The name Douglas Fairbanks doesn't resonate the way it use to. Of the three big Hollywood stars, indeed, mega-stars from the 1920's, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin are reasonably secured in the pantheon. Chaplin was awarded two Oscars in his lifetime, both honorary. Pickford, won a competitive Oscar for 1929's Coquette and was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy in 1976. Fairbanks, one of the original founders of the Academy, was never rewarded with the little golden guy. Chaplin's Little Tramp is known as the comic pantomime without peer, while Little Mary's legacy has been recognized by modern day critics and film historians as the first female movie star as mogul. Yet Fairbanks has somehow, however gently, been pushed aside. These three were so powerful and popular that in 1919, along with director D.W.Griffith, they formed the studio United Artists. Each had their own backlot and soundstages and would, at the beginning, personally supervise, write and/or direct each production that bore the United Artists' logo. Fairbanks' own His Majesty, the American was UA's inaugural release in 1919.Wags at the time suggested the inmates had taken hold of the asylum. So much was riding on the film's success and Fairbanks did not disappoint : His Majesty, the American was a solid box office winner, helping kick-start the fledgling company.
Fairbanks supervised every aspect of his productions. Here he is on set of The Black Pirate, 1926
Fairbanks, born May 23, 1883, was christened the first "King" of Hollywood, years before the crown was passed on to Clark Gable. He had a storybook romance and marriage to "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford, was the idol of boys and young men everywhere as the universal symbol of athleticism, exuberance and enthusiasm. The 1920's were his golden years, when Fairbanks, just 37 in 1920, began a series of swashbucklers and adventure yarns upon which his legend rests. Fairbanks had been in the "flickers" since 1915 and had made over 30 films when he decided to film The Mark of Zorro in 1920, with himself as Don Diego Vega aka Zorro. Released in December, Mark of Zorro was a huge hit wherever it played, changed the course of his career, and Fairbanks the action star was off and running.{Subsequent Zorro remakes were made with Tyrone Power in 1940 and Frank Langella in 1974}. In the following years, Fairbanks would embark on a series of ambitious action, adventure and fantasy films. These productions set the gold standard for swashbuckling, with romantic derring-do on a grand and lavish scale : The Three Musketeers {1921, with Doug as D'Artagnan}; Robin Hood {1922} with massive sets, the biggest yet built for a Hollywood movie; The Thief Of Bagdad {1924} a real boy's Arabian Nights fantasy, and to this day probably his best known work. 1925 brought a sequel {yes, they made them back then, too} playing the title role as Don Q, Son of Zorro. The Black Pirate, an early technicolor spectacular from 1926, has what may be Fairbanks' greatest stunt by taking his knife and plunging it into the sail of a ship and sliding down to the deck, while taking over the vessel. The YouTube clip below, was the only one I could successfully access. Unfortunately, it's in B & W, not the original color. The stunt comes in at about the 2:10 mark.
1927 brought The Gaucho, a darker, more somber Fairbanks film in which he plays, you guessed it, The Gaucho, who according to IMDB, is a "charismatic leader of a band of outlaws, who save an Argentine town from an evil and sadistic General". This is one of my favorite Fairbanks films, though much different in tone from his other classics, with it's sexually charged tango scene with the lusty Lupe Velez in her first starring role and Doug's Gaucho, which has an ambivalent quality that's quite unlike his previous heroes. Fairbanks, chain-smoking his way through the part, had never allowed this steamy quality of his personality to surface; in fact, his Gaucho is practically image-shattering. In addition, the film has a somewhat schizo quality, {possibly due to Fairbanks', whose astrological sign is Gemini, split within his own nature}, with it's very reverent tone, such as when the Gaucho sees a vision of the Virgin Mary, {tellingly played by none other than wife Pickford}, and has a religious conversion. Because of this mixed bag of themes and persona's, many critics rank it lower in the Fairbanks canon of classics, yet these are the very qualities I find fascinating.
Dancing the seductive tango with Lupe Velez in The Gaucho, 1927.
Premiering on November 7, 1927 at Grauman's Chinese theater in Hollywood {which Doug and Mary had put their hand and footprints in the previous April}, The Gaucho was a bit of an anachronism by the time of it's release, in that, just a month before, Warner Brothers had unleashed The Jazz Singer on an unsuspecting world and turned the movies on it's head with the innovation of synchronized sound. Fairbanks, Chaplin, Pickford and others suddenly found their persona and entire careers in jeopardy. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Fairbanks had spent years on the Broadway stage {as did Pickford} before he went into films in 1915, so speaking on film wasn't much of an issue or concern to him. Consequently Fairbanks did not fear sound pictures, but he did dread the change it brought to the silver screen and the influence it brought to making of the kind of films he loved to create. With sound, the motion picture camera went into a stagnant phase that would last a good 2 to 3 years. Suddenly movies stopped moving and the actors all stood around reciting dialog to each other. Today a lot of ignorant folk hate silent films because the films are just that, silent. That's ironic, because the silent film by 1926/27 had reached the pinnacle of artistry and sophistication with movies like 1925's Ben-Hur and King Vidor's WWI epic The Big Parade and his 1928 production of everyday life with The Crowd; Von Stroheim's 1925 exercise in decadence, The Merry Widow; Chaplin's The Gold Rush; John Ford's The Iron Horse; F.W. Murnau's picturesque Sunrise, and many more, show how far the art of film had come since D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation in 1915. Without a doubt, by 1927 the silent film had become a universal art form of the highest order. If one wants to see the truly worst period for Hollywood films, view the early talkies made from 1928 to 1930. Most are awful. There are exceptions, of course : Lubitsch's The Love Parade, Josef Von Sternberg's The Blue Angel and Morocco; Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front and a handful more, but most are deadly affairs. Fairbanks anticipated this change in cinema and also, with sound, there would have to be a shift to more realistic stories and plots. As Doug said to his art director Laurence Irving in 1928, while touring a new soundstage at the UA studio for his next production The Iron Mask, " the romance of motion picture making ends here."
The Iron Mask, as D'Artagnan, 20 years after The Three Musketeers.
The Iron Mask, from 1929, picks up 20 years after The Three Musketeers. D'Artagnan and his fellow cohorts are older, but no less committed to their King. The film, like the previous The Gaucho, was different from Fairbanks' earlier efforts. First off, Doug would be playing a character for whom age is an issue, much as it was becoming for him in real life. Fairbanks realized he could not go on playing the light, bouncy, exuberant and youthful go-getter he had played since in began making pictures. The change is evident in the film as Fairbanks is no longer front and center. Though obviously the star, The Iron Mask, more than other Fairbanks films, is a more ensemble piece with a slower pace than most of Doug's other work. And the film has a distinction that sets it apart; at film's end, D'Artagnan dies. A somber ending for a Fairbanks film is unheard of, but Doug was crafting a farewell film to the genre he had created almost single-handedly. The Iron Mask, which has two talking sequences, is a loving and moving tribute to that genre and one of my favorite Fairbanks extravaganzas.
