When I was on my initial voyage of noir discovery in the 1990s, Robert Siodmak's near perfect Criss Cross was nowhere near the top of the food chain, and that puzzled me. Here was a tremendously affecting story: Burt Lancaster plays Steve, a guy who returns to his hometown of Los Angeles still pining for ex (Yvonne "Lily Munster" DeCarlo) and gets mixed up in a armored car heist.
Lancaster was essentially discovered by director Siodmak three years earlier when he was cast in 1946's The Killers, based on Ernest Hemingway's short story. That film, Lancaster's debut, made him a star instantly. By 1949, Lancaster had begun to feel his oats and had just expanded his cinematic horizons with his own production company, one of the first independents in Hollywood, and the noir-ish Kiss the Blood Off My Hands. However, still under contract to Hal Wallis and Paramount, Lancaster was loaned to Universal Studios for Criss Cross, his eighth film.
One of the benefits of the film is its extensive location work in and around Bunker Hill near downtown Los Angeles. All of these locations were destroyed in the 1960s to make way for the new Los Angeles Courthouse and other federal buildings. (With the refurbishment, the city also lost the fabled "Angels Flight," a tramcar that connected Hill Street and Olive Street, and can be seen in the film.)
Like all the best noir films, Criss Cross has a tremendous sense of atmosphere.
It's interesting to note that in the New York Times review, Criss Cross was labeled "a suspenseful action picture," when today's critics and scholars refer to it as a film noir. Star Lancaster was not pleased with the liberties Siodmak and screenwriter Daniel Fuchs made to the story after producer Mark Hellinger suddenly died of a heart attack prior to filming. The director and screenwriter slanted the story, which was originally a basic robbery yarn, to emphasize scenes and dialogue between Steve, Anna (DeCarlo), and Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea), and the poisonous threesome they have developed. Steve's passion and love for Anna becomes his sole motivation for participating in the robbery with Slim and his gang. Lancaster's Steve is one of the most passive, love-struck saps of all films noir. His love for the opportunistic Anna blinds him to the trouble and double cross ahead, and I'm assuming Lancaster wasn't crazy about playing such a passive guy. Nevertheless, I feel his performance is one of Lancaster's most effective, with his vulnerability making Steve more sympathetic and much better than his "Swede" character in The Killers, who just seemed stupid. That film had a great critical and box office reputation from the time it premiered, yet Criss Cross has struggled for over sixty years to make it to the top of critics' and scholars' lists. (Criss Cross currently sits at number two on "noir czar" Eddie Muller's list of all-time noirs right behind 1950's great In a Lonely Place.)
Tension is mounting: DeCarlo's Anna, Duryea as Slim, Tom Pedi's Vincent, Lancaster as Steve (left to right).
One of the benefits of the film is its marvelous cast. DeCarlo, who I previously tagged as Lily Munster from the 1960's sitcom, The Munsters, had one of her greatest roles as Anna, Steve's two-timing ex and current wife of Duryea's Slim. DeCarlo's beauty staggers everyone she comes into contact with. While maybe not quite on par with Ava Gardner's femme fatale in The Killers, DeCarlo more than holds her own. For me, who had only been in contact with her through her sitcom character and the old chestnut, Band of Angels with Clark Gable, DeCarlo's turn in Criss Cross was an eye opener.
Not enough can be said of Dan Duryea, one of cinema's great bad guys. His Slim Dundee is creepy, slimy, scary, and oddly sympathetic. Slim, too, is in love with Anna, and it drives him crazy with jealousy, never trusting her or letting her out of his sight (if Slim isn't around, one of his flunkies escorts her with rides and so forth). In fact, although the basic plot is an armored car heist, the actual tension comes from the triangle these three develop.
Saving the best for last is Burt Lancaster as Steve, a poor sap if ever there was one. Steve believes all the sweet talk Anna gives him about hating Slim, and Steve being the only one she ever wanted. Steve believes it because he wants to more than anything. From Steve's opening scene, all he thinks about is Anna, although he denies it to anyone who asks. If you've ever had a break-up with a dame and then thought only about ways of getting her back, then Steve is your go-to guy.
Criss Cross also benefits from a tremendous supporting cast, some familiar, some not. Starting with Steve's pal, Detective Pete Ramirez, played by Stephen McNalley; Tom Pedi's Vincent ("That's the ticket! That's the way to be!!!"); Alan Napier (best known as Alfred from the 1960s Batman TV show) as Finchley; Richard Long as Steve's brother, Slade; and, best of all, Percy Helton as bartender, Frank. Also, I have to give a shout out to an actress I haven't seen in a movie since, Joan Miller as The Lush, as she's credited on IMDB.
Yvonne DeCarlo in Criss Cross, at the height of her beauty.
Steve and Slim battle over her the entire film. Come on, wouldn't you?
Director Robert Siodmak, a German refugee, was a noir expert. Coming to America in the late 1930s, he made 23 films in Tinseltown, but he started slow and near the bottom. After a few minor features, Siodmak signed with Universal Pictures where his first job came in the form of Son of Dracula, featuring a robust Lon Chaney, Jr., as Count Alucard (get it? "Dracula" spelled backwards). According to Wikipedia, Son of Dracula is the first Dracula film to show the Count turning into a bat. Although a B-picture, the film is drenched in a smoky atmosphere suitable to its Southern setting. From there, Siodmak went on to make several of the best noirs ever, including Phantom Lady in 1944; Christmas Holiday with singing star Deanna Durbin giving her pipes a rest and shedding her wholesome image opposite a menacing against-type Gene Kelly, also in 1944; 1945's The Spiral Staircase; The Killers (for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Director) and The Dark Mirror, both in 1946. After finishing his work in American movies with the rousing, very un-noir-like The Crimson Pirate with an acrobatic Burt Lancaster, Siodmak returned to Europe to continue his career. He died in 1973 without ever really getting the recognition he deserved.
The end is nigh.
For my money, the best part of Criss Cross is the ending. The robbery goes horribly wrong, leaving Steve in the hospital after being shot in the shoulder during the heist. He's taken by one of Slim's henchmen and driven to the beach house where he told Anna to meet him. Once there, Anna shows her true colors: she is leaving Steve, bad shoulder and all, telling him that what has happened is not her fault, that people "gotta look out for themselves." Crushed, Steve quietly tells her of his never-ending love and obsession. "I never wanted the money," he tells her. "I only wanted you." Then, just before Anna hits the road with a suitcase full of dough, Slim shows up. Shot in the hold-up as well, Slim comes limping in with cane for help. Catching Anna with Steve is the ultimate betrayal. Slim pulls out a gun. . . . It's one of the saddest, most heartbreaking conclusions in film history. Along with the finale to another noir classic, Chinatown, the last five minutes of Criss Cross haunt the viewer long after the movie ends.
