I must apologize for the lack of posts over the past month or so, but I have been working closely with a colleague on launching a new site dedicated to (you guessed it) classic film. The Cinementals launched today, with our first audio podcast going up tomorrow, and we hope that the Pictorial readers will find reason to swing by for a visit or two.
The goal of The Cinementals is an up-to-the minute destination for what’s happening in the world of classic film and classic film fans. Our goal is to help foster and promote the classic film community online by getting Cinementals everywhere INVOLVED!
Stay tuned for more, but for now take a gander and please let us know what you think!
This post is in conjuction with the Gone Too Soon Blogathon, hosted by the marvelous Comet Over Hollyood blog.
At the moment of this writing, Robert Walker lies dead in a candlelit room of a funeral parlor just a few miles from where I sit. Dressed in a blue suit, a white shirt and a simple dark tie, he lies silently dead in his thirty-third year. Those who have seen him say he looks at peace, and maybe he is.” – The Tragedy of Robert Walker by Jim Henaghan, Redbook Magazine, November 1951
On an unseasonably chilly, rainy evening, smack in the middle of a Los Angeles summer, Robert Walker died in his Brentwood home at the age of 32. His best friend Jim Henaghan, a Hollywood columnist, was at his side along with two doctors who had been called in earlier that evening to help calm the nerves of an emotionally unstable Walker. They had administered a routine sedative, one which Walker had received on several occasions, only this time the actor, who had been teasingly joking with his Henaghan mere moments before, stopped breathing.
MGM production chief Dory Schare, who had invested much effort over the past few months in rehabilitating Walker both professionally and emotionally, was called by an inconsolable Henaghan whom he found upon arrival, rocking in a chair, sobbing and shaken. Henaghan had often been the do-as-I-say paternal figure in their friendship and this night, when the doctors had advised it necessary, had forced his friend to take the injection by literally holding him down on the bed.
“I held him down,” said the guilt stricken Henaghan. “I felt like a murderer.”
3,000 miles away, Jennifer Jones was prepping for a trip to the Venice International Film Festival with her husband, when the wire came in that her ex-husband, and the father of her two children, was dead. Mrs. and Mrs. David O. Selznick immediately returned to the coast.
The Variety obit read: “Walker, who was climbing back to top attention in a renewed screen career, had complete work Saturday on his last film, “My Son John,” atParamount. Producer-director Leo McCarey said last night that the film was “Walker’s greatest work.” Son of aUtaheditor, Walker won two scholarships to Pasadena Playhouse while still in highschool. Later he studied at theAmericanAcademyof Dramatic arts inNew Yorkwhere he met Jennifer Jones who became his first wife. They worked together at theCherry Lanetheatre in Greenwich Village and later on aTulsaradio station.Walkermade his screen bow in “Bataan” later appearing in “See Here Private Hargrove” and “Since You Went Away” the latter with Miss Jones who at that time was still his wife. They were divorced in 1945 and she married David O. Selznick in 1949.”
Although separated by a divorce of six years and a string of highly disasterous relationships, flirtations and flings (including a brief but violent affair with Ava Gardner during the filming of One Touch of Venus) the truth was that Walker had never got over losing Jennifer to Selznick. They were practically children when they met, not more than 20 each, and fell in love while attending the same dramatic school in New York. One year after meeting they were married, deeply in love and deeply ambitious to make it big on Broadway. What came for Walker was success in radio. What came for Phyllis was motherhood. What came for both of them, eventually, was a chance at Hollywood. It proved to be the beginning and the end. The beginning of two sparkling screen careers– Phyllis born again as Jennifer Jones and netting an Academy Award for her screen debut, and Walker making a mark as the ultimate boy-next-door.
Phyllis.
Effects of the divorce.
And while Walker was a genuinely kind-hearted fellow, and although he possessed a face rounded in youthful innocence, Walker’s aww-gee-fellas demeanor on screen belied the rebel beneath. It took the unexpected atom bomb of a divorce to bring those dark, haunting ghosts, with him since his ne’er do well days as a military cadet, to visceral fruition.
Much in the same way that the soon-to-be-famous method actors Brando, Clift and Dean would outwardly buck the system, Walker was in every way a Hollywood rebel. He never wanted to be a “movie star”, and when he became the victim of a systematic plot by an obsessed David O. Selznick to possess Jennifer Jones at any cost, his indifference toward Hollywood became acerbic.
Selznick produced the poignant wartime melodrama Since You Went Away during the traumatic climax of their divorce, of which he had been the careful orchestrator, and refused to recast Walker. Selznick not only insisted on Walker playing Jones’ ill-fated love interest, but personally oversaw some of the most gutwrenching dialogue between the two lovers.
Walker and Jones in Since You Went Away.
Walker on the single scene.
Not long after, Modern Screen magazine ran the story “The Mystery of Bob Walker”:
“Consider the mystery of Robert Walker, one of the strangest men in Hollywood. He’s a guy with a million romances, but they say he’s still in love with his ex-wife. He’s a man who wants to act, but he’s turned down parts any other actor would have hocked his soul for. (A lead in ‘State of the Union’, for instance.)”
“He’s disappeared for long stretches at a time, and neither family, friends nor studio could track him down, or lure him back.”
“He’s behaved at all times the way he’s felt like behaving; he’s never conformed, he’s never tried to.”
“He went straight to the top, stayed there a while, and then very calmly walked out. Nobody in Hollywood understood Walker but that wasn’t strange, because Walker didn’t understand himself.”
“A few months ago, he went to the head men at Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer. “Take me off the payroll,” he said. “I’m through with movies for good.”
“Listen, Bob,” one of them said, “take some time and think it over. Go to New York, do a play — but quit talking nonsense. Hollywood is where you belong.”
“Walker shook his head stubbornly. “Take me off the payroll. I’m not working, and I’m not going to work.”
“You can’t work for any other outfit,” he was warned. “Your contract belongs to Metro.”
“I understand that. I’m not asking you to tear up my contract. I just want it clearly understood that as far as pictures are concerned I’m all washed up. Through.”
He wasn’t, of course.