D'Artagnan with Athos, Porthos and Aramis. All for one and one for all, one more time. The Iron Mask, 1929
February 1929 brought the premiere of The Iron Mask to glowing reviews and stellar box office, though because of it's high budget of $1 million dollars the film is often cast aside as a failure. In view of Fairbanks' classic 20's sagas, The Iron Mask usually, and unfairly, comes up on the short end. 1929 also brought Doug and Mary together professionally for the first time {if one discounts her Gaucho cameo} for an all-talking version of William Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew. Since their marriage in 1920, the public had been clamoring for the world's most famous couple to unite on celluloid. The original Brangelina or LizandDick of their generation, Doug and Mary helped give Hollywood a much needed boost of respectability when the town and the film industry really needed it as it was on the verge of self-destruction due to several scandals that brought every moral organization in the country out to denounce Hollywood as a modern Gomorrah. A dinner's invitation to Pickfair, their regal home in Beverly Hills, was tantamount to a Royal Command Performance and an offer one couldn't refuse. But by 1929, when Taming Of The Shrew a co-produced, co-financed and co-starring vehicle,was being lensed, the Fairbanks/Pickford alliance was starting to fray and burst at the seems. By most accounts, the filming of Shrew was fraught with difficulties mostly from Fairbanks' behavior, not only towards Mary, but also toward the director Sam Taylor. According to Jeffrey Vance's book Douglas Fairbanks, the swashbuckler was "moody, willful and defiant", that "sound film turned his natural exuberance into petulance." For Doug, for whom creating pictures was everything, this behavior was entirely out of character. Assistant director H. Bruce "Lucky" Humberstone recalled relations between Doug and Mary as frosty at best. About the only time they spoke to each other on set was when Fairbanks would criticise or question Mary's judgement. Mary Pickford, in her autobiography, states that "I saw a completely new Douglas, a Douglas who no longer cared apparently about me or my feelings". At times Fairbanks would show up on set late, unprepared, not knowing his lines and having them written on chalkboards, out of camera range. Of course the strange thing is that by all reviews, contemporary and otherwise, Fairbanks' Petruchio walks off with the the film, while Mary's Kate appears rather shrill and weak of voice in comparison. The film opened at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City on November 29, 1929 {just one month after Black Tuesday which signified the stock market crash of 1929 therefore ushering in the Great Depression} to tepid reviews and a lackluster box office. For Fairbanks the Depression of 1929 also had him questioning his philosophy of "pluck, luck and hard work", which would lead to one's success.
Doug as Petruchio, stealing the show from wife Mary, in the infamous 1929 version of Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew.
By 1930 with his marriage in trouble and his career at a low point Fairbanks, always restless, was encountering a midlife crisis and began to travel as a means of staying active and avoiding his strained relationship with Mary. In fact, he was running away from himself and his problems. As far back as 1925 Mary sensed a "restlessness and nervous impatience...nothing satisfied him." He continued to make movies and he still took an active interest in United Artists, but overall Fairbanks was a vagabond, wandering from port to port, country to country. There would be a few more movies: Reaching for the Moon in 1930, Mr. Robinson Crusoe from 1932 and his last film, Private Lives of Don Juan in 1934. After that, silence. Fairbanks did make great strides in his relationship with his son, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Theirs had always been an uneasy alliance. Senior always had to appear youthful and exuberance personified. Junior was always a reminder that Senior wasn't getting any younger and that he had failed his first wife by running away from marriage #1 when it was in crisis. Yet in the final 10 years of his life Fairbanks, Senior and Junior, came to a kind of understanding, one that they could both accept. Doug Junior would go on to have a nice career in movies, even emulating his father in such films as Sinbad, the Sailor {1947}; Prisoner of Zenda {1937}; The Corsican Brothers {1941} and probably his best remembered movie, Gunga Din {1939}. A respectable career, not quite as spectacular as Senior's, but not bad on it's own terms.
A rare night on the town with son, Doug, Jr.
So far as marriage to Pickford was concerned, it was essentially over. Mary's drinking and her affair with Charles "Buddy" Rogers, was more than Fairbanks could or would tolerate. Mary filed for divorce in December 1933 and earlier that year Doug turned 50, a dangerous age for any man. About this time Doug told his son that he had "done everything twice, was bored with life and prepared to die". If he had to go, he wanted to go quickly and not linger. While in England to film The Private Life of Don Juan, his final film, Fairbanks met and was smitten with Lady Sylvia Ashley. Sylvia's husband Lord Ashley, filed for divorce, naming Fairbanks as corespondent. Pickford could tolerate Doug's infidelities if kept private, but this public acknowledgement was more than she could bear. On January 10, 1936 their divorce was final, with Mary assuming all control of Pickfair where she would reside for the rest of her days. Later that year Sylvia Ashley became the third Mrs. Douglas Fairbanks. What went wrong in the marriage between Doug and Mary is anyone's guess. Mine would be Doug's mid-life crisis, Mary's alcoholism and the downturn of both careers, due to talkies. Fairbanks, a life long teetotaler, hated to witness Pickford's condition when under the influence. Fairbanks' mid-life issues are inextricably linked to his career problems now that he had reached his late 40's and couldn't do all the athletic feats he was famous for. Fairbanks, a man in constant motion, was facing his own mortality. As for The Private Lives of Don Juan, it received a cool reception from critics and moviegoers alike. It was to be the last film Doug would make. As he told director Raoul Walsh, "There's nothing as humiliating as being a has been". Time was running out. By the late 30's Fairbanks, only in his mid-fifties, nonetheless felt as if he were an old man. Depression, always close at hand, began to consume him. The years of nicotine addiction was catching up with him and he was weary of traveling so much. However his new bride was a social animal with many friends in Europe, so Doug and Sylvia trotted round the Continent in search of the next party. September 1939 put an end to such frivolous behavior with the outbreak of WWII. Finally, the Fairbanks' were forced to settle down and decided to set up residence at 705 Ocean Front Boulevard {now the Pacific Coast Highway}. Back on the west coast of California, Fairbanks toyed with the idea of producing vehicles for his son. The Adventures of Marco Polo was one such project, but Fairbanks, bored by the project, sold it to UA's newest partner Samuel Goldwyn who made it in 1938 with Gary Cooper. Another film in development was called The Californian, but it failed to get beyond the initial planning phase.
