Ben Gazzara died on February 3 of pancreatic cancer.  An alumnus of the famed Actors’ Studio, he had a long career on stage, TV, and film.  Not just long, but accomplished. 

On Broadway, he was the original Brick in the Tennessee Williams’ classic, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and then he eclipsed that triumph with another powerful stage performance as a junkie whose habit poisons his relationship with everyone who loves him in A Hat Full of Rain. 

His TV career launched in the early 1950s and extended through the next five decades.  His small screen credits included roles on the landmark live drama anthologies of the 50s, such as The United States Steel Hour, Kraft Theatre, and Playhouse 90, and such acclaimed productions as cop drama A Question of Honor (1982), one of network TV’s first attempts to address the then detonating AIDS epidemic in An Early Frost (1985), and the epic mini-series, QB VII (1974).  He starred in one of the classics of 1960s TV, Run for Your Life (1965-68), earning two Emmy nominations as a successful lawyer trying to live life to the fullest after learning he has just two years to live. 

On the big screen, however, he never quite achieved the same stature he did on TV and the stage, in large part because – by his own admission – “I didn’t really take advantage of the opportunities,” though late in his career he became a valued character actor (he was a particular hoot as a porn king in the off-kilter The Big Lebowski [1998]).  But his best film work may have been in some of his least-seen films; the movies he made for John Cassavetes, and the most popular of the three films they made together was Husbands (1970). 

Cassavetes was a true art house renegade, taking acting roles in commercial movies to put together enough money to make his own, highly personal films.  In Husbands, Cassavetes, Gazzara, and Peter Falk play three long-time friends who react to the death of another buddy with a midlife crisis bender of booze and a jaunt to London.  Think The Hangover – but serious and for grown-ups. 

Like much of Cassavetes’ work, Husbands has the shapelessness and shambling pace of life, the same sense of spontaneity, the same chaotic tumbling of the comedic into the tragic.  It’s a demanding watch, but a rewarding one, almost uncomfortable at times in its feel of intruding into the real. 

The heart of the movie is the give-and-go between the three leading men, and it may be one of the most honest and vibrant portraits of male friendship – with all its awkward intimacy and macho bullshit – captured on film.  The bond between the three seems so damned real, it’s a surprise to find out that the three hadn’t known each other before Husbands. 

Watching the film, seeing how open and vulnerable the three made themselves to each other, at the obvious chemistry among them, it’s no surprise they came out of the project friends.  Gazzara would act for Cassavetes twice more, in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) and Opening Night (1977), and direct several episodes of Falk’s hit TV series, Columbo, including one starring Cassavetes as a philandering orchestra conductor. 

But if you really want to see how closely tied the film brought them, go to YouTube and find them on an episode of The Dick Cavett Show being interviewed about the film.  It puts Danny DeVito and his limoncello hangover on The View to shame.  On the one hand, it’s appalling to see three grown – and obviously half-crocked — men cackling and falling over themselves on network television like kids farting in the back pew during mass. 

On the other hand, it seems almost a scene from Husbands, and shows just how right the three of them had gotten it on film.  Some things you can’t create; you can only hope to capture. 

Husbands, Chinese Bookie, et al was not work Gazzara or the others did for fame and fortune.  These were art house films before there was much of an art house circuit.  Most people didn’t hear about them, even fewer went to see them.  It was work done for the sake of doing; art for art’s sake.  Film actors tend to be judged by their commercial successes and their visibility; not their willingness to explore the art.  In that sense, Gazzara’s artistry was bigger than his career.

Writing a series focused on the depiction of gender and sexuality in films, it would be a massive oversight not to talk about the work of French director Catherine Breillat. Few other directors have as consistently explored these topics as directly or as interestingly. The next few articles will explore Breillat’s 13 feature films in detail.

One can get an idea about Breillat’s filmmaking philosophy through some of her contributions outside of directing in the 1970s. She has a small acting role in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango In Paris. She contributes commentary on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Sálo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, which is featured in the Criterion release of that film. She is a screenwriter on David Hamilton’s teenage coming-of-age/erotica film Bilitis. All three directors provoke controversy through their work and the open depiction of sexuality, whether due to the graphic nature of the sexuality, the inclusion of perverse fetish, or by focusing on the sexuality of teenagers.

Breillat’s film debut, A Real Young Girl, includes a bit of each of these traits. It focuses on 14-year-old Alice, played by Charlotte Alexandra. The character’s name and attire hints at the teen protagonists in Alice In Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz and the film frequently slips away from a sense of realism. It has a certain poetic lyricism that leaves it a bit vague. Further distancing matters, Alexandra is an adult and doesn’t really pass as a young teen, though this makes the graphic nudity that prevented the film’s release for over two decades a bit easier to tolerate.

At 14, Alice is hitting a time of sexual discovery, masturbating and toying with her effect on men. The lack of passion captured in these moments suggests something is a bit off. More interesting is the notion of how difficult it is for a girl to control her own sexuality, either being repressed by her mother saying she is dressed like a whore or having it forced on her when a man exposes himself to her. The film introduces Breillat as a filmmaker of challenging and unique vision, but still not one of great technical skill. Breillat’s early works are fairly rough.

A couple years later, Breillat made Nocturnal Uproar. Broadly put, it is like Fellini’s 8 1/2 without the surrealism and with a female director, Solange, in the focus. Seeing very little of her actually directing anything, or for that matter sleeping, the film takes us from bed to bed as we observe her polyamorous lifestyle. Curiously, she tends to engage the guy she’s with in a discussion about the guys she’s not with, but not in a way intended to stir jealousy. Whether this is meant to be of particular interest, a woman acting in a way more associated with men, or whether it is just particularly French is not entirely clear.

It was almost a decade before Breillat’s third film, Junior Size 36, was released. It marks a bit of a return to her original work, focusing on another 14-year-old girl Lili, this time actually played by teenaged actress Delphine Zentout, though one who could pass as an adult. This fits well into the story as she longs to be an adult and cherishes her appeal to adult men, especially Boris, played by The 400 Blows star Jean-Pierre Léaud. Boris is well into middle age and bounces back and forth between finding charm in Lili’s youthful appeal and frustration in her youthful immaturity. Lili meanwhile doesn’t have a clear grasp of her own desire, though she gets increasingly anxious to lose her virginity. As a bit more nuanced take on the appeal and pitfall of a Lolita-style relationship, this is Breillat’s first full success.

The final film of Breillat’s first twenty years as a director is Dirty Like An Angel. The big change in this film is that it is the first, and to date only, film that centers fully on a male character. George is a detective nearing retirement, a bit corrupt in using his position to derive some benefit from the underbelly of Paris. Taken with his partner’s new wife, Barbara, he uses his seniority to send his partner on assignment and, asked to keep an eye on her by his partner, gets close to her. Even though the film is essentially focused on the male characters, one of the main conflicts is within Barbara as she struggles with her desire for George and her guilt over cheating on her husband, however much he may be philandering himself. Infidelity seems to be the French national past-time. This feels like the least personal and ultimately the least interesting of Breillat’s films.

And so, as we roll into 2012, and a fresh calendar of veritable quality mixed liberally with garbage and chewing gum for the eyes, we’ll see new gems unearthed, giants fall and movie stars made. Using the power of prediction, and Wall Street style logical growth trajectory, here are six actors likely to be Kings and Queens of Cinema by this time next year. Watch this space.

6. Chris Hemsworth

Harshly described by some as Sam Worthington Mk. II, Aussie heartthrob Hemsworth has already cemented himself firmly in Hollywood minds as the dynamic new wave superhero Thor, having worked his way from soap operas to supporting roles in the likes of Star Trek and A Perfect Getaway, all the way to leading man status in big budget action spectaculars. While he has the brawn and looks of Worthington, Hemsworth clearly possesses superior acting chops.

In 2012 he will be the big star in the perhaps ill-advised remake of Red Dawn, reprise his role as Thor in the hotly anticipated The Avengers, and take up a somber, serious role as Formula 1 driver James Hunt in Ron Howard’s Rush, a biopic of the ill-fated Niki Lauda.

Already commanding one segment of the Marvel franchise, it’s arguable that Hemsworth has a long fall or possibly serious typecasting ahead of him. But with serious dramatic roles at the behest of respected Directors coming in, and a status as a thinking man’s action hero, it will take some doing to stop the Melbourne born lad being the poster boy for numerous blockbusters for some time.

5. Emma Stone

Another with a quick career curve hurtling north, Emma Stone’s previous specialty was in comedy, starting with surprise hit Superbad, growing with cult classic Zombieland and earning a breakthrough in Easy A, has seen her come to the attention of the big hitters, and last year’s The Help quickly expanded this growth into drama.

As well as getting worldwide exposure as Spiderman’s darling Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider Man, a sure fire way to make her name recognizable, she will be in the company of the big boys for crime thriller The Gangster Squad, with a cast including Sean Penn and Josh Brolin.

Owning a bewitching ‘cute’ factor reminiscent of a young Christina Ricci, and funnybones to match her charm and genuine talent, it is clear that she has a niche carved out for herself. If she picks up a couple of serious roles, and delivers in those parts, Stone is surely destined for household name status.

4. Rooney Mara

The mere mention of Rooney Mara instantly concocts the phrase ‘Fincher Factor’. After a pretty anonymous early career in teen sensibility flicks such as Youth in Revolt and Tanner Hall, Mara earned some interest with Fincher’s The Social Network. So impressed was the director that he instantly entrusted her with the role of Lisbeth Salander, made iconic by Noomi Rapace, in December’s remake of the Swedish sleeper hit. Two hits under the same master and Mara was an overnight star.

As of yet, her schedule for this year seems scarce, with a reported drama based on the killing of Osama Bin Laden the only project in the works. But as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo proved to be a critical hit, with much acclaim dished Mara’s way, it’s unlikely she will be out of the limelight for long.

Doubtlessly attractive as an actress, Mara proved with Dragon Tattoo that is she is willing to get down and dirty for a role, a hugely advantageous move at an early stage in her career. Add that to a subtle, earthy talent and you have the makings of a very sought after young actress, and a name on everyone’s lips.

3. Tom Hardy

It’s odd to mention Hardy as somebody on the rise, since he’s been an actor performing in big pictures home and abroad for more than ten years, albeit with far less success than he is garnering now. One of a large crop of talent to emerge from the cast of Band of Brothers, the Brit may not have cracked the big time in Black Hawk Down or Star Trek: Nemesis, but on the back of a supercharged 2010/11 back catalogue, he is scheduled to explode into life this year.

While his best performance was 2008’s Bronson, it was two years later with Inception that Hardy caught the eye, and last year built on it with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Warrior, hugely diverse roles that packed punch, no pun intended. And while This Means War may look suspect at first glance, it is this summer’s The Dark Knight Rises which is sure to make Hardy a colossus. Considering that John Hillcoat’s quiet historical drama Wettest Country follows, versatility is the name of the game.

Already on many the list of favorite actors for many, Hardy’s charisma and intensity earns job offers and admirers at every turn, seemingly in most genres. He currently looks as unstoppable as his super-villain Bane.

2. Ryan Gosling

Before simmering on screen in last year’s standout Drive, Ryan Gosling was enjoy something of an acting renaissance. Though once a heartthrob for teenage girls, fodder for romantic melodramas, the Canadian actor has slowly clawed his way into more respectable, serious roles. With the likes of Half Nelson and Lars and the Real Girl he proved his abilities, before coming to life with Blue Valentine, and then Nicolas Winding Refn’s thriller, a pick of the year for many, came along and he delivered the deeply memorable, star making turn.

This year will see him in thrillers The Place Beyond the Pines and Only God Forgives, along with the hugely promising period crime drama The Gangster Squad, co-starring Emma Stone. Hardly a trio of sure-fire hits, but in Gosling’s current form it’s hard to see him missing a beat.

His prior career seems based on slow, patient progression to get away from cheaper, forgettable parts in half rate pictures. A three year hiatus after Lars in particular raised eyebrows. It now seems that, invigorated and inspired, Gosling is about to graduate to full blown big name.

1. Jessica Chastain

Last year’s out of nowhere sleeper star, Jessica Chastain was certainly busy, building in twelve months a solid back catalogue that most actors would be delighted to achieve in five years. Though her anticipated big break in The Debt was lost amidst release date chaos, she quickly dodged a potential career landmine, bagging parts in the critically acclaimed Take Shelter, shining in Ralph Fiennes’s directorial debut Coriolanus, and wowing the eyes and hearts of viewers of Terrence Malick’s deeply philosophical The Tree of Life.