And although a propensity for drink did not in any way help his emotional state, MGM still held on to him as a worthwhile property. The new MGM production chief Dore Schary took a particular interest in Walker, dedicating much time and effort in rehabilitating Walker personally as wall as professionally. As Walker’s spells of melancholia and emotional outbursts were becoming more frequent, they were also becoming decidedly more violent: random vocal tirades (According to Henaghan they would be having a normal conversation when suddenly Walker would fist his hands and cry out “DAVID O. SELZNICK!”) and unexpected fits of rage that resulted in him smashing his fists through walls or windows. (After interpreting a casual flirtation by Ava Gardner into something more, he struck her across the face during a heated argument. They finished filming without a word to the other.) Increasingly emotionally fragile, it was following Walker’s being booked for drunk and disorderly conduct (which resulted in an embarrassing photo that would be seen ‘round the world) it was Schary who forced him to seek psychiatric help at Meninger’s Clinic.
“I thought of a mental institution like an insane asylum,” Walker said in 1949. “Fear hit me. I thought that someday soon I was going to end up dead.”
It is impossible to be sure, but perhaps it was this well-publicized sojourn at Meninger’s that led to Alfred Hitchcock casting Walker completely against type in the psychological thriller Stranger’s On a Train. Whatever Hitchcock’s reason, it is well documented fact that Walker was his ONLY choice from the very beginning to play the charming sociopath Bruno Anthony. The result was a chilling, disturbing, and altogether perfect performance by a deeply nuanced Walker who not only carried the film but walked away with the film completely.
As Bruno Anthony
Director Leo McCarey’s deafeningly Anti-Communist soapbox of a film My Son John followed and, althought Walker was highly dissatisfied with the way the shoot was going, his career looked to be on the mend nonetheless. Being a father, always the most important career of his life, had become especially so and Walker would race home after a day’s filming on John to have as much quality time with his two sons as possible. And although dealt a blow by the final decree of Irene Selznick’s divorce resulting in a swift wedding between Selznick and Jones, Meninger’s had indeed done Walker good. He’d entered a new phase of his life, not as a mere studio “property,” but an actor in his own right.
The facts of which made the miscarriage that rainy night all the more tragic.
“Bob’s death was such a waste,” Schary commented. “He was a talented actor and a man who simply switched onto a siding and ran into a dead end.”
Henaghan penned an in-memoriam of his dear friend just days after his death– a self-admitted catharsis– nursing his wounds with prose. Walker was a man understood by few to none in person, which compelled Jim Henaghan, the only other person on the planet to understand him as well as Jennifer, to pen his 1951 Redbook eulogy:
I poured myself a drink and went into Bob’s bedroom. They had covered him with a blanket. I uncovered his face, straightened his head, closed his eyes, and smoothed his hair, for he was a vain man and I knew he would have wanted to look as good as possible when they came for him.
I sat alone with him for half an hour and spoke to him as though he could hear me. I wanted desperately to call him buddy just once more and to have a last laugh with him. Then I remembered and outrageous running joke we had shared for many years.
It was our private joke. He would see me with a new pair of cuff links, and he would cry, “Those are mine! You stole them from me!”
I would look through his record collection, and I would scream that the records were mine and that he was gradually looting me of all my possessions. I remembered that one night, when he had stayed at my house, he had said:
“If I were to die in this house tonight, the first thing you would do is steal my money.” And he sat on the stairs and laughed for ten minutes at the thought.
I got up from my chair and picked his trousers. He had no money in the pockets. So I stole his watch.
I covered his face again, but I am sure I could hear him yelling at the top of his lungs, “You——–! I told you! I knew you’d do it!”
With the sound ringing in my ears, I left my friend’s body and his house and I’ll never go back.”
That was the question once asked by writer Ted Elrick, his answer coming in the form the essay Classic is in the Eye—and Mind—of the Beholder (as published in DGA News Magazine, Feb. 1992). Elrick gave the daunting task of defining that elusive quality which differentiates a good movie from a classic film to over 100 people working in the entertainment industry. Many of them were veterans of the classic silver screen themselves– still with us when the story went to print back in 1992.
Below are a few of the highlights from this most insightful piece, written at the height of the industry’s first major rally in Washington on the issue of film preservation, and I hope it provides much food for thought…and discussion.
Gene Kelly
A classic film must stand the test of time, have universality of appeal, and be a reflection of the society at the time it was made, but must not seem dated.
Charles Champlain
An impossible question. A classic film is one that was not quite like those that went before and was not quite like those that followed.
Katharine Hepburn
Something that lasts. If they really last I would say they fit the description of a classic. … Universal truth and something that appeals to everyone. The reason of life.
Robert Wise
The elements that go into making a film a classic are a timeless story and a script that have a meaningful subtext, outstanding direction that enhances the script, great ensemble acting by the cast and exceptional cinematic treatment in every department.
Edward James Olmos
A classic film takes us into an experience and grounds us into something eternal.
ArthurHiller
A classic film is one that leaves me intellectually stunned and so emotionally drained that I can’t get up from my seat. It accepts and incorporates the established conventions of art of filmmaking and takes it to the highest levels or artistic superiority that it stands the test of time.
Jack Lemmon
A classic film is not necessarily of a time. Whatever its theme was, whatever its point of view was, it was not only pertinent then, it’s pertinent now. (his example: Citizen Kane)
David Lynch
When a film creates a world and characters that you are compelled to visit again and again, it is a classic. (His examples: Sunset Blvd, Rear Window, Lolita, 8 ½)
James Stewart
That’s a very tough question when you come right down to it. More than ever, it’s survivability.
Milos Forman
Any film you can watch after 20 years without embarrassment has a chance to become a classic.
Rod Steiger
If a picture’s not credible, then it can’t be memorable. [It must] touch upon great truth.
John Levin (agent)
A classic film is one that continues to amuse, move or frighten years of moviegoers with the appreciation and passion deepening with each new generation. (His example: The Wizard of Oz)
Diane Cairns (ICM agent)
A film that captures a past generation’s heart, challenges a present generation’s mind, and nourishes a future generation’s soul.