A still from his last starring role. The Private Life of Don Juan, 1934.
Early in December 1939 Doug suffered a mild heart attack. The doctors expected a full recovery with complete bed rest for six months, but the years of tobacco and Doug's constant restlessness had left his lungs shot and his spirit weary. Upon hearing the doctors prognosis, according to his son, he had lost the will to live. Fairbanks suffered a massive heart attack on December 12, 1939 and died, aged 56. Only ten years previous he had been on top of the world, the greatest swashbuckler the movies had ever seen. I believe Fairbanks died of a broken heart. He still loved Mary, despite them both being married to others and one of his last words were about her, that, plus the loss of his metier of making movies, killed him. He had achieved so much in such a short time; actor, producer, mogul, millionaire, idol to millions of boys, not to mention father, husband and friend, that I don't think he absorbed it, took it all in, in it's proper perspective and failed to appreciated it. Certainly, it was a sad end to one of the most exorbitant careers in the history of Hollywood.
Doug and Mary. Love never dies. My favorite picture of the two of them.
References:
Wikipedia
Douglas Fairbanks by Jeffrey Vance
Mary Pickford, America's Sweetheart by Scott Eyeman
The films of Douglas Fairbanks
One would never accuse Baz Luhrmann of having too much good taste. From Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!,we know the director loves to film his subjects with a larger than life, frenetic, all-or-nothing style, full of excess. His characters live their lives on the edge of a precipice, willing to do anything for love. It should therefore come as no surprise that his latest film, The Great Gatsby, has much the same energy as his previous outings. F. Scott Fitzgerald may be rolling over in his grave, but Luhrmann's interpretation of a nearly 90 year old novel gives the story a vibrance and immediacy that helps keep it fresh for 21st Century cinema audiences.
Daisy and Gatsby, with the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg watching over them like God.
The book was published in 1925 and there have been many previously filmed versions of the Fitzgerald book, which some claim is The Great American Novel. In 1926 a silent Gatsby was filmed with Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson and William Powell. This appears to be a ' lost ' film. In 1949, Paramount Pictures turned Gatsby into a noir drama with Alan Ladd {Shane} as the mysterious man, Betty Field as his love Daisy, Macdonald Carey {of daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives fame} as Gatsby's only true friend Nick Carraway, Ruth Hussey as Jordan Baker , Barry Sullivan as Daisy's husband Tom and Shelley Winters as the ill-fated Myrtle, Tom's lower class mistress. This version was kept out of circulation for decades, presumably because Paramount wanted movie lovers to only see their 1974 version with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. The 1949 version has turned up recently on YouTube in a truly awful print. That pretty much left the field open for the Redford/Farrow version, made amid plenty of media pomp and circumstance, but which left most viewers cold. The ' 74 version, which I have seen plenty of times, has it's pleasures; the period detail, costumes, sets and music, are all first rate, it also contained several quality performances; specifically from Bruce Dern, Karen Black, Sam Waterston and Scott Wilson. Redford's Gatsby and Farrow's Daisy were okay, but the supporting cast was impeccable.
Poster for the 1949 Alan Ladd noir-ish version
This new, hip-hopped, 3D'ed version gets alot of the feel of the Roaring 20's -bootleg gin and flappers- right. I was doubtful going in if the music would fit the milieu, however Luhrmann has chosen wisely to keep most of the modern music to the party scenes, which are spectacular. The use of Rhapsody in Blue, though historically inaccurate { the movie is set in 1922, Gershwin's masterpiece wasn't written and performed until 1924}, it fits well into the picture, coming as it does with the first intro of DiCaprio's Gatsby. Luhrmann's trademark rapid-fire editing and camerawork is also more subdued here and the images of New York City are, at times, truly breathtaking. Surely one cannot fault the physical production.
The performances range from good to fair to poor. On the good side there is Leonardo DiCaprio as millionaire Jay Gatsby. DiCaprio brings a initial hesitancy to Gatsby that feels right; this is a man for whom making a positive impression is everything, due to his dirt poor upbringing. DiCaprio's use of the term "old sport ", is delivered with just the right amount of uncertainess; it doesn't sound quite right coming out of his mouth and it shouldn't. The out of control, violent side of Gatsby's nature is also frighteningly brought to life. Leo makes a fine Jay Gatsby, for who repeating the past is essential. I would go further and say Gatsby is not so much about repeating the past, but about erasing the bad parts of that past; substituting one's own version of it. Carey Mulligan brings a more down to earth quality than I had seen in previous incarnations. Not flighty, Mulligan brings a melancholy to Daisy I had not anticipated. Her Daisy, through a good hour or so, has one of the saddest expression on her face I have ever witnessed. Tobey Maguire's Nick Carraway was, at first, hard for me to take, but the actor seemed to get more comfortable with the part as the movie progressed. An interesting thing I noticed was Maguire's resembles to the book's author, Fitzgerald. Opening the film in an asylum {which is not in the book}, from which Nick narrates the entire movie, brings a touch of Fitzgerald, who spent time in the 1930's in such places brought on by his alcoholism, to the proceedings.
Nick and Jordan party hardy, 20's-style
Newcomer Elizabeth Debicki brings the right amount of sexy, slinky, sassy elegance to the part of golf pro Jordan Baker, Nick's part-time girlfriend and good friend of Daisy's. One of the weakest parts of this new version are the characters of Tom Buchanan, Daisy's brutish husband, and his mistress Myrtle. Isla Fisher brings a jazz baby vivacity to Myrtle, what with her Brooklyn accented, Clara Bow-look and her low-life {in today's parlance, trailer trash} sister and their friends. Unfortunately, Ms. Fisher has just a scant amount of screen time, with no interaction with her garage-owning husband, who she appears to loathe, but since Luhrmann doesn't give us any of Myrtle's story, and if one hasn't read the book, one can only assume.
Party girl, Myrtle
Joel Edgerton's Tom is a different problem altogether. If I were to point to one glaring weakness in both the movie and it's actors it would be Edgerton, for he shows us only one side of Tom; the racist, misogynistic, privileged, to-the-manor-born white man. It is true Tom is such a man, but as Bruce Dern aptly showed us in the 1974 version, there was much more to Tom than control and money and oppression. Edgerton's Tom is all bluster with no subtlety or shading. Edgerton misses Buchanan's smug arrogance; consequently, Tom becomes more of a bore than a threat to Gatsby and Daisy's chance for happiness. What Daisy saw in him and why she married him in the first place is hard to fathom.
