The Hero on the Family Room Floor

It's been a disquieting year, and I've questioned the relevance of doing a blog about old movies. But November 7th would have been my father's 78th birthday, and in recent months I've thought about writing something related to movies to remember him by.

I got interested in classic movies in the early 1980s, when I was about 12 or 13. I spent a lot of time reading about the people who made the movies of the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood. I developed a voracious appetite for the 1930s and ‘40s: the films, directors, actors and actresses, technicians, and the storied studios where these amazing artists did their work.

Truthfully, it probably bordered on the obsessive. Dad saw that I didn’t share his love of sports, but over time he must have sensed that watching movies was something we could do together. This dovetailed perfectly with the advent of the VCR. By the early ‘80s, you didn’t have to miss movies that ran during the work and school day, or late at night – you could watch them any time you wanted to.

So Dad would record old favorites he either first saw as a kid growing up in Youngstown, Ohio, caught on the late show when he was going through Air Force pilot training in the early ‘60s, or saw later on, as he got older – on business trips or just relaxing at home.

Together, we watched practically every genre you could think of: war films, detective stories, courtroom dramas, mysteries, adventures, comedies. His favorites spanned from the 1930s to the ‘70s. He introduced me to the term “character study,” films in which the focus was on a particular individual who triumphed over adversity, grappled with personal demons, or fought to find his place in the world.

I recall a few such studies: “Patton,” in which George C. Scott gives a towering performance as the famous but enigmatic WWII Army commander. “The Conversation,” which examines the ethical ambiguity of a wire-tapper, played by the incomparable Gene Hackman. “A Double Life,” in which the elegant Ronald Colman plays a stage actor who becomes so obsessed with his role as Shakespeare's Othello that he goes mad. I’d never seen a non-musical movie with such a pitch of grand opera.

Oh, and Dad introduced me to Humphrey Bogart. I liked Bogie because he was tough but vulnerable, and he quickly became my favorite male star. “The Maltese Falcon” and “The Big Sleep” took me into the dark, smoky world of film noir, where Bogart was always cool and composed. (In the latter, with Bacall on his arm.)

But Dad showed me the other Bogart, who could play crazy so vividly that it knocked me out. Like in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” where he’s a surly gold prospector who’s been in the sun too long. Or in “The Caine Mutiny,” as the neurotic, vicious, power-hungry captain of a Navy destroyer. Bogart could even be a drunken, comically self-pitying slob piloting a clunky steamer down the Ulanga River in East Africa with Kate Hepburn in tow. That grand adventure, “The African Queen,” was another all-time favorite I got to share with Dad.

Other titles are coming to me now. In “The Flight of the Phoenix,” James Stewart pilots a rattle-trap of a plane that crash-lands in the dessert. Led by their captain, the crew and passengers have to decide how to survive. Similarly, in “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Stalag 17,” two movies about POWs, I learned to admire men who had to rely on their wits in the fight of their lives. (These were men who got captured.)

But the ultimate POW film – and the movie I think of first when I think of those I watched with my pop – was “The Great Escape.” As its title implies, it’s about a group of WWII POWs who devise an ingenious scheme to break out of prison. And what a cast! Steve McQueen, James Garner, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Richard Attenborough, and an international cast to be reckoned with. Though set in the ‘40s, it was made in ’63, and McQueen on his motorcycle was the pinnacle of early-60s cool. Its theme is something to be admired.

Then there were the courtroom dramas, like “Anatomy of a Murder.” Again, James Stewart is the star, and the film had me riveted and awed by wonderful scriptwriting and fine performances. And the murder mysteries – they were funny and surprising. How could you go wrong with Agatha Christie adaptations like “And Then There Were None” and “Witness for the Prosecution”? Their twist endings blew my mind!

Dad introduced me to directors that any film lover must know: Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane,” “The Magnificent Ambersons,” and the wonderfully weird “Touch of Evil,” all about man's cruelty to himself and others; John Ford’s “The Informer,” about duplicity’s power to destroy, and his “Grapes of Wrath,” about the power of faith in mankind; Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train," which riveted me with that merry-go-round finale; and Billy Wilder, better known for comedies, but whose “Lost Weekend” was a character study of the first order – in which Ray Milland grapples with alcoholism in the most vivid way.

I got to know so many great actors through Dad’s refined taste in films. Bogart and Milland, William Holden, Lily Palmer, Charles Boyer, Mary Astor, Henry Fonda, Jessica Tandy, Dirk Bogarde, Trevor Howard, and a slew of other fabulous American, and British, actors… the list goes on.

Dad appreciated characters who demonstrated ingenuity, grit, and perseverance. But he appreciated their flaws too. (All those character studies!) He was not naive, but he was optimistic, and he tended to admire people who illustrated what he saw as the best in us. 