What a cast of characters! That's Percy Helton top left.
The year is 1976. The place, Hollywood USA. Billy Wilder, one of Hollywood's greatest writer-directors is at loose ends. His last film, a remake of The Front Page, starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in their first film together since 1968's hit comedy, The Odd Couple, had "underperformed," Tinseltown-speak for failed. For his next project, the six-time Oscar winner came across a book called Crowned Heads by Thomas Tryon, a former actor whose most notable role was the title character in Otto Preminger's 1963 film, The Cardinal. Crowned Heads told four different stories of Hollywood: of Lorna, a movie sex goddess who travels to a remote part of Mexico to find herself; of Bobbitt, an aging child star whose films have been forgotten; of Willie, a gay silent film star who encounters a Manson-like hustler and pays the price (much like Ramon Navarro, the model for the character); and of Fedora, an enigmatic old school movie queen ala Garbo and Dietrich whose beautiful face has been untouched by time.
The not-so-great poster: the art work showcasing Marthe Keller's title character is great, but Holden's superimposed photo knocks it down a peg or two.
Plans to film Fedora had originated at Universal Pictures around 1976, shortly after the novel's publication, but due to that studio's poor track record with films about old Hollywood (Gable & Lombard, W.C. Fields & Me both released in 1976), the recent wave of nostalgia had dissipated, resulting in Wilder's film going into turnaround (i.e., "Good luck, Billy, you can take this piece of shit script elsewhere."). With two options - to press on, looking for interest from other studios or to give up and search for another worthwhile project - Wilder decided to press on. No one has ever explained exactly why he held onto Fedora so tenaciously. It would prove to be one of the most difficult for him to get on screen.
Back in 1951, Wilder got thoroughly roasted by critics and audiences alike (crowds, as they say, stayed away in droves) when his film Ace in the Hole, a brilliant though unrelentingly bleak view of the human condition, was released. Since the failure of that movie, Wilder had hightailed it to more proven commodities, like stage hits Stalag 17, Sabrina,The Seven Year Itch, and Witness for the Prosecution. The couple of times Wilder did step outside the box of these proven winners he tripped up with The Spirit of St. Louis and Love in the Afternoon. These movies - with the exception of Spirit of St. Louis - were comedies, or at least lighter takes on serious subjects as with Prosecution and Stalag 17. Wilder would continue in this comic vein for the rest of the 1950s and into the 60s. It wasn't until Fedora that Wilder would be completely serious again.
The film that sent Billy Wilder running for comedic cover, 1951.
I read somewhere (having read so much about Wilder and his films, I'm not sure where, but obviously it has stayed with me) that Wilder has claimed that when he was depressed he made comedies and when happy he made dramas. If that's true Wilder was depressed for the better part of 20 years. From 1953 to 1974, Wilder made only two dramas - 1957's The Spirit of St. Louis and 1970's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. The rest could all be classified as lighter films, if not outright comedies.
With Fedora, Wilder had something to say - something he had been holding onto for at least a decade and probably more: Hollywood and its movies were going to the dogs. Told in flashback, the accent of Fedora is on youth, the mystical allure of movie queens, and how to remain forever young and desirable whatever the cost. Wilder gets his jabs in on the New Hollywood of the 1970s via William Holden's character Barry Detweiler (the film's story is narrated by Detweiler; its events seen via Detweiler's POV), a down-on-his-luck producer trying to pitch his Anna Karenina adaptation - retitled The Snows of Yesteryear - to Fedora.
Detweiler, we learn, is not only trying to sell Fedora on his script; he is also on a kind of sentimental journey of lost love and past regrets. He has a history with her. Flashing back to 1947, Detweiler, called Dutch at the time, is an assistant director on a movie called Leda and the Swan, starring none other than Fedora. During the shooting of a seduction scene in an artificial pond, Dutch is summoned to place water lilies strategically on Fedora's exposed breasts, so the scene will pass the censors' review. Dutch does so, yet makes the ultimate faux pas of yawning while covering
her breasts, an action which offends Fedora (apparently no one had
ever yawned while she was nude). Fedora is so incensed that she and Dutch end up spending the night together as she proves to him what a great lover she can be.
Fedora before the water lilies.
In the present, Detweiler is kept from Fedora by her strange entourage - the Countess Sobryanski,
Dr. Vando, and Miss Balfour - and finally pitches his script to
them. They tell Detweiler that his script is typical Hollywood
trash. The Countess tells Detweiler that no woman would leap to her
death under a moving train, leaving herself completely disfigured. A
woman, she claims, would always wants to look her best, even at her own
funeral. Fedora,
however, who has been eavesdropping on Detweiler's pitch to her
entourage, emerges, claiming, "I love that ending.... It is so
inevitable." She
approaches Detweiler, wanting to know who her leading man will be.
Detweiler tells her that she can have any male star since they are all dying to
work with her. She suggests Michael York, whom she had worked with in
the last picture before her "retirement" and with whom she had developed
an intense obsession. The story goes cleverly on from there with a twist or two that should be saved for a viewing of the film.
Fedora is Billy Wilder's swan song of Classic Hollywood and his kind of movies - movies that have a plot, genuine - or at least genuine-seeming - characters, and inspired dialogue. New Hollywood's recently adapted Star Wars mentality of keeping character and dialog to a minimum with action and special effects coming as fast as possible was anathema to someone like Wilder and his longtime co-writer I.A.L. Diamond. They wrote films in which the actors' dialogue was its own special effect. Even Fedora, though not top-of-the-line Billy Wilder, has a couple of good lines, like Detweiler's "The kids with the beards have taken over. Just give them a hand-held camera and a zoom lens." I sense a lot of Wilder in Detweiler, much like Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard (which Fedora is a clear descendant of). That earlier film saw Wilder at the height of his powers and represents not only a peak in his career but one of the best movies to ever come out of the so-called dream factory. As Wilder himself claimed in an interview, he got very lucky making Sunset Boulevard. They needed DeMille for a cameo in the picture, and they got him. They needed an old-time silent film star and found Gloria Swanson. A washed up director? Erich Von Stroheim as butler/director/protector was perfection. Whatever Wilder needed, he got. Even Montgomery Clift's early exit from the production was a blessing in disguise, as he likely would have been too anxious about the reflection of his own personal life in the role of Joe Gillis. I don't think anyone can top William Holden's interpretation of Joe as a combination of bemused, desperate, hopeful, and self-loathing (Holden should've won the Oscar, in my opinion).