Director Lurhmann get's Isla Fisher in his sights
Baz Luhrmann's films are stylized, operatic, over-the-top affairs. Like a box of over-stuffed chocolates, one is never quite sure what to expect until that first bite is taken and I admit I went to this movie expecting to love it or hate it, for Luhrmann's films, unlike most filmmakers, leaves room no middle ground. He doesn't play it safe. He is the Ken Russell of the 21st Century; a mad dreamer, who has a strong visual sense with a unique, some might say outrageous, view. Luhmann is also the cinema's current romantic. In this age of hip cynicism, where most people have seen it all or done it all { or feel that they have, which amounts to the same thing }, Luhrmann dares to give us romantics who cannot be separated, yet also cannot be together, except in death; his Romeo and Juliet surrounded by gang warfare and the peer pressure of doing what that crowd expects; Sabine and Christian, the ill-fated lovers torn apart by bad luck and circumstance in Moulin Rouge!, and now Gatsby. I recommend that you go and see this Gatsby, in a theater and in 3D. It may not please everyone {it has the critics divided right down the middle}, but it will not bore you.Like it's maker, Gatsby the movieand Gatsby the man is a risk taker and that alone has it's rewards.
Sources: Wikipedia;
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; Crazy Sundays : F, Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood by Aaron Latham; The Great Gatsby - 1974
Her best known movie. Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961. Audrey may not have been author Truman Capote's Holly Golightly but she sure was director Blake Edwards'. Audrey gave a classic performance in one of the great romantic comedies of all-time.
Today would have been Audrey Hepburn's 84th birthday, but she passed way too soon, 20 years ago at age 63. An icon of style, grace and elegance, the incredibly thin Hepburn was an unusual sex symbol, especially in the boob conscious 50's and 60's America. Audrey once said, she was too skinny, her feet were too big, her legs and neck were too long. Like all of us, she only saw her imperfections. Born in Belgium on May 4th, 1929, Audrey Kathleen Ruston was caught up in the horrors of World War II like so many in Europe, in fact her father was a Nazi sympathizer. In the mid-1930's Audrey's mother caught her father in a rather compromising position with the family nanny and he swiftly left the family. Hepburn's experiences during WW II and it's human suffering led to her later involvement with UNICEF.
As Billy Wilder's Sabrina. Back from Paris looking so chic her old crush, David Larrabee, won't recognize her.
1953's Roman Holiday, her first starring role, made Hepburn a star and won her an Oscar for Best Actress. When she won the Oscar she was in New York appearing in the play Ondine. She would go on to win a Tony Award for that performance making her one of 3 actresses to win both Oscars and Tonys the same year. In 1954 came Sabrina with Bogie and William Holden {a love affair ensued between Holden and Audrey}, War and Peace in 1956 opposite Henry Fonda and new hubby Mel Ferrer, while both Funny Face, dancing with the peerless Fred Astaire and Love in the Afternoon with an aging Gary Cooper were released in 1957 and Fred Zinnemann's The Nun's Story in 1959 and on and on into the 60's.
Love this pic. Beautiful, even with rings under her eyes and getting her hair styled
Men were intrigued with her gamine quality but women absolutely adored her. I suppose the first time I saw her was in her comeback film after 9 years away from the screen, 1976's Robin And Marian with Sean Connery. I like the movie a lot but I don't think Hepburn made much of an impression on my 17 year old mind. In 1979 Hepburn top lined the big budget box office disaster Sidney Sheldon's Bloodline, another movie I caught at my local cinema {in those days of youth I saw everything. Usually with my friends or my sister and niece, but often on my own too}. Audrey looked great, clothed by Enrico Sabbatini, but the movie, directed by Terence Young {Dr.No, From Russia With Love, Wait Until Dark}, was a dog with fleas.
In 1983 Audrey joined John Ritter, Ben Gazzara, Colleen Camp and a group of talented unknowns for Peter Bogdanovich's They All Laughed, a thoroughly delightful romantic ensemble comedy that I saw with my sis and niece at the old Granada theater in Santa Barbara, back in the day when it was the best movie palace in town and the only one with a balcony that never was closed off. I loved this movie from day one {in fact, it would make a good post of an Underrated Gem}, but again, Audrey left me with a feeling of less than I had hoped or been led to believe. My first glimpse of Audrey in her movie prime was, I think, 1954's Sabrina. I really love this movie, even with a miscast Humphrey Bogart as eldest brother Linus Larrabee; it does feature a spot-on William Holden as playboy/younger brother, David. A Cinderella story, Sabrina was directed by the great Billy Wilder, caught in a Lubtisch mood, just as he would be 3 years later when he would direct Audrey and Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon. This second pairing of Wilder and Hepburn may not be everyone's cup of tea; for one thing Coop, though excellent in the part, looks too old for her. Wilder had wanted Cary Grant, but the great comic actor said no. The YouTube clip, above, is recommended for those who have seen the movie, as it is a spoiler. But it contains what may be my favorite ending to a movie, ever. Certainly the most romantic ending I have ever scene.
Audrey in the mid-50's, having tea with hubby Mel Ferrer. The marriage didn't last. But I love this photo, they look so happy.
My other favorite Hepburn's are Funny Face, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Charade {with Cary Grant, finally!}, My Fair Lady and Two For The Road. Curiously, throughout her career, Hepburn was paired up with much older leading men: Bogart was 54 to Audrey's 24 in Sabrina, Fonda in War and Peace was about 50, Astaire and Cooper were over 55 when she worked with them, ditto Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. Even in that splendid pairing of Audrey and Cary in 1963's Charade, one cannot deny that fact that Grant is much older than she {though I for one have to say he doesn't look nearly 60}
Had no idea they knew each other! On the Sabrina set, 1953.
Audrey died in January 1993 of appendiceal cancer. Her last movie appearance was in Steven Spielberg's Always, as Hap, the angel who helps Richard Dreyfuss' character after his plane has crashed. Hepburn continues to live on after her death as an icon of fashion, sophistication and glamor. To the under 40 crowd, she may be best known for that, rather than for her work in films, although I like to think a lot of girls still travel through the Hepburn filmography of Tiffany's, Sabrina, Roman Holiday and My Fair Lady; etc. A lot of guys could benefit from that visit too.
With the fawn, named Ip, she helped to raise from it's infancy for the movie Green Mansions, a 1959 dud directed by husband Ferrer.
Audrey's cowgirl look, unusual for her, is fetching. On set of Huston's The Unforgiven, 1960
Miss Hepburn checks out.
