A recap of the Arthur Lyons Film Noir festival in Palm Springs by Kim Morgan, with a special focus on John Garfield. He’s long been a favorite of mine. Due to my obsession with all things Actors Studio starting from when I was 13 years old, he came on my radar long before he might have otherwise, because of his association with the Group Theatre in the 30s, started by Lee Strasberg, Cheryl Crawford and Harold Clurman, and his sort of shadow-box-dance with Marlon Brando for roles in Streetcar and On the Waterfront (which was actually written for Garfield). He was known as Julie Garfinkel back then. The internalized anti-Semitism of the day brought about the name change, but to his good friends – and he had many (despite the horrible way he ended) he was always known as “Julie” or “Jules-y”.
John Garfield’s daughter Julie was at the Film Noir fest, and Kim Morgan got to interview her about her father:
The picture I presented was one of his greatest films, and his last movie before he passed away — He Ran All the Way (1951). A movie made by many victims of the blacklist, including director John Berry and co-writers Hugo Butler and Dalton Trumbo (who was jailed as one of the “Hollywood Ten”), the story of a criminal on the lam, a desperate man, a man in a panic who takes a family hostage only to be tortured by his conscious and the cold hands of fate, held extra resonance. There was the power of the film itself, the history and real life tragedy of its star, and then Julie sitting next to me. She had never seen her father’s final film on the big screen, and experiencing her taking in daddy so beautifully shot by James Wong Howe, and his tough, vulnerable, wounded, complicated performance was especially moving.
I did not know that John Garfield, at one point in his life, sold diaphragms door to door. Can you imagine? That guy in the picture above selling birth control at your door?
A giant star in his day, who died way too young, his death hurried upon him by the stress and harassment he was receiving from the HUAC, his funeral in 1952 was a mob scene of fans. But now? What has happened?
Go read Kim’s piece. It’s an emotional tribute to an actor rather forgotten nowadays.
I wrote about John Garfield’s screen debut in Michael Curtiz’s Four Daughters (1938) here.
A great American movie star.