Is this a knock-knock joke? Holden and Keller in Fedora.
Fedora was not so lucky. Wilder had wanted Marlene Dietrich for the Countess and Faye Dunaway for Fedora. Supposedly Dietrich hated the book and thought Wilder's script was no better. With Dietrich out, Wilder evidently decided not to approach Dunaway and gave the part to Marthe Keller, a Swiss beauty in the process of making a small splash with Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man (1976) and Black Sunday (1977) and opposite Al Pacino in Bobby Deerfield (also 1977). Problem after problem plagued Wilder during filming and in post-production. While viewing a rough cut of the film, Wilder realized that Keller and Hildegard Knef's strong accents made their lines practically unintelligible. Further, their voices did not sound remotely similar, an element vital to the plot, so Wilder had to dub both women's voices with another actress's. Allied Artists, a financially sketchy company that had the distribution deal on the film, pulled out after an unenthusiastic screening at a benefit in New York City. The film was then picked up by Lorimar Productions which planned to sell it as a television movie to CBS. Before that happened, however, United Artists (UA) stepped in to save the film for theatrical exhibition. Based on recommendations from UA, Wilder cut twelve minutes from the film and previewed it in Santa Barbara, California, in May 1978. Wilder was hoping to show it at a theater that was playing either Fred Zinnemann's Julia or Herb Ross's The Turning Point to get a more similarly-minded audience, but neither film was playing in town. Wilder settled on the Walter Matthau/Glenda Jackson comedy House Calls.
I was at that preview held at the now-long-gone State Theater. The first half seemed to play well, but after the secret of Fedora's true identity was revealed, the audience began to get restless. By the time a line of dialogue was spoken about Detweiler and Fedora's affair years previous on a "beach somewhere ... Santa Barbara!" the audience burst into a roar of laughter. The scenes with Michael York didn't play well either. The film's mood had been broken, and Wilder had lost his audience. Watching the film, knowing Wilder was sitting in a roped-off section a few rows behind me, I felt bad for him and his writing partner Diamond. When the film ended and I got up to leave the theater, I was surprised to see Wilder and Diamond had already left. But it makes sense. Why would Wilder want to sit with an audience who could not appreciate the fruit of his labor?
Wilder, Keller, and Michael York filming the important flashback scene.
At this point Wilder refused to make any more cuts to the troubled film that he had worked on for nearly three years (Wilder later said, "In three years I could've made three lousy pictures instead of one."). He was done. Let Fedora sink or swim as is. On May 30, 1978, the nearly $7 million (a not insignificant amount in the late 1970s) Fedora had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, which was honoring Wilder with a small retrospective of his films. Almost another year would pass before Fedora received an American release in April 1979. It performed poorly, earning only about $1 million. Domestic reviews were harsh. Richard Schickel stated that the film was "ludicrous" and its maker over the hill. European critics were kinder than American ones with the phrase "old fashioned" used several times. So, Wilder was out of touch with the current cinema. He didn't necessarily perceive it as an insult. "Who wants to be in touch with these times?" he asked. The good news is that Fedora has been reappraised by modern critics who consider it Wilder's last film worth viewing (1981's abysmal Buddy, Buddy is a must to avoid) with a 6.9 rating on IMDB and 73% on Rotten Tomatoes. And the movie, which only received a VHS release back in the early 90s, got a proper Blu-Ray transfer just this year. So it seems after all this time the world is finally catching up to and appreciating the beauty, elegance, charm, wit, and heartbreak that is Fedora.
What price fame?
Sources: On Sunset Boulevard: The Life & Times of Billy Wilder by Ed Sikov Conversations with Wilder by Cameron Crowe Film Comment Volume 15, Number 1, Jan-Feb.1979
Wikipedia page on Fedora IMDB Images courtesy of the internet
Orson Welles is widely acknowledged as the great genius of American cinema, the wunderkind, the magician of the movies. From his screen debut in the great cinematic game-changer, Citizen Kane, until his death 44 years later, he was also considered one of the movies' biggest failures. His success with Kane, at the tender age of 25, doomed him to something he could never surpass, no matter how hard he tried or how close he came.
Welles, with pipe, overseeing every detail. His brilliant director of photography, Gregg Toland is at lower right, in scarf.
Welles came to Hollywood in July 1939, barely 24 years old, and already hailed as the "Boy Wonder" of stage and radio. His radio broadcast of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds in October 1938 bought his ticket to Hollywood - a carte blanche contract from RKO Radio Pictures that even the best filmmakers in town could not get. It instantly made him the envy of everyone. After spending nearly a year in town, starting and discarding projects, including an adaptation of Joesph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (later the basis for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now); a thriller called Smiler With a Knife; and the life of Christ, the pressure began to build. He found his project, though, after teaming up with writer Herman J. Mankiewicz on a script titled American.
Welles began shooting the American script, renamed Citizen Kane, in July 1940, and finished four months later. With his first film, Welles continued the luck that had been part of his career, both in theater and radio. A big part of this luck was the teaming of Welles with Gregg Toland, widely thought to be the best cameraman in the movies at the time. Besides Toland, Welles was surrounded by a cracker jack production team: art direction by Perry Ferguson, editing by Robert Wise, musical score by Bernard Herrmann. Together, they created one of the best (if not the best), most influential films ever made.
After the notorious press and release of Kane, Welles embarked on an adaptation of Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons, the story of a proud, rich Midwestern family that falls on hard times. The film's production coincided with the United States' entry into World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. As a result, Ambersons - already a difficult film to sell - became something of an anachronism. Though the Ambersons budget was approximately that of Kane, Welles went over by about $100,000, bringing the total to nearly a million dollars, a significant amount for the time and, especially, for RKO, which seemed always on the brink of disaster.
America's involvement in World War II brought a change to the mindset of the nation's weekly moviegoers. Suddenly, American movie theaters were flooded with patriotic war films; criticism of the American way of life, in the past or the present, was not particularly welcome. When Ambersons previewed in the spring of 1942, the audience reaction was less than enthusiastic. The final cut ran 131 minutes when most films ran well under two hours. To the RKO executives, the previews indicated cuts were imperative. But Welles was thousands of miles away shooting a film for RKO in Brazil, commissioned by the United States Government (and instigated by Nelson Rockefeller) to help foster the Good Neighbor Policy with South America. Try as he might, Welles had a difficult time relaying via phone calls and telegrams his editing instructions to Robert Wise. Consequently, RKO brass made massive cuts and re-shot some scenes. Overall, about 40 minutes were cut, re-edited, and/or re-filmed, taking the final release print down to 88 minutes.