Sources : Wikipedia
Audrey Hepburn by Barry Paris
Images: Fuck Yeah, Audrey Hepburn
And the movies of Audrey Hepburn
In 1980 Francis Ford Coppola, fresh from the Philippine jungle and loaded with hubris, bought an old Hollywood studio. A real one, not just a production company, an actual physical studio with soundstages, editing rooms, dubbing rooms, wardrobe and make-up rooms, screening rooms, dressing rooms, executive offices; the works. It was the old Hollywood General Studios, located at 1040 N. Las Palmas Avenue in Hollywood. Built in 1919, the studio had a long history with Howard Hughes filming some of Hell's Angels {1930}on the lot, as well as The Front Page {1931}. Harold Lloyd used the studio several times in the 20's. The studio's heyday was in the 1940's when British producer Alexander Korda, relocated from England, made the studio his home base and filmed classics The Thief of Bagdad {1940} and That Hamilton Woman {1941}with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. The Marx Brothers came out of retirement to make A Night in Casablanca at Hollywood General. In the 50's and 60's TV shows such as I Love Lucy, The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, Green Acres, Perry Mason and countless others called the Hollywood General home.
Hollywood General Studios
The sale of the 10.5 acre studio to Coppola was announced March 25,1980. The price tag, $6.7 million, was considered a bargain. Coppola also invested $5 million more in renovations for the studio, before a foot of film would be shot, as his working base of operations. The studio would be rechristened Zoetrope General Studios. Coppola's idea of gathering actors, directors, writers, cameramen, etc; putting them under contract, was a throwback to the studio era heyday of the 1930's & 1940's: A repertory company, who would come to the same place to work everyday. No bothersome location work waiting for the light to be just right or replacing parking meters and streetlights that were not in period. Everything would be in a controlled studio environment. It would also be a family, with a 4 day work week, thanks to the new electronic cinema Coppola was working on, which {in theory}would speed up production and lower costs. So the idea was, one would come to work on Monday thru Thursday, then on Friday there would be a big party. Every week. Now the reasoning behind all this was Coppola's experience with Apocalypse Now. A legendary shoot of Murphy's Law, Apocalypse had all kinds of troubles:Coppola's firing his initial lead actor Harvey Keitel; Keitel's replacement Martin Sheen having a heart attack; typhoons destroying sets; the Philippine government recalling choppers Coppola had rented to fight some real battles, due to the fact that the U.S. government refused to cooperate with the making of the film and Coppola needing the Philippines' to make the film. All this contributed to having the budget swell from $12 million to over $30 million, an enormous sum at that time. Consequently the shooting of Apocalypse dragged on and on and on. Ultimately, Apocalypse Now was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1979 and won the Palme d'Or for Best Film. When released in the States, it proved to be a big hit both critically and at the box office and received 8 Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Director for Coppola. Francis' gamble had paid off.
Coppola's state of mind while making Apocalypse Now
Having survived the ordeal, Coppola went into action with One From The Heart. The movie's shoot, all done on the Zoetrope General lot, was to be an antidote to Apocalypse's overruns. According to Wikipedia, the film's budget of $2 million {which seems incredibly low even for 1980}eventually soared to over $25 million. Suddenly everything Coppola had gambled on was riding on this one little movie. If the movie failed Coppola's dream of a studio family and complete autonomy would also fail. All this is taking the long road of saying One From The Heart had a lot more riding on it's shoulders than it should have. Consequently, because of all the press this generated, the critics didn't give the movie a fair shake.
Frannie {Teri Garr}, walking out on Hank {Fredric Forest} to start a new life.
One From The Heart is small story of a couple who have been living together for a number of years and have found that the magic has gone from their relationship. Hank {Fredric Forest} and Frannie {Teri Garr} have gone about as far as they can without doing one of two things : they either get married and possibly start a family or, they can split up and start over with others before it's too late and they find their youth has gone and they end up alone. Hank owns a junkyard with his pal Moe {Harry Dean Stanton}, Frannie works for a travel agency with her friend Maggie {Lainie Kazan}. These are simple people living simple lives and, for Frannie at least, that's not enough. So she leaves Hank and stays with Maggie until she can figure out what she should do, while Hank turns to Moe for guidance. On their own, they both meet other people who show them there may be something or someone else out there for them. For Frannie, it's Ray {Raul Julia}a singer who actually waits tables. For Hank, it's Leila a high wire circus performer. Both are sexy and lead, what seems to Hank and Frannie, exotic, carefree lives. After a night with their new playmates, the bitter cold of morning and the harsh reality of day brings both Frannie and Hank back to the bitter, harsh, ultimate realization that they may be destined to stay together.
Frannie's at work in the display window, with Ray transfixed on her. Note Coppola's use of the window as Ray's reflection of seeing what he is feeling for Frannie.
The film is a kind of throwback to a simpler cinema, a cinema pre-Godfather. More along the lines of Rain People {1969}and You're A Big Boy Now {1967} of people, character and gesture, rather than grandiose themes. I love the film and have since I first saw it after it had made it's way to the {new at time}home video market. I recall wanting to see the film in a theater but it's release was brief, I seem to remember it being shown in my home town for about a week, maybe two at the most. The reason for One From The Heart's short release time was that it was a major, major bomb. Fast on the heels of the infamous Heaven's Gate {1981}, One From The Heart grossed approximately less than $1 million, with the final costs coming in at around $27 million. Total disaster. And the nation's critics didn't care for it either. Roger Ebert called the movie "an interesting production but not a good movie", Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times said "A bold experiment in technique and style that doesn't work", Ty Burr of The Boston Globe is quoted as "underwritten and overdirected". The movie currently holds a 46% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The influences of Michael Powell and Vincente Minnelli run through the film, with it's artificial, stylized sets and swooping camera work. The music, sung by Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle and written by Mr. Waits, act as a running inner dialog for Frannie and Hank's inner thoughts and feelings. Songs like "Picking Up After You", " Is There Anyway Out Of This Dream?", " I Beg Your Pardon" are character set pieces. The one acclaimed feature from the film was it's songs, which earned an Oscar nomination for Mr. Waits. He lost {natch}.
What I really like about this film are the characters, who are just as messed up as anyone, with no clue as to how to go about communicating what they want. They only know what they have is not enough. Or so they think. In truth {spoilers ahead folks}, Hank and Frannie have what they want. They really do love one another, but like any long term relationship will experience from time to time, it has hit a wall with a resounding thud. The scene where Hank, spurned on by jealousy, follows Frannie to the airport {she is going to BoraBora with Ray}and his pathetic rendering of " You Are My Sunshine ", just as she is boarding the plane, never fails to get to me. Fredric Forest's Hank is a true grabinski. Pot-bellied, somewhat narrow minded and not too bright, Hank is a typical-almost stereotypical-working class male. His one redeeming quality is his basic sweetness. Frannie is the real disenchanted one in the relationship. Wanting more from Hank and a life of quiet desperation, Frannie has had enough of coming home, fixing dinner, taking care of the house and being the good girl for her man. She wants to find romance, to travel to exotic lands, have drinks where they put an umbrella in the glass, and needs passion, maybe even an orgasim or two.