For my part, good or bad, I've followed that through and looked to film for admirable traits to emulate in real life. When Dad and I watched Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Victor McLaglen fight a vicious cult in colonial British India in the rollicking "Gunga Din," I discovered through their adventures what bravery, sacrifice, and heroism could look like.

He would have done it regardless, but through the films he introduced me to, Dad underscored basic values: humor, humility, common sense, level-headedness, resourcefulness, and respect for other people. He showed me how to aspire to be my best through the plots, dialogue, characters – and the actions they take – in these films.

I’ve been reflecting on how much has changed in America since Dad died in 2009. I wonder what he’d think about the climate in this country today. How many of the adjectives I’ve used here are undervalued, scoffed at by the powers that be, if not seen as downright quaint? Maybe no one cares about civility and humility, bravery and sacrifice anymore. We're certainly not seeing it in our national discourse or leadership. We have no profiles in courage.

Dad in the '50s, when the
future lay before him.

Dad had opinions, but he never spoke disparagingly of women or those whose skin color didn’t match his. He was a proud veteran of the Vietnam War, but he didn’t believe in military might for might’s sake. (His all-time favorite film is Kubrick's "Paths of Glory," which can't be more anti-war.) He was conservative, but he wasn’t ignorant. He listened to what you had to say, even if he didn’t agree with you. He did, however, draw the line at unethical, offensive, cruel and stupid. He was traditional, loved growing up in Ohio in the 1950s, but he wasn’t stuck in the past. He believed in the future.

If he were here today, I think he’d wonder what happened to the country he served for 20 years. He'd be mystified that a self-serving narcissist – the type of boastful, nouveau-riche weasel he disdained – became the president of the United States. ("Weasel" was his preferred word for sleazy, disreputable, or contemptuous people.)

One of the ways Dad conveyed to me values worth preserving was through the films we shared together. So as I go on in my life, I’ll try to hold on to the intangibles he instilled in me. 

And as I watch these movies again, I’ll imagine he’s there with me. And I'll strive to remember fairness, tolerance, reason, and, yes, optimism.

A birthday card from Dad in the '80s

And his inscription inside

Great Memories
The first time I saw "The Great Escape," in the 1980s, Dad and I were in the family room of our house outside of Pittsburgh. As usual, I was sprawled out on the blue couch, and Dad lay on the carpeted floor, his head resting in his hand as he faced the T.V. That was his usual movie-watching position. Inevitably there was a bag of Red Twists at the ready. (Dad loved his Red Twists.)

Years later, in the early 2000s, the Byham Theater in downtown Pittsburgh was holding its annual classic film festival. “The Great Escape” was on the docket, and I bought two tickets. How cool to see Steve McQueen on his motorcycle again, riding around the countryside of Nazi Germany – this time on the big screen. It's one of my fondest memories of movies with Dad. 

Joan Bennett's Bitter Little World

There are certain actresses who are emblematic of the Hollywood of the 1930s and ‘40s. These are the shining female icons of that glittering place and time: Garbo, Dietrich, Hepburn, Davis, Crawford, Stanwyck.

By contrast, the name Joan Bennett is not widely recognized or remembered today. And that’s a shame, because she was a popular star who was adept at a variety of genres, from comedy to drama.

But it’s her roles in a series of crime dramas of the 1940s that stand out in her career. I would argue that Bennett’s characterizations in these movies very distinctly helped evolve what in the ‘40s was known as “melodrama,” but which today we respectfully call “film noir.” 

After spending the 1930s laboring in cute but undemanding ingénue roles, Bennett dyed her hair jet-black in 1939 for "The Man in the Iron Mask." The effect was revitalizing. The dark hair accentuated her penetrating eyes. Her perfect features and deliciously pouty mouth suddenly took on a harsher, dangerous, world-weary quality.

In several films in the new decade, she became the silken embodiment of a film noir woman: Dangerous yet malleable, conniving yet vulnerable. In the six noir pictures she made throughout the ‘40s, it was as if one of the dangerous brunettes from a cover of a lurid crime magazine had come to life.

In these notable films, which are comments on their era, Bennett captures a sense of displacement, uncertainty, and discomfiture about the present and the future. The world may be spinning, slow and resolute; but it's spinning out of control.

In 1941, Bennett was cast against type in “Man Hunt” as a hard-edged London prostitute who comes to the aid of a marksman out to assassinate Hitler. It was the first of four films she made during the ensuing decade with Austrian director Fritz Lang, who knew how to plumb the darker side of human nature. Lang also seemed to know how to utilize Bennett’s gifts to the optimal effect, and “Man Hunt” would change her career trajectory.

