To those who watch “old” movies, Dana Andrews is a familiar figure and everyone knows how great he was. But his name recognition is almost nil outside of that niche community, although a lot of people have seen Best Years of Our Lives and will never forget the scene in the field of airplanes. This is to say I think what Dana Andrews did in his career, and who he was as an actor, is highly under-rated and under-appreciated.
His was a diverse career, as is the case for most great character actors, but he also came up in the flourishing of Noir, and nobody – save Robert Mitchum – was as hard-boiled and cynical as Dana Andrews. His toughness and cynicism rivaled the best and is why something like Laura works. If he wasn’t as tough as he was the film could not work. Andrews’ toughness is different from Mitchum’s or Bogart’s or John Garfield’s – it has a different shading. Maybe “tough” isn’t the right word. Closed-off, impenetrable, rigid. And we should know that rigid people are more prone to breaking. (Oak trees snap in hurricane winds. Willows bend and survive). His hardness and impenetrability tips towards the sociopathic. Detective Mark McPherson is truly anti-social man. To watch him fracture and dissolve into single-minded obsession is truly destabilizing. If THAT guy can succumb, then none of us are safe.
Mark McPherson catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror in Laura, as he wanders through the dead woman’s apartment, his sense of desire growing in him. Disturbing. The necrophiliac subtext of his obsession is undeniable.
He is also fantastic in Daisy Kenyon, as one of the two men rivaling for the affection of Joan Crawford. Andrews plays attorney Dan O’Mara, essentially Daisy’s long-time “friend with benefits”, a married man with daughters, whose wife is cold and somewhat “odd”, shall we say. Dan O’Mara is braggy and arrogant, a successful guy, but … here’s the magic trick … he loves Kenyon.
O’Mara is trapped in a loveless marriage, fearful of what will happen if he leaves. His wife is abusing their daughters physically, when he’s not around, a situation he becomes aware of one day when he sees blood coming from his daughter’s ear. The way Andrews says, spiked with alarm and urgency, “What happened to your ear? What happened to your ear?” – his body hovering towards his daughter protectively, is truly heartbreaking. As my friend Mitchell says, “5-second Oscar.” He has failed the daughters he loves. They are not safe when he is not around. He will not forgive himself.
Henry Fonda plays the troubled haunted war veteran who comes into Daisy’s life, and offers her something more stable: he wants to marry her. But … he clings. He’s “too much”. Daisy Kenyon is a movie about and FOR grown-ups, because everybody gets to be complciated. There isn’t a clear-cut “right” choice. Both men come with overwhelming problems. Both are attractive, but in different ways. If Daisy accepts one or the other, there will be challenges with both. “Happily ever after” is not on the table. I wrote about Daisy Kenyon years ago for Slant. I adore the film.
He plays another unhappily married man in The Best Years of Our Lives, where his Captain Fred Derry returns from war a hero, but rattled by PTSD, something his wife doesn’t understand. They married quickly before he shipped out, and he didn’t know her character at all. He’s trapped. He finds himself drawn to the daughter of one of his war buddies (played by the excellent Teresa Wright). It’s all excellent, the film is great, but it reaches an epic level when Captain Derry wanders through the airfield of war planes, yearning to “go back” to the field of battle where everything made sense. He climbs into the cockpit of a decommissioned B-17 bomber. It’s such a famous scene, it conveys so much.
Other favorites … Where the Sidewalk Ends … where there is this long closeup as he writes a letter.
You totally believe everything he is doing: writing off-frame, thinking of what he should say, having feelings about what’s going on. This isn’t just good acting. It’s acting technique. It’s skill. Make-believe is a skill, especially when a camera is basically up your nostrils.
Andrews was so good at playing men who were torn up inside, so torn up they pour cement over themselves to create a barrier six feet deep. Hard as nails.
But let’s not forget he could also take these very same qualities and put it to use in a screwball like Ball of Fire, where he plays mob boss Joe Lilac (hilarious), the boyfriend/”keeper” of showgirl Sugarpuss O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck), whom he takes for granted and calls “honeybunch”. In his pinstripe suits, surrounded by sycophantic goons, he is both ridiculous and a legitimate threat. Andrews is lampooning some of his other performances, and it feels totally real, which is why it’s so funny. The wedding scene, with Stanwyck resisting, and Andrews insisting, is hilarious!
Fallen Angel is another excellent entry in Andrews’ noir biography. In the film, as Eric Stanton, Andrews is as amoral as he ever was. A drifter, a grifter, he’s nothing but trouble. He’s got nowhere to go. His wandering seems sinister, like he would do anything to find a safe place to land. He’s looking for someone to con. When he meets Stella (Linda Darnell), a waitress at a cafe who steals money from the register – showing her own amorality, he thinks she might be his soulmate. But Stella is as tough as he is, she’s as much of a user as he is.
Fallen Angel was a year after Laura. Eric Stanton and Detective McPherson are brothers by the same noir mother, but there are crucial differences. McPherson at least has a job. He’s actually doing something with his life. He can be cruel but he is not just adrift, he is not criminal. Stanton is a guy you’d want to stay far far away from. Not surprisingly, Andrews is sexy in Fallen Angel. The sociopath is sexy. Welcome to film noir.
Andrews had a long career, with many many roles I haven’t mentioned – The Ox-Bow Incident, Walk in the Sun, State Fair – but his heyday was in 40s noir. He eventually did mostly B-movies, appearing in anti-Communist radio plays and stuff like that. He was a heavy drinker and it got in his way. His torment, etched into his face in some of his best roles, came from an authentic place. He wasn’t “putting on” the tough surface as a pose. It was a psychological barrier against his own fragility. He needed the surface. You can really it in Laura. Detective McPherson may be fooling a lot of people with his tough exterior. But Andrews shows what’s REALLY going on in that long incredible scene where he wanders through the dead woman’s apartment – looking at himself in the mirror (because, of course: if you know me, you know I revere mirror scenes for what they provide stories) – before finally collapsing in the chair beneath the portrait.
Watch how he collapses. His body gives over to abandon. It’s frankly sexual.
We’ve seen how McPherson operates. He’s cruel, he’s impenetrable. His abandonment to his desires, then, is even more startling. A person like McPherson can’t give himself over to abandon without going way WAY too far.
Oak trees are tall and strong and they snap like twigs.
That’s Dana Andrews.