Stanley Donen
A film is a classic because it is unique in conception and execution and it exposes human weaknesses and strengths with a cinematic eloquence and beauty which enlightens, astonishes and entertains. (His examples: Welles, Kurosawa, Chaplin)
There were many things about 2011 I’d rather forget, and am quite eager to sweep under the rug and write off as a (semi) total loss.
It was, however, a fantastic year for bloggers. And especially so for the classic film community– a niche that hitherto has been of a largely insular nature, existing on the fringes of filmdom, never quite enjoying a resounding presence in its own right. An eclectic makeup of film theorists, essayists, historians, fanboys and fangirls, visual artists, poets, and everything in between, classic film enthusiasts the enjoyed a real renaissance in 2011 and can confidently start the new year with a newly defined sense of community. (And if that’s overstating things, it is only because I believe we have every reason to start the new year with a newly defined sense of community!)
The exponential growth of social media has made it possible to nurture a culture of mutual respect and graciousness within the blogging community, resulting in work that is enlightening, enlivening and always entertaining.
Perhaps nowhere is this better illustrated than in the “blogathons” that permeate the blogosphere. Sponsored by either an independent site, or a conglomerate (like CMBA), blogathons rally writers together by challenging them to dig deep into their resources and contribute a piece on a specific topic. Typically lasting anywhere from a day to a week, not only do blogathons result in a hearty cornucopia of material, they are an invaluable tool for writers to connect with fellow colleagues on an international scale.
The Pictorial signs off for 2011 with a review of some of our favorite blogathons of the year. If you missed any of these, I can’t think of a better way to spend some of the idle holiday hours than by giving them a good long read.
Grand work, everyone! Every last one of you is, without doubt, an:
“Awards! All this town does is give awards! Best Fascist Dictator, Adolf Hitler!” – Woody Allen, Annie Hall
If by chance you are unfamiliar with how the Awards season works, here’s a brief outline: Studios tend to release their real Oscar contenders (i.e., films with any sort of non-mainstream artistic merit) until the year’s final Quarter when, badda bing badda boom, theatres find themselves gorged with posters fairly grafittied by four stars and gratuitous praise– all of which prominently feature the words BEST FILM OF THE YEAR in bolded Times New Roman. Courting the attentions of voting members of the Academy and industry guilds, these films bottleneck around Thanksgiving, just in time for the first in a long slew of awards nominations. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association unofficially kicks off the Oscar race with the Golden Globes, followed in quick succession by the major industry guild awards, The PGA, DGA and SAG, all of which have a heavy influence on the Oscar outcome (the DGA has failed to predict the best director Oscar only 7 times in the past 60 years). The BAFTAs roll around in early February and, by then, the hotly contended Oscar race has been wined and dined until the Academy members’ votes have been more or less… secured. If this sounds like a well-oiled political machine, that’s because it is. By the time Oscar night rolls around, the odds are so firmly fixed that there are few, if any, surprises.
But.
What does surprise me this year, with Awards season just now kicking into high gear, is that fact that four of the films garnering the most amount of critical accolades are in fact nods to classic film.
I’m talking about, of course, Simon Curtis’ My Week With Marilyn, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, Martin Scorsese’s Hugo and Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist.
From Simon Curtis, in his feature film directorial debut, comes My Week With Marilyn, featuring Michelle Williams taking on (arguably) *the* pop culture icon of the 20th century. The story centers on the filming of Laurence Olivier’s tumultuous production The Prince and the Showgirl where a very young man (Eddie Redemayne) grabs a job on the shoot, meets Marilyn Monroe, and ends up spending a week with her at a guest cottage. And yes, it’s based on a true story. Or at least, a memoir. I’m sure I’m not alone in being rather, shall we say, protective when it comes to portrayals of Marilyn since stereotype and sensationalism so often cheapen the woman behind the image. My Week With Marilyn is a flawed film about a flawed woman, and I suppose that’s what makes it work so well. Williams may not be Marilyn’s doppleganger, per se, but what Williams absolutely commands is the fragility and loneliness that so consumed Marilyn. The film may lack somewhat in plot, but is entirely forgiven by performance. It is also, let’s be honest, total eye candy for classic film lovers. We get to revel in the early golden years of Pinewood Studios, and are treated to appearances by such classic film luminaries as Laurence Olivier (a solid Kenneth Branagh) Vivien Leigh (Julia Ormond), Arthur Miller (Dougray Scott), and even Jack Cardiff (Karl Moffat)! Although charming and sentimental, My Week With Marilyn relies on neither.
Marion Cotillard and Owen Wilson in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS ; Jeff Daniels and Mia Farrow in THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO
Woody Allen’s unapologetically sentimental Midnight in Paris was released earlier this year, but has enjoyed a recent For Your Consideration awards campaign that has put it squarely in Oscar contention. The film, in many ways, mirrors Allen’s 1985 The Purple Rose of Cairo: in Cairo an unhappy housewife sought relief at her local theatre, while Paris tells the whimsical tale of an idealistic Hollywood screenwriter (Owen Wilson) who, while on holiday with his very ‘L.A.’ fiancee (Rachel McAdams), finds creative freedom and whirlwind love in 1920s Paris. Literally. A mysterious black taxi cab pulls up in front of his hotel and whisks him away to a hole in time– make that a watering hole in time. A left bank cafe whose regulars are the none other than the artistic superstars of the ‘20s: Ernest Hemingway, Salvidor Dali, Cole Porter, Gertrude Stein, the Fitzgeralds– and a beautiful young flapper (Marion Cotillard). While Midnight in Paris is not technically a ‘Hollywood’ movie, and lacks the gut-wrenching stomach punch that makes Cairo such a classic, Paris is still the sort of fanciful grown-up fairy tale that hearkens back to a day when studios were still brave enough (and young enough) to take creative risks– it is a film that could only be made by a a classic film enthusiast like Allen.