He used her to even greater effect in their next film together, “The Woman in the Window” (1944). A mousey professor (Edward G. Robinson) becomes enamored with a painting of a beautiful woman, which hangs in a store window he passes by. A chance meeting with the painting's subject (Bennett) leads to her jealous lover’s murder and a convoluted cover-up. In this film, Bennett is the seductive spider who lures an unsuspecting victim into her web. She's the pulp magazine cover's duplicitous vixen.

The film was such a sensation that it led immediately to a re-teaming of Bennett and Robinson in Lang’s “Scarlet Street” (1945). Here, Lang takes things to an even seedier level, casting Robinson as a struggling artist who defends a seemingly helpless and sympathetic woman (Bennett), then falls in love with her, and is subsequently exploited by her when she thinks his artwork has made him a rich man. In this film, everyone has an ulterior motive, with something to hide, someone to take advantage of, something to gain, and a lot to lose. At one point, Robinson eagerly paints Bennett's toenails while she lays back on a chaise lounge smirking. She revels in his debasement.

Bennett made just a single film in 1946, which was followed in 1947 by an excellent adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Macomber Affair,” as directed by Hungarian Zoltan Korda. This film, though set in Africa, has all the shading of a film noir. Indeed, she plays a highly unsympathetic woman who is a likely  murderess. Later that year, Bennett returned to straight-up film noir with "The Woman on the Beach." To date, Bennett seemed to give her most vivid performances when she was working with serious European directors; here, she was under the helm of French auteur Jean Renoir, the son of Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

In this heightened noir, location is switched from the urban setting of Fritz Lang’s films to a beachfront community. Bennett is a frustrated wife married to a blind painter (Charles Bickford). When she meets a Coast Guardsman (Robert Ryan) who’s suffering from PTSD, sparks fly. She's seductive and ruthless in orchestrating the sordid goings-on, as Ryan’s post-war nightmares spiral into potential murder. It's interesting to me that more than one of Bennett's '40s films centers on painting. She's the subject of a portrait in "The Woman in the Window," she seduces an artist in "Scarlet Street," and is married to one in "The Woman on the Beach." In these films, art serves as a catalyst for duplicity and self-destruction.

Bennett’s next film, the same year, was her fourth and final outing with Lang, “Secret Beyond the Door.” He changed the setting from the foreboding urban landscape to an old mansion in the American east. And while Bennett played unsympathetic vixens in their previous films together, here she is a cultured woman of means who suspects her new husband is out to kill her. What’s in the mysterious room he always keeps locked? “Secret” is really less a film noir than an old-dark-house thriller, but there are enough of Lang’s stylistic visual touches to keep it within the genre. And, of course, there’s brunette Bennett, gorgeous even as she faces a growing threat that may or may not be in her mind.

The following year, 1948, Bennett made “Hollow Triumph” (also known as “The Scar”), directed by Hungarian Steve Sekeley (nee István Székely). Paul Henreid plays a crook on the lam with stolen earnings from a notorious gangster’s casino. While hiding out, he realizes he looks exactly like a noted psychiatrist, except for a conspicuous scar on the doctor’s left cheek. To hide in plain sight, Henreid kills the doctor and carves himself a similar scar.

Convoluted entanglements and complications ensue, some of which strain credibility, but I see this film as an unsung noir classic. As the doctor’s secretary and lover, Bennett brings to her characterization a combination of compassion and desolation. She wants to love, she wants to be happy, but the powers that be just can’t help but knock her down, over and over. “It's a bitter little world, full of sad surprises,” she inveighs angrily in a scene near the film's conclusion. It underscores the movie's bleak, somber tone – fitting for a country grappling with the effects of a devastating world war.

From 1945 on, Bennett made a film noir every year until 1949, finishing the decade with “The Reckless Moment,” directed by German filmmaker Max Ophuls (who is better known for his French cult art house films). Here, Ophuls took a stab at a dark thriller with a distinctly American setting. Bennett no longer plays the femme fatale who’s seen too much of the world. Instead, she plays a charming middle-class California wife and mother who suddenly finds herself thrust into the midst of murder and attempted cover-up. 

As the respectable Mrs. Lucia Harper, Bennett doesn’t like her impetuous teenage daughter’s irredeemable boyfriend, and seeks to break up the relationship. When the boyfriend demands money, she refuses. A few days later, she discovers the boyfriend dead in the family’s boathouse. She goes to great lengths to get rid of the body and avoid scandal.

Just when she thinks the coast is clear, she is visited by a strange man (James Mason) who knows about the murder and is out to blackmail her. Mason’s nefarious business partner has in his possession letters from the daughter to the dead boyfriend, and he wants $5,000 in return. 

The film’s plot hinges on Bennett’s desperate attempts to raise the money to protect her daughter – who, we learn, may not have killed the boyfriend in the first place. To make things more complicated, Mason falls in love with Mrs. Harper. 