In 2012, Chastain is due to hook up with Malick again with another, as yet unnamed project, and will work with John Hillcoat for the aforementioned Wettest Country, co-starring Hardy and Guy Pearce. There’s also a biopic of author C. K. Williams and drama/potential horror flick Mama for her to stretch herself with.

One wonders whether this daughter of California will ever stop, at least before she earns supernova star status, and it seems likely that the answer is a resounding no. Possessing the sort of elegant grace rarely seen in modern cinema, a fragility and tempered beauty, it is unlikely the roles will cease rolling in for her.

Scott Patterson

Last spring, a bold show with a dark heart brightened up our screens and reminded us once again that television can be a wonderful medium for in-depth storytelling, despite the likes of Jersey Shore poisoning impressionable minds. It may have helped that it has its roots in literature, but Game of Thrones had so many richly drawn characters that it was rarely dull. The terrific Peter Dinklage snagged most of the attention, and an Emmy, for his work, but there was another actor who particularly stood out: Mark Addy.

As gluttonous philanderer Robert Baratheon, Addy brought a commanding, dominating character to life in a most outstanding manner. The King ruled with impunity, doing whatever he felt like and to hell with the consequences. It’s an excellent performance by a top notch actor, but it’s not the first time that he’s excelled without grabbing the limelight.

After years of strong work in British shows like ’60s cop drama Heartbeat and enjoyable sitcom The Thin Blue Line, Addy first made a big splash on the international scene with his role in the megahit comedy The Full Monty. Dave is a regular Joe who is roped into taking part in a male strip show by his friend Gaz, but has major qualms about featuring in the performance due to physical insecurities. Addy plays Dave’s internal struggles beautifully as the ex-steel worker learns to come to terms with his large build and summon the confidence to bare all on stage.

A few years later, Addy starred as Fred Flintstone in The Flinstones in Viva Rock Vegas. The film is terrible, and Addy was one of the few involved to emerge with reputation largely intact. His easy charisma and undeniable talent helped him brush off the ashes of this flaming mess. He appeared in another medieval setting when his Roland squired for Heath Ledger in A Knight’s Tale. Ledger and Paul Bettany might have had the showier roles, but Addy lent solid support to the leads with an easy humour and displayed his able talents once again.

Despite his 4 year stint as a network sitcom lead in Still Standing, Addy might not be as recognisable as some of his co-stars in his higher profile projects. Still, he’s an actor with a wealth of talent and shone among an exceptional cast in Game of Thrones. Here’s hoping his stint as the Usurper will lead to bigger projects for the amiable Englishman.

- Kris Holt

I say rewarding because it gave me a nostalgic-flavored chance to revisit certain work and the people behind it; a revisiting which often brought back the nearly-forgotten youthful excitement that went with an eye-opening, a discovery, the thrill of the new. Writing them has also been bittersweet because each of these pieces is a formal acknowledgment that something precious is gone. A talent may be perhaps preserved forever on celluloid, but the filmography now had a terminus; no additions, no more new chapters.

Some of the losses get by me. As I was thumbing through the most recent issue of Entertainment Weekly, a year-end “Best & Worst of 2011” edition, I was surprised at how many familiar names showed up in the issue’s “Late Greats” section having passed without my knowing it. With your permission, I’d like to pay a quick homage to some of them; for all the entertaining hours they gave me in front of both the big and small screen, it would seem ungrateful on my part not to acknowledge their departure.

I grew up watching Harry Morgan (b. 1915). His was one of those Familiar Faces which seemed a permanent part – a Rushmore – of the entertainment landscape. When I was a kid, I watched him steal scenes as the next door neighbor in syndicated re-runs of 1950s sitcom December Bride, and then there he was, back again, in the 1960s revival of the granddaddy of all police procedurals, Dragnet, playing Jack Webb’s head-nodding partner. Seemingly eternal, he came back – yet again – in the 1970s as the grandfatherly commanding officer on the TV adaptation of M*A*S*H. And there were a hundred other guest appearances, other series, and God knows how many movies. That flat Midwestern nasal twang of his was pitch-perfect for the often caustic, wry pitch which was his trademark. He was a hoot the minute he opened his mouth in movies like The Flim-Flam Man (1967), Support Your Local Sheriff (1967), and what seems like a million others. Because he was so closely associated with comedy, few knew how much dramatic muscle he could muster, and if you really want to see Morgan’s range, watch him as Henry Fonda’s brooding sidekick in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). “I didn’t really start out to be an actor,” Morgan once said, “I just sort of fell into it. I’ve had a good career, a lot of laughs. I don’t know if that’s enough, but it beats coal mining.” Amen and thanks for a million laughs and a few lumps in the throat, Harry.

G.D. Spradlin (b. 1920) was another Familiar Face we lost in 2011. Most probably remember him as the slimy, corrupt senator in The Godfather: Part II. With his tall, lean, erect frame, Spradlin was often cast as stern authority figures: the coach in North Dallas Forty (1979), the patrician commanding officer of a military school in The Lords of Discipline (1983), and the like. But Francis Ford Coppola saw something in Spradlin most directors never asked for, and gave him the mold-breaking part of a compassionate, troubled military man in Apocalypse Now (1979). You want to see a pro at work? Watch the look in Spradlin’s eyes, hear the softening in his voice as he tells assassin Martin Sheen how his one-time friend (Marlon Brando) has given in to the insanity of the Vietnam War and gone bloodily insane himself.

Dana Wynter (b. 1931) holds a special place in the hearts of sci fi fans of which I consider myself a member of the club. She co-starred with Kevin McCarthy in the original The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). I can never forget that close up director Don Siegel gives her near the end of the film when she’s kissed by McCarthy who realizes – looking into her flat, cold eyes – that he’s lost his beloved to the invading pods.

Dana Wynter (b. 1931) holds a special place in the hearts of sci fi fans of which I consider myself a member of the club. She co-starred with Kevin McCarthy in the original The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). I can never forget that close up director Don Siegel gives her near the end of the film when she’s kissed by McCarthy who realizes – looking into her flat, cold eyes – that he’s lost his beloved to the invading pods.

When it comes to Star Trek, I’m a purist; it’s the original 1960s series for me and the rest can be beamed elsewhere. As such, I couldn’t help but feel a pang at the passing of William Campbell (b. 1923), another one of those, “Oh, that guy!” supporting players. Campbell never graduated past the B-list, and was usually cast as some kind of silky slimeball. But, like most character actors, he had more range than he was usually given credit for. I remember him as the brash-talking Confederate trooper father-son bonding with crusty William Demarest in Escape from Fort Bravo (1953), and his disturbing scene in the WW II actioner Breakthrough (1950) where he’s unable to pull himself clear of a burning tank because “I got no legs!” But the Trekkie in me remembers him best for his role in the episode, “The Squire of Gothos,” one of the original series’ best. Cambell eats up the part of the foppish alien Trelane with a spoon, the torments he inflicts on Captain Kirk & Co. turning out to be the pulling-the-wings-off-flies sociopathology of a child masquerading as an adult.

Brit Pete Postlethwaite (b. 1946) already had an extensive resume, particularly in UK TV, when I first noticed him – as most American audiences did – as the mysterious Kobayashi, minion of the feared master criminal, Keyser Sose, in The Usual Suspects (1995). But I didn’t appreciate the range and depth of the guy until I later caught on cable his earlier performance in the true-life drama, In the Name of the Father (1993). Kobayashi is an austere, still pillar in an immaculately tailored suit, an agent of unbounded malevolence, the high priest of bad guy’s boogeyman Sose. Giuseppe Conlon from Father, on the other hand, is a hunched, frail and fearful figure, whose one, great strength is his love for his bedeviled son (Daniel Day-Lewis). In the British tradition, he was a pro who brought dignity and class to whatever set he stepped on, from sci-fi like Inception (2010), to a hardboiled contemporary noir like The Town (2010).

Composer John Barry (b. 1933) may have had as much to do with turning James Bond into an international, inter-generational brand as anybody involved with the franchise. Barry was the composer on all of the early Bonds, and his brassy, kinetic scores were a signature of the series. He may have been most closely identified with the Bonds, but Barry had other colors, too: epic grandeur in Zulu (1964) and Born Free (1966), faded romance in Robin and Marian (1976), neo-noir in Body Heat (1981). My personal favorite: the melancholy, harmonica-carried theme from Midnight Cowboy (1969) which so painfully captured the isolation and disillusionment of souls lost amid the neon-lit canyons of a (then) decaying New York City.

I had an incredible crush on Susannah York (b. 1939) in the 1960s. She was a perfect Carnaby Street icon of the time with her lithe, short-haired, mini-skirted casual sexiness. It didn’t hurt that she was also a hell of an actress, something she would prove time and again in films like Tom Jones (1963), A Man for All Seasons (1966), and, in most harrowing fashion, the Depression-era drama, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969). Nobody got as much mileage out of York’s wide blue eyes as director Sidney Pollock, shooting them through a shower’s spray as the fragile psyche of her wannabe actress Alice shatters from the exhaustion and heartbreak of a desperate dance marathon.

But there was an earlier heartthrob: Anne Francis (b. 1930). If York was late 60s mod, Francis was good ol’ fashioned Hollywood: blonde, curvy, brassy (in her best parts), and with the sexiest facial mole this side of Marilyn Monroe. In retrospect, she may have been too pretty. It was hard – particularly in that era – to get producers and casting people to see past her looks to the strong actress she was. “Most young blondes in those days ['50s] were not taken too seriously,” she once explained. “I had wanted to work on a project [directing] all my own from beginning to end for many years. I had managers who said, ‘Look, you’re an actress. You’re not supposed to do that other business.’” She could play girl-next-door, like the goody-two-shoes wife of inner city teacher Glenn Ford in Blackboard Jungle (1955); the intimidated bad guy’s girl (Bad Day at Black Rock [1955]); and sci fi/fantasy buffs probably remember her from the classic Twilight Zone episode, “After Hours,” playing a woman trapped in a closed department store, haunted by mannequins come to life, only to realize that she, too, is a mannequin who has been on leave in the human world. But she was at her best – and never more alluring – then when she played strong: the free-spirited Altaira in the sci fi classic Forbidden Planet (1956), or – my favorite – as the lead in the mid-60s TV series, Honey West, playing a tough, independent, karate-chopping, guys-can-just-kiss-my-perfect-ass private eye before most people had heard of Women’s Lib.

There was a time it looked like whenever a producer needed someone to play the wide-eyed naïf, Michael Sarrazin (b. 1940) seemed to get first call. There was something about those big, blue eyes, the babyish cast of his full-lipped face, his soft voice that spoke of vulnerability and innocence. But Sarrazin was a good enough actor to keep himself from becoming an empty type. As similar as many of his characters were, he made each distinct, alive: Army deserter Curley, frantically fighting off the cynicism being preached by George C. Scott’s con artist in The Flim-Flam Man; the aimless Robert caught up in the misery of a relentless dance marathon in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?; the angry prodigal who returns to his lumberjack family in Sometimes a Great Notion (1970).

One of the funniest men who ever hit the screen was the great Kenneth Mars (b. 1935). He was a master of absurd, ridiculous accents, and at his best when a director stood back and let Mars loose on his ruthless pursuit of a laugh. Few directors knew how to do that. One was the equally ruthless laugh-chaser Mel Brooks who unleashed Mars in The Producers (1968) as Franz Liebkind, an atrocious playwright who pens a virtual “love-letter to Hitler” with his appalling play, Springtime for Hitler; and then again in his spot-on parody, Young Frankenstein (1974), playing a Transylvanian constable whose accent is so thick even the locals can’t understand him!

Of all The Little Rascals, Jackie Cooper (b. 1922) was my favorite next to Spanky. I grew up watching Rascals re-runs on local TV, blissfully unaware that, by that time, the Rascals were all middle-aged. Cooper was the rare child actor who managed to maintain a career – not only as an actor, but as a producer and director — throughout his life. I thought he was a stitch as a cheap, loud Perry White in the first Superman movie (1978), rattling off zingers in screwball comedy style: “Lois, Clark Kent may seem like just a mild-mannered reporter, but listen: not only does he know how to treat his editor-in-chief with the proper respect, not only does he have a snappy, punchy prose style, but he is, in my forty years in this business, the fastest typist I’ve ever seen!” But my strongest memory of him will always be as little Jackie, fumbling through a crush on his school teacher (“Gee, Miss Crabtree…”), ridiculously competing for her attention against fellow Rascal Chubby.