Note the Statue of Liberty on Frannie's left. Liberation, and romance, is what drives her.
When One From The Heart failed and died a miserable death at the box office, Coppola's dream studio ended. He went way out onto the ledge and he lost. Bankrupt, having lost his toy, Coppola had to go, hat in hand, looking for a job. Finding himself in debt, Coppola became the most famous director for hire in Hollywood. A town that doesn't allow failure, Hollywood essentially made him eat shit for the next ten years. Taking jobs that, while maybe not beneath him, were almost certainly not projects he would have chosen to make. It wasn't until 1990 with The Godfather III {ironically another movie he didn't, originally, want to make }and Bram Stoker's Dracula that Coppola got back on his feet financially. Coppola has had an interesting turn of events the last 20 years or so. Financially solvent, with a most successful winery, he has made only 5 movies since 1992's Dracula and, until recently, appeared to forsake directing and concentrate on producing for others, including daughter Sofia. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science in 2010 presented him with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. In 2002 the Film Society of Lincoln Center likewise honored him. The one organization that has overlooked Coppola's contribution to film is, ironically, the American Film Institute. While toasting colleagues Spielberg, Scorsese and Lucas, Coppola, at one time more successful than all of them, has
yet to be feted by that once-great organization with it's Lifetime Achievement Award. Coppola, who just turned 74 this past April 7th, appears to have settled into a nice, benevolent, middle aged.... godfather.
My first in a series on tough guys is big, bad, Bob Mitchum. Mitch may have given more good performances in more bad or mediocre films than any Hollywood star of his stature.
Born in Connecticut in 1917, Robert Mitchum came up the hard way:riding the rails during the depression, ditch digging and boxing professionally. Down south at 14, Mitchum was arrested for vagrancy and did time on a Georgia chin gang. Somehow Mitchum escaped and went back to his family, now in Delaware. Ever footloose, Mitchum soon rode the rails out to California in 1936 and stayed with his sister, Julie. One of his many jobs was as ghost writer for astrologist Carroll Righter. It was sister Julie who convinced Bob to join the Players Guild of Long Beach where Mitchum worked as a stage hand and sometime bit player for the company. In 1940 Mitchum married his childhood sweetheart Dorothy. Also around this time Mitchum got a job at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation where he would work with a fellow named James Dougherty, who at the time happened to have a girlfriend {and future wife}Norma Jean Baker aka Marilyn Monroe. A nervous breakdown, apparently from job related stress, forced Mitchum to quit Lockheed and he decided to try his luck working in movies.
The image of noir:Fedora, trench coat, wet pavement, Mitchum in the urban jungle. Only thing missing is the cigarette and a dame.
Mitchum broke into films in the early 40's when Hollywood was having a leading man shortage due to several big name actors-Tyrone Power, Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Robert Taylor, William Holden, Robert Montgomery among others-joined the troops; fighting fascism in Europe and the Japanese in the Pacific. In 1943, Mitchum got his first speaking part in a Hopalong Cassidy western, a quickie called Hoppy Serves a Writ. For the young Mitchum, who by this time also had a young son, James, it was a boon or as he would put it, "50 bucks a week and all the hay that I could eat". From that point on, Mitchum never stopped working. Most of the 20-odd films Mitch made on his way to the top were forgettable fare: the western West of the Pecos; a comedy The Girl Rush; Border Patrol; We've Never Been Licked to name but a few. However, he did make a bit of an impression in his two MGM pictures at the time, small parts though they were, in 1943's The Human Comedy and 1944's Twenty Seconds Over Tokyo. Also in 1944, RKO Pictures, an always struggling {now defunct}studio, signed Mitchum to a long term contract with the usual options. Not quite sure what to do with their new piece of beefcake, the studio put him in a couple of westerns. Then in 1945, maverick director William Wellman {Wings, the original A Star is Born, The OxBow Incident} borrowed Mitchum for a important part in his war film The Story of G.I. Joe, as Lt.Walker, a reflective, lonely officer of Company C that journalist Ernie Pyle {Burgess Meredith}immortalized in a series of newspaper articles. The picture was a hit, Mitchum got his one and only Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor {he lost}and it made him a star.
The Story of G.I. Joe, 1945
Hollywood in the 1940's sometimes moved so fast that it took awhile before a studio realized what it had in it's own backyard. Thus in 1946, Mitchum was on loan-out to MGM for 1946's Undercurrent, directed by Vincente Minnelli and co-starring a couple of big 1940's names Robert Taylor and Katharine Hepburn {who took none too kindly to Mr. Mitchum, as a relatively inexperienced newcomer, being one of the two stars cast opposite her} and Desire Me starring the Queen of The Metro Lot in the 40's, Miss Greer Garson. Mitchum also appeared in the noirish-western, Raoul Walsh's Pursued with Teresa Wright for Warner Bros. He also had a small yet memorable part in Edward Dymtryk's Till The End Of Time, stealing the show as a war veteran whose inner softness and sensitivity betrays an outer cynicism and hardness, his one and only 1946 film for RKO. It wasn't until 1947, two years after putting him under contract, that Mitchum had a part that was worthy of his talent, 1947's Out Of The Past, RKO's classic example of noir with a femme fatale {the lethal Jane Greer in the performance of her life}, a charming yet dangerous villain {an early portrait by Kirk Douglas}, seductive b&w photography {by the great Nicholas Musuraca}, and a doomed protagonist - not an innocent but not guilty either - who is a victim of fate, played by our man Mitchum.
Mitchum, about to enter the cantina to wait. And wait. And wait. Out of the Past, 1947
The waiting is over. Here she comes, out of the sun, into the shadows. Big Bob is about to be hit by a ton of soft, lush, deadly bricks. Out of the Past, 1947
Look at her. Try to tell yourself you wouldn't be her chump, too. Out of the Past, 1947
Out of the Past changed the Mitchum persona. In G.I. Joe, Mitchum, however laconic, was a man of action. But Out of the Past took his lazy, laconic, easygoing style and turned it into a character flaw. From that point on in his career Mitchum often played a chump. Films like Where Danger Lives, His Kind of Woman, The Lusty Men and especially Otto Preminger's 1953 noir classic Angel Face, show us a Mitchum whose character has little ambition. They're men that-though not old in years-have already witnessed too much of life's frustration and defeat and can be fooled only by love; men who are just floating thru life, until a dangerous woman enters the frame and then it's game over.