“The Reckless Moment” is a weird movie, a dark thriller that makes the picture-perfect hometown setting seem threatening. Bennett is convincing playing a woman out of her element largely because of the hard-bitten noir heroines she’d played in her previous films in the '40s.

But by 1950, Hollywood had changed. Film noir as a style had begun to flag. Bennett's jagged edge was smoothed over as she entered a new decade in a new guise: the suburban housewife. As if signaled by the turn of the new year, she was cast in 1950's "Father of the Bride" opposite Spencer Tracy as the comically hapless parents of 18-year-old Elizabeth Taylor. Bennett is lovely in this film and its 1951 sequel, but the hard-bitten dame of the 1940s – muse to Lang, Renoir, and Ophuls – has been erased.

Speaking of 1951, it was a year that almost ruined Bennett in real and reel life. Her husband, Walter Wanger (who produced “Scarlet Street,” “Secret Beyond the Door” and “The Reckless Moment”) confronted and shot Bennett’s agent, Jennings Lang (no relation to Fritz), over what Wanger thought was an extramarital affair. Lang survived, but the case went to court – and the headlines’ implications weren’t pretty.

Bennett worked in films sporadically in the 1950s, and took only occasional roles in various television series throughout the ‘60s. But in 1966, she was cast as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, matriarch of the troubled Collins clan, in the popular Gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows,” which ran until 1971 and became a colossal cult hit, mostly with young viewers.

Headlining that strange, moody series, the enigmatic Joan Bennett won over new fans – fans who perhaps never realized that she already knew her way around dark shadows.

  

Constance, early '30s

Joan, early '30s

Footnote: When talking pictures arrived in 1929, the new format needed new stars, and Joan Bennett's older sister Constance seemed tailor-made. With her sleek blonde looks and slim lines, Constance shimmered onscreen, personifying the ideal female star of the era. Fast-forward to the end of the '30s, and filmgoers’ tastes had changed. Constance’s career was on the wane. But Joan? She was just revving up.

The Pleasure of Her Company

What makes a movie star a movie star? Is it aloofness, or is it accessibility? It can be either, depending on the personality.

Throughout the years, audiences have certainly responded to aloofness. That’s why Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich were stars in the 1930s, Grace Kelly owned the ‘50s, Faye Dunaway dominated the ‘70s, and Angelina Jolie remains a household name. Somehow they seem untouchable, like goddesses.

Keeping a distance is easy. But gaining the trust of an audience, and seeming like one of us – that’s harder to do. We may want to place some stars on a pedestal, but we also want to spend time with a friend who makes us feel comfortable, who shares the laugh, lets us in on the gag.

If there was ever a star who was accessible, it was Debbie Reynolds. Whether she was hoofing in a musical, hamming in a comedy, or having a genuine dramatic moment (which she most certainly could do when given the chance), she was always someone audiences could identify with.

For men, she was the girl next door who could also jump out of a barn window, land in a pile of hay, and roll out laughing. But they knew that when she cleaned up, she cleaned up nice. For women, she was a like a trusted best pal they could turn to when they shared their hopes, dreams, and values of life and love. Debbie would understand.

She came along at a transitional time in Hollywood. The old studio system structure was beginning its decline in power and influence by the late 1940s. Reynolds was a fresh face at MGM when she made her debut in 1948, and she was groomed to be a star who could help the moviemakers compete with the looming threat of television. She got small roles in big productions, and prominent parts in smaller features. It was clear from the start that she could light up the screen with a ten-megawatt charisma.

She really hit it big with “Singin’ in the Rain” in 1952. Although Gene Kelly ran the show, the movie made her a star, and she’s a big part of why it remains one of the best – if not the best – musical of that era. 

In 1955, Frank Sinatra was in a career resurgence, and it said a lot about Reynolds’ box office appeal that she was his co-star in the sophisticated musical comedy “The Tender Trap.” While she’d made a name for herself up to then in frothy musicals, a year later she appeared in the drama “The Catered Affair,” which gave her a chance to show her acting chops. As a lower-middle-class girl whose impending wedding becomes the cause of family dysfunction, she is wonderful.

Unsinkable

The next year put her back on bright Technicolor musical footing with “Tammy and the Bachelor.” By this point, Reynolds was being typecast as good girls with a heart of gold and dirty knees, so often did she play tomboys. “The Mating Game” in 1959 was no exception. In this film, she’s a farm girl who falls for stuffy government guy Tony Randall. He steals the show, but she has lots of pratfalls that demonstrate her physical comic timing.

She took a dramatic turn the next year in “The Rat Race,” giving a biting performance as an embittered New York City show girl who takes up with an aspiring musician (Tony Curtis). This is another overlooked dramatic performance that should have led to better material.

