublev had lived around AD 1400 at a time of much savagery and destruction in Russia. The legend about him was that he had been trained by a painter but then had become so numbed by the horrors he saw that he had been unable to paint; then sometime later he became a monk and painted pictures of serene, adoring angels ... I began to have an obsession about getting to see these paintings by Andrei Rublev: I felt I had to see them to confirm something I was on the edge of understanding about Russia.

Max, through much subterfuge (nobody seems to want to point him the way to the museum), arrives at the monastery where the paintings are supposedly held. It is deserted. It is not a time in Russia (1933) when you wanted to be seen mooning over paintings of serene angels. Max wanders through the halls, feeling like he is going to be arrested at any moment. In the strangest moment of all, he walks into one gallery and sees two men talking. Stunned, he realizes he recognizes one of the men as his classmate from Cambridge - who is not supposed to be in Russia at all. Max then realizes, thunderstruck, that it had been Mullen (the friend) who had told him to seek out the paintings of Andrei Rublev. Max doesn't know whether to be frightened or pleased. He does know that "coincidence" is rarely such ... and that all of this has something to do with Andrei Rublev. He approaches Mullen. Mullen wraps up his conversation with the other fellow and turns to Max.

Mullen said, 'You've found me.'

I thought - Well, yes, I see what you mean, I've found you.

Mullen put his hand on my arm. He said 'How are you?' He looked round. He said, 'How did you get here?' Then 'We can talk here.'

I said ' I was trying to get to see paintings by Andrei Rublev.'

He said 'You were trying to get to see paintings by Andrei Rublev?'

I said 'Yes.'

He said 'Here there's a painting by Andrei Rublev.'

I said 'I thought I recognised you at the top of the stairs.'

He said 'I see.'

Mullen was a tall, gaunt figure who might have been some sort of monk. He might have gone wandering across Russia seeing horrors; might he from these have imagined pictures of serene, adoring angels?

I said 'I thought the paintings were in a monastery, but the taxi brought me here.'

Mullen said, 'No one told you I was here?'

I said 'No.'

Mullen said 'But it was I who told you about Andrei Rublev!'

I said 'Yes.'

Mullen smiled. He said 'What a coincidence!'

I thought - He may know the code! But what is the message?

Mullen turned away towards a painting that was on the wall behind him. He murmured, 'I thought you were somewhere in the Ukraine.'

I said 'I was.' Then - 'I wondered about Kapitsa.'

Mullen said 'You wondered about Kapitsa.'

I said 'Yes.' Then I became aware of the painting on the wall behind Mullen.

Do you know this painting by Andrei Rublev? It is called The Old Testament Trinity. It was one of the paintings of which I had seen a reproduction before I left England. It is of the three angels that came to tell Abraham and Sarah that, even though they were about a hundred years old, they would have a child. The three angels are said to be God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. They are all three much the same; they are neither male nor female; they are all young and beautiful. They sit round table, on which there is a bowl; and behind them is a tree, and what seems to be the entrance to a courtyard. The three angels, though separate, seem to be held together by a common inner absorption - by the fact that this seems to give them control over the spaces between. I thought - They are serene, but they are not exactly adoring: they know too much to be adoring: what they are in contact with is themselves.

Tarkovsky's use of long long shots, with deep closeups in the foreground, makes the film feel like The Old Testament Trinity. Perhaps it was a deliberate filmmaking decision: to set up Rublev as a character who was like one of those angels he would later paint - consumed by "inner absorption" - and it is that absorption that gives him " control over the spaces between". Tarkovsky shows us "the spaces between". They are vast, endless, and overpowering at times. How could anyone come along and unite those spaces together?

A flawed work, but a great piece of 20th century filmmaking nonetheless.

I would love to hear the thoughts of others who have seen this extraordinary, difficult and (to me) frustrating film. I have read many of the reviews hailing it as a masterpiece, and I can honestly see all of their points. In the same way that I read the reviews of Taste of Cherry, and yes, I felt we all had seen the same film, but it just did not resonate for me the way it did for others. I don't feel, in the case of Andrei Rublev, that this is a matter of "the emperor's wearing no clothes" - the way I feel about, say, Forrest Gump - a film I find to be truly vile. My tepid response to Rublev very well could be my own failing. I'm still working it out. (It is also highly possible, given the look and structure of the film, that seeing it on a big screen would be a totally different experience. Like night and day different. I have only seen it on a small screen, and perhaps the images - although beautiful and arresting - would add up to seem to be something more on the big screen. So I will certainly keep my eye out at the Film Forum, and other venues, for a Tarkovsky tribute week.)