George and Uncle Jack Amberson say goodbye at the train station. This may be my favorite scene from the film.
In spite of the studio's cuts, the Amberson family's reversal of fortune is presented in an elegiac, melancholy way, reflecting the loss of a calmer, slower way of life. It is tempting to compare Ambersons to Welles own life, with their poignant parallels: George was Welles' own first name; Joseph Cotton's inventor character was modeled somewhat on Welles' own inventor father; the Midwestern atmosphere was familiar to Welles who was born in Wisconsin; and perhaps most telling of all - the film's townspeople wish to see the young George get his comeuppance, as many in Hollywood wished for Welles. Overall, I think The Magnificent Ambersons is well worth watching - and re-watching. As I get older, I can appreciate its nostalgic tone - the mournful passing of time and the longing for a past remembered.
After the Ambersons debacle, filming halted on the Brazilian project, now called It's All True. With
$1.2 million already spent, RKO cut off Welles' funds. When he returned
to the US, Welles and his entire staff had been dismissed from RKO.
"[T]he studio destroyed Ambersons," he said, "which, in effect, destroyed me." Orson Welles never had complete control of a Hollywood production again.
Orson in The Lady From Shanghai. Note the sign on the right. Shortly after the film was released in 1948, Welles would flee to Europe for reasons never really explained.
For the next several years Welles could not get a film directing job; however, he did stay busy, acting in movies like Jane Eyre, as the brooding Mr. Rochester, with Joan Fontaine; alongside Claudette Colbert in the weepy Tomorrow Is Forever; and doing a guest star cameo in the wartime extravaganza, Follow the Boys, performing a magic show with an assist from pal Marlene Dietrich.
In 1946, Welles was finally allowed to make the thriller, The Stranger, with stars Loretta Young and Edward G. Robinson. An early producing effort by Sam Spiegel (still under his pseudonym S.P. Eagle), many call it the worst film Welles directed. It's certainly the most conventional, though there is much to like, including the always welcome presence of Robinson as a Nazi hunter in hot pursuit of Welles' Nazi-on-the-lam college professor and a nice atmosphere of college life in a small New England town. Such was his reputation for profligate spending that he made it a priority with The Stranger to stay on budget and deliver a film the masses could enjoy. I suppose in that regard the film was successful.
It was also at this point in his life and career that Welles cultivated the habit of performing in one or more productions to pay for his directing projects, though it started out in kind of reverse fashion. 1946 found Welles back on Broadway for the first time since 1941's Native Son with a colossal adaptation of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, a musical with words and music by Cole Porter. The show ran over budget, and in a desperate bid for cash, Welles asked Columbia Pictures studio head, Harry Cohn, for a loan. In return, Welles agreed to write, produce, direct, and star in The Lady From Shanghai, an adaptation of a pulpy book called If I Die Before I Wake. Cohn gave his approval and Around the World proceeded to draw big crowds. Due to its tremendous cost, however, it closed less than three months after its opening and lost money.
The Lady From Shanghai paired Welles with his estranged wife, Rita Hayworth. The couple married in 1943 and had a daughter, Rebecca, in 1944, but by 1946 the union was more or less kaput. Hayworth was Columbia Pictures' biggest asset, so naturally Harry Cohn lavished a big budget on the film. What Cohn didn't know - or count on - was Welles subversive ways. He cut Hayworth's famed hair and dyed it blonde. On top of that, her character was the film's femme fatale. Welles' rough cut ran 155 minutes. Cohn blanched and cut it in half to a more audience friendly 86 minutes. It didn't matter though. The Lady From Shanghai - like Orson and Rita's wedded bliss - was doomed to fail. With all its off-camera intrigue - along with the Welles/Hayworth drama, the schooner charted for the ocean scenes was Errol Flynn's Zaca, and he and second wife Nora accompanied the cast and crew from California to Mexico and back - the production history would undoubtedly make for a great making-of book or in-depth documentary.
The marvelous Italian poster from the noir classic.
Though his marriage to Rita Hayworth couldn't be saved, Welles thought he could rescue his faltering career with a film of Shakespeare's Macbeth. And why not? Welles' own voodoo Macbeth, produced for Broadway back in 1937, was already legendary. Though a significant amount for B-movie studio Republic Pictures (well known mostly for its westerns), Welles' film of Macbeth had a comparatively modest budget of $800,000. Released the same year as Olivier's boffo rendering of Hamlet (1948's Best Picture) Welles' Macbeth, filmed in 23 days, was another box office and critical disappointment.
Giving up on Hollywood, Welles moved to Europe where he starred in a series of films and directed two. His most prominent acting role was as the nefarious Harry Lime in 1949's The Third Man. Co-produced by David O. Selznick and Alexander Korda, The Third Man became an international smash hit, the kind Welles dreamed of for years. Had Welles taken a percentage, which was offered, instead of up-front money, he could have been solvent for many years. But needing immediate funding to keep his latest Shakespeare adaptation, Othello, afloat, Welles chose money up front. (No one ever said great artists were good businessmen.)
Welles in Italy, early 1950s
Besides Othello, Welles directed just one other film during his sojourn in Europe. 1955's Mr. Arkadin, a bizarre film even by Welles standards, is about a rich man who hires someone to conduct an inquiry into his life. Although Othello won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival (though that honor mattered little in the late 1940s), Mr. Arkadin was a total bust when it snuck ("released" is too strong a term to describe the film's US debut) into the US in 1962. In spite of an expert cast, including the the lush Patricia Medina, it is my choice for the worst film Orson Welles directed.
Touch of Evil brought Orson Welles back to the kingdom he'd abdicated in 1948, but it almost didn't happen. In pre-production, Universal Pictures had signed Welles to portray racist, corrupt cop, Hank Quinlan, and shortly after that approached Charlton Heston to star as good American cop, Mitch Holt. Heston told the studio execs that he would be very interested if Welles was the director. The studio offered the film to Welles, who accepted and proceeded to re-write the script, changing the setting from San Diego to a fictional Mexican border town (read: Tijuana), making Heston's character a Mexican named Miguel Vargas rather than an American named Mitch Holt, and reversing the nationality of his wife, Susan, from Mexican to American. The plot deals with a prominent American big shot and his stripper companion getting blown up by an unseen bomber. The opening tracking shot is legendary - the opening of Robert Altman's The Player references it while imitating it - and is one of several Welles touches that distinguish this B-grade thriller and raise it to the level of art.
Dietrich, Leigh, Heston, and Welles. When Dietrich showed up unannounced to view the daily rushes, studio execs sat up; they didn't know she was in it. When contacted, Dietrich said if they didn't use her in publicity, she'd work for minimum, but if they publicized her appearance, they could "talk to [her] agent."They did.