Instead, she was cast in a series of cute little comedies, and she gamely romped with a number of handsome straight-laced guys, including Glenn Ford, Robert Wagner, Cliff Robertson, and others. The stand-out at this time was 1961’s “The Pleasure of His Company,” a witty comedy that was really more a comeback for Fred Astaire as Reynolds’ estranged rascal of a father. It’s a delightful film, and she's adorable in it.

She was part of a sprawling big-name cast in “How the West Was Won” in 1962, in which she had to age several decades. Then, after a few duds, Reynolds hit gold with the rousing musical “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” perhaps her best-remembered film. As the titular Molly Brown – famous for surviving the Titanic – Reynolds drew upon every trait that made her a star in the first place: a big voice and vibrant dancing, a spunky earthiness, and touching humanity. She was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress for its year, 1964.

a la Jackie

America was changing by the mid-1960s. A film like “The Singing Nun” in 1966 probably seemed hopelessly anachronistic to the young people it was targeted to. By that time, a president had been assassinated, the Vietnam war was on, the civil rights movement was in full force, women’s liberation was percolating and sexual revolution was on the horizon. 

That may be why her next film, “Divorce, American Style” (1967), worked so well. It took the wholesome images of its stars (Reynolds and Dick van Dyke) and flipped them upside down. They played an unhappily married couple going through the motions of upper-middle-class California suburbia. The film remains a funny, yet scathing, commentary on the American dream gone sour.

The end of the ‘60s was also the end of Reynolds’ film career. Her sunny, optimistic style simply was not a part of the changing times and tastes. (It’s the same reason that Doris Day, whose career tracks Reynolds’ almost exactly, also retired from films around this time.)

But it’s not that she stopped. From 1970 on, she tried her hand at a television sitcom, and then spent the remainder of the 1970s doing live Vegas shows. In the ‘80s and '90s it was more television, including such popular sitcoms as “Golden Girls, “Roseanne,” and “Will & Grace," and an occasional movie as a funny old lady or in cameos - playing herself in Vegas mode, such as 1992's "The Bodyguard."

 Golden Girl

She kept busy to the end, ever the trooper, ever the entertainer who just wanted to make us smile. She also reconciled with her estranged daughter, Carrie Fisher, forging a public story of mother-daughter love that resonated strongly, especially last December when they passed away one day apart.

Although Debbie Reynolds was one of our final links to Hollywood’s incredibly creative, if restrictive and hard-driving, studio era, it seemed to me that she would keep on singin’ forever, in the rain or not. 

Of course, that wasn’t meant to be. But the films in which she starred for over 20 years live on as a reminder of a specific period in movies, and in America, and represent her discipline and hard work, beauty and brass, her joy, her spontaneity, and her love of the business.

So, let the stormy clouds chase, everyone from the place. A movie with Debbie means I'm going to spend at least an hour and a half with a marvelous broad. Happy again.

Here's a top-notch dance sequence from "Singin' in the Rain," with Debbie, Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor. She worked so hard in rehearsals that her feet bled. The payoff? Perfection. 

Hollywood History Footnote: In the early 1970s, MGM held an auction of its holdings of costumes and props from its glory days. The studio wanted to divest itself of these old musty properties and make some fast cash. Debbie Reynolds knew their inherent value, and began buying and collecting this vital memorabilia of the studio era. She sold off most of her collection in 2011, but her vast archive is preserved. Her effort to save not just the stuff of her own dreams of stardom, but the very costumes and props she used in her films, demonstrates that she thought beyond herself and saw the value in keeping these mementos alive. She loved not just her work, but the industry that gave her a career. You can read about it here.

Happy 100th Birthday to Kirk Douglas!

Douglas had an unrelenting stare.

Today is the 100th birthday of Kirk Douglas, and I wanted to recognize this living link to the film industry, both past and present, who can best be described as a transitional film figure.

He got his first film role in 1946, the year after the end of a cataclysmic world war. He had no connection with the Hollywood of the pre-war years, so he brought no baggage. His was a gritty new style that fit a jaded America. And yet he possessed the magnetism required of a Movie Star. 

During the 1940s, he was well-suited to the ambivalent black-and-white world of film noir—a distinctly post-war genre—and he starred in one of the best of the form, “Out of the Past,” in 1947. But he would never be pigeon-holed as a certain character type.

The same year as "Out of the Past," he got a change of pace in an ambitious adaptation of Eugene O’Neil’s play “Mourning Becomes Electra.” This smaller role was an early indication that he was willing to do unusual parts in non-commercial fare. Just a year later, he joined an ensemble cast in the brilliant (and very commercial) film "A Letter to Three Wives," as the intellectual, comically cynical husband of one of the three wives.