Rather like Allen’s cineaste colleague Marty Scorsese…
Asa Butterfield in HUGO; Harold Lloyd in SAFETY LAST
Like Allen, this proud New Yorker has chosen the City of Lights for his family-friendly offering. Hugo is currently being packaged and marketed as a Holiday family film of feel-good fluff. Talk about false advertising. Sure, Hugo is family friendly, but it is hardly Holiday fluff. Scorsese, a masterful storyteller, has created a dazzling film that, at its core, is a lesson in film history, a case for film preservation, and an unabashed love letter to the cinema. (As if one could expect anything less from Marty, cineaste supreme and film preservation champion.) Orphaned when his clockmaker father (Jude Law) is killed in a museum fire, Hugo takes to minding the clocks at a grand Beaux Arts train station, ducking the comically villainous policeman (Sacha Baron Cohen) by weaving in and out of secret nooks and crannies. Just as the clocks never stop ticking, neither does Hugo’s sharp mind– nor his light fingers– which deftly scrape the station for scraps of food and scraps of junk from an old man’s joke shop (a fantastic Ben Kingsley). The boy is desperate to repair a broken automaton, which is his last tangible connection with his father, and is convinced that the automaton is holding a secret message. He’s right… kind of. With the help of spunky, wide-eyed adventuress Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), who happens to be the crotchety old joke shop owner’s niece, Hugo unlocks much more than he imaged. It is 1931 and young Hugo is a movie lover– movie going being one of his favorite pastimes with his late father– and he introduces them to Isabelle who has been banned from the movies by her uncle. They gasp and laugh in wonder at Harold Lloyd hanging from a clock in Safety Last (a feat Hugo mimics later in the film) and, it soon becomes clear why Isabelle’s uncle is so opposed to them. The man is none other than Georges Méliès, the first great artist of the cinema, and also the first true casualty of the film business. In a wondrous stretch of visual narrative, Scorsese recreates Méliès’ magical early days of invention and inspiration in dazzling 3D that is a tremendous thrill for film fans. Scorsese’s vivid recreation of A Trip to the Moon (1902) itself is worth the price of admission. Méliès, broken and shadowed by oblivion for so many decades, finds a new beginning through Hugo’s large blue eyes, just as Hugo finds a surrogate father figure in Méliès. They, in effect, fix each other. Too sugary sweet? Maybe, but hardly superficial, and like the classic films that so inspired Scorsese, the result is magic. Will kids bite Scorsese’s clever bate, which is so obviously geared at introducing classic films to a new audience? One can only hope…
Jean Deaujardin in THE ARTIST; Fredric March in A STAR IS BORN
And finally, from French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius comes a film not set in Paris, but rather Hollywood 1927 during the onset of sound. The Artist is a silent film, shot in black and white in 4:3 aspect ratio and worked from a scenario– not a script. Which means The Artist is The Real McCoy. Whimsical, gorgeous, and at times, just plain magical.
Trust me, no one was more skeptical than I going into The Artist. Just who did this Michel Hazanavicius think he was, anyway? What could he possibly know about silent filmmaking. I am happy to say that my misgivings were ill founded. Hazanavicius is completely in control here.
He is highly fluent with the grammar of silent film narrative. Occasionally, perhaps he understands it a little too well– Hazanivicius’ formulaic setup keeping me from being completely immersed in material. (And total immersion is what silent film is all about– being completely absorbed in the pure magic of shadow and light). A film critic friend of mine shrugged when I mentioned this, replying that “silent melodramas were all pretty formulaic.” I bit my tongue. In fact, I have decided to bite my tongue about all of my nitpicks with The Artist. (i.e., Kinograph Studios not doing a sound test on its stars until 1929 when sound had in fact already taken over.) because this is NOT a historical film, it is a silent melodrama set in Hollywood.
And who cares that George Valentin (Jean Dujardin)’s tragic story is actually A Star is Born 3.0 (although the performance does, I say, give Fredric March some serious competition.) the fact is he nails it. And when we finally do hear Valentin’s voice, in the final seconds of the film, the fact that he has a French accent is a marvelous kick.
What is also exciting, for silent film enthusiasts, is the reaction of the audience. At a time when the theater going experience is becoming more and more insular, the shared experience of a dark theater becoming less and less of a cultural pasttime, it was so wonderfully (I hate the overuse of this word but no other will do) organic to hear nothing but music and laughter for 90 minutes. (And speaking of music, classic film fans will swoon over the fact that the film’s emotional climax relies entirely on Bernard Herrmann’s haunting score from Vertigo!)
And also, vindicating. An art form over 100 years old still has the power to entertain and charm mainstream audiences… hopefully, the critical success of The Artist means that someone will come along with the balls to prove that silent film also has the power to enlighten!
"Honey, we all got to go sometime, reason or no reason. Dyin's as natural as livin'. The man who's too afraid to die is too afraid to live." Clark Gable in The Misfits
Another public apology, this time to the marvelous Shadowplay blog– a longtime Pictorial favorite. I agreed to participate in their recent The Late Films Blogathon: a week long look at the final films of directors, actors and writers. A fascinating concept and I was psyched to participate and… absolutely bollocked it up. More than a week overdue, here’s my entry. Major apologies to Shadowplay– one of the best damn blogs on the web.
By 1961, the Hollywood Studio System had begun a slow rot from the inside out which would, by decade’s end, see to its total collapse thus ending the Golden Age of classical Hollywood. The Misfits, directed by John Huston and penned by Arthur Miller, is a fascinating relic from those years in flux that bewildered its audiences just as much as it bewildered the execs. On paper, the words Clark Gable (the king), Marilyn Monroe (the queen) and Montgomery Clift (the rebel) looked like box office magic. The result is a mixed bag that would be Gable and Monroe’s final film, and one of Clift’s last.
So if you’ve not seen The Misfits, it is a semi-romantic drama revolving around a curious love quadrangle: Aging cowboy (Gable) falls for a beautiful but damaged divorcee (Monroe) and the two set up, uh, housekeeping in a cottage in the Nevada desert belonging to Gable’s friend (Eli Wallach) who also happens to have the hots for Monroe, but she seems to be more emotionally attached to their punch-drunk friend Perce (Clift). It’s an odd structure, perhaps due to the fact that there isn’t any, as Miller masquerades a deeply intimate, and highly modern, character study as a Western romance.