Aussie actress Diane Cilento (b. 1933) had an impressive filmography including roles in such high-profile flicks as Tom Jones, The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), and cult horror fave, The Wicker Man (1973), but my favorite was as the tough-hided dispossessed housekeeper in the equally tough-hided Western, Hombre (1967). She’s the movie conscience, its referee between what we’d like to do, and what we should do. It’s a rich, full-bodied performance, her Jessie a mix of the melancholic weight of her emotional scars, and her stubborn if battered sense of decency. In a genre which often shorts its women folk, Cilento in Hombre stands far above the crowd.

In my younger days, I wasn’t always sure what director Ken Russell (b. 1927) was trying to do. Looking back, I’m not sure Russell always knew what he was trying to do…other than see how far he could go. Russell once said, “I don’t believe there is any virtue in understatement,” and he filmed accordingly. I was introduced to his work in my college days when I saw his screen adaptation of The Who’s rock opera, Tommy (1975). After over 30 years of numbingly over-the-top music videos, it’s hard to appreciate how novel Russell’s visually flamboyant rendering of the rock milestone was at the time. Intrigued by the eye behind Tommy, I began backtracking its director, was struck by the seething eroticism of Women in Love (1969), appropriately disturbed by the fever dream visualization of The Devils (1971). I didn’t always like Russell’s work; there were times I thought him so obsessed with pushing limits that he forgot to tell his story as in Crimes of Passion (1984) and Valentino (1977). But I was always impressed with his audacity, his willingness to see how far off-center he could pull the commercial mainstream…and then try to tug it a little further.

And now they’re all gone. It’s a hell of a movie they’d make: a cast comprised of Jackie Cooper, Diane Cilento, Anne Francis, Michael Sarrazin, Kenneth Mars, Dana Wynter, Harry Morgan, Susannah York, G.D. Spradlin, William Campbell, and Pete Postlethwaite, scored by John Barry, and directed by Ken Russell. It’s a shame that such grand cinema is reserved only for the next world. We here will have to make do with something less.

Bill Mesce

Much of our lurid film community is of the belief that America’s acting prowess died with its classic stars like Marlon Brando, James Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Grace Kelly. However, I’m here to argue that America’s actors are stronger than ever and can match up toe to toe with the likes of both Europe and Asia.

The list will be split into two parts: in part one, I delve into the modern world of Hollywood actors with actresses soon to follow in part two.

Part one: Top Ten Actors Working In Hollywood Today

Actor With The Most Potential To Hit It Big: Paddy Considine

Before I begin the list, I want to take a moment to discuss an actor whom I believe has enormous potential. While not American born, British actor Paddy Considine has been in his fair share of American films like In America, Cinderella Man, and The Bourne Ultimatum. Although, his best work has come in gritty independent British dramas like Last Resort, My Summer Of Love, and most recently, the coming-of-age tale Submarine. However, Considine is at the top of his game in the stark revenge thriller Dead Man’s Shoes. Considine’s performance as Richard, a hardened military man seeking revenge against those who killed his mentally challenged brother, is eerily reminiscent of De Niro’s Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver and is also one of the single best performances of the decade. With his recent directorial debut of the excellent Tyrannosaur, and a role in two upcoming films next year, Considine is definitely one to watch.

The List

Before I begin, I want to preface the list by saying that I chose the top ten to be representative of actors with a solid body of work but also of those with the potential for greatness. If you see someone you think should be on the list, please let me know in the comments section.

#10: Jack Nicholson

Nicholson began his illustrious career in 1958 as Jimmy Wallace in the film Cry Baby Killer. He has been acting longer than anyone on this list and his body of work is nothing short of extensive. His resumé contains roles in classic films like Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown, and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. He was brilliant alongside Meryl Streep in Ironweed and approaches Heath Ledger’s greatness with his own unique take as the Joker in the 1989 version of Batman. Nicholson has always shown incredible range from a more independent character study in About Schmidt to his role in the recent gangster flick The Departed. However, perhaps his finest role, one that cemented his status as one of the greatest actors of our generation, was that of Jack Torrence in The Shining. Nicholson gives one of the creepiest most deranged performances in film history as he transforms a seemingly normal father into a crazed lunatic haunted by the supernatural.

#9: Robert De Niro

Next on the list is someone that has been in the business almost as long as Nicholson. De Niro established himself with his iconic role as Johnny Boy in Mean Streets followed up a year later with his performance as Vito Corleone in The Godfather: Part II. Like Nicholson, De Niro has a great range. Many people think of him in the context of his roles in gangster films like Once Upon A Time In America, Goodfellas, Casino, Heat, and Jackie Brown. However, he is at his best in films like The Deer Hunter, Raging Bull, and Awakenings alongside Robin Williams. As good as all of these performances are, De Niro has never topped his portrayal of Travis Bickle in Scorsese’s brilliant Taxi Driver. Regarded as one of the best performances in one of the best American films of all time, De Niro is as perfect as you can get as the frustrated and lonely Bickle who finally explodes like a volcano at the climax of the film in which he enacts his vengeance in one of the most violent, most memorable scenes in film history. De Niro has been on somewhat of a rut since the late 90s but his performance as an author and long-absent father attempting to reach out to his son (played by Paul Dano) in the upcoming film Being Flynn has promise.

#8: Sean Penn

Although not quite as experienced as Nicholson and De Niro, Sean Penn can still be considered one of the most talented, most iconic actors of our generation. Acting since the early 80’s, Penn broke onto the scene with his role as Jeff Spicoli in the 80’s comedy Fast Times At Ridgemont High. He followed that up with key performances in At Close Range, State of Grace, Carlito’s Way, The Thin Red Line, and I Am Sam. However, unlike the above two actors, Penn’s best work has come in the last decade. With searing portrayals in 21 Grams, Mystic River, and Fair Game, Penn has established himself as one of the best dramatic method actors around. With two great directorial efforts in Into The Wild and The Pledge, Penn has shown his multi-faceted allure. He is at his best when he gives himself to his role and I don’t think there is a performance more dedicated then his brilliant portrayal of Harvey Milk in Milk. Hopefully we see much more of this type of Penn and with his role as Mickey Cohen in the upcoming, star-studded The Gangster Squad, it seems as though Penn is only just beginning to hit his stride.

#7: Kevin Spacey

Perhaps one of the most consistently solid Hollywood actors today, Kevin Spacey is at the top of his game. He is one of the few actors that is able to play roles in a wide range of genres from comedies like Swimming With Sharks and Horrible Bosses, to dramas like Glengarry Glen Ross, L.A. Confidential, and his incredible performance as Lester Burnham in one of my favorite films American Beauty, to thrillers like The Usual Suspects, The Negotiator and Se7en, Spacey does it all. At once sarcastic and heartfelt, Spacey is one of a kind. Not to mention, he hasn’t lost a step with his great performance as Sam Rogers in the recent and underrated Margin Call. There is no question that Spacey has etched himself a place in the canon of the all time greats.

#6: Ben Foster

Number 6 on the list may come as a surprise to many of you. Although he is not nearly as established as the aforementioned four, for my money, Ben Foster is one of the most underrated, most talented actors around. I first took notice of Foster as the villain Mars Krupcheck in the 2005 film Hostage. Though not exactly a great film, it put Foster on my map of actors to watch. He was again brilliant in a small role as Charlie Prince in the 2007 remake of the classic Western 3:10 To Yuma. Solid again in both the 2009 film Pandorum and one of this year’s most underrated films Rampart, Foster brings an energy and aggression to his roles that is rare in today’s cinema. However, if it were just these films alone, Foster wouldn’t be on this list. It was his unbelievable performance as Will Montgomery in the 2009 searing war drama The Messenger that cemented his place on this list. This was not only the best performance of that year but one of the top three American performances I’ve ever seen. Yes that’s right, I said it. Foster does it all in this film and his scene in which he recounts his experiences in battle to Woody Harrelson (just missed this list) is one of the most moving of the decade. I know many of you may question this choice but keep an eye on this guy. He has more potential in his pinky finger then virtually any other young actor in Hollywood and if he can harness it and bring it all together…watch out.

#5: Michael Fassbender

Like Foster, Michael Fassbender is relatively new to the scene. Getting his start as Sgt. Burton Christenson on the TV Mini-series Band of Brothers, Fassbender proved that he was one to watch. He was great in the 2008 horror-thriller Eden Lake but it wasn’t until his unforgettable performance as Bobby Sands in Hunger, one of the most brutal, unflinching films that I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching, that I knew he had big things ahead. He was again great in the 2009 British film Fish Tank, one of my favorites that year, but it wasn’t until Inglorious Basterds that he became recognized as a force of American cinema. More recently, he has been consistently awesome carrying last year’s Centurion on his back and again, with great performances in X-Men: First Class, Jane Eyre, and A Dangerous Method. However, it is Shame that is finally getting Fassbender Oscar consideration. With one of the best performances of the year, Fassbender is no longer flying under the radar.

#4: Edward Norton

So many of you are probably thinking, “Ed Norton at number 4?” Well, I guess this one is more of a personal choice. Norton possesses a magnetic quality a la James Stewart that few actors still have. Every time I watch a Norton film, I can never seem to take my eyes off the screen. I am completely enthralled. This is evidenced by performances in films like Primal fear, Rounders, Fight Club, The 25^th Hour, The Illusionist, The Painted Veil, and Leaves of Grass. Although these performances are all great, one stands above the rest. His performance as Derek Vinyard in American History X is a thing of beauty. It makes up the second third of my three favorite American performances of all time because of how brilliantly Norton pulls off the transition from Nazi hard-ass to loving brother. The film contains some of my favorite dialogue and Norton’s lines come across with such conviction that he is the main reason why the film has such a profound affect on me to this day.

#3: Philip Seymour Hoffman

This guy has more range then a fifty-caliber sniper rifle and he is one of the most unrecognized actors deserved of recognition in the business. Hoffman has had his fair share of small roles and it is only recently that he is getting the roles that he deserves. With a bevy of supporting roles in films like Boogie Nights, Happiness, Magnolia, Almost Famous, The 25^th Hour, and Cold Mountain Hoffman is as consistent as they come. It wasn’t until 2005 that he broke through by winning a well-deserved Oscar for his performance as Truman Capote in Capote. He followed that up with energetic performances in The Savages, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, Charlie Wilson’s War, and Doubt. However, it is his brilliant, multi-layered performance in Synecdoche, New York that cements his spot in the top three. More recently Hoffman has shined in one of my favorite animated films of all time, Mary and Max as well as good performances in Jack Goes Boating, (his directorial debut) Moneyball, and The Ides of March. As you can see from the plethora of solid films that I’ve listed, Hoffman has already had a great career and still has a bright future ahead of him as one of today’s premiere method actors.

#2: Ryan Gosling

One of the things that infuriate me is when my friends hear Ryan Gosling’s name, many of them still say “oh, you mean that guy from The Notebook?” Yes he may be in that film, but his brilliance was using that film as a springboard to obtain the roles that would allow him to show off his dynamic range, subtle delivery, and magnetic star quality reminiscent of a young Marlon Brando. The first performance of Gosling’s to catch my eye was his multi-layered portrayal of Jewish Nazi Danny Balint in The Believer. This was the best of Gosling’s pre-Notebook roles. Two years after The Notebook, Gosling was nominated for his first Oscar in Half Nelson and continued with two amazing, varied performances in their own right: Lars and the Real Girl, and Blue Valentine. Gosling has had a great year with film-carrying performances in both Crazy, Stupid, Love and The Ides of March but the film to cement him as not only one of the best young actors around but one of the best period is this year’s Drive. This one is sure to be in my top ten come the end of the year and Gosling is a big reason for that. His performance as the aptly named “Driver” is brutal yet gentle with an aura of cool. In some ways, Gosling’s performance is a more avant-garde, violent version of McQueen’s in Bullitt. With five films in the works for next year, Gosling is set to become one of this generation’s greatest actor’s and perhaps one of the greatest Hollywood actors of all time.

Although each of the above nine actors are excellent in their own ways, one actor stands above them on a level all his own.