But he could smile too.

But his career really took off with his most powerful portrayal to date, as a ruthless boxer in 1949’s “Champion.” 

With that film, Douglas's career went into high gear, and he became one of the biggest stars of the 1950s and early '60s. At the same time, Hollywood was struggling to compete with the new medium of television and declining revenue. The studios started relying on new and exciting personalities like Douglas to bring in audiences. Douglas's big persona fit well with the wide-screen, Technicolor spectacles the studio put their money in.

But Douglas never wanted to be identified with any particular studio or film genre, and he happily juggled both commercial and artistic material, some of which may have been unattractive to many of his contemporaries. Throughout the 1950s, in between some pretty good westerns and several bad historical epics, so-so romances, and forgettable comedies, Douglas made a number of films of real artistic note.

In 1953, he starred in “The Juggler,” one of the first films to deal with the Holocaust. He brought to the screen the life of Vincent van Gogh (another intense artist) in 1956’s “Lust for Life.” A year later, he starred in Stanley Kubrick’s anti-war film “Paths of Glory,” and started a new decade with Kubrick’s “Spartacus” in 1960, perhaps his most famous role.

Throughout the 1950s, he also helped bring to life adaptations of modern and classic literature, works by Homer and Jules Verne, George Bernard Shaw and Tennessee Williams. (In fact, he co-starred as the Gentleman Caller in the first film adaptation of a Williams play, "The Glass Menagerie," in 1950.)

Oddly, Douglas is not well remembered for any particular pairing with a female co-star, although he appeared with everyone from Lana Turner to Lauren Bacall, Doris Day to Susan Hayward, Kim Novak to Farrah Fawcett. It's his big, rugged portrayals in dramatic, often outdoor, settings that stand out: adventure epics, war films, and especially the westerns.

In those films, he often shared billing with other men. It was the conflict between them that gave Douglas a platform to give intense, often raging, portrayals. With Kirk Douglas, there was always explosiveness simmering beneath the surface. And when it exploded, it was memorable. Although some of his films are black and white, his characterizations never were. In his best work, he was both protagonist and antagonist.

As with many stars of his generation, Douglas struggled for relevance in the 1970s, although he made a few good, if underrated, films in that decade. (He even directed two: a bad one in '73, a good one in '74.) In subsequent decades, he moved into occasional character parts.

Sometimes Douglas's intensity seemed almost too big for the screen. With the trademark clenched teeth, the chiseled looks, and that distinctive dimple, he could veer into self-parody. 

But whether his films—and the performances he gave—were good or great, okay or lousy, you can look at his career as a reflection of the cultural, attitudinal, moral, and even political changes of the last half of the twentieth century. 

Nominated three times for Best Actor but never a winner, Douglas's long dedication to the craft of acting, and to the magic of the movies, makes him a living artist to honor.

Directed by the Best:
Over nearly 20 years, Douglas worked with some of the biggest directors of the era, in some of their—and his—best, or at least most challenging, work:

• Joseph L. Mankiewicz - "A Letter to Three Wives" (1948) and "There Was a Crooked Man..." (1970)
• Billy Wilder - "Ace in the Hole" (1951)
• William Wyler - "Detective Story" (1951)
• Vincente Minnelli - "The Bad and the Beautiful" (1952) and "Lust for Life" (1956)
• John Sturges - "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" (1957)
• John Huston - "The List of Adrian Messenger" (1963)
• John Frankenheimer - "Seven Days in May" (1964)
• Otto Preminger - "In Harm's Way" (1965)
• Elia Kazan - "The Arrangement" (1969)

Vanishing Acts

Since the beginning of cinema, becoming a movie star has been a singular symbol of success. In the 1930s and ‘40s, silver screen stardom was an aspiration that promised a life of adulation, glamour, and privilege – unlike the lives of everyday people.

But for some, the drive for stardom came at a high price. I’m looking at four top actresses of that scintillating era, glamorous ghosts who briefly burned white-hot and then disappeared – their lives either suddenly cut short or their careers halted due to painful personal tragedy prolonged for decades.

The Bombshell Defused
In the early 1930s, Jean Harlow exemplified the “blonde bombshell.” Volatile, electric, explosive. She was the original “platinum blonde” – a term created for her.

Discovered by Fox Studios (later 20^th Century Fox), Harlow made an auspicious early appearance in Howard Hughes’s big-budget film “Hell’s Angels” in the transitional year of 1930. The persona that evolved was that of the sexy, brash vixen. Female movie-goers saw her as a tough-talking best pal; guys loved the uninhibited gal with a heart of gold.