Touch of Evil has more than its share of sleazy images and grotesque characters: Marlene Dietrich's gypsy/madam/fortune teller, Tanya; Akim Tamiroff's Joe Grandi; Val de Vargas' gang leader, Pancho; Dennis Weaver's nerdy motel night manager; and Mercedes McCambridge's androgynous, greasy gang member, who, in the film's most unsettling scene, asks Pancho, to "[l]et me stay. I wanna watch," when the gang break into Suzie's motel room. Despite all these bravura moments, it's the dialogue and the characters of Quinlan and Tanya that still resonate.
Welles' films are filled with quiet moments of pathos, like the farewell scene at the train station in Magnificent Ambersons and in Citizen Kane when Kane first meets Susan Alexander and tells her about his "sentimental journey" to go to the "western Manhattan warehouse in search of my youth." In Touch of Evil, Tanya is a person from Quinlan's past, possibly a former lover who knew him before the weight and corruption took over his life. In one memorable scene Quinlan asks her to "read my fortune to me," and Tanya replies, "You haven't got one. Your future's all used up." Similarly, Welles' future in Hollywood was all used up too. Though Touch of Evil finished on time and budget, Welles never completed another film in Hollywood.
Today, Touch of Evil is a touchstone of noir perversity and audacity. All of Orson Welles' films had a look-ma-no-hands presentation, the opposite of his American contemporaries. He was too grandiose, too non-conformist, too much the genius for Hollywood to accept comfortably. Like previous master directors Erich Von Stroheim and D.W. Griffith, the excess in his films sent Hollywood's power brokers running scared. Like the The Magnificent Ambersons and The Lady From Shanghai, Touch of Evil was taken away from Welles and re-edited and shortened by about 15 minutes. Yet, as Charlton Heston pointed out, Welles reputation for extravagance was unfounded, as all his films combined cost far less than any one opus from today's maestros of cinema - Spielberg, Kubrick, Coppola, Lucas. So we celebrate this so-called mad genius of cinema on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth by going back to the legacy of awesome and unique films he left us to enjoy.
Sources
Books: The Magic World of Orson Welles by James Naremore Orson Welles: Power, Heart and Soul by F.X. Feeney Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles by David Thomson The Great Movies by William Bayer
Video: The Orson Welles Story (BBC)
For years, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) was considered the Tiffany & Co. of film studios. In its heyday, which lasted nearly 30 years, MGM had the biggest stars (Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Spencer Tracy, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire . . . the list seems endless), won the most Academy Awards (eight Best Picture Oscars between 1928 and 1959, the most for a single studio up to that time), and made the most money, regularly leading the industry in gross revenue.
By the 1960s, however, MGM was in a bad way. It began at the top with Ben-Hur winning the Oscar for Best Picture of 1959 and bringing in buckets of box office gold. But that epic, a remake of MGM's own 1926 silent version, ultimately did more harm than good. For the rest of the decade, MGM kept trying to recapture Ben-Hur's success with other big budget extravaganzas, often relying on remakes of past glories. 1960 started with the western Cimarron, a remake of 1931's Best Picture winner, with Glenn Ford - a big name at the time - that failed to recoup its costs. Nicholas Ray's reboot of the old Cecil B. DeMille silent, King of Kings, fared better, managing to eke out a small profit. Vincente Minnelli's 1962 version of the Rudolf Valentino classic, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, was almost the biggest loser of the decade for Metro but was bailed out later that same year by the ill-fated remake of the classic Oscar winner from 1935, Mutiny on the Bounty. Starring Marlon Brando, Bounty' s box office take of over $9 million made it the sixth highest grosser of the year, but with an $8.5 million budget that ballooned to $20 million during production, it was far from profitable, contributing to the the studio's loss of $17 million for the year, the worst in its history. While the studio rebounded the next year with a tidy profit of over $7 million and continued to luck out now and then with big hits like Dr. Zhivago and Stanley Kubrick's ground-breaking sci-fi classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, by 1969 the writing was on the wall. That year, MGM posted a loss of nearly $35 million, by far the worst in its 45-year history.
Still taken from the 1926 version of Ben-Hur. Though the movie shoot had begun in Italy, by the time this sequence was shot, the company was back in the Culver City studios. The chariot race was filmed at the intersection of Venice and LaCienega Boulevard.
With the losses came potential buyers. For MGM, the buyer with the deepest pockets turned out to be Las Vegas tycoon Kirk Kerkorian, and by mid-September 1969, he had acquired control of the beleaguered studio. One of Kerkorian's first orders of business was to find an executive to run production and day-to-day operations. To this role, he appointed Jim Aubrey, aka "the smiling cobra," to run the show. Aubrey had been top man at CBS in the late 50s and early 60s, responsible for making it the number one channel in television with shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Gilligan's Island, Petticoat Junction, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. He was also infamous for pulling the plug on the critically admired The Judy Garland Show after only one season. Aubrey's sudden dismissal by CBS founder William Paley in 1965 was the subject of much speculation. It's possible that Aubrey's reputation as a party animal caught up with him. In addition to "the smiling cobra" sobriquet, he was also known as "Jungle Jim" for his wild, womanizing ways (in her novel, The Love Machine, Jacqueline Susann would base the main character, Robin Stone, on Aubrey). Aubrey was a so-called bottom-line man, more interested in profit than art. This quality made him attractive to Kerkorian, who knew some hard ball would have to be played in order to turn the companies ledgers around.
MGM's Lot Two in the foreground with its sound stages looming in the upper portion of the photo.
Unfortunately Aubrey and company were also tough on the creative community, cancelling several pay-or-play deals for which everyone would get paid even if productions got canceled. Commitments involving respected filmmakers like director Fred Zinneman (High Noon, From Here to Eternity, A Man for All Seasons), producer Martin Ransohoff (The Cincinnati Kid), and director David Lean (The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago). All three men had big budget spectacles in production or pre-production. Two of the three were axed; only Lean's Ryan's Daughter survived. Aubrey's next steps included cutting the studio's workforce by half, closing its New York City headquarters; and closing, selling, or greatly reducing various production departments such as music, camera, and wardrobe. Aubrey reduced payroll by $7.5 million. In addition, the new regime prepared to sell off both Boreham Wood, MGM's studio outside London, for $4.3 million, and overseas theaters for $6.4 million. One loyal studio employee took Aubrey and several executives on a walking tour of the backlots, trying to impress upon them the vast amount of movie history the studio contained. Completely unimpressed, Aubrey interrupted the tour to ask, "Does any of this stuff get used anymore? It's just lying around. I don't want to hear any more bullshit about the old MGM. The old MGM is gone." To prove his point Aubrey removed the bust of Irving Thalberg from the Thalberg Building and gave the structure a much catchier name - The Administration Building.
