{"id":10050,"date":"2010-04-21T06:20:54","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T10:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=10050"},"modified":"2015-06-24T11:43:16","modified_gmt":"2015-06-24T15:43:16","slug":"out-of-the-past-the-battle-of-the-under-actors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=10050","title":{"rendered":"Out of the Past<\/i>: The Battle of the Under-Actors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nExcerpt from Lee Server’s Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don’t Care<\/a>\"\"<\/i>:<\/p>\n

Director and star proved to be ideally matched. In [Robert] Mitchum, [Jacques] Tourneur had found the most expressive embodiment of his own cinematic aesthetic of eloquent, subversive resistance and oneiric sensuality. Tourneur loved Mitchum’s physical grace, the gliding, pantherlike movements, and his underplaying and powerful silences, his expressive quiescence thrilled the director whose films were among the quietest<\/i> in the history of talking pictures. He savored Mitchum’s ability to listen<\/i> in a scene. “There are a large number of players who don’t know how to listen,” said Tourneur. “While one of their partners speaks to them, they simply think, I don’t have anything to do during this; let’s try not to let the scene get stolen from me. Mitchum can be silent and listen to a five-minute speech. You’ll never lose sight of him and you’ll understand that he takes in what is said to him, even if he doesn’t do anything. That’s how one judges good actors.”<\/p>\n

In Mitchum’s opposite, the sort who tried “not to let the scene get stolen”, Tourneur might possibly have been thinking of Kirk Douglas. With his explosive starring roles – Champion, Ace in the Hole, Detective Story<\/i> – still a few years off, Douglas was becoming typed for intelligent, urbane characters, supporting parts. As Whit Sterling, certainly among the most well-spoken and civilized of ruthless racketeers, Douglas gave a brilliantly controlled and charismatic performance, but he could not have been thrilled by another second fiddle part – especially second fiddle to Mitchum, who had already taken from him the lead in Pursued<\/i>. The two got along well enough off the set, but the rivalry would flare as soon as the cameras began to turn. Since Tourneur was not about to accept any obvious histrionics in his diminuendo world, Douglas was left to try and out-underact<\/i> Mitchum, an exercise in futility, he discovered. He tried adding distracting bits of business during Mitchum’s lines and came up with a coin trick, running it quickly between the tops of his fingers. Bob started staring at the fingers until Kirk started staring at the fingers and dropped the coin on the rug. He put the coin away. In another scene, Douglas brought a gold watch fob out of his coat pocket and twirled it around like a propeller. This time everybody stared.<\/p>\n

“It was a hoot to watch them go at it,” said Jane Greer. “They were two such different types. Kirk was something of a method actor. And Bob was Bob. You weren’t going to catch him acting<\/i>. But they both tried to get the advantage. At one point they were actually trying to upstage each other by who could sit the lowest. The one sitting the lowest had the best camera angle, I guess – I don’t know what they were thinking. Bob sat on the couch, so Kirk sat on the table, then one sat on the footstool, and by the end I think they were both on the floor.”<\/p>\n

Tourneur, no martinet, liked to give his performers a lot of freedom and waited out the one-upmanship antics with a weary grace. “Quoi qu’il arrive, restez calme<\/i>,” he liked to say.<\/p>\n

Actors were actors. One night he was screening the rushes of a scene with Mitchum and Douglas talking to each other on either side of the frame, and he was startled to see how Paul Valentine – placed in the background and without a line of dialogue – had craftily picked up a magazine and was flipping the pages with an altogether distracting intensity, hijacking the scene.<\/p>\n

“Oh, Paul<\/i>,” he said to the actor, “now I have to keep an eye on you, too?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"chins.jpg\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excerpt from Lee Server’s Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don’t Care: Director and star proved to be ideally matched. In [Robert] Mitchum, [Jacques] Tourneur had found the most expressive embodiment of his own cinematic aesthetic of eloquent, subversive resistance and oneiric … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[1272,2177],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10050"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10050"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104265,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10050\/revisions\/104265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}