Harlow was never billed as a bad-girl type, but in the early ‘30s – before the more stringent production code that came into effect in Hollywood by 1934 – the studio could play up her frank sexuality. By the middle of the decade, however, the studio began to soften her image, even dimming her shimmering head of white-blonde hair to a light brown.

She was one of the biggest stars of the decade, exemplifying the glittering world of black and white cinema. She was at the height of her fame by 1937, but during the making of “Saratoga,” she became gravely ill. Her leading man Clark Gable knew something was wrong, but outside of a few other fellow actors, no one seemed to take her symptoms seriously.

Harlow went into the hospital with symptoms of kidney failure – and died there suddenly on June 7, 1937. She was only 26. Her fans were stunned that someone so vital could suddenly disappear so quickly. Eighty years hence, Jean Harlow remains frozen in time as a young, yearning figure draped in feathers and furs – awaiting her next take.

Side note: In 1932, after just two months of marriage, Harlow’s husband Paul Bern was found dead in their home – an alleged suicide. The actual circumstances of his death have never been determined, but the incident adds to her mystique.

Not to Be

Carole Lombard was the essence of what it meant to be a movie star in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Classier than Harlow, she was nonetheless an irresistible free spirit. She had a marvelous voice that could be gloriously comic or, when needed, pitched slightly lower to fit a dramatic scenario. She was a gorgeous dame with spunk and class.

Screwball comedy proved her niche. She had a knack for fast-paced dialogue delivery, sophisticated humor, and a physicality that counterbalanced her austere beauty. She co-starred with the biggest names of the day, from Gary Cooper to Cary Grant, Bing Crosby to Shirley Temple. She made four films with Fred MacMurray, and even co-starred with ex-husband William Powell in one of her biggest hits, "My Man Godfrey," in 1936.

By 1939, Lombard was married to Clark Gable in the biggest star romance of the era. And, she was trying new career territory, with a couple of straight dramas to test her acting mettle. Critics agreed she was more than just a screwball heroine. So in the daring anti-Nazi black comedy “To Be or Not to Be,” she combined both dramatic and comedic skills. At this time, she put her patriotism to work by leading a war bond drive that helped raise over $2,000,000 in one night. After that drive, on January 16, 1942, Lombard, her mother, and 19 servicemen boarded a plane in Indianapolis to head back to California.

But the plane mysteriously crashed into a Nevada mountain en route, killing everyone on board. Lombard was just 33. The death of this symbol of American life, freedom, and joy on a lonely mountainside – at the advent of a catastrophic world war – seemed to signal that the cinematic golden age she represented was slowly but surely nearing its end.

This Is Your Life

Hollywood has always been about fresh faces, and when Frances Farmer was discovered by Paramount Pictures in 1935, she was a new sensation. An aspiring stage actress born in Seattle and trained in New York, Farmer possessed a compelling combination of classic beauty and an earnest demeanor. She was sort of a Greta Garbo of the Pacific Northwest.

Farmer considered herself a serious actress, so it was an adjustment to appear as the love interest in a middling Bing Crosby musical shortly after arriving in Hollywood. A couple of B movies in, and she finally got a prestigious film based on the well-regarded novel “Come and Get It” in 1936. It garnered her great critical and popular attention, and she felt as though she was finally being appreciated for her talent.

Yet Farmer rebelled against nearly every facet of the Hollywood studio system, and her reputation for being argumentative, arrogant, and entitled grew. She was quickly relegated to one-dimensional supporting parts. But her downfall was motivated by more than just a rebellious spirit and reduced parts. In addition to a failed marriage and a scuttled affair with a famous playwright, Farmer was battling alcoholism. She became increasing abusive, both verbally and physically. In a burst of rage on one occasion, she even dislocated the jaw of a makeup woman.

Finally, with a highly publicized arrest in 1942, the studio had had enough, and Farmer’s career abruptly ended. She was 29. Repeated altercations with the police and well-publicized incidents of violent, erratic behavior due to paranoid schizophrenia led to eight years in and out of psychiatric wards and mental institutions. It was a harrowing period of shock treatments and even a claim of a lobotomy.

By 1950, with her once-splendid career behind her, Farmer entered a phase of quiet anonymity. She took various jobs that didn’t require a name: laundress, bookkeeper, hotel receptionist. A curious reporter wrote a magazine article about her, which led to renewed public interest. She was invited to make several TV appearances, including the unctuous Ralph Edwards-hosted “This is Your Life.”

The renewed where-is-she-now notoriety led to a few acting roles on television dramas, as well as a single, minor film role. Farmer then became the hostess of a daytime television program in Indianapolis (where Lombard boarded that fateful plane). Farmer had sporadic theater work throughout the 1960s and, although she seemed professionally content at this time, her personal demons were never really at bay. When she died of cancer in 1970 at 56, she was still a troubled woman – only a ghost of her former self.