#1: Daniel Day-Lewis

With one of the smallest resumes of any of the ten actors listed spanning 31 years, Daniel Day-Lewis is the master class of Hollywood acting. Because he only appears in one film every two-three years, he is able to completely engulf himself in his roles. He isn’t just an actor playing a role; rather, he becomes his roles. He can play anything asked of him with such conviction and dedication that I forget that I’m watching a film. Day-Lewis brings his characters to life more so than any actor today and is not only one of the best actors alive but one of the best of all time. After starting with a small role in Gandhi, Day-Lewis began to establish himself in films like A Room With a View and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Then, beginning in 1989 with My Left Foot came film after film in which Day-Lewis began to give himself 110% to his roles. In the 90’s came The Last of the Mohicans, The Age of Innocence, In the Name of the Father, and The Boxer. Each of these roles completely different from the next, Day-Lewis anchored himself at the top of the list of method actors. In the last decade, Day-Lewis has only appeared in four films, each featuring a widely different performance. From The Ballad of Jack and Rose, to Gangs of New York, to Nine, Day-Lewis was proving that there was nothing he couldn’t do. Then came his performance as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood. Not only is this my favorite American performance of all time, completing the trifecta, it is one of the best performances of all time, American or otherwise. Daniel Day-Lewis is no longer Daniel Day-Lewis. For two and a half hours he becomes Daniel Plainview, as if transformed by some other-wordly entity. It is one of the most absorbing performances you will ever see. What does Day-Lewis have in store? Next year he will play Abraham Lincoln in Spielberg’s upcoming Lincoln. Color me excited.

That concludes part one. Keep your eyes glued to sound on sight for part two when I reveal my top 10 Hollywood actresses still in business. Until then, do yourself a favor and go watch There Will Be Blood if you haven’t yet. You will not be disappointed.

Masterclass: Barry Ackroyd

“The most peaceful place you can be on a film set is when you put your eye to the camera.”

On Monday night at the BFI, British cinematographer Barry Ackroyd talked to Screen International Editor Mike Goodridge about his 30 years in film and TV. It’s a shame there wasn’t a full house in NFT3 and that I had to sit at an uncomfortable 45-degree angle to see the discussion. The good news was that Ackroyd’s eloquence matches his skills behind the camera and he sounded like a poet as he alluded to the “flow” of his work.

If there’s one word you probably wouldn’t use in association with Ackroyd’s recent films it’s peaceful. This is the guy who shot Ralph Fiennes’s Balkan-set Coriolanus, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker and United 93. Given his talent for depicting war zones, it’s perhaps not surprising that he cites Andrzej Wajda’s Kanal, a film about the Warsaw Uprising, as a key influence. But he learned his trade and travelled the world making corporate documentaries, so he also admires DA Pennebaker, the Maysles brothers and his mentor, Chris Menges.

Beginning with Riff-Raff, Ackroyd has so far made 12 films with Ken Loach – the same number as Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Burks. (He was due to shoot Route Irish, but was bumped in favour of Menges.) Ackroyd chooses his words carefully, but you get the impression that while he greatly admires Loach, he finds his approach quite rigid in terms of lighting (naturalistic) and camera positioning. After we watched a harrowing confrontation from Raining Stones (1993), Ackroyd said he could still recall the pungent aftershave worn by loan shark Tansey (Jonathan James).

He talked about the technical challenges of choreographing multiple camera operators, working in relay, on Paul Greengrass’s United 93 and Green Zone. Watching a clip from the end of United 93 you could see that the actors had almost forgotten about the presence of the cameras, as they dived around the mocked-up fuselage. Apparently, some of them later disappeared off into a dark corner and cried.

He didn’t meet Bigelow before starting work on The Hurt Locker, though she’d obviously been impressed by his work with Loach and Greengrass. Shooting on a low budget using Super 16, the emphasis was on verisimilitude (one of Ackroyd’s favourite words) and making viewers feel what it’s like to be in the kill zone. Ackroyd said a key element of capturing the opening explosion that kills Guy Pearce’s Thompson, was to convey the full force of the blast. There’s something almost balletic about the slo-mo shots of gravel, dirt and body being hurled into the air.

What surprised me most about Ackroyd is that he seems so emotionally invested in the intense cinematic worlds he helps to create. I’d always imagined the cinematographer to be a remote figure, whose role was to translate the director’s vision onto film. He said he could still recall how he trembled when he first picked up a camera to capture some Letraset titles for a film-school colleague. Despite his impressive list of TV and film credits, that mixture of anxiety and excitement has obviously stayed with him.

A session of 100 minutes was only long enough to do justice to one aspect of Ackroyd’s work. Though he relished the challenge of doing Dominic Savage’s Out of Control (2002), there was nothing about his TV movies with Stephen Poliakoff. I would have thought a sedate period drama like The Lost Prince was about as far removed from The Hurt Locker as you could imagine.

I haven’t seen Coriolanus yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

- Susannah Straughan

Visit the official website for the 55th BFI Film Festival

Hollywood joke: 

A writer, a director, and a producer are crawling across the desert without water, dying of thirst.  They look up and sticking out of the sand is a nicely chilled bottle of apple juice.  Before the writer and director can grab it, the producer is on his feet, unzips his pants and starts peeing into the bottle. 

“What’re you doing?” the writer and director cry. 

“Fixing it!” says the producer. 

So, that attitude in mind, when I tell you John Calley died last Tuesday at age 81, and if the name is unfamiliar and I try to enlighten you by saying he was a producer and – worse – a studio executive, no doubt at least a few of you who regularly patronize this site out of your love for film and filmmakers might shrug and say, “So what?”  A dead studio exec?  That’s like that other joke, the one about lawyers: 

“What do you call 5000 lawyers on the bottom of the ocean?” 

“A good start.” 

Studio executives.  Ew.  Often referred to with sneery repugnance as, “The Suits.”  Ugh. Five thousand of them on the bottom of the ocean would be a great start. They’re the Enemy, the Others, the antithesis of the creative impulse embodied by the noble filmmaker, the antichrist to the artistic spirit.  Anybody who thinks Hollywood just plain, flat-out sucks with its pandering, market research, four-quadrant development and fear of the new, horror at the original, and absolute paralyzing terror at the untried, points a finger quivering with rage at the office suites and shouts, “J’accuse!”  

So.  Who cares some old, ex-studio biggie died? 

Well, not that it means much, but I do. 

I became a fan of Calley’s after reading Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls:  How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘n’ Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, a dizzying, sometimes hysterical, sometimes heart-breaking account of the movie industry’s bumpy transfer of power from the moguls of old to a new, young generation of studio chieftains in the 1960s/70s. 

In part, I liked Calley because he was one of “us,” another Jersey boy like myself, originally being from Jersey City.  I always root for the home team. 

Jersey City wasn’t exactly a bastion of the arts.  It had been a mill town back in Calley’s day, rough-edged, blue collar – was, still is.  If Calley picked up any creative sensibilities in those days, it was the art of the deal from his dad, a used car salesman. 

What his background told me was Calley – the erudite, scholarly, well-spoken production chief who screened Kurosawa and Fellini and Trauffaut flicks for his execs – was a self-made man.  He learned what he learned and knew what he knew because he’d seeded and cultivated and watered that gray matter between his ears, and considering what he’d learned and knew, you couldn’t not be impressed by the accomplishment. 

But just as impressive to me was that he was that rarest of rare gems in studio executive circles:  he was one of the few studio bosses who’d actually made movies; good movies, smart movies.  By the time he was tapped to head up production at Warner Bros. in 1969, he’d spent a few years at Filmways working as a producer or associate producer on a number of films, some of them quite impressive, like Blake Edward’s brilliant, bitter antiwar comedy The Americanization of Emily (1964, associate producer); Norman Jewison’s memorable tale of a young poker hustler on the rise, The Cincinnati Kid (1965, associate producer); and Mike Nichols’ grand and ambitious if flawed rendering of Joseph Heller’s classic antiwar novel, Catch-22 (1970).  In fact, Calley was on the set of Catch-22 when he got the call from Ted Ashley, a one-time talent agency honcho who Warners’ new owner – Steve Ross and his hodge-podge of funeral homes and parking lots called Kinney National Service – had put in charge of the studio, giving him a free hand to clean house.  Once the house was cleaned, Ashley tabbed Calley to be Warners’ new production chief. 

It was a unique time in Hollywood; the old rulers had faded away, a new breed was replacing them eager to re-write the rule book on movies and movie-making, and Calley caught the wave.  “We were all young,” he told The Los Angeles Times in a 1999 interview, “it was our time, and it was very exciting.” 

This is from Biskind’s book: 

“Under Calley, Warners became the class act in town…He was so hip he didn’t even have a desk in his office, just a big coffee table covered with snacks, carrot sticks, hardboiled eggs, and candy.  Lots of antiques.” 

Even at the time, Calley stood apart from the rest of the new execs.  According to Biskind, under Calley the production offices became a place of jeans and sandals with “…the aroma of marijuana wafting down the first floor.” He wasn’t a glitzy, self-promoter like Paramount’s Robert Evans; in fact, according to friend Candice Bergen, while he was always quite charming and could be great company, he was also somewhat withdrawn, spending his weekend nights at home, in flannels and a nightcap reading scripts.  He had a soft spot for expensive cars and yachts, and yet generally lived a life –as producer Tony Bill said at a recent memorial service – “unattached to material things.” Bill recalled Calley buying a 65-foot Swedish yawl, spending a few years fixing it up, then, after enjoying it a while, selling it off.  He enjoyed things; he didn’t amass them.

Calley was a director’s exec and he started reaching out to filmmakers who interested him, among them:  Sidney Pollock who turned out Jeremiah Johnson (1972) and The Yakuza (1974); John Boorman (Deliverance, 1972); William Friedkin (The Exorcist, 1973); Martin Scorsese (Mean Streets [1973] and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore [1974]); Robert Altman (McCabe & Mrs. Miller, 1971), and Stanley Kubrick to whom Calley gave a remarkable carte blanche, granting him a free hand to pursue his own projects, take as long to develop them as he wanted, and retain full creative control.   

He generally stayed out of the way of his filmmakers, believing in giving them the freedom to indulge the creativity he’d hired them for.  He would complain about the Hollywood penchant – then and just as much now – for hiring a filmmaker for his unique talent, then turning around and “…(doing) everything you possibly can to neutralize him so that he can’t do what you’ve hired him to do in the first place.” An impressive number of the signature movies from one of American movies’ most expressive periods came from Warners thanks to Calley’s laissez-faire attitude:  Woodstock (1970), Klute (1971), All the President Men (1976), Chariots of Fire (1981), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Dog Day Afternoon (1975)…  The list goes on. 

He loved fine cinema, he loved fine filmmakers, but Calley was not oblivious to the fact he had a studio to run.  As much as he liked a certain kind of cinematic artistry, he also had a feel for what was going to mint money, like Mel Brooks’ hysterical Blazing Saddles (1974), or disaster pic The Towering Inferno (1974), or kicking off the superhero movie craze with Superman:  The Movie (1978).  And, like his wheeling-dealing dad, he knew how to cut a deal, joining with 20^th Century Fox on Inferno so the two studios – which had been developing similar high-rise disaster projects – wouldn’t mutually destruct in a head-to-head competition; or milking Dirty Harry (1971) through four sequels.  Better:  correctly reading the tea leaves left behind by Star Wars (1977), and understanding that the opportunity George Lucas’ mega-hit had provided wasn’t in jumping on the sci fi bandwagon, but in tapping into that same mix of boomer nostalgia/budding fanboy geekdom which he did with Superman. 

Sitting with Peter Bart and Peter Guber on AMC’s Sunday Morning Shootout in 2003, Calley remembered “…making Dirty Harry’s for $3-3.2 million.  That was a great business.  It was almost impossible to lose money.”  That, perhaps was the key.  Costs weren’t as extravagant as they are today, and Calley rarely went the big budget route (Superman and Exorcist were rare exceptions).  In the main, he forged an admirable balance between his creative wish list and hard dollar earners, bringing both prestige and financial stability to Warners throughout his tenure. 

Calley’s read on the audience of the time was astute enough that he managed to hit – with enviable regularity – that sweet spot where fine filmmaking and commercial success walked hand in hand.  Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men (1976), Boorman’s Deliverance, and Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon were not only critical and commercial hits, but were actually among the top eighty-odd earners of the 1970s. 

And then, another rarity of rarities.  In an industry in which doors are something executives usually get pushed out of, Calley left Warners of his own volition.  By his own admission, after 13 years at the studio he was burned out.  “I wasn’t enjoying it,” he would say later, “I had lost myself.”  So, he walked away, not only from Warners, but from the business, spending the next 10 years traveling, sailing (which was one of his passions). 