In 1970, Jim Aubrey made a deal with the David Weisz Company to sell all props and costumes for $1.5 million. In May 1970, Weisz held an 18-day public auction described as "the greatest rummage sale in history" by The Hollywood Reporter. Tom Walsh, then president of the Art Directors Guild, remarked that the auction was "the defining moment when Rome was sacked and burned." At the time there was very little perceived value in the nostalgia of Hollywood's fabled past. Greta Garbo dresses, Clark Gable suits, the Bounty ship, the actual showboat from the 1951 musical, all of it was on the auction block. The ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz were the star of the show, selling for $15,000 (the equivalent of $90,000 today).
Evidently, all that so-called junk that was lying around was worth more than the studio brain trust realized. As the auction netted about $8 million, MGM had clearly made a huge mistake by practically giving away the studio's history to the Weisz Company. Some stars who had worked at MGM like Debbie Reynolds were there. She purchased as many items as possible for a Hollywood museum she was planning. The auction also brought out other stars and studio employees who watched in dismay as pieces of the once great, proud studio were sold off to the highest bidder. What they didn't know was that there were worse times ahead.
On October 1, 1970, Variety broke the news that Jim Aubrey had brokered a deal to sell MGM's Lot Three for $7.25 million to a company that wanted the space to construct an apartment complex. Consequently, MGM's St. Louis Street, Western Street, Jungle Lake, Salem Waterfront, Process Tank, and Brooklyn Street - among others - were bulldozed in 1972. Lot Five and Lot Six were sold shortly after for a total of $1.5 million. Lot Seven became a shopping center.
Ultimately, Kirk Kerkorian proved that first and foremost, he was a Vegas guy. Making movies was never his real goal. Delighted by the $7.8 million profit MGM showed - mostly due to the sale of assets - in 1971, Kerkorian announced his plan to build the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, with a Rhett Butler Suite, among several other themed rooms. This was the real motive for Kerkorian's purchase of the studio - not to save it, but to strip it, using the left overs for his dream hotel. (According to Peter Bart's book about the last days of MGM, Fade Out, a studio official was appointed to "unleash a band of foragers to roam the back lot in search of what he called 'souvenirs'." The plan was to load up items for an MGM Grand gift shop. A year later, studio exec Jack Haley, Jr., found William Wyler's shooting script for Mrs. Miniver on sale in the gift shop for $12. Haley, along with production head Daniel Melnick and executive Roger Mayer, tried to persuade Jim Aubrey to donate the remaining scripts, production sketches and notes, and cartoon cels to a museum or to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library for a tax write-off. No, said Aubrey, the studio's main function was to furnish and fund the hotel.)
The abandoned New York Street on Lot Two awaits its fate.
In 1973, with the studio's fiftieth anniversary coming up, MGM stumbled onto its best project idea in years. One of Jack Haley, Jr.'s pet projects was helping to restore the films in the studio library that suffered from neglect and decay. With Daniel Melnick's help, Haley went to Jim Aubrey with a plan to save the studio's film history. Their plea fell on deaf ears. Haley secretly spent his free time going though films, splicing scenes together, and showing them to Melnick. Slowly, Haley added scenes of narration with old-timers like Frank Sinatra, Mickey Rooney, and Fred Astaire. Melnick made one last attempt to persuade Aubrey to allow him to continue the project legitimately. Unsurprisingly, he was met with a typical reply, "You've really gone Hollywood, haven't you, Danny?"and was dismissed. Not to be discouraged, Haley kept working and eventually a kind of sketch of a film was presented to Aubrey and some studio employees from the good old days. The audience was awestruck, remembering what the studio had accomplished in its prime. Sensing the enthusiasm of the viewers, Aubrey gave Melnick the OK to make That's Entertainment in time for Leo the Lion's fiftieth birthday in 1974.
One of the few bright spots from the studio in the early 1970s.
Unfortunately, 1973 also brought the startling announcements that, going forward, MGM would produce only four or five films per year and that the company was cutting off its marketing and distribution arm as part of the continual effort to reduce studio overhead. This announcement was big news in the industry. Production of about 20 films per year had held steady from 1970 to 1972, but 1973 would bring the number to an all-time low of only 11 features. In 1974, MGM produced only five films. . . .
Debbie Reynolds had dreams of turning the MGM backlot into a "kind of Disneyland," she related in When the Lion Roars, the comprehensive documentary about the studio's history. She pictured studio alumni greeting crowds at the its gate. In the early 70s, Reynolds and Al Hart, the President of Culver City Bank tried to get an assortment of investors to buy Lot Two for about $5 million. This lot, across the street from the main studio, was the home of the Andy Hardy/New England Street, Three Musketeers Court, Small Town Railroad Depot, Waterloo Bridge, Copperfield Street, Verona Square, the Camille Cottage, the Esther Williams Pool, the Southern Mansion, the Lord Home, Wimpole Street, various New York Streets, and the Cartoon Department. But Jim Aubrey had an asking price of close to $7 million and rejected Reynolds' bid. Aubrey did take a $5 million bid from Levitt & Sons, the same company who had demolished Lot Three, however. No one knows why he rejected Reynolds' bid.
Toppling the Southern Mansion on the back lot.
The actual sale to Levitt never happened. In January 1974, Levitt & Sons secretly backed out of the deal due to the bankruptcy of Urbanetics, the builder Levitt had been using to develop Lot Three. Consequently, the actual sale of Lot Two didn't occur until April 1978 when it was sold to scrap dealers, Mr. and Mrs. Ching Lin, for $4.1 million. It's sad that Aubrey didn't go to Reynolds and relay this bit of info. If he had, Lot Two might still be around. Instead all that's left is the physical plant of offices and sound stages. I suppose we should be grateful that much is left. But sound sound stages all look pretty much the same, and MGM's remaining lot actually belongs to Columbia Pictures. The studio has a tour, which I haven't taken, but reviews claim that it's pretty disappointing. The tour guides pay homage to Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune and, reasonably, focus their commentary on Columbia Pictures' movies, not MGM's. I guess the smiling cobra was right - "The old MGM is gone."