Side note: That famous playwright with whom Farmer had a "scuttled affair" was Clifford Odets, who was married at the time to film star Luise Rainer – another infamous flame-out who I talked about here. In 1982, Jessica Lange portrayed Farmer in a controversial biography called "Frances." The veracity of some of the depictions of her mental breakdown have been questioned, including the purported lobotomy. But it remains a vivid recreation of the world she suffered within and against.

Hold That Blonde

When Connie Ockelman's family moved to Beverly Hills in the late 1930s, she was a pretty, diminutive teenager. Hollywood beckoned, and she became Veronica Lake.

A supporting part in 1941’s “I Wanted Wings” as a nightclub singer made her a hit overnight. A natural, unaffected style combined with that famous long blonde hair draped over one eye heralded a new look and presence for the war years of the 1940s.

A plum role in the Preston Sturges social comedy “Sullivan’s Travels” featured an impish quality and a wry, subtle humor. While 1942 was a bad year for Frances Farmer, it was a great one for Lake. She appeared for the first time opposite rising star Alan Ladd in the film noir “This Gun for Hire,” a big enough hit that it was followed quickly by a reteaming in “The Glass Key.” Two more films together later in the decade would cement Ladd and Lake as a legendary team emblematic of the smoky, mysterious, dream-like world of film noir.

A few more good parts for Lake during the war years led to a litany of forgettable comedies and musicals, including one called “Hold That Blonde.” But nothing seemed to hold Lake; burgeoning alcoholism and a terrible temperament made her unpopular with her fellow actors. A growing paranoia was holding her more than she was holding together life or career.

By her last studio film in 1951, when she was only 29, one hurdle after another had beset her. Multiple divorces, a miscarriage, bankruptcy, losing her home for back taxes, arrests and alcoholic dissolution sent Lake into obscurity. In 1959, she was discovered living at a women’s hotel in New York City, where she worked as a bartender.

As if parallel with Frances Farmer, hitting bottom for Lake became fodder for the tabloids. As a result, Lake found brief renewed interest. In the 1960s, she got a few stage parts – including playing the tragic Blanche DuBois in a British production of “A Streetcar Named Desire” – and, like Farmer, got a job hosting a local daytime TV show, this one in Baltimore.

She made one more movie, a bizarre, cheaply-made horror film in 1970 that was funded by the profits from her autobiography. When she died three years later of cirrhosis of the liver at age 50, she was a nearly forgotten curio of a brighter past. In a sad coda, there wasn’t enough money to pay for the removal of her ashes, so they remained locked away in a funeral home for many years.

Some of Us Are Looking at the Stars

Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Frances Farmer and Veronica Lake are all quite different women, with varying degrees of talent and staying power. Harlow is a symbol of 1930s Hollywood. Lombard practically invented the female presence in screwball comedy. Farmer, despite her notorious personal life, has not a single classic among her short filmography. Lake is emblematic of Tinsel Town of the 1940s, and several of her films with Ladd are classics of the film noir form.

Despite their differences, they share in common a singular style, beauty, personality, and presence – as well as uniquely tragic trajectories of fame. They all came to the ever-changing medium of the movies as luminous rockets, then disappeared – vanished ghosts of a vanished Hollywood.

Related: 

Joel McCrae: The Lake-Farmer Connection
The underrated leading man Joel McCrae co-starred opposite Veronica Lake in her best film, "Sullivan's Travels," in 1941. He was slated to be her leading man in "I Married a Witch" the following year, but he begged off, saying: "Life is too short for two films with Veronica Lake." 

Despite his disdain, they would make the western "Ramrod" together in 1947, at which point Lake's career was already in free-fall. Interestingly, McCrae was also Frances Farmer's leading man in her biggest success, "Come and Get It," in 1936.

The Lombard-Harlow Leading Man Timeline
Carole Lombard and Jean Harlow criss-crossed their leading men with great frequency:

- 1931: Lombard marries William Powell. Together, that year they make "Ladies' Man" and "Man of the World".
- 1932: Lombard makes "No Man of Her Own" with Clark Gable. Harlow makes "Red Dust" with Gable.
- 1933: Lombard divorces Powell. Harlow makes "Hold Your Man" with Gable.
- 1935: Harlow makes "Reckless" with Powell, and "China Seas" with Gable.
- 1936: Harlow makes "Libeled Lady" with Powell and "Suzy" with Cary Grant. Lombard makes "My Man Godfrey" with ex-husband Powell.
- 1937: Harlow makes "Wife vs. Secretary" with Gable and James Stewart, and starts, but does not finish, "Saratoga," also with Gable.
- 1939: Lombard marries Gable, and makes "In Name Only" with Grant and "Made for Each Other" with Stewart.