It was no secret that Miller wrote the screenplay for his wife. The role of Roslyn could have been played by anyone, sure, but perhaps no other performance would have been nearly as truthful. In The Misfits, Marilyn is not acting. She is Marilyn– exposed and naked and shivering in the scalding Nevada sun. There is a moment towards the end of the film when Monroe accompanies Gable, Wallach and Clift to go “mustang’n” as they call it (roping up herds of wild mustang), where Marilyn erupts in a way that is, to this day, unsettling. The emotionally fragile Monroe, who has been horrified by the ferocity required in Gable and Wallach’s trade, finally has a meltdown. She is a white dot in the Nevada desert, screaming “MURDERERS” with blood-curdling tremor. Clift, the one emotional connection she has in the film, senses she’s right and, usurping Gable’s leadership, sets them free.
Monroe hated the moment.” He could have written me anything, and he comes up with this. If that’s what he thinks of me, then I’m not for him and he’s not for me.”
The emotional instability and frustrated relationships on the screen absolutely mirror what was going on behind the scenes.
By the time filming began in the High Sierras, the Miller/Monroe marriage was over. The two weren’t on speaking terms, although for sake of keeping up appearances, they shared a suite on location. But the cast and crew on this hellish shoot found themselves inadvertently herded off like the mustangs, into separate camps: Camp Miller and Camp Monroe.
Monroe, never the easiest actress to work with, had by this time become so addicted to pills that it was almost impossible for her to work. She suffered from acute insomnia, taking up to four Nembutals a night, and still could not sleep. As result of her insomnia, and a drug-induced state of paranoia, Monroe caused extreme delays in shooting, shutting down production entirely on three separate occasions.
Marilyn on set (copyright Magnum photos)
Clift too had reached a crisis point in both his professional and personal life and, being an insomniac like Monroe, was similarly dependent on pills. His alcoholism had earned him a high-risk reputation that made the Misfits crew apprehensive. Producer Frank Taylor was kept on 24-hour call should Monroe or Clift have … an emergency. “Monroe and Clift were psychic twins,” said Taylor. “They recognized disaster in each other’s faces and giggled about it.”
There in the midst of Monroe’s endless delays, Miller’s frantic rewrites, Huston’s laissez-faire directorial approach (he seemed more interested in the gambling casinos than anything else), and Clift’s drug problem, Clark Gable labored to remain a true professional.
In the film, Gable’s character is a Cowboy forced to face the fact that (to steal from Margaret Mitchell) his civilization is one that has gone with the wind. The same was true of Gable himself, on the Misfits set.
Gable was, after all, The King of Hollywood: a veteran of screen who had weathered personal tragedies and career highs and lows with resounding resilience. Gable was a pro from the Studios System era when actors were, beneath all the glamour, 9-5 blue collar workers: they were up at 5am, were expected to show up on time, know their lines, and the directors were to get the job done on time and on budget. And so, the 59 year old, now looking older than his years, found himself on a set more or less rooted in chaos. The troubled shoot’s endless delays plagued Gable, who would retreat in the off hours to work on his new car and race it around the desert. As Gable became increasingly dissatisfied with the project, he began to drank heavily. (To say that Gable held his liquor better than his costars is quite an understatement.)
Gable was also unnerved by the acting approach of his costars: Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift and Eli Wallach were all Method actors. Monroe’s close friend and acting coach happened to be Paula Strasberg who was a constant presence on the set. Gable came from a more… square shooting school of acting, perhaps best summed up by Jimmy Cagney: know your mark and know your lines. And still Gable tried his best not to complain, and more importantly, remain sympathetic to everyone, especially Monroe and Clift.
From Warren Harris’ Gable biography: “Monroe finally tottered out in stiletto heels and a low cut white dress, marched straight over to Gable and apologized for the delay. Gable put his arms around her and said, You’re not late honey,” and took her by the hand and led her to a quiet corner for a private chat. Whatever Gable told her made her giggle and then laugh out loud. From then on they had a cordial working relationship.”
The King & Queen of Hollywood
One of the few times Gable did throw something of a fit (and for good reason) occurred only after having been pushed to the limit by Clift, whose scenes often required many retakes. Clift was ad-libbing with Gable in a scene and took to playfully punching Gable in the arm. Gable had arthritis. After repeatedly telling Clift to stop (which only made the at times mischievous Clift do it more) Gable lost it and, in the middle of the take, bellowed “FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, CUT THAT OUT!”
Clift burst into tears.
Shooting stopped.
One can only imagine the look of disbelief on Gable’s face as he turned to the crew and shouted “What in the fuck is the world coming to!”
Only weeks later, on November 6 1960, Gable suffered a massive heart attack and, ten days later, the King of Hollywood was dead.
Gable’s refreshingly honest self effacing personality, manifest from the earliest days of his stardom, proved true even in death with his request of a closed casket. “I don’t want a bunch of strangers staring down at my wrinkles and fat belly when I’m dead.” This straightforward quality mirrors an interview from the glory days of the 1930s: “I don’t believe I’m king of anything. I’m not much of an actor… I’m no Adonis, and I’m as American as the telephone poles I used to climb to make a living. [Men] see me broke, in trouble, scared… they see me making love to Harlow or Colbert and they say if he can do it, I can do it, and figure it’ll be fun to go home and make love to their wives.”
As is often the habit, Hollywood was eager to point blame on a premature death. Monroe’s behavior was such a stress on Gable it gave him a heart attack. Huston not using a double for Gable gave him a heart attack.
Gable and the end of an era...
Kay Gable’s now famous remarks to Louella Parsons are more or less the reason for this.
“It wasn’t the physical exertion that killed him, it was the horrible tension, that eternal waiting, waiting, waiting. He waited around forever, for everybody. He’d get so angry that he’d just go ahead and do anything to keep occupied. That’s why he did those awful horse scenes where they dragged him on his stomach. He had a stand-in and a stuntman, but he did most of it himself. I told him ‘your’e crazy’ but he wouldn’t listen.”