Sources:
* Fade Out - The Calamitous Final Days of MGM by Peter Bart
* MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot by Steven Bingen, Stephen X. Sylvester, and Michael Troyan
* The MGM Story: The Complete History of Fifty Roaring Years by John Douglas Eames
* IMDB
* Wikipedia
* All photos from the internet
About a year ago - on a whim - I purchased the Blu-ray of Peter Bogdanovich's much maligned musical comedy, At Long Last Love, a musical inspired by and showcasing the music of Cole Porter. What instigated my leap of faith? A big factor was the disc's promotion as the "Director's Definitive Edition" (whatever that means), my genuine affection for Bogdanovich's work, and my fondness for nearly all the members of the cast.
With three major hits (The Last Picture Show, What's Up, Doc?, and Paper Moon) and a minor failure (Daisy Miller) to his credit, Peter Bogdanovich decided to attempt a musical in which he would film the actors singing live - the early talkie way of filming musical numbers - rather than overdubbing the songs to a lip-synching cast, which was standard practice from the mid 1930s. Bogdanovich believed that this technique would allow for greater spontaneity. After watching the film, I agree.
Casting Burt Reynolds and Cybill Shepherd, who had little vocal or no experience (Shepherd had recently cut an album of Cole Porter songs called Cybill Does It (to Cole Porter) that bombed), in the lead roles was a huge risk. Reynolds told the press at the time how much he loved doing a Cary Grant-type part rather than his usual good ole boy schtick. For Reynolds, who was just about the biggest movie star in the world at the time, this film would be the first of several sophisticated or pseudo-sophisticated comedic roles he would take on in the following years: Lucky Lady later in 1975; a re-teaming with Bogdanovich in 1976 for Nickelodeon, the valentine to film making's earliest days; 1977's Semi-Tough, his most Cary Grant-like role; the critically acclaimed Starting Over in 1979; Rough Cut in 1980; and Best Friends in 1982with fellow comedy master, Goldie Hawn. While his performance is probably the least inspired of the cast, At Long Last Love created an opportunity for Reynolds to at least try for other parts and expand his range as an actor.
John Hillerman and Eileen Brennan as the "hired help" nearly steal the show (I especially love Hillerman's trademark deadpan delivery). Second leads Madeline Kahn and Duilio Del Prete have the singing chops and are priceless in parts that, in lesser hands, would have made clear the thankless roles they are. The real revelation, though, is Cybill Shepherd's spoiled heiress. She sings, dances, and trades one liners with the aplomb of Claudette Colbert or Ginger Rogers. She is completely charming.
Duilio, Cybill, Burt, and Madeline try to get a leg up on the competition.
Burt and Cybill, looking like they know the critical drubbing they are to receive.
The fact is that it's not surprising the film tanked. What is surprising is the movie got made at all. By 1975, the movie musical, especially the original movie musical, was dying. Musicals cost too much for the small audiences they attracted. Only three other musicals were made or released in 1975 (four if you could Robert Altman's Nashville, which I don't): stage musical adaptation, The Rocky Horror Picture Show; The Who's rock opera, Tommy; and Funny Lady, sequel to the enormously successful 1968 movie, Funny Girl, starring the queen of all things musical in the 70s, Barbra Streisand. Rocky Horror became a cult fave with its midnight shows and dressed up audiences; Tommy grossed over $30 million on a $5 million budget (the same budget as At Long Last Love) and garnered some Oscar love, including a Best Actress nomination for its star, Ann-Margaret. Funny Lady, a period piece like At Long Last Love, was the musical of the year, grossing more than $40 million and becoming the 8th highest grosser of the year. Meanwhile, At Long Last Love, released two weeks before Funny Lady, grossed just $2.5 million. Seems Bogdanovich and friends were way off key in their calculation of what American audiences wanted.
At the races. . . . Here's a taste of the the movie's period feel.
In his day, Billy Wilder was Mr. Cynic. His singular take on the American character and its psyche was more in tune with today's anything goes vision of the world than what Wilder's contemporaries were pursuing in the forties, fifties, and sixties. Wilder, a refugee from Austria, saw the world as a morally dark place, full of hustlers and con artists. This quality alone made his films stand out from an overcrowded pack. After the success of his directorial debut, 1942's lightweight comedy, The Major and The Minor, Wilder moved onto the topical subject of the war in Five Graves to Cairo, starring (in name only) Franchot Tone as Corporal Bramble and (the real star) Erich Von Stroheim as Field Marshall Rommel. Then, after establishing himself as a capable director with these two features, Billy Wilder's perspective really began to emerge as he set loose his first "son" - Walter Neff, the insurance salesman played by Fred MacMurray in the near perfect film noir, Double Indemnity.
Walter Neff, the eldest. All of Billy Wilder's sons have weaknesses - sex, money, love, booze, fame - that cause their downfall. Walter Neff's weakness is sex. Yes, there is money involved, and it is certainly a factor in the killing of Phyllis Dietrichson's abusive husband. But Stanwyck's femme fatale is the main attraction for Neff.
Barbara Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson is one of cinema's sublime black widows - and Walter Neff's weakness.
After all, if money were the only motive, Neff's judgment wouldn't be so clouded. Sex trips up Walter Neff, and he gets caught by the authorities because of it. Walter also carries a certain amount of self loathing. He's one of those guys who never sticks with a woman for long. The women he does choose are not classy dames but ones who "drink from the bottle," as Neff's co-worker, friend, and father figure, Barton Keyes, describes them. Neff's choice of women shows his lack of self worth. He would prefer to spend time with a cheap broad or two than settle down with a nice, respectable girl, and lead a nice, respectable life. Neff actually gets the chance to be respectable with Dietrichson's daughter, Lola. In the film's final third Neff befriends Lola, who he feels may be on to Phyllis. However, rather than bedding down with her, Neff helps Lola fix the strained relationship with her boyfriend, Nino, unbeknownst to them both, has been spending time with Phyllis. (The film is nothing if not perverse.)
Walter gets Phyllis' husband to sign his life away unwittingly, yet his gaze focuses on her leg.
Another of Walter Neff's flaws is his intelligence. Neff's bright all right, but he's also looking for the angle, eager to get rich and move to easy street, not realizing there's no such address. Of course, his smarts also get him in trouble - the deepest trouble. All of Billy Wilder's sons, from Walter Neff to Ace in the Hole'sChuck Tatum, are too smart for their own good. Eldest brother Walter Neff blazed the trail.
Don Birnam, the prodigal. Wilder's next film - made the very next year - 1945's The Lost Weekend, presents a very different man with a different weakness: Alcohol. Ray Milland as the alcoholic writer, Don Birnam, is magnificent. He carries the film and is in practically every scene. Birnam is a would-be genius. In college, the school newspaper couldn't get enough of his stories. Upon graduation, he was set to conquer the literary world with prose on par with Hemingway's. Then reality - or more likely, writer's block - set in. He found that by having a drink, the creative juices flowed a little easier. But then one drink was followed by another and another and another until Don was too drunk to write. The pattern that emerged had no end.