A decade away from the business and he was recharged, but when he came back – as a producer partnered with his old Catch-22 collaborator and friend, Mike Nichols – he wasn’t completely sure of his footing.  The business had changed, the audiences had changed.  “I made dopey mistakes,” he later appraised, “like Tank Girl (1995), not getting it, thinking, ‘Is this the world I’ve re-entered?  Does everybody have a safety pin through their tongue now?” 

But whatever Calley’s doubts were, mixed in with Tank Girl were more notable efforts like Postcards from the Edge (1990, directed by Nichols) and the Merchant/Ivory classic, Remains of the Day (1993) for which he received his only Oscar nomination. 

Now firmly back on the movie scene again, Calley was asked to head up the United Artists side of a floundering MGM/UA.  The once great pair of studios were now one broke company desperate to establish some kind of credibility as a still viable movie-making enterprise.  He revived the James Bond franchise with Pierce Brosnan taking over the iconic role in Goldeneye (the series’ highest-grossing installment).  The studio’s Americanized version of French farce La Cage aux Folles became the $124 million-grossing hit, The Birdcage (again, it was Nichols at the directorial helm).  Never giving up his penchant for artier fare, Calley’s MGM/UA also turned out critics’ darlings like Leaving Las Vegas and Sir Ian McKellan’s Richard III. 

In 1996, Sony Pictures Entertainment (which owns Columbia Pictures) brought him on board to head up the company which was also going through rocky times.  Again, for seven years, Calley mixed big earners (Spider-Man, 2002) with more substantial fare (As Good As It Gets, 1997), and sometimes rolled the company’s dice on something delightfully, bizarrely, exhilitaringly unique (Men in Black, 1997).  By the time he retired from SPE, the company was again on firm footing. 

He went back to producing and as per the usual, blended big box office (The DaVinci Code [2006] and sequel, Angels and Demons [2009]) with more substantive fare (the Mike Nichols-directed drama, Closer [2004]). 

He was not flawless.  There are those who thought they’d caught a raw deal from him, and certainly Calley turned out his share of clunkers, both as a producer (turgid historical drama Fat Man and Little Boy, 1989) and as a studio boss (Sony’s bloated Godzilla remake, 1998).  And let us not forget Tank Girl.  But if you view a life on balance, John Calley’s moviemaking cred weighs overwhelmingly to the positive, and for that the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences gave him, in 2009, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.  The MPAA cited his “…intellectual rigor, sophisticated artistic sensibilities and calm, understated manner,” and declaring him “…one of the most trusted and admired figures in Hollywood.”  

But it was for those years at Warners I was a fan; that pitch perfect blend of the commercial and the compelling, the entertaining the engaging.  I never saw anything about him that said this, but I suspect that in his years at SPE and afterward, seeing at how audiences and tastes had changed, he must’ve – must have – missed those days when today’s art house fare could be a mainstream hit. 

He said he’d had two passions:  to make movies and to run a studio.  I suppose his great strength was his ability to combine both sensibilities in each passion, having a nose for a hit as a producer, and providing filmmakers not with a boss but with a colleague in a studio’s front office. 

And now he’s gone.  Maybe, sadly, a kind of moviemaking with him.  But for those of you who might still not see cause to bow your head just a little out of respect because he was one of The Suits, remember:  he didn’t wear one.

- Bill Mesce

He played leads – but never became a star.  He played supporting parts – but was never considered a second-stringer.  He moved between the big and little screen easily throughout much of his career without ever looking like he’d overreached (for the former), or was slumming (in the latter).  The only thing that mattered – the one thing that was consistent whatever the vehicle, whatever the medium, whatever the size of the role – was the caliber of his work.  By his own description, Cliff Robertson, who passed away this week one day after his 88^th birthday, was a “utility player” who shone whatever his position.

Still in his 20s, he was already working regularly on TV during those early, hectic days of live broadcasting in the early 1950s, and just as immediately demonstrating the utility that marked his career.  His range was limitless as he performed in everything from heavyweight drama anthology Hallmark Hall of Fame to Saturday morning kiddie sci fier, Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers, leading all those little junior Rocket Rangers out there with (in the words of Variety) “gee whiz enthusiasm” in pledging the “Rocket Ranger Code.”

He began to get his first major roles in film in the mid- and late 1950s, playing opposite – and losing Kim Novak to — William Holden in the steamy (for its time) Picnic (1955), playing a humanitarian platoon leader in the bowdlerized film adaptation of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead (1958), knocking the teen girls dizzy as The Big Kahuna surfing king in Gidget (1959), making them swoon again as one of an ensemble of dedicated young (and uniformly good-looking) wannabe doctors in The Interns (1962).

At the same time, he continued to maintain a heavy presence in TV, guest-starring on some of the most popular series of the day such as The Untouchables, Wagon Train, Ben Casey as well as drama anthologies like The United States Steel Hour.

Curiously, it was these anthologies, not his big screen work, which provided the best opportunities for Robertson to showcase just how strong and serious a dramatic actor he was.  He racked up Emmy nominations for the TV versions of The Days of Wine and Roses and The Two Worlds of Charly Gordon, and copped a win for The Game. 

TV also provided Robertson with the work for which most contemporary audiences probably remember him thanks to endless re-runs on cable, namely his appearances in two of the most memorable episodes of the classic sci fi/fantasy series, The Twilight Zone.  In “One Hundred Yards Over the Rim,” Robertson plays a 19^th century immigrant settler, his wagon stranded in the desert of the American southwest, who sets out for help for his ailing son and finds himself mysteriously transported to the 20^th century.  Even stronger is one of the all-time series classics, “The Dummy,” with Robertson as a tortured ventriloquist sure the little wooden figure on his knee has a malicious mind of his own.\

He finally seemed to break out of the junior film ranks with P.T. 109 (1963), a dramatized (highly dramatized) version of author Robert J. Donovan’s account of John F. Kennedy’s adventures aboard the eponymous torpedo boat during WW II.  Robertson was the choice of Kennedy himself to play the lead (Jackie Kennedy wanted Warren Beatty).  It’s not a particularly good movie, it’s lousy history, and it’s not even Robertson’s best work, but the high profile film boosted the actor’s visibility and improved the roles coming his way.  Among the best of those which soon followed was that of the vicious, back-biting presidential candidate Joe Cantwell trying to out-maneuver nice-guy candidate Henry Fonda in the film version of Gore Vidal’s astute political drama, The Best Man (1964).

Robertson reached a professional peak of sorts a few years later with his Oscar-winning role in Charly (1968), a big screen redo of “The Two Worlds of Charly Gordon.” Robertson had already lost one juicy role in a film remake of his TV work when Jack Lemmon had been cast in the film version of The Days of Wine and Roses in the role for which Robertson had gotten an Emmy nom.  Determined not to lose Charly as well, he bought the rights to the story himself and spent years trying to get the film made.  It was worth it.

It’s a heart-breaking performance.  Charly Gordon is an often teased mentally retarded adult who volunteers for an experimental surgical procedure which transforms him into a genius.  But the effects of the procedure are short-lived, and Gordon – fighting the clock trying to use his new brain powers to solve the tragic puzzle of his come-and-go mental prowess – needs to face going back to his childish state.

Despite the commercial and critical success of Charly, despite the Oscar, Robertson never quite made the step up to marquee value star.  But the actor seemed to understand the ephemeral nature of status in Hollywood.  “The year you win an Oscar is the fastest year in a Hollywood actor’s life,” he would later observe.  “Twelve months later they ask, ‘Who won the Oscar last year?’”

But if he was frustrated, he kept it to himself, and continued on as the valued utility player, showing up when called, always putting out the good work as he did as a well-meaning if prosaic CIA officer in Three Days of the Condor (1975), one of the signature exercises in political paranoia from the era.

His biggest career challenge came in 1977, not in a role, not in a film or TV project, but in the all-too-seamy all-too-real world of corporate Hollywood.  Robertson found his name forged on a $10,000 check.  Despite being advised by the power circles of moviedom to keep the issue to himself, the actor blew the whistle on what came to be known as “Hollywoodgate.” The forgery turned out to be one of several traced to Columbia studio chief David Begelman who lost his job, and was convicted and sentenced to probation.  Hollywood, however, having the free-spinning moral compass it does, soon welcomed Begelman back and in 1980 he became the president of MGM.  Robertson, on the other hand, was tacitly punished for going public on executive suite misdoings, and didn’t get another acting call for four years.

By the time the work started coming his way again, his leading man days were over, but Robertson hadn’t lost a step, always bringing his A game whether it was on a high profile feature (Brainstorm, 1983; Star 80, 1983), or a switch-off-the-brain time-killer (Escape from L.A., 1996), or a prime time TV soap like Falcon Crest where he had a recurring role in the mid-80s. 

Youngsters discovered him – and oldsters were reminded about him –  when he appeared as Uncle Ben in Spider-Man (2002), struggling to understand his young nephew’s angst, and unknowingly – through his own innate decency – giving the fledgling superhero his moral center.  With all the gravitas of his years, and with a gravelly voice that sounded weighed down by the wisdom of the ages, Robertson gives his nephew his mandate and one of the all-time great lines in superhero flicks:  “Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.”

To the mass public, Robertson was not well-known enough, not iconic enough to be missed, his many sterling performances too poorly remembered to still be appreciated.  And if that’s the case for anyone reading this, than salute the survival of a quality performer who, in one of the most competitive and vicious of trades, maintained a career over six decades.  That alone is worth commemorating in an arena Robertson once described thusly:  “This isn’t exactly a stable business.  It’s like trying to stand up in a canoe with your pants down.”

- Bill Mesce

Before we called them MILFs or cougars – long before – there was only Mrs. Robinson.  She was a mid-1960s adolescent fantasy come true; the sexy, available older woman/housewife next door with an appetite for young not-quite-men/not-quite-boys.  She became so indelibly, boldly etched in the public consciousness that the name became a noun – and, for young males, a hope – and the referenced fodder for a thousand if-only-they-were-true Letters to Penthouse.

But the character in the movie The Graduate (1967) was no exercise in wish fulfillment, no Weird Science (1985) or Risky Business (1983) teen’s wet dream.  Rather, Mrs. Robinson was a devouring suburban nightmare, a paean to unmoored youth and disillusioned adulthood and life-draining, soul-killing upper middle class ennui.

Over four decades later, the name still resonates, her portrait so deeply carved into the pop culture by Anne Bancroft’s letter perfect Oscar-nominated performance that Mrs. Robinson remains the proto-MILF/cougar, the root of that particular sexual anthropological tree.  Throughout her career, Bancroft would be approached by admirers to be told that, as young men, her Mrs. Robinson had been their first sexual fantasy.  That unending tribute demonstrated how well she had captured the undeniable casual eroticism of the character.

And it irritated the hell out of her because it sometimes seemed as if she’d done nothing else…and that was hardly true, hardly true at all.

She’d been born Anna Maria Louisa Italiano in the Bronx of immigrant parents, attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and almost immediately found work in the early years of live TV.

A friend of hers was called for a screen test at 20^th Century Fox, and Bancroft followed along to read opposite.  Fox passed on the friend but offered Bancroft a studio contract.  She jumped at the opportunity, later admitting she had wanted not to be an actress, but a movie star.  Fox chief Daryl Zanuck thought her name “too ethnic,” and gave her a list of possible alternatives.  She picked “Bancroft” for its dignified sound.

At Fox, she became neither an actress nor a star.  She might have had a new, dignified name, but the career Fox handed her was hardly comprised of classy stuff.  The studio ran her through one forgettable flick after another; pictures like Gorilla at Large (1954) and New York Confidential (1955).  “Every picture I did was worse than the last one,” she would later say.  The parade of junk took a toll on her spirits and her personal life; her first marriage foundered.

As soon as her Fox contract expired, she high-tailed it back to New York to study at the legendary Actor’s Studio.  She would come to the attention of Arthur Penn and later say the director was probably the single individual who’d had the greatest impact on her career.

Penn put her through a series of top-of-the-line performances which effectively re-minted Bancroft as an actress of the first order rebooting her career.  On stage, she copped back-to-back Tony wins under Penn’s direction, first in the 1958 romantic comedy/drama, Two for the Seesaw, and then the following year for what would become one of her signature roles, that of Helen Keller’s tutor, Annie Sullivan, in The Miracle Worker. Penn would tap her again for the 1962 film version which would put an Oscar on her mantelpiece next to her two Tonys.

It would, over the years, become a rather crowded mantel.