From John Huston’s autobiography: “One of the myths attached to ‘The Misfits’ was that Clark Gable died of a heart attack because of over-exertion on this film. This is utter nonsense. Toward the end of the picture there was a contest between Clark and the stallion the cowboys had captured. It looked like rough work, and it was, but it was the stunt men who were thrown around, not Clark.”
NOT a stunt double.
There is no denying the fact that The Misfits proved enormous strain on Gable, physically and emotionally. But. Be that as it may, the truth is, The Misfits didn’t directly kill Gable anymore than the Kennedy’s killed Marilyn. The strenuous Misfits shoot did not cause Gable’s premature death– but at the same time, cannot be disqualified as one of its many contributing factors.
Monroe did not attend Gable’s funeral (although Miller did), although it is reported she cried for two days straight after hearing the shocking news.
One year and nine months later, Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her Beverly Hills home.
Upon learning of Monroe’s death, which shook Clift greatly, he was noted as having said ‘Hollywood deaths always come in threes. First Gable, now Marilyn… who’s next.’
Clift would make two more films after The Misfits: Huston’s Freud and Raoul Levy’s The Defector: the first a mistake from start to finish ensuring Clift’s inability to work anywhere in Hollywood and leading to the last film, a European spy flick filmed on the Continent. Like Gable, Clift would die of a heart attack before its release.
The eerie lyrcisism of Miller’s words would prove to be hauntingly prophetic: “Honey, nothing can live unless something dies.”
Welcome Back Bob has generated a flurry of activity over on Twitter and Tumblr– thanks to any and all who have turned out to voice their support of Mr. Robert Osborne’s return to TCM. Since today is the big day, The Pictorial is letting its readers know that at 8PM Eastern Standard Time, when Osborne hits the airwaves, we are co-hosting a massive Live Tweet.
If by chance you are a Twitter user, please do log on at 8PM EST and post a quick tweet welcoming him back. (And don’t forget to use the hash tag #WelcomeBackBob so we can find you!) If you don’t have a twitter account, do feel free to send your thoughts to the Pictorial and we shall post it for you.
As all of you are very well aware, this week marks the return of the one, the only, wonderful Mr. Robert Osborne who, after a five-month hiatus, resumes his primetime hosting duties on the TCM stage this week, December 1st.
“Welcome Back Bob” is a week-long celebration brought to you by the online constituency of the classic film community. The Kitty Packard Pictorial and classic film blogger Will McKinley are sponsoring this humble little tribute, but the voices that truly matter are YOURS: everyone who makes up our vital, virtual community of classic film fanatics. We are, I think it’s safe to say, a close knit, affectionate community of film lovers and, with Bob Osborne being a patron saint of classic film, it is only fitting to rally together this week to share what it is we love about our dear Robert O— and classic film itself— and why it is such a unifying force.
Here’s how it works:
Hop on over to the Welcome Back Bob Tumblr page this week and voice up in any way you like: share memories, a video, a photo, a “Welcome Back Bob” graphic, a blog post, or even just a li’l old tweet– the sky’s the limit! If you post something on your blog or tumblr, tweet @MissCarley and we’ll repost it. And if/when you do tweet, make sure to tag it with #WelcomeBackBob so we can find it and share it!
First things first: this post is in conjunction with the Park Circus Charlie Chaplin Blogathon … for which I am shamefully late. The blogathon wrapped two days ago, but I absolutely HAD to contribute. Park Circus does amazing work: a UK-based organization dedicated to bringing classic films back to their home on the big screen. Not being a part of their Chaplin blogathon would be unforgivable!
So. That being said…
I thought it would be fun to explore Chaplin’s fascinating love/hate relationship with a little thing called … sound. Chaplin may have been the one filmmaker to hold out the longest against sound, but he also happened to be one of the earliest filmmakers to embrace it. A fitting contradiction given Chaplin was a man of so many contradictions.
The truth is, Chaplin could neither read nor write music. He had no formal musical training of any sort and taught himself to play the violin and cello entirely by ear. What Chaplin did have was a childhood deeply rooted in late Victorian English music hall culture. Music, whatever its form, was therefore an integral part of Chaplin’s Dickensian childhood. So many of his boyhood memories were wrapped in the soft comfort of sheet music– melodies brainwashed into him by his mother Hannah, herself a semi-successful music hall performer before her slide into mental deterioration.
“It’s beauty was a sweet mystery I did not understand,” Chaplin said, waxing poetic about those early music hall days. “I only knew I loved it and I became reverent as the sounds carried themselves through my brain via my heart.”
This sort of reverent attachment is essential to assessing Chaplin’s musical endeavors. Music was (pardon the pun) instrumental to Chaplin’s growth as an artist. How could it not? Charlie fell in love for the first time there in the damp, dirty, overcrowded backstage of the London music hall (Hetty, a beautiful young dancer who would become, in Chaplin’s later memoir, an almost Arthurian figure) and Chaplin’s own poetic (if not somewhat inflated) prose he would pen for journals at the height of his fame romanticized those early years:
Lambeth, the land of concertina music! As I walk along the darkened streets, I hum to myself some of the old familiar tunes again:
“Why did I leave my little back room in Bloomsbury, Where I could live on a pound a week in luxury…”
These old songs have their associations and a flood of memories surges through my mind. The streets are deserted and there is a slight mist. The houses are just visible in outline. Here in these humble quarters I walk along as though I were visiting some fairyland…. How often I have heard this waltz, refrain on a Saturday night played on concertinas by Cockney lads as they strolled by the house, the music gradually diminishing in the distance, dying off into the night. –Excerpt from A Comedian Sees The World, The Ladies Home Companion 1933.
When Sidney Chaplin successfully recruited his young half-brother to join powerful impresario Fred Karno’s music hall troupe (“Karno’s Army”) it was the music that became integral to the famous Karno pantomime.
From a 1952 BBC Interview:
“The [Karno sketches] had splendid music. For instance, if they had squalor surroundings with a lot of comedy tramps working in it, they ou see, they would have very beautiful boudoir music, something of the eighteenth century, very lush and very grandioso, just purely as satirical and as a counterpoint; and I copied a great deal from Mr. Fred Karno in that direction.”