Just in time: Helen reaches Don just as he hits bottom.
In a crucial scene, Don reveals to his kind girlfriend, Helen, what makes him tick - what makes him drink. Turns out Don has tried a cure to dry out, but it didn't take. Don's main problem, it seems, is his lack of self esteem, or as he puts it, "I never did anything with my life, and I never will do anything with my life. Zero, zero, zero!" So Don takes solace in a bottle rather than in the love of this good woman. In the end, though, Don is the only one of Wilder's sons who has a chance at redemption because he is the only one who doesn't die at the end of the movie. Jane Wyman's almost too-good-to-be-true Helen arrives just in time to save a completely sober Don from ending his life by shooting himself.
One more for the road
The Lost Weekend's presentation of Don Birnam as he goes from one humiliation to another is still pretty strong stuff - getting caught stealing money from the purse of a patron at a piano bar and being forcibly removed; wandering up and down 75th Street unsuccessfully trying to hock his typewriter for money to buy another drink; landing at Bellevue Hospital after falling down a flight of stairs, then escaping to a liquor store where he demands the clerk give him a bottle. And finally, alone in his apartment, the DTs hit him like a tidal wave as he hallucinates a mouse coming out of the wall and a bat swooping down to kill it. While the film ends on a positive note as Don puts out his cigarette in a glass of booze, I can't help but feel that it's just a temporary respite, that Don will eventually succeed in killing himself either with a bottle or a gun. Would these sons of Billy Wilder end up any other way?
Joe Gillis, the neglected middle child. Of all Billy Wilder's sons, perhaps none was closer to his heart than Hollywood screenwriter, Joe Gillis, in Sunset Boulevard. Joe is the hack Wilder might have been if he hadn't been so damned talented. He is also possibly Wilder's most tragic creation - a good guy who should have done more. He has screen credits ("My last film was about Okies in the dust bowl, only you wouldn't know it. When it was released the whole thing played on a torpedo boat."). He knows the ins and outs of the town, who to talk to, who to know, and who to avoid. Unfortunately for Joe, however, he forgets what he knows when he meets up with former silent movie queen, Norma Desmond. Joe has been a decent guy for several years in Tinseltown, but he's tired of being behind the eight ball - late on his car payment and his rent - and he feels, justifiably, entitled to a better life. So he hooks up with the aging Norma ("You use to be in silent pictures," Joe tells Norma, "You use to be big." "I am big!" she replies, "It's the pictures that got small.").
Uncomfortably numb: Norma and Joe on the couch
Joe, like older brother Walter Neff, has a chance for escape and a respectable life in the form of studio scenario reader, Betty Schaefer. Only Betty is engaged to Joe's only real friend, assistant director Artie Green. Sunset Boulevardis one of Wilder's greatest creations. Delusional Norma Desmond, played to the hilt yet sensitively by Gloria Swanson, is one of the cinema's most enduring characters. Former director, Erich Von Stroheim, hits all the right notes as Max, Norma's chauffeur and former husband who helps keep her legend alive and holds the madness at bay. Along the way we are introduced to various movie types - the callous agent only worried about his ten percent; the producer, Sheldrake, who makes a mockery of the story a desperate, broke Joe tries to sell him; and Norma's bridge playing friends from the silent movie days - her "waxworks," as Joe puts it.
Joe with script reader and aspiring writer, Betty Schaefer
William Holden as Joe Gillis is sometimes lost in the shuffle when put side by side with these other Hollywood types. Holden was nominated for an Academy Award for his effort, and the film paved the way to a great career, including his Oscar-winning turn as another Billy Wilder cynic in 1953's Stalag 17. However, when folks speak of the film today, it tends to be Norma Desmond they remember. The film, though, is about Joe, and Holden's work here is exemplary. We may not always like what we see, yet it is with Joe Gillis that we can identify.
Chuck Tatum, the baby (a.k.a., the spoiled brat). Ace in the Hole'sChuck Tatum may be the most despicable character Wilder ever created. In fact, he may be the most despicable character in Hollywood history.
Starring Kirk Douglas as reprehensible newspaper reporter, Chuck Tatum, who finds himself stranded in a small New Mexico town after being banished from his post on a New York paper for libel, drinking, and general debauchery, Chuck is bored senseless. Thinking he was in for a light sentence with time off for good behavior, he's been stranded for more than a year with no worthwhile story to pave his way back to the Big Apple. But then local restaurant/souvenir stand owner, Leo Minosa, gets trapped in an old mine while searching for American Indian artifacts. Seeing Leo's story as his ticket out of town, Chuck plays it up for all its worth, convincing the corrupt local sheriff and construction company to consider the most dynamic way to save the trapped man rather than the quickest and safest. It doesn't end well.
Stranded and in need of a job, Chuck Tatum works his wily charm on newspaper editor, Mr. Boot.
Chuck Tatum has the worst characteristics of all his brothers. Like them he is single-minded. His greed comes from big brother Walter Neff; the writing background and opportunism from older brother Joe Gillis; the turn of a quick phrase and love of drink from Don Birnam. Unlike his older brothers, however, Chuck has no heart. He is sorry about Leo's fate . . . because the human interest angle to the story requires a happy ending.
Kirk Douglas, who made a career of playing heels, sinks his teeth into the dialogue written by Wilder and Walter Newman, relishing every word. A shout out must also go to Jan Sterling as bottle blonde Lorraine Minosa, wife of the poor, unfortunate Leo, and worthy cohort/adversary of the cutthroat Chuck. Her portrait of a woman worn down by life - when told by Chuck to put on a good show for the spectators by going to church to pray for her husband, Lorraine replies, "I don't pray. Kneeling bags my nylons" - is nothing short of first rate. (Wilder has some daughters I should write about one day. His view of the opposite sex is no more kind than his perspective on many of the male schnooks whose stories he told.)
Ace in the Holewas a box office failure, and it scared Wilder. He didn't direct for a year, and when he did emerge, it was with one proven Broadway adaptation after another - Stalag 17 in 1953, Sabrinain 1954,and The Seven Year Itch in 1955. Only one of these could be considered a Wilder son like the previous four, and that would be William Holden's Sefton in Stalag 17. In all Wilder's future successes, however, he would never again be as abrasive and or as much of a risk taker as he was with these four films and his depictions of their flawed, desperate (anti-)heroes.
Sources : Wikipedia
IMDB
TCM
Images gathered at random from the internet