For the next few years she split her time between stage and screen, consistently turning in acclaimed work and winning another Oscar nomination in 1964 as the dissatisfied housewife of Peter Finch in the Brit drama, The Pumpkin Eater.

But if Penn had been her first-stage booster rocket, Mike Nichols put her career in orbit with what is easily her best-remembered role as Mrs. Robinson in the screen adaptation of Charles Webb’s novel, The Graduate.  She was 35 at the time, made up to play 40, while Dustin Hoffman was 30 playing painfully awkward 20-year-old Benjamin Braddock, freshly graduated from college, trapped between the great expectations of family and friends, and his own utter cluelessness as to what to do with his life.  He finds a comfortable numbness in the seducing arms of family friend Mrs. Robinson.

As it turns out, Mrs. Robinson is looking for some numbness of her own.  She’s never more sexy than her initial, liquory come-on (“Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me…aren’t you?”), their later encounters becoming as erotic as a root canal.  Mrs. Robinson isn’t there for romance or even for sex.  She’s killing time, hitting on Benjamin the same way she hits on a bottle of booze.  At one point, Benjamin, frustrated by the emptiness of their robotic trysts, presses her for conversation.  For once, her self-control falters, and she allows herself one, pained rumination on her long-ago, dead dream of being an artist.  For that moment, the gray-templed sex icon reveals the wounded soul under the well-coifed, immaculately posed exterior, and the predatory lady next door becomes both pitiful and pitiable.  Benjamin is hiding from the terror of an unknowable future; Mrs. Robinson from the terror of her unbearable present.  Said Bancroft of the character:  “(We) reach a point in our lives, look around and realize that all the things we said we’d do and become will never come to be – and that we’re ordinary.”

She was a star now, but didn’t play the star game, didn’t make star choices, was even willing to pull back on her career a bit in favor of time at home.  That stability and independence seemed to be directly tied to the stability she now had in her personal life.

In 1961, she met then comedy writer Mel Brooks while rehearsing for a TV show.  According to Brooks, it was love at first sight, and three years later they were married.  They seemed, to outsiders, the oddest of odd couples:  the svelte, classy-looking, dark-haired Italian Catholic, and the short, homely, shtick-dishing Jewish shlubb.  But, according to director Robert Allen Ackerman, they made “…one of the great show business love stories of all time…They were madly in love with each other…,” and they would laugh and love until her death.

If Bancroft sometimes chafed at how Mrs. Robinson overshadowed her later career, it’s understandable.  The body of work she produced over the next thirty-plus years is impressive in its breadth and outstanding in its consistent quality.  She moved between the big and small screen and the stage, gracefully aging from leading lady to character actress, piling on the critical plaudits year by year.  She played drama (Young Winston, 1972; ‘night, Mother, 1986), she played comedy (The Prisoner of Second Avenue, 1975; Honeymoon in Vegas, 1992); she played cultured upscale ladies (The Elephant Man, 1980), she played noodgy yentas (Broadway Bound, 1992).  She would add another Tony nomination to her score playing Golda Meir on Broadway in 1977’s Golda, and run her Oscar nomination tally to five with her portrayal of a fading prima ballerina in The Turning Point (1977), and the tough-minded mother superior of Agnes of God (1995).  She increasingly turned to television where there were better roles for mature actresses, amassing five Emmy nods and wins for Annie, the Women in the Life of a Man (1970), and Deep in My Heart (1999), making her the 15^th performer to take the Triple Crown of Oscar, Tony, and Emmy wins.

Though much of her work had an upscale prestige to it, she was not above knocking herself off her classy pedestal, buffooning around in her husband’s Silent Movie (1976), his remake To Be or Not to Be (1983), and his parody Dracula:  Dead and Loving It (1995).  She even turned up as a shrink in a 1994 episode of “The Simpsons,” trying to cure Marge of her fear of flying.

She kept her private life private, not sharing her battle with uterine cancer, working nearly to the end, picking up her last Emmy nomination for the Showtime TV movie, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003), and then cutting up with her husband in a 2004 episode of the HBO comedy series, Curb Your Enthusiasm, with her and Mel Brooks goofily parodying a scene from his 1968 classic, The Producers. For many, then, her death was unexpected and a tragic surprise.

She wanted it otherwise, but even if she were only remembered for The Miracle Worker and The Graduate, there’s many a lengthy filmography which can’t boast even one work of that caliber.  For those who knew her – and particularly, those who knew her well – her legacy consists of so much more.  Said David Geffen, “She was the consummate everything.  Actress, comedienne, beauty, mother and wife.  She made it all look easy.”

- Bill Mesce

When it comes to actresses, the movie business has always had an eye for beautiful faces.  Unfortunately, it has often only been an afterthought as to whether or not that beautiful face could do anything other than be beautiful.  Leaf through the archives of any of the movie glamour magazines from long ago and you’ll find them a cemetery of beautiful faces primped and hyped by the Hollywood PR machine to be The Next Great Thing.  Some never made it past a screen test, while others managed to survive a few screen roles, but through lack of talent, charisma, the right roles — whatever mysterious magic it is that causes a performer to click with an audience — soon disappeared, never to be heard of again.  It’s a long, looong casualty list of forgotten pretties like Merrilyn Grix,  Eleanor Counts, Kathy Marlowe, Myrna Dell, Sandra Giles, Jean Colleran, Sunnie O’Dea, Eve Whitney, Helen Perry, Colleen Townsend, Dawn Addams, Ina Balin, Nicole Maurey…and on and on and on.

But sometimes Hollywood gets it right.

Lee Remick was beautiful.  Petite, with an hourglass shape, devastating blue eyes, and the delicate features of a porcelain doll under a cascade of honey-blonde hair.

She was, in fact, beautiful to the point of distraction, considered early in her career as “America’s Answer to Brigitte Bardot.”  Until she began her fight with cancer in 1989, the years remained kind to her throughout her career, allowing her an elegant, mature beauty every bit as eye-catching as the sex kitten allure of her early professional years.  John J. O’Connor, reviewing the 1980 TV movie adaptation of Marilyn French’s novel, The Women’s Room, wrote of Remick that she was an “…uncommonly gifted actress whose somewhat fragile, almost stereotype good looks tend to distract one from that fact.”

“Uncommonly gifted actress.”  That was the kicker.  Right out of the gate, with her debut role in Elia Kazan’s prescient expose of media power, A Face in the Crowd (1957), she demonstrated a powerful, first rank talent.

She never managed to be called “great,” the way Bette Davis, or Joan Crawford, or Rita Hayworth were considered great, but then she never had that kind of iconic star aura to her either.  For stars, what makes them stars is something familiar which surfaces in every role:  Davis’ brassiness, Crawford’s stridency, Hayworth’s sexual heat.  Remick didn’t have that; she was too good at what she did.  When she finally passed in 1991, the most common word which showed up in her obituaries was “versatile.”

Born in Quincy, Massachusetts of an actress mother and a department store-owning father, she had trained for modern dance and ballet but, by her own admission, wasn’t particularly good at either.  She studied acting at Barnard College and then moved on to the legendary Actors Studio, becoming part of a generation of one-of-a-kind AS alums which included Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Shelley Winters, Rod Steiger, Eva Marie Saint, Dennis Hopper, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward…  That the list doesn’t end there sends one’s head reeling, and Remick was as good at her craft as any of them.

She had been working on stage and in live TV drama when AS co-founder Kazan caught her on TV and cast her as the bimboesque baton twirler who turns the head of TV personality Lonesome Rhodes (Andy Griffith).  In true AS fashion, she lived with a local family during the Arkansas shooting and practiced baton twirling so she’d come off natural on camera.  And she did.  When the cameras rolled, there was nothing of the well-educated young woman from Massachusetts up there, but a leggy, backwoods teen easily enthralled by a big-time TV star.

If she had a trademark that was it; that she had no trademark. The Los Angeles Times’ Charles Champlin wrote of her that in every role she “…ceased to be the actress acting and became the character.”

Her range was limitless.  There was the simple, small town Texas girl of Baby, the Rain Must Fall (1965) trying to reboot a life for herself, her daughter, and husband Steve McQueen just released from prison; which was 180 degrees away from the uptown Manhattan sophisticate sexual compulsive of The Detective (1968), married to hard-bitten cop Frank Sinatra. There was her Oscar-nominated turn as the farm girl turned partying alcoholic housewife of The Days of Wine and Roses (1962), riding a wave of booze to oblivion; which was equally distant from her swivel-hipped trailer camp trash whose questionable rape puts vengeful husband Ben Gazzara (another AS grad) on trial for murder in the deliciously torrid Anatomy of a Murder (1959).

She was as adept at straight drama (Wild River, 1960, her self-professed favorite role, opposite Montgomery Clift) as broad comedy (playing a militant Prohibitionist in the comedy Western, The Hallelujah Trail, 1965).  She never gave up the stage, becoming good friends with tune-meister Steven Sondheim after appearing in his short-lived Anyone Can Whistle in 1965, and copping a Tony nod two years later for Frederick Knott’s taut thriller, Wait Until Dark.

The 1960s and especially the 1970s were not generous ones for actresses, particularly those moving into their 40s.  It sometimes seemed the Academy Awards had to beat the bushes to come up with 10 nominees for Best Actress/Supporting Actress categories (Example:  Beatrice Straight won her Supporting Actress statue for 1976’s Network with less than six minutes of screen time; the smallest Oscar-winning performance on record).  With good women’s roles dwindling, Remick smoothly transitioned back to TV continuing to turn out high caliber work racking up seven Emmy nominations in TV movies like The Women’s Room and mini-series like QB VII (1974), Jennie:  Lady Randolph Churchill (1975), Ike:  The War Years (1978).

When asked why she now appeared so rarely on the big screen, Remick replied, “I make movies for grownups.  When Hollywood starts making them again, I’ll start acting in them again.”

My personal favorite wasn’t one of her award-nominated parts, nor the touchstone roles talked about in her obits, terrific as they all were.  It was her turn in the 1968 comedy thriller, No Way to Treat a Lady, adapted from William Goldman’s novel by John Gay, and directed by Jack Smight. I remember it because it seemed to capture all of what she could do in the character of self-possessed sophisticate and wickedly sly big city survivor who, underneath all that urban savvy, was a vulnerable lonely, emotionally bruised girl.

She plays Kate Palmer, an independent, city-smart Lincoln Center tour guide – kind of an ancestral Sex and the City urban single – who may have caught a glimpse of a killer (fellow ASer Rod Steiger) who’s been strangling little old ladies.  George Segal is menschy NYPD detective Morris Brummel still living at home, harangued every day by a doting mom (a hilarious Eileen Heckart) about his lack of a college diploma, wife, children, and how poorly he stacks up against his doctor brother.

From the moment she opens her door to him, Morris is smitten.  She’s still half asleep, her tousled hair tumbling down unheeded into her face, and other parts of her also in danger of tumbling out of her nightgown, but she’s too damned tired to care.  But, bit by bit, she awakens to the inherent decency of the cop in her doorway.

What plays out is a romance so lovingly pieced together, it’s a shame it hadn’t been lifted out of a wry serial killer thriller and dropped into a true big city romance.  We see Remick – ably matched by Segal – sweet, sly, goofy, comically cunning in the way her shiksa goddess converts Momma Brummel to her side by pretending to boss her son around the same way Momma does.

But the highlight of their pas de deux takes place on Morris’ “yacht” – a police patrol boat.  The relationship teeters on the brink of turning from dating to something deeper.  She senses Morris’ reluctance (he’s not commitment-shy, but feels unworthy) and John Gay gives her a lovely speech:  “I’ve had him already,” she tells Morris.

“Who?”

“Randy Beautiful.”  She’s had the nights filled with hunks and little else, cavorted with the beautiful people who were only beautiful on the outside.  In Morris, she sees the proverbial inner beauty.  “Are you gentle, Morris?” she asks him, her voice a mix of hope and plaintiveness.  “You can have me if you say yes.”

It’s the kind of grownup moment one rarely sees in major films these days, and even more rare is to see it done so well, with an achingly sweet honesty, and an equally sweet simplicity.

Perhaps if she had lived longer, pulled a Meryl Streep or a Glenn Close, surviving to nab the juicy mature roles that have come to both actresses, she might finally have been tagged “great” – because she was.

But whether anyone said it or not, the greatness was there, for like any great performer, she had her own voice, her own unique gifts.  Said Charles Champlin, “…her beauty, both perky and patrician, and her obvious intelligence were hers alone.”