Chaplin in THE VAGABOND
His nearly intoxicating love of music led him to, at age 16 while still under Karno’s contract, learn the cello and violin. A defiant perfectionist, Chaplin would will himself to possess an adroit fluency with the strings that came with age– but at the onset, Chaplin’s natural comedic dexterity far outweighed any musical aspirations.
Chaplin may have left Karno for Keystone and Hollywood in 1914, but music would stay the rest of his life. A fact that would serve him grandly in the face of the silent comic’s greatest adversary: the talkies.
Now, Chaplin was by no means a musical prodigy (remember, he could neither read nor write music) and there are some critics to this day maintain he was never truly a bona-fide composer. I understand their arguments and court them, but resolutely disagree. It is true that Chaplin’s first works were far from polished, and his first scores not original compositions. They were, instead, dreamy gossamer re-imaginings of his favorite pieces. A patchwork quilt, if you will, of music hall memories.
In 1916, while newly contracted with The Mutual Film Company (anyone who thinks that the Mutuals aren’t his best shorts needs their head examined… or a Valium) Chaplin set up a music publishing shop in downtown Los Angeles called (ever so creatively) The Charlie Chaplin Music Publishing Company.
The sheet music for Chaplin’s “Oh! That Cello,” “The Peace Patrol” and “There’s Always One You Can’t Forget” would sell only a handful of copies. Downtown Los Angeles in 1916 was, simply, not Tin Pan Alley in 1916. Even a sky-rocketing name like Chaplin’s couldn’t attract interest. Not surprisingly, the company folded not long after.
Typed correspondence from the Charlie Chaplin Publishing Company that, prophetically, has nothing to do with music. The company lasted only a few months.
Sheet Music for "The Peace Patrol"
Also not surprisingly: Chaplin did not give up.
From the beginning, Chaplin acknowledged the symbiotic relationship between music in film. Others did as well– D.W. Griffith composed original music for some of his films and commissioned a score for Broken Blossoms– but none came remotely close to equaling Chaplin’s passion for telling stories shadow, light and music.
Chaplin allayed himself with well-established composers with whom he could collaborate. Eric James and David Raskin are perhaps the most famous, helping Chaplin create the unforgettable scores to the likes of Modern Times and Limelight. But Chaplin’s first such collaboration was with musician Frederick Stahlberg in 1923 for the daring directorial departure, A Woman of Paris. The film was his first venture as a truly independent filmmaker, under the creative protection of United Artists (of which he was a founding member) as well as his first dabbling in serious drama. Chaplin was already a director supreme, an auteur decades before that word had any real relevance, and his confidence was such that he made a decision that mystified everyone: A Woman of Paris would be a film by Charlie Chaplin without Charlie Chaplin. Hardly surprising, the public did not respond. After all, the public reasoned, “Who wants to see a Charlie Chaplin film without Charlie Chaplin?”
It flopped.
But the very few fortunate enough to have actually seen the film during its first run, would have also, in addition to witnessing the birth of a first-rate director, witnessed the birth of a pioneering film composer. This fact has more than its fair share of critics, but regardless of Chaplin’s musical merits the fact of the matter is inarguable: he was absolutely one of the first filmmakers to be just as passionate about the music of his films than any other creative aspect of the process. Something all the more remarkable given the fact that Chaplin’s enthusiasm for film scoring came about at a time when there was really no such thing as a film score.
Always drawn to musicians (his illustrious roster of acquaintances would come to include such 20th Century maestros as Igor Stravinsky) in 1925 Chaplin took a brief respite from filming The Gold Rush to team up with the highly popular Los Angeles-based bandleaders Abe Lyman and Gus Arnheim. By way of perspective, during the gloriously delirious heyday of 1920s Hollywood, The Ambassador Hotel’s Coconut Grove was THE in-spot and Abe Lyman’s California Orchestra were the Ambassador Hotel’s big attraction. (Gus Arnheim was the pianist soon to make a major name in his own right.) Arnheim’s jaunty, jazz-age tunes sizzled nationwide over the KNX radio waves their 78 recordings (still very much in existence) are high examples of hot ‘20s West Coast jazz.
From this partnership came a composition that was, really for the first time, consummate Chaplin: “With You Dear, In Bombay.” While the original Brunswick 78 is tinny, the energy of the piece still comes through and marvelous re-recordings of this and other Chaplin compositions are available on the excellent album Oh! That Cello.
Charlie with Gus Arnheim (at the piano) and Abe Lyman.
Chaplin’s guest conducting Lyman’s orchestra was noted in Music Trade Review, July 1925:
Film Comedian an Able Left-Handed Violinist and Recently Conducted Orchestra in Making of Brunswick Record.
Few of the admirers of Charlie Chaplin, the well-known film comedian, know that he is a composer or that he is much of a musician. As a matter of fact, however, he is quite accomplished in this direction. He studied the violin in his youth and is one of the few left-handed bow-players the world has known. He is also a conductor as was demonstrated by his ability in directing Abe Lyman’s Cocoanut Grove Orchestra when they recently made the recording of his new song “With You, Dear, In Bombay.” This record was made for the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company. Chaplin not only wielded the baton on this occasion but himself played the violin solo part of the recording. It is said that the Brunswick Co. has inaugurated a special publicity department and will feature this Chaplin recording. “With You, Dear, In Bombay” is published by M. Witmark & Sons. Chaplin wrote both the words and music. It is a lively fox-trot with an appealing swing and very tuneful melody. The Witmark Co. will exploit the number on a wide scale.
Chaplin (far left) on the violin while Sid Grauman sits at the piano, Mary Pickford sings and Douglas Fairbanks plays the bass.
That same year, Chaplin released one of the masterpieces of silent cinema– and indeed, cinema itself– The Gold Rush. Still years before the advent of talkies, Chaplin went to extraordinary lengths to protect the musical fidelity of his vision by composing a score to accompany the film, the sheet music of which was provided to theatres. Of course, Main Street Hollywood was light years from Main Street Anywhere, U.S.A., and Chaplin’s musical accompaniments were very often lost in the process. A fact which, to say the least, annoyed Chaplin The Perfectionist. (I could rightfully use the term ‘control freak’ but that would be terribly disrespectful: it was Chaplin’s obsessive behavior that made his films as perfect as they are.)