The start of Jeff McCloud's long walk home. The Lusty Men, 1952
In 1952 Mitchum took on the role of Jeff McCloud, a former rodeo champ now just trying to get by one day at a time, in The Lusty Men. Also in it are Arthur Kennedy as a ranch hand, wanting more from life and thinking bronco-busting can get it for him, and Susan Hayward as his wife, who only wants a quiet life and a place to call their own. Directed by Nicholas {Rebel Without Cause} Ray, it's a small, lonely film that was overlooked by most critics and nearly all moviegoers in it's day, but it has developed a bit of a reputation as a cult film and gives Mitchum one of his most atypical roles and best, self contained performances. His Jeff McCloud is just a little solitary, just a little melancholy {check out the way he answers the old timer he meets at his old boyhood home when the old man asks McCloud if he has ever been married}and a physical wreck with broken bones left all over the rodeo circuits of the west. The Lusty Men is a kind of stepbrother to Huston's 1961 film The Misfits, with it's black and white photography, the shotty, fringe-dwelling hangouts of the nomadic principle characters; people with no where to go and getting there fast, looking for "a home of their own" in Nicholas Ray's phrase, but destined never to find one.
The right hand says love. Need I tell you what the left hand says? 1955's Night of the Hunter
1955's Night of the Hunter is one of the true masterpieces of expressionistic cinema with the dark, angular camera work by Stanley Cortez {The Magnificent Ambersons} of studio-bound sets, Charles Laughton's only directorial effort is a tour-de-force of evil. Evil personified by the presence of Robert Mitchum. I know more than a few folks who had seen this movie on the late, late show and being scarred for life and never trusting Robert Mitchum again. To some, any role he would play in the future would be measured against his satanic "preacher".
Night of the Hunter. The preacher's wedding night, with Shelley Winters.
Having been busted in 1949 for possession of marijuana, Mitchum would retain the persona of an outcast, a wild man, a loose cannon, someone who is dangerous to be around. The 1949 arrest was big front page news and quite the scandal. Along with Errol Flynn's rape trial, Ingrid Bergman's near-career-ending affair with Italian director Roberto Rossellini and Fatty Arbuckle's rape trial, Mitchum's arrest for possession is one of the legendary scandals of Tinseltown. Put yourself in the time frame of the late 40's/early 50's: Men and women didn't openly "play house", women didn't have children out of wedlock, only junkies smoked reefer, to name but a few taboos of the day. Now put yourself in Mitchum's place and one would have to figure,"my career is over". Not only that, he was busted in the home of a woman who was not his wife. So in addition to his career, Mitchum could have also have lost his wife and his family. Ouch. Mitchum was convicted, served his time:7 days in county jail {His take on it: "Like Palm Springs, without the riff-raff."}and 43 days in the Castaic, California prison farm, said the right things about being "sorry" and so on. Mitchum must have been relieved when he found out that his career wasn't going to be thrown away like an old newspaper. The reason for this: Howard Hughes' RKO went into major damage control to save their number one box-office star. The studio paired Mitchum up with Out of the Past co-star Jane Greer for a noir The Big Steal and a family Christmas themed comedy with Janet Leigh, Holiday Affair. These two films showed Mitchum as both tough and tender. The films clicked, as did many snapshots of Bob home playing daddy and good hubby for public consumption. Mitchum was off and running for another 40 years of stardom. And he got to keep his wife and kids. Or vice versa.
Doin' time.
Out of the clink.Mitchum emerges, bigger than ever.
In 1954 Mitchum's RKO contract ended and he began free lancing. 20th Century-Fox for Preminger's Point of No Return with Marilyn Monroe, Stanley Kramer's all-star snooze-fest Not As A Stranger, John Huston's Heaven Knows, Mr, Allison, the first of 3 movies with Deborah Kerr. Also during his mid-50's career, Mitchum was fired from John Wayne's Batjac production of William Wellman's Blood Alley opposite Lauren Bacall. According to Sam O'Steen's memoir Cut To The Chase, Mitchum showed up to the San Francisco location after a night of heavy drinking and tore a room apart when he found out he was not promised a driver for the location filming and quit or was replaced after 3 days filming claiming he couldn't work with director Wellman. Now this is the same director who 10 years earlier cast Mitch in G.I. Joe the picture that made him a star of the first order and he and Wellman had just made 1954's Track Of The Cat, a psychological western filmed in color but using mostly a black & white color scheme. Couldn't work with Wellman? Clearly Mitchum had some issues to work out with himself. As the years past the 50's gave way to the 60's, Mitchum would continue
to grow as an actor, at times essaying portraits in films one would not
have expected of him. Vincente Minnelli's Home From The Hill and Fred Zinnemann's The Sundowners
from 1960 and both, especially the Zinnemann film, becoming hits with
critics and audiences. In fact one could make a strong case for 1960
being Mitchum's Annus mirabilis, his year of years, as he was voted The
National Board of Review Critics Award as it's Best Actor of 1960 for
the two previously mentioned films. Oscar, as usual, turned a deaf ear.
Part, if not all, of Mitchum's problem with the Hollywood community {and
thus, Oscar}is his rep as a bad boy. As Max Cady in1962's Cape Fear, Mitchumfeeds off that rep showing the audience a study in sadistic bullying, threatening intimidation and finally, all-out physical violence.
1962 also brought the all-star WWII epic The Longest Day and Two For The Seesaw, which paired him up for the first time with Shirley MacLaine. According to her memoir My Lucky Stars, in which Miss MacLaine dishes on the famous co-stars from her many films, she and Mitchum had an affair which lasted several years. Although she was in love with Mitchum, MacLaine eventually called it quits when it became increasingly clear that he would never leave his wife. The 60's brought a lot of junk Mitchum's way too: The Last Time I Saw Archie a feeble comedy, the jungle adventure film Rampage; Man In The Middle; a couple of westerns Villa Ride and 5 Card Stud and the artsy-fartsy Secret Ceremony with Mia Farrow and Liz Taylor. A couple of good ones came out of the mid to late 60's too. Howard Hawks' El Dorado with Duke Wayne {who apparently held no grudge against Mitch for the Blood Alley debacle}and a very young James Caan in what is essentially a re-working of Hawks' 1959 western classic Rio Bravo with Mitchum replacing Dean Martin as the drunk law enforcer of a small west Texas town. The other movie Mitchum made that I have a fond memories of is 1965's African-adventure saga called Mister Moses with pistol-hot Carroll Baker of Baby Doll and The Carpetbagger's fame. I say memories because I haven't seen this movie in at least 20 years, as it seems to be forgotten and never shows up on the cable channels I receive. Never put out to the home video market in any form, I recall seeing it on KCOP TV Channel 13 back in the 80's and was quite taken with Mitchum's portrayal of a con man trying to get an African tribe to relocate it's location, but as to the reason it must relocate is something I have completely forgotten. Made by the British director Ronald Neame, photographed by Oswald Morris, with a music score by John Barry. Perhaps a company like Olive Films, who have rescued several older movies from complete extinction in recent years, will come along and save it from lost-movie-purgatory.