Screenshots below.

White nights

So my reading of War and Peace continues ... and, in a fortuitous moment, I came across this extraordinary post with photos of the "white nights" in St. Petersburg. Wow!!

Dear Hope,

I have a request.

Would it be possible for you to show me just how long and flat and elongated you can become?

Thank you, Hope. I was just curious. You've answered all my questions, and I am very grateful.

The Books: "Lessons In Becoming Myself" (Ellen Burstyn)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

Lessons in Becoming Myself, by Ellen Burstyn

In less than a decade, Ellen Burstyn was nominated 5 times for an Oscar (for The Last Picture Show, The Exorcist (speaking of The Exorcist ...), Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Same Time Next Year and Resurrection) and won one Oscar (for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore). That's a helluva good run. One of the best in the business. Then, of course, in 2001, she was nominated for an Oscar again for Requiem For a Dream. Her work in the 70s and 80s helped define the new cinema, the independent spirit, the breaking down of the boundaries of the old studio system. She WAS 1970s film, in many ways.

She's nominated almost any time she acts - including the controversial nomination for her 14 seconds of screen time in HBO's Mrs. Harris in 2006. Remember that? People were upset - like: how on earth could only 14 seconds be worthy of a nomination?? It was the talk of the town for a good 2 weeks. Burstyn made no statements about it for a while. After all, it wasn't her fight. If they wanted to nominate her, how is that HER fault? Finally, she did make a statement, and it's glorious:

I thought it was fabulous. My next ambition is to get nominated for seven seconds, and ultimately I want to be nominated for a picture in which I don't even appear.

hahahahahahaha

She's also co-President of the Actors Studio, an organization which she has always been highly involved in - Lee Strasberg adored her, and pretty much clocked what he saw to be her issues as an actress immediately. But I'll talk about that in a minute.

I took a 4-day acting workshop with Ellen Burstyn about 10 years ago. There were about 30 people in the class - a huge class - but the way she set it up and organized it (it was impeccable) we all had a chance to work, and get feedback from her. Nobody was stiffed. We all got our shot. She had obviously thought long and hard about what she wanted to do in such an intensely condensed time period, and it WASN'T scene-work. It was an extremely unconventional acting class, like no other I have ever taken before or since. She was magnificent as a teacher. It was not "Oooh, here I am The Guru" ... she had things to impart to us, and then - when it came time for each one of us to get up and work - she honed in on each student specifically, with eyes like laser beams ... seeing right into who we were. It was not generalized (as a lot of acting classes can become, with the same comments given to different people - one-size-fits-all). She did not say to me what she said to the guy across the room. Because she saw in us different things. Basically, she's a person of deep and also relaxed focus (that's one of the things that really struck me about her - her level of relaxation - without EVER seeming "mellow" or indifferent) - and when one person was up in front of the group working, her entire consciousness was focused on that person. It was amazing - to be in that spotlight for 2 minutes, or however long it was I was up in front of the group. It was almost embarrassing. You would finish working, and there would be a long long silence, as she would look up at you, thinking, thinking, thinking ... It wasn't a dead silence, it was FILLED with anticipation and thought ... The whole room was riveted. Because this was an intensive and there were so many people in the class, she couldn't spend 25 minutes on every person, analyzing them - it had to be about 10 minutes per person ... That's hard to do. Hard to be specific enough in that small amount of time, and also difficult to make the comments something the students will take with them, things that will elevate the students' understanding not only of their own process, but of who they are, for God's sake. THAT'S a good class. And person after person, Burstyn was able to do that. It was extraordinary. We were all on the edge of our seats. We would watch another classmate work (and these weren't monologues or scenes - it was a different kind of thing she was having us explore) - and then we'd all sit there, quiet, aware of her, sitting in her chair, always wearing bright deep colors - reds and purples and deep greens - thinking, pondering, staring up at our classmate ... choosing her words very carefully. She said a couple of things to me, after I worked, that I have never forgotten.