- Bill Mesce

It is to be expected that the obituaries and commemorations for Peter Falk, who passed away last Thursday, would center on his four-time Emmy-winning starring role in the long-running series Columbo (the character was first introduced in a 1968 TV movie, it was turned into an NBC series running 1971-1977, then ABC revived the brand in 1989 for 24 TV movies, the last airing in 2003). His role as the perennially rumpled, misleadingly bumbling, “Ahhh, just one more thing…” homicide detective was not only his most famous and memorable character, but one which achieved that rarified altitude of “iconic.” Think Falk; think Columbo.

And as deserving as the tributes are, as laudatory as the valedictories have been, they still don’t do justice to the range and power Falk demonstrated throughout his career as an actor on both large and small screen.

Even the laurels thrown on his work in Columbo focus on the visible elements, the “easy” part – the pretense of messy, shuffling ineptitude – and not the slyer, sometimes surprisingly darker elements Falk – in collaboration with series creators William Link and Richard Levinson along with their stable of writers – occasionally injected to keep the formula fresh and the character intriguing.

The show was always fun, but every so often it would hit some resonating chord, something hearkening back to J.B. Priestly’s 1945 play, An Inspector Calls, the pointed prototype for Columbo, which brought a human element to a TV genre that – then and now – was often about no more than putting a puzzle together, and forgetting the tragedy behind it.  In some of those episodes, where Falk was matched with a performer of equal power, there was an element of real pity (opposite Donald Pleasance as a desperate winery owner who murders his crass brother to save the family business; Patrick McGoohan as a starchy military academy commander fighting to save his beloved institution) and tragedy (Janet Leigh as a past-it movie actress slipping into senility and not even remembering her crime; symphony conductor John Cassavetes’ humiliation of wife Blythe Danner when she learns he murdered to conceal an affair) that, at best, seems only perfunctory in today’s CSIs and Castles and the like.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing episodes was the awkwardly titled, “The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case,” written by Robert M. Young, in which Falk goes up against Theodore Bikel as head of a Mensa-type organization of certified geniuses.  There’s an absolutely chilling scene before the final reveal where Falk and Bikel sit together during a power failure, and as they pass the time in conversation – what the screenwriting gurus would maintain was a throw-away scene, but stands as one of the most memorable moments in the series – Columbo, for the only time in the series, explains himself:

“You know, sir, it’s a funny thing. All my life I kept running into smart people. I don’t just mean smart like you and the people in this house. You know what I mean. In school, there were lots of smarter kids. And when I first joined the force, sir, they had some very clever people there. And I could tell right away that it wasn’t gonna be easy making detective as long as they were around. But I figured, if I worked harder than they did, put in more time, read the books, kept my eyes open, maybe I could make it happen. And I did. And I really love my work, sir.”

It’s not just Young’s on-point dialogue, but Falk’s delivery that sends a chill through the scene:  the sense of a committed obsessive, the slight touch of vindictiveness toward all those “very clever people” he’s outdone, and finally, the malevolent – maybe even slightly sadistic? – declaration that nothing gives him greater satisfaction than the way he toys with and manipulates and finally lowers the boom on a killer.

But anyone who knew Falk’s work before he landed Columbo should not have been surprised at what he could do with the part.  He’d already been moving easily between film and TV and the stage, had been twice nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, picked up a Tony for his lead role in Neil Simon’s The Prisoner of Second Avenue, and had already copped an Emmy for the 1961 TV movie, The Price of Tomatoes. He’d even already played a Columbo-esque character in the short-lived but critically-acclaimed early ‘60s lawyer series, The Trials of O’Brien. There was a reason he was considered worth the then considerable amount of $250,000 per Columbo episode, and that NBC and the producers were willing to accept his demand of doing the show on a rotating basis with two other 90-minute mystery series rather than as a weekly.

Throughout his career, Falk was a utility player, carrying leads (dim-bulb planner of one of the biggest robberies in U.S. history in the true-crime-inspired The Brinks Job [1978]), supporting roles (the loving grandfather who narrates The Princess Bride [1987), or working in an ensemble (as a high-strung cabbie in the all-star comedy epic, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World [1963]).  He played broad comedy (Jack Lemmon’s inept henchman in The Great Race [1965]), domestic drama (the frustrated husband who doesn’t understand the how or why of his wife’s breakdown in A Woman Under the Influence [1974]), heroes (the war-loving corporal of Anzio [1968]), or villains.

His breakout role had been in the true-crime-inspired Murder, Inc. (1960) playing Mob contract killer Abe “Kid Twist” Reles.  Murder, Inc. had been one of a stream of punchy “B” caliber gangster flicks (I, Mobster [1958], Al Capone [1959], The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond [1960], Portrait of a Mobster [1961]) filling out double bills at the time, and Murder, Inc. shared all the same limitations of its contemporaries:  obviously tight budgets, colorful but rarely memorable second tier casts, clearly back lot locations.  But Falk’s performance as the ice-blooded sociopathic Reles is from some other A-caliber universe.  Every scene he’s in is electric; and every scene without him suddenly feels leaden.  A Murder, Inc. with a full cast equal to Falk would have been an all-time gangster classic.

The very next year Falk earned another Oscar nod playing the Dr. Jekyll version of his Mr. Hyde/Reles in Frank Capra’s adaptation of Damon Runyon’s Depression-era Mob comedy, Pocketful of Miracles. Tweaking the same kind of character that, in Murder, Inc., had sent a shiver down spines, he now charmed and tickled as the exasperated gangland secretary of state for Mob boss Glenn Ford, watching his carefully arranged deal for Ford with a bigger Mob go down the tubes as Ford attempts to do an ever-more-complicated good deed for a street corner apple-seller (Bette Davis).

It seemed there was no genre or style beyond Falk.  In Sidney Pollock’s surreal antiwar story Castle Keep (1969), Falk hit the perfect note for Pollock’s dreamy, highly symbolic vision; he was a flat-out hoot in his largely ad libbed cameo in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World; he was painfully life-sized in the TV movie A Step Out of Line (1971) as a financially-strapped working man looking to a bank robbery not out of greed, but for survival.

Along with friends Ben Gazzara and John Cassavetes, he would sometimes work just for a paycheck (the impressively bad Italian-produced Machine Gun McCain [1969]) to help Cassavetes raise financing for his independently-produced films in which Falk did some of his best work:  A Woman Under the Influence (with Cassavetes’ wife Gena Rowlands), and maybe Cassavetes’ most accessible work, Husbands (1970), with Falk, Cassavetes, and Gazzara as three friends on a midlife crisis-fueled bender following the death of a fourth buddy.

Watching Falk in Cassavetes’  largely improvised dramas back-to-back with him pulling off with equal adeptness the straight-faced silliness of The In-Laws (1979 – his explanation of “The Guacamole Treaty” which protects the giant flies preying on Amazonian natives is an exquisite piece of deadpan comedy) is a better appreciation of the breadth and depth of the actor than simply to tout how beautifully he pulled off Columbo.

Like the good lieutenant once said, “I figured, if I worked harder than they did, put in more time, read the books, kept my eyes open, maybe I could make it happen.” And every time Peter Falk stepped on a stage or in front of a camera, he made it happen.

- Bill Mesce

By most accounts, Harry Cohn was a royal son of a bitch.

For the uninformed, Harry Cohn was co-founder of Columbia Pictures, and the autocratic ruler of the studio from its founding in 1919 until his death in 1958.  He was vulgar, crass, tyrannical, a screaming, foul-mouthed verbal bully i.e. a royal son of a bitch.

He was also a cheap son of a bitch.

Originally considered a “Poverty Row” studio, Cohn’s Columbia –  at least at first – refused to build a roster of salaried stars as the other studios did.  Cohn didn’t want the overhead or the headaches he saw saddling other studio chiefs with their contract talent.  Cheaper and easier was to pay those studios a flat fee for the one-time use of their marquee value stars to give Columbia’s B-budgeted flicks an A-list shine.  Columbia was considered such a nickel-and-dime outfit at the time that other studios often loaned their stars to Columbia as a form of punishment; Columbia as a penal colony.

By the late 1930s, though, even Cohn saw the benefit in having his own on-tap stars and began to build a stable, but even then he wanted a configuration which would minimize the problems he saw other studios having with rebellious stars.  A favored Cohn tactic:  hire one actor as an always threatening waiting-in-the-wings replacement for another – hire a Kim Novak to keep a Rita Hayworth in line, for example.  Start mouthing off you were unhappy with your salary or with the pictures you were being assigned or the directors working with you, and on suspension you’d go, your name growing colder in the public consciousness while your salaried clone got all the parts – and the public attention that went with them — you would have gotten.

And that was Cohn’s thinking in 1939 when both William Holden and Glenn Ford were put under contract to Columbia.  Cohn envisaged them as fit for the same kinds of roles and, as such, saw the opportunity to play them against each other.

But the actors fooled him.  Instead of cutthroat competitors, they became good friends and remained so until Holden’s death in 1981.

Oh, they did sometimes compete for the same parts but it was hardly the kind of manipulative managerial power play contest Cohn had hoped for.  Rather, it was one even the two friends had to laugh at.  Ford would later tell of both he and Holden stuffing paper in their shoes to boost their heights as they went after the same role.  “Finally, neither of us could walk, so we said the hell with it.”

Fittingly as friends, the course of their separate careers mirrored each other to an almost Twilight Zone-y degree:

Holden’s family had moved to southern California from Illinois while Ford’s had migrated to the same part of the country from their native Quebec.  They were both discovered about the same time on the west coast theater circuit, put under contract about the same time (Ford originally to 20^th Century Fox, Holden in a deal which split his services between Columbia and Paramount), and both won their first starring roles in 1939 — Ford in the Western Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence, Holden in the melodrama Golden Boy. And each came damned close to blowing his chance as a film actor first time out.

Ford only landed at Columbia after Fox cut him loose following a dud of a screen test.  And Holden’s career came even closer to ending before it had begun.

The story has long been a favorite bit of Hollywood lore, probably because it plays so much like something from a movie:

Holden had been given the lead in the screen adaptation of Clifford Odets’ stage play about a young man torn between boxing and the violin, but the novice film actor’s work during the first days of Golden Boy’s shooting had been so underwhelming the producers had decided to can him.  But co-star Barbara Stanwyck saw something in the young actor the execs didn’t, and she lobbied forcefully for him until she convinced the chiefs to keep Holden on.  The actor’s work grew more assured over the course of the picture, his career was launched, and thereafter he was known as  Golden Holden or – appropriately enough – Golden Boy  (the actor never forgot what Stanwyck had done for him, and every year on the anniversary of the beginning of the Golden Boy shoot, he would send Stanwyck a bouquet of roses, and even surprised her with a public thank-you for the career she’d made possible for him at the 1978 Academy Awards when they appeared as joint presenters).

For the next few years, Ford and Holden worked regularly building up their resumes with solid work in mostly minor films until the outbreak of World War II.  Holden went into the Army Air Corps, Ford into the Marines, and when they came back to Hollywood after the war, they found themselves – like so many actors who’d gone into military service at the time – having lost much of the commercial traction they’d built up in the pre-war years.  In another eerie parallel, each would find their stalled careers rebooted in spectacular fashion with a breakout performance in a film classic.

Ford hit pay dirt first in the 1946 noir Gilda, as a silky ne’er do well grifting about South America who teams up with even silkier and more of a ne’er do well in George Macready.  Macready coos, Ford purrs, and it’s a surprisingly unsubtle and – still to this day — daring bit of mutual homoerotic seduction which brings the two men together, making the ensuing love triangle when Macready’s new wife shows up (Rita Hayworth in her own iconic star-making turn) a true three-way.  When Ford falls for Hayworth’s Gilda, it’s hard to tell if Macready is more burned his friend is running off with his wife, or that his wife is running off with his boyfriend.

The 1946 audience may not have picked up on the boy-boy subtext, but Ford’s steamy coupling with Hayworth (the two would pair up onscreen in four more films) made Gilda a hit, and vaulted the actor instantly into leading man ranks.

Holden’s big break didn’t come until 1950, but it happened with an even more memorable noir, Billy Wilder’s horror show about past-it Hollywood glamour, Sunset Boulevard. It’s a brave performance in a brazen film, Holden playing a flat-busted screenwriter who leaves his integrity at the door to hustle his way into the favors of a reclusive, forgotten, frightfully deluded silent film star (real-life silent great Gloria Swanson).  Scandalous in its time, still creepy today, Sunset – like Gilda – became one of the touchstone movies of the postwar period and put Holden into the orbit of bonafide Hollywood A-list stars.