On the beach with Sarah Miles in Ryan's Daughter, 1970
The 70's brought a new Mitchum. A kind of kinder, gentler Mitchum, a Robert for the New Age/New Male 70's. Oh Bob could still be big, bad and tough if the situation warranted it {such as 1972's Wrath of God and The Yakuza from 1975 would demonstrate} but there would be parts like the kind, cuckolded schoolmaster/ husband of Sarah Miles' Rosy Ryan in David Lean's much maligned Ryan's Daughter; 1971's Going Home with Mitchum as a man just released from prison for the murder of his wife, a crime which occurred years before, and having to deal with his young son {Jan-Michael Vincent} and the obvious issues they must deal with; 1976's The Last Tycoon starring Robert DeNiro as a Irving Thalberg-like movie studio head and Mitchum playing an L.B. Mayer type who pretty much opposes DeNiro at every turn and 1978's remake of the Bogart and Bacall classic, The Big Sleep. Directed by Michael Winner {Death Wish 1,2 and 3 The Nightcomers, The Sentinel]}, the remake changes locales from southern California 1940's to London, England circa 1978; to me that right there is a major flaw. The cast is a good one, though: Sarah Miles {taking the Bacall part}, James Stewart, Richard Boone, John Mills, Joan Collins, Candy Clark, Edward Fox. But Mitchum {whose presence is still being felt in every frame} in his second go round as Raymond Chandler's gumshoe, cannot do much to elevate the script, faithful though it is to the source novel; Winner's direction is by the numbers and his pacing flacid. The 70's also brought a couple of films I have yet to see, The Friends of Eddie Coyle and The Amsterdam Kill. In 1974 Mitchum was set to play in Rosebud, an international thriller with Otto Preminger at the helm for what would be the third time in for a Mitchum movie. But it wasn't meant to be. Bringing back shades of his Blood Alley debacle, reportedly Mitchum showed up on location in Corsica drunk. On location for two weeks, Mitchum had worked a total of three days. As reported in Lee Server's terrific bio of Mitchum called Baby, I Don't Care, Mitchum gets bored and moves from professional actor to erratic liability, fighting with Preminger and being replaced by Peter O'Toole, another actor with a hell-raising, hard drinking reputation.{Mitchum's take on it:"O'Toole! Hell, that's like replacing Ray Charles with Helen Keller"}.
Lobby card for Farewell, My Lovely, 1975
Which brings me to what may be my favorite Mitchum movie of all-time. Its certainly is one of my favorite Mitchum performances: 1975's Farewell, My Lovely.Critics at the time liked Mitchum's take on Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. As pointed out by critics at the time, Mitchum, at 57, was least at decade too old; yet he made the part his own. My only regret is that he didn't play the part earlier. Made fast on the heels of that other all-time great neo-noir Chinatown {1974}, Farewell, My Lovely takes Mitchum's age factor and put it front and center in the opening voice over narration, with Marlowe explaining to the audience that he is holed up in a seedy hotel and coming to grips with "the plain fact that I am tired, and growing old". The femme fatale is played by Charlotte Rampling, fresh from her romp with Dirk Bogarde in the explicit, controversial The Night Porter, and though British, she brings the right amount of Bacall-esque sultriness the part requires. As Marlowe, Mitchum is tough and seen it all but shows great empathy toward some of the characters; the old floozy Jessie Florian, ex-bandleader Tommy Ray and his family, even for the big lug who hired him and started the whole thing, Moose Malloy. The film also features an early Sylvester Stallone, pre-Rocky, as one of the thugs who works for Madame Frances Amthor.
Released on August 8, 1975, Farewell, My Lovely reminded fans and critics alike why Robert Mitchum was a great screen actor. There was buzz about a possible Oscar nomination, with his increasing age making him a sentimental favorite. But, no. Hollywood chose to look away and ignore another great Mitchum performance. And it was his last great one, too
The 80's brought a few theatrical releases, most of them negligible. In 1982, age 65 and still capable of doing good work, Mitchum made his dramatic small screen debut in the noir-ish mystery One Shoe Makes It Murder with Angie Dickinson. A year later, Mitchum was absolutely frightening in the TV movie A Killer In The Family, as the title role. Then came the big behemoth 1983's TV event of the decade, the adaptation of Herman Wouk's bestseller The Winds Of War. In it Mitch is Victor "Pug" Henry, a middle aged Naval officer and confidante of FDR. The mini-series was well received by the critics and TV viewers alike. It was a reunion of sorts for Mitchum; Polly Bergen who played Gregory Peck's wife in Cape Fear was cast as Mitchum's wife, Jan-Michael Vincent played his son, just as he did in 1971's Going Home and Peter Graves who appeared with Mitchum in The Night Of The Hunter in 1955. Also in the extravaganza were Ali MacGraw, John Houseman and Ralph Bellamy. In 1988, it's sequel War and Remembrance, was broadcast to acclaim and huge ratings, though most reviews noted that at 71, Mitchum had become too old for the part whose character was about 50 in the book.
Group Portrait. The Winds Of War, 1983
The last nine years brought mostly cameos {Scrooged, the remake of Cape Fear}and some TV spots including a weekly sitcom called A Family For Joe. Broadcast in 1990 on Saturday nights at 8pm, it ran for nine episodes and was cancelled. His last filmed performance came in something called James Dean:Race With Destiny in 1997. In 1996 when he was informed that his lungs were shot from too many cigarettes, doctors wanted to put him in hospital, but he refused. Robert Mitchum died at home in Montecito, California on July1,1997 at the age of 79. His wife Dorothy, still with him after all those years, had gone into his room to check on him. He had stopped breathing. She kissed him, one last time. Peace had finally come for Robert Mitchum.
"I don't want to die."
"Neither do I baby, but if I do....I want to die last."
Quote from Out Of The Past
Sources: Baby, I Don't Care by Lee Server
Wikipedia's Robert Mitchum page
My Lucky Stars by Shirley MacLaine
Pyramid Illustrated History of the Movies: Robert Mitchum by John Belton
And the movies of Robert Mitchum
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