She was an incredible teacher. And why she is incredible is because she has such good eyes for it. She also loves other actors and has very little envy. Her energy during our class was that of shining JOY at seeing actors do well, grow, be brave, face fears. It's a strange thing - to feel safe and yet courageous at the same time - but that's what she created as a teacher. The class was not, as I mentioned, an acting class, where people got up and did monologues. It was an exploration of each actor's "shadow side" - the part of us we do not want to admit, or we avoid, or we say to ourselves, "OTHER people are like that - NOT ME!" Burstyn said, "When you catch yourself saying things like that, pay close attention. You're coming close to your own shadow side." In order to be fully expressed as an actor, then the "shadow side" must not be avoided. Nothing can be avoided. You can't judge certain attributes as unworthy of you. You have to be willing to experience the full spectrum. I had never quite thought of it in that way before, but Burstyn's class represented a slight shift in how I thought, not just about acting, but also about my own ambivalence and sometimes hatred of a certain individual - who, during the course of the class, I realized represented my "shadow side". I mean, she was also a full individual in her own right - but she was symbolic to me. Exploring that side of me that was her was excruciating, at times. But such worthwhile work.

Ellen Burstyn has four rules of acting. 4 things that you MUST do:

1. Show up.
2. Pay attention.
3. Tell the truth.
4. Don't be attached to the outcome.

I fluctuate on which one is the most difficult - but often I think that it's flat out #1 that is the hardest. But "showing up" is what you MUST do - and that doesn't just mean getting to rehearsal on time, but showing up, with all your talent, openness, creativity, fearlessness, self, fears, whatever - at your disposal. There are those who WANT to "show up" but honestly can't. That's what separates the talented from the not-talented.

But certainly #4 is one of the most challenging things of all - not just in acting, but in life in general. I have not mastered #4 at all, and it is a lifelong journey, I suppose. I am terribly bad at it. Most of my broken hearts have come from not having a grasp on #4. And I can feel it in me: it will happen again.

But not being attached to the outcome - in acting - is especially essential. It is that which creates fearlessness, it is that which sets an actor free. Having an idea about how to play something is great. But do not ever be attached to the outcome. Life is more mysterious than that. You can't expect anything. The DOING must be enough. (My college acting teacher used to talk about "the reality of the doing" - which helped actors ground themselves. What are you actually DOING? It helped you get specific).

Anyway, those 4 days of workshop left me with a lifetime of lessons, which is why I'm talking about it so much.

Her autobiography, which came out last year, is a real actor's book. She obviously has had much success at the highest echelons of Hollywood. I mean, 5 nominations in less than 10 years. You know. She's one of the anointed. BUT alongside of that, has been her rigorous training - she STILL is in training, she still does workshops of plays, and teaches, and moderates at the Studio (another once-in-a-lifetime experience - watching her handle that room ... You just hold your breath, waiting to hear what she will say).

Her relationship with Lee Strasberg, famous acting teacher and creator of/head of the Actors Studio is well-known. Burstyn had been a model in her early 20s, with some success in television, commercials and variety hours and the like. She was beautiful. Burstyn is quite honest about how vain she was (and still can be) - which is one of the reasons why I think her performance in Requiem For a Dream was so shattering to watch. Talk about shadow sides.

The vanity of that character became so acute that it was indistinguishable from self-loathing (something that I think is quite common). And her vanity about her looks - and dropping some weight for her big television moment - is something that Burstyn, as a model, and a beautiful young woman, understood intimately. It may seem easy to play something so close to yourself, but it is not. That's why Burstyn has her students work on "shadow sides", because we all have blind spots - and it is usually in our blind spot about ourselves that we find the gold mine. You don't act from anywhere else but there. It is the most truthful part of us, because it is the part we are ashamed of, that we hide, deny. Bring it out into the light. Let's let that sucker breathe. Easier said than done. Anyway, Lee Strasberg, within one or two sessions of working with Burstyn, could sense her shallowness as a human being, and could sense her vanity. Burstyn said to us, during the workshop, "Let's not forget. I was a pretty silly girl. I got by on my looks, and that's the truth." Strasberg recognized that in her - that defense mechanism - and went after it. Many actors resent such intrusions. Who the hell does he think he is?? But careful: when you hear a voice like that, make sure it's a REAL voice, that is on the side of growth and health ... as opposed to the shadow side protecting itself, not wanting to be revealed. Burstyn took to Strasberg's teachings like blood to a vampire. He saved her from what could have been a rather conventional career. Burstyn was a pretty girl, a flirt, who was used to having things come to her. (That is not to say she was a happy person. Her childhood was a sad one, it's just that once she hit puberty, her looks blossomed - and things started to just come easily to her, because of her beauty). Strasberg threw a wrench in that particular journey and Burstyn is forever grateful - because he gave to her a sense of her own power, first of all - but ALSO: a sense that she was more than her face, AND that certain emotions which did not really fit with being a pretty girl (rage, grief, need, envy) - needed to be explored and released. Just because she was pretty didn't mean she wasn't deep. Believe it or not, this was a revelation to Burstyn at the time. She flourished under his teaching.