Someone who dedicated himself to recovering these lost, and highly important pieces of film history, was silent film composer Timothy Brock. Brock restored a number of Chaplin’s original scores and was instrumental in their public re-introduction in (cough) modern times.
There is a tendency to believe that Chaplin’s collaborations with his musical advisors merely consisted of Chaplin humming a tune while his associate took down the dictations. Chaplin himself made the remark, and it is actually a case of Chaplin giving himself too little credit. Brock described the process this way:
“Chaplin’s composing methods, as we all know perhaps by now, involved a “musical associate” who would transcribe what Chaplin composed, either on the piano or the violin. From there, Chaplin, sitting beside [City Lights musical advisor] Johnston on the piano would orchestrate each passage as he had heard it in his mind. The unfortunate quote that I and my colleagues have to contend with, that Chaplin simply “la-la-ed” his music to the arranger, was not only a self-deprecating remark but wholly inaccurate. He was as meticulous with his musical output as he was with his directorial results. In the original manuscripts there are pages and pages of rejected music that he deemed unworthy in the final cuts. It is clear by looking at these documents that Chaplin not only knew what was involved in composing just the perfect music for the scenes, but had the objectivity to discard what any normal director would probably have used. Therefore, there is not a note out of place in the entire score.”
Serenading Jackie Coogan on the set of THE KID
The production of Chaplin’s silent masterpiece, City Lights, was plagued by a state of neurotic paranoia. With so much at stake, Chaplin drove himself to the absolute limit on the picture– not to mention those he worked with– and while the result is pure cinematic perfection, the result is also nearly perfect film score.
Hollywood’s first synchronized film soundtrack was Warner Bros’ 1926 John Barrymore starrer Don Juan, and of course with the advent of the talkies, music had taken on profound importance. But Chaplin, already a seasoned pro in this particular area of production, perhaps understood music and its relationship to narrative structure more than anyone else working at that pivotal silent/sound crossover. Although refusing to talk, Chaplin embraced this new technology with radiant enthusiasm as it finally allowed him to exercise complete control over musical accompaniment. Relying on that patchwork quilt method of his, the City Lights score is seamless.
“His scores, within the boundaries that he set himself, are perfect,” remarked legendary silent film composer Carl Davis. “I would not change a note of them.”
“I use music as a counterpoint,” explained Chaplin. “ I learned that from the Fred Karno Company. For instance if they had squalid surroundings with a lot of comedy tramps working in it, they would have very beautiful, boudoir music, something of the 18th century, very lush and grandiose, and it would be satirical, a counterpoint.”
This style is highly evident in the original score for The Gold Rush and, of course, City Lights, (Jose Padilla’s “La Violetera” pitch perfect poignancy as the poor flower girl’s theme song) but also in his 1936 final silent feature Modern Times. (Flawed as it is, I love the ballsy, bad-ass nature of Modern Times: Chaplin effectively extending a prominently raised middle finger to anyone and everyone telling him what not to do and why not to do it.)
What would later become one of the 20th century’s most beloved standards, the sweet melancholy of “Smile” swirls in and out of Modern Times, framing moments of destitution and despair with sublime loveliness.
“Sometimes a musician would get pompous with me,” said Chaplin, “and I would cut him short: ‘Whatever the melody is, the rest is just a vamp.’ After putting music to one or two pictures I began to look at a conductor’s score with a professional eye and to know whether a composition was over-orchestrated or not. If I saw a lot of notes in the brass and woodwind section I would say: ‘That’s too black in the brass,’ or ‘too busy in the woodwinds’.”
Carl Davis, very accurately, made this observation: “His assistants had a terrible time. It must have been torture. He was very, very moody.”
This, I’m sure, surprises no one.
But the simple fact remains: Charlie’s only competitive Oscar win was not for acting nor for directing (crimes, both) but for Best Original Score: the 1952 beauty Limelight.
Keaton and Chaplin on the set of LIMELIGHT
As Chaplin grew on in years, especially while living Swiss exile, so did his obsession with perfecting the sound of his silents. Chaplin’s final musical associate, Eric James, worked closely with Chaplin during his ailing years in the 1970s and, therefore, took on a much larger creative role than his predecessors.
In 1975, at the age of 86 (two years before his death) Chaplin and James worked on recording the score for A Woman of Paris. “As the years went by, Charlie found it more and more difficult to think of ideas for the music and left a great deal of it to me. … When I arrived to work with Charlie on A Woman of Paris, he looked quite weak and ill. I was very distressed to find him in such a state and I could see that he found even talking quite an effort. I therefore told him not to worry but that when I had finished each piece and played it over to him, he need only shake his head…”
In these later scores, Chaplin revisits the music hall memories of his youth, and grand music hall-esque string arrangements dominate the scores for Pay Day, The Kid, The Circus. It is, I think, fair to say that all of the Chaplin/James arrangements are Chaplin’s autumnal swan songs to that childhood that was so very much a part of his lifelong love affair with music.
Recommended listening:
Oh! That Cello (Beautiful arrangements of Chaplin’s early sheet music.)
The Film Music of Charles Chaplin by Carl Davis. (This is out of print, but worth the digging. Got mine 8 years ago from a Russian e-bay seller and still cherish it.)
Just like last year, the Pictorial will be on something of a hiatus this month owing to the voluntary slavery known as National Novel Writing Month. NaNaWriMo is a major creative kick in the ass, not for the faint of heart, and I utterly failed last year… which I aim not to repeat this time around.
The Pictorial will still be around, in spits and spurts, and will be back online fulltime first thing December 1st.
Unless I’m in rehab. 50,000 words in thirty days could drive even a Vicar to liquor…
I must apologize for the lack of posts over the past month or so, but I have been working closely with a colleague on launching a new site dedicated to (you guessed it) classic film. The Cinementals launched today, with our first audio podcast going up tomorrow, and we hope that the Pictorial readers will find reason to swing by for a visit or two.