Though Holden would land a greater number of major hits and be the bigger commercial star, both actors would consistently rank among the top box office draws of the 1950s.  Between them, they compiled a truly outstanding body of work including the social-commentary-camouflaged-as-romantic-comedy Born Yesterday (1950 – Holden); the Dirty Harry-esque classic noir The Big Heat (1953 – Ford); WW II POW camp drama Stalag 17 (1953 – Holden); the movie that brought both rock ‘n’ roll and the postwar juvenile delinquency crisis to the big screen in Blackboard Jungle (1955 – Ford); a blazing indictment of the demeaning corporatization of the American worker in Executive Suite (1954 – Holden); pressure cooker Western 3:10 to Yuma (1957 – Ford); Korean War classic The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954 – Holden); one of the most authentic portrayals of life on the cow trail in Cowboy (1958 – Ford); the steamy Picnic (1955 – Holden); a sly skewering of Ford’s own Western image in The Sheepman (1958 – Ford); Frank Capra’s last film, the Damon Runyon gangster comedy, Pocketful of Miracles (1961 – Ford); and one of the all-time classics of American cinema, David Lean’s epic war film, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957 – Holden).

Though Cohn had intended to threaten each with their interchangeability, Holden and Ford were hardly that.  They were two distinctive brands of actors which was only natural as – despite their close friendship — they were two distinctive brands of people.

Holden (born William Beedle), the son of a well-to-do family, was a bit of a sophisticate and globetrotter for much of his life.  He collected fine art, kept a second home in Switzerland, and perhaps most famously, founded a game preserve in Kenya which was often a gathering place for the good-timing jet set crowd.

There was also something melancholic to Holden, at least in his later years.  At some point, by his own admission, he lost his passion for acting, staying with it simply to maintain his lifestyle.  He was an alcoholic for much of his life, was hit with a suspended sentence for being involved in a fatal drunk driving accident in Italy in the 1960s, and apparently died bleeding out from a head wound from a fall, too intoxicated to call for help.

He was also, to be blunt, the prettier of the two actors.  He had the kind of manly good looks tailor-made for movie magazine covers and one-sheets.  One could argue Picnic was largely sold on the power of its iconic beefcake poster featuring a bare-chested Holden being pawed by a lusting Kim Novak.

Though he played a variety of roles, always with distinction, it’s no surprise, then, that the roles which best suited Holden were savvy guys, sophisticates and/or street-smart guys, men who’d seen the world, knew how it worked, and knew how to work it.  He may have sent ladies’ hearts fluttering as the virile but aimless drifter of Picnic, but he always looked more at home in a suit or a uniform i.e. the wastrel playboy younger brother of uptight Humphrey Bogart in another teaming with Wilder in the romantic comedy delight, Sabrina (1954); the slick ladies’ man competing with David Niven to deflower virgin Maggie McNamara in the – for its time – titillating The Moon Is Blue (1953); the idealistic intellectual of Born Yesterday trying to open ditzy Judy Holliday’s eyes to the law-bending practices of her boorish businessman boyfriend; the equally idealistic junior exec of Executive Suite trying to save his company’s soul; the brutally judgmental cavalry officer of Escape from Fort Bravo (1953); the world-seasoned correspondent in the three-hankie soaper Love Is a Many Splendored Thing (1955); the equally world-seasoned expatriate in the equally soapy The World of Suzie Wong (1960); the forceful Broadway director of The Country Girl (1954); the conniving POW of The Bridge on the River Kwai. It is equally unsurprising that of his three Oscar nominations, one was for the fast-talking, fast-pitching, self-hating de facto gigolo of Sunset Boulevard, and his one Best Actor win was for the caustic, cynical, barracks black market maestro of Stalag 17.

There was always something more proletarian about Glenn (born Gwyllyn) Ford.  Ford’s father, a railroad man, had early on advised him to develop a practical trade to have something to fall back on should acting fail him, and even after he became a major star Ford was known to do his own house repairs – plumbing, wiring, the whole blue-collar working man shebang.  If there’s anything to the idea that the character of the man influences the character of the role, it was probably more clear in Ford than Holden.  Ford certainly thought so saying, “I’ve never played anyone but myself on screen.”

Like Holden, Ford played a wide range of roles, usually acquitting himself well, but despite his career breakout as a smoothie casino operator in Gilda, he would become better remembered for his Everyman-flavored characters.  In fact, Ford would take a critical drubbing for being painfully miscast in the 1962 remake of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the playboy role first done in 1921 by Rudolf Valentino. The actor himself admitted, “I’m out of place doing sophistication.  I’m so uncomfortable in a tuxedo.”

It would be hard to picture Holden the glib smoothie as the tentative, frustrated inner city schoolteacher Ford played so memorably in Blackboard Jungle, or the constantly befuddled fish-out-of-water public relations officer of Teahouse of the August Moon (1956).  While Holden could be the seasoned globe-trotting correspondent involved in a hot-and-heavy affair with a Eurasian doctor during the Chinese revolution in Love Is a Many Splendored Thing or fall for a Hong Kong prostitute in The World of Suzie Wong, he couldn’t be the guy-next-door Ford played as a widower fumblingly trying to find the proverbial “nice girl” in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1963), or the small-time salesman trying to connect with the spinster postmistress of Dear Heart (1964).  Holden tries to reinvigorate the heart of a furniture company in Executive Suite, while Ford only wants to save the reputation of his friend, a dead pilot accused of negligence in Fate Is the Hunter (1964).  If Holden was in a corner, his was the kind of character who tried to fast-talk his way out, whereas Ford floundered and flustered.  Watching Ford overwhelmed by the culture clash of Teahouse, lost in the inanity of military public relations in Don’t Go Near the Water (1957), caught up in a laughable blackmail scheme in The Gazebo (1959), or watching his smooth-running bootlegging operation unravel in the course of his trying to do one good deed in Pocketful of Miracles, it’s clear no actor could flounder, fluster, stammer, and comically collapse as well as Ford.

As much as their personas, their acting styles were radically different as well.  Holden’s emotions were right there; where he raged (the climax of Executive Suite), Ford simmered (the Ahab-like sub skipper of Torpedo Run [1958]); when Holden wrestled with fear (The Bridges at Toko-Ri), Ford fell into a quiet sweat that made you feel the knot in his stomach (The Fastest Gun Alive [1956]).  It was, perhaps, Ford’s more low-key approach which might’ve been responsible – despite a host of acclaimed performances – for his never even being nominated for an Oscar; his work was too subtle to be appreciated.  Holden – whatever the emotion – was certain in what he felt – love, sadness, anger — while Ford had an ability to show a half-dozen different emotions at war with each other.

In Cowboy, his veteran trail boss tries to let down his shell to connect with his young upstart partner (Jack Lemmon) who has mistaken callousness for toughness (“You haven’t gotten tougher,” Ford tells him later, “you’ve gotten miserable”) and offer some solace over the Mexican woman who’s jilted Lemmon.  It all flickers across Ford’s face; the awkwardness, the embarrassment, the knowing the advice will be unwelcomed yet the urge to reach across to the young man, the realization that any words will only sound lame.  Or in Fate Is the Hunter, as Ford, at a safety hearing trying to explain that a devastating air crash may have been more about fate than human error, he fumbles for words, knowing how insane his story sounds, how lacking in solace it will be for the kin who’ve come to hear why they’ve lost their loved ones; it is a beautifully played scene of a man grasping for words to describe something beyond words.  And there’s The Fastest Gun Alive (Ford, in real life, was reputedly one of the fastest draws in Hollywood, able to draw and fire in 0.4 seconds) where soft-spoken store clerk Ford brags to being a speedy draw, then later, when being pushed into a shootout to save his town threatened by gunslingers, must chokingly confess to his own fear, having never drawn against a man.  The quivering tone, the catch in his voice, the glum, unheroic resignation are all pure Glenn Ford.

Heading into the 1960s, the careers of both actors continued to parallel, but now unhappily, as their marquee value began to decline with their middle years.  But Holden was given a late career gift which bypassed Ford.

In 1969, Holden was cast by director Sam Peckinpah in the classic deconstructionist Western, The Wild Bunch. Holden was 51 by then, and the years of alcohol made him look older, but that was perfect for the role of a fading legend of an Old West bandit being pushed to extinction by New West progress (there’s a story Peckinpah considered Ford for the role played by Robert Ryan, an old riding partner of Holden now forced by circumstance to hunt him down; Ryan did an excellent job but it’s tantalizing to consider the added dynamic which might’ve been gained if the part had been played by Holden’s real-life friend Ford) .  The movie rekindled Holden’s career (ironically at a time when he was less committed to it), and led to an Emmy-winning turn in the cop drama TV movie The Blue Knight (1973), and one of the best roles of his career, an Oscar-nominated turn as a TV news division chief trying to stave off the debasing rising tide of reality TV in the frighteningly prescient Sidney Lumet/Paddy Chayefsky black comedy, Network (1976).  With his fading good looks and seen-it-all world weariness, Holden became the go-to guy as an emblem of a kind of dignity and class and honorability which seemed to be falling beneath a steamroller of raucous, cacophonous sensationalism.

Ford, who kept acting until his health began to fail him (a supporting role in the 1991 cable movie The Final Verdict was his last screen work), never got that Third Act spike.  There were a series of minor Westerns (one of his favorite genres; he did two dozen over the course of his career, more than any other single type of film on his resume), sometimes made overseas, and he also found work on TV, some of it memorable (The Brotherhood of the Bell – 1970), some of it less so (The Disappearance of Flight 412 – 1974).  But no matter how large or small the part, how large or small the screen, Ford always brought his A-game.

One of the brightest spots in his late career was what was really no more than a cameo as Pa Kent in Superman (1978).  He has only two scenes:  where he and his wife (Phyllis Thaxter) discover the toddler from space who will grow up to be Clark Kent/Superman, and a scene with teenaged Clark (Jeff East) where, in that wonderfully stumbling Ford fashion, he grapples with trying to explain to his adopted son his grand if undefined, undivined purpose.  The brackets of those two scenes tell us everything we need to know about a decent, hard-working man always trying to do right without always being sure of what it is, and hoping he has passed those same qualities on to his son.  And then the scene ends with Ford done in by a failing heart, and for a second – in that way only Ford seemed to be able to do – a host of emotions rush across his face, he quietly utters “Oh, no,” and we see the great pain of his knowing he’s leaving his struggling, confused son just when he knows the boy needs him most.

William Holden and Glenn Ford – each barely made it out of the Hollywood starting gate, each was launched on a stellar career by a studio manipulator bent on turning them against each other, each ended with a body of work any dedicated performer has to envy.  But what the bigger accomplishment might have been for both men is that in an industry infamous for double-dealing, back-stabbing, bad-mouthing, and for the schadenfreude-esque mantra, “It’s not enough for you to do well, but for your friends have to do badly,” that not Harry Cohn or the inherent competition of the business or their own differences ever got in the way of a friendship they maintained all their lives.

- Bill Mesce

Barbara Stanwyck made her screen debut in 1927 and her strong screen presence established her as a favourite of many great directors, including Cecil B. De Mille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra. She went on to appear in over 80 films, often portraying strong-willed, independent women, was nominated for the Academy Award four times, and won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe. Perhaps her most famous role was that of Phyllis Dietrichson in Billy Wilder’s 1940 film noir, Double Indemnity. Adapted from a James M. Cain novel by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, Double Indemnity represents the high-water mark of 1940s film noir urban crime dramas and Barbara Stanwyck’s finest hour. Here she is, opposite Fred MacMurray as one of cinema’s most devilish femme fatals.

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Bette Davis is one of my favourite actresses of all time, and with good reason. She could play a variety of difficult and powerful roles, though her greatest successes came from her willingness to play unsympathetic characters. She set a new standard for women on film, won two Academy Awards and is often referred to as “The First Lady of the American Screen”. She didn’t win an Oscar for her performance in All About Eve, but she should have. Released in 1950, and written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the film was based on the 1946 short story The Wisdom of Eve, by Mary Orr and featured Davis in the lead role as Margo Channing, a highly regarded but aging Broadway star. The film was praised by critics at the time of its release, and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times wrote, “veteran actress Margo Channing in All About Eve was her greatest role” and I would agree with him. Below is her famous monologue from one of the most memorable scenes in the film.

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