So that's the excerpt I wanted to choose today from her lovely autobiography. A real actor's kind of excerpt. Nothing to do with fame, or her famous co-stars, or her most popular roles, or shooting The Last Picture Show ... but beginning her work with Lee Strasberg, and discovering, basically, who she was.

Also, as an aside: she told the story about the actress playing Joan of Arc in our workshop, and it's one of my favorite anecdotes ever. Having sat through years of classes in sense memory (and not really "getting it", let's be honest) ... I read that anecdote and think: Yup. If you're GOING to use that technique, then you had BETTER use it in that particular way. Otherwise, it's just an exercise and who the hell cares about that.

This is not the time or the place to go into sense memory. Or who knows, maybe it is, but I'm going to the beach today and I don't have time to go into it.

Any actor who has taken beginning sense-memory classes will recognize those early exercises described by Burstyn. Creating the cup, the glass of juice ... using only your sensoral apparatus. Training your concentration.

More to say about Burstyn. All I can say is: I was nervous to read this book, because I have such high regard for her ... and I also wasn't wacky about the title, which seemed rather generic - BUT: it's a lovely and honest book, and it really is about her lifelong journey in becoming herself. It's not been a neat life, and her trajectory has been full of fits and starts ... and her honesty about herself is not only refreshing, but totally inspiring.

(I also have Ellen Burstyn to thank for bringing the word "entelechy" into my consciousness - a concept she brought up continuously in the workshop).

Here's the excerpt. Ellen and her husband Neil Burstyn signed up for a class with Lee Strasberg.

No pressure, Ted (haha), but I would love to hear your thoughts. I know you have them!!

EXCERPT FROM Lessons in Becoming Myself, by Ellen Burstyn

At that time, 1964, Lee was holding his classes in a studio behind Carnegie Hall. You signed up for two classes a week - one exercise and scene class with lee and one scene study class with his wife, Paula. Lee asked for a commitment of at least six weeks because he felt it took that long to understand what the classes were about so that one could make an informed decision on whether or not to continue. He was right. The first weeks I didn't understand the classes at all. Several actors would work at the same time. There was one guy who was obviously being a chicken picking at food (turned out it was a pigeon). Another girl was looking close up into a mirror, singing to herself in a sultry way and crying. Another older woman seemed to be taking an imaginary shower and rubbing soap between her legs. One guy was on his hands and knees doing something I couldn't understand, but it was obviously very moving to him because he was crying like a baby. The whole lot of them looked crazy to me. I wanted to laugh out loud. I looked around the room to see if anyone else was suppressing a giggle as I was. Everyone was dead serious. I couldn't imagine what any of this had to do with acting. Then Lee brought the exercise to an end and criticized each one as though what they were doing made any sense at all. I was baffled. I would have left the class right then, but I had made that promise to stay for six weeks. I attended the scene study class taught by Paula. She was a short, heavy, fair-skinned, red-headed woman in a black muumuu. The scenes didn't seem all that good to me and I didn't quite understand her comments afterward. She praised things I didn't see and seemed to criticize the very things that I thought looked pretty good. I just didn't get it. But I thought before I left I ought to give it a go, so I signed up to do an exercise for Lee and a scene for Paula. The fist exercise everyone was asked to do was to create whatever you had for breakfast, a cup of coffee, a glass of juice, whatever you normally drank every morning. I was a coffee drinker at the time, so I went to work at home creating my imaginary mug. When I felt I had it, I got to be one of the five crazy people up there. I sat in my chair and held out my left hand and imagined a cup sitting on it. With my right hand I traced the rim of the cup. I let my finger move down the handle until I could define its shape. Then slowly I wrapped my fingers a