Farewell to a Few Film Favorites: 2017

I typically write about the movies of Hollywood’s “Golden Age,” the 1930s and ‘40s. Most of the people who made those movies are gone now. As I get older, I’m noticing that the actors and actresses who slip away each year are increasingly those I grew up watching. For example, Roger Moore was James Bond when I was a child of the ‘70s. That is, he was my James Bond, so that was my first thought when I saw that he had died at age 90.

In this post, I want to recognize a few other performers who left us this year. They meant something special to me for one reason or another, whether it was through a single performance, their esteemed place in film history, or just an inspiring screen presence.

Harry Dean Stanton

“Every actor is a character actor.”

Harry Dean Stanton had one of those familiar movie faces, even if you didn’t know his name. With that hangdog derelict look, he added color and character to almost any movie.

Most modern viewers know him through cultish ‘80s movies, like “Repo Man" or “Paris, Texas.” But his career reaches way back to 1954. For over two decades, he labored anonymously in both movies and T.V. He even went by Dean Stanton or H.D. Stanton. But often, he wasn’t credited at all.

I think I first noticed him as one of the unfortunate space crew in 1979’s “Alien,” but it’s his role as Molly Ringwald’s sweet-natured, ne’er-do-well father in 1986’s “Pretty in Pink” that stands out the most for me. His character may be down on his luck, but he brings a tenderness to every scene, as he sweetly encourages Ringwald’s off-beat Andie to follow her dreams.

That Stanton could make an otherwise corny teen movie so memorable says something about his unique presence. He died on September 15 at 91.

Sam Shepard

“I didn't go out of my way to get into this movie stuff. I think of myself as a writer.”

I’ll admit I’m not really familiar with Sam Shepard’s plays. I remember when “Fool for Love” became a movie in 1985, because it was an early role for Kim Basinger, and I wondered who that gorgeous blonde was.

When Shepard died on July 27 at 73, I thought back on when I first noticed him. It was in one of 1983’s biggest movies, “The Right Stuff,” in which he played the pioneering jet pilot Chuck Yeager, someone my dad respected. Shepard continued to star in increasingly notable films as the ‘80s wore on.

From “Country” and “Crimes of the Heart” (both with his off-screen partner Jessica Lange), to “Baby Boom” and “Steel Magnolias,” Shepard always played variations on the laconic, amiable country guy who was smarter than he looked.

Into the ‘90s and beyond, he ventured into other character types. I remember him distinctly in 1994’s underrated “Safe Passage” as Susan Sarandon’s distracted husband, who suffers from episodes of hysterical blindness. He was just one reason why I fell in love with that charming movie.

But in those films in the ‘80s? Sam Shepard was sexy without being flashy. With that taciturn expression, he never really had to say much to say a lot.

French Triumvirate

“My face has changed with the years and has enough history in it to give audiences something to work with.”

Jeanne Moreau

The quote above comes from Jeanne Moreau, who, along with two other titans of classic French cinema -- Danielle Darrieux and Michele Morgan -- passed away in the last year. For audiences all over the world, they represented French film at its finest.

All three of them lived very long lives; their faces indeed changed with the years. They worked with those changes, creating indelible performances that helped evolve an art form. I want to talk about each of them.

Danielle Darrieux

Let’s start with Dannielle Darrieux, who began her film career in 1931. She made every manner of movie in her home country, so America beckoned. In 1938, she made her stateside debut in “The Rage of Paris,” a fluffy romantic comedy opposite Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. But she was disappointed in how Hollywood tried to turn her into a cute, cookie-cutter confection.

She went back to France just in time for WWII, and continued to make films throughout the German Occupation. She came back to Hollywood only twice: Once in 1951 to play the mother of Jane Powell in a silly musical, then again in 1956 as Queen Olympias to Richard Burton’s “Alexander the Great.” (So legendary was she by this time, that she was billed as “The French Star Danielle Darrieux”).

Alexander was not so great, and it was her final American movie. Back in France, she did her best work in the 1950s, notably in “La Ronde” and “The Earrings of Madame de...” They are two of the most important films of French cinema during that period. But her acting (and singing) career never waned, and excellent character roles dotted her filmography for another six decades. She was a French institution when she died on October 17, 2017 at 100.

Michele Morgan

Michele Morgan got her start in French cinema in 1936, and quickly became a box office draw in several films opposite heartthrob Jean Gabin. In the 1930s and ‘40s, American studios were always on the lookout for an enigmatic European beauty in the Garbo mold, and Morgan had the requisite allure. Her first American film was in 1942's “Joan of Paris,” as a French girl who resists the Nazis.

While it’s an excellent film, and she's terrific in it, it didn’t light box office fire. Warner Brothers tried again, casting her opposite Humphrey Bogart in “Passage to Marseille,” which was the studio’s attempt at rekindling the success of “Casablanca” from the year before -- to no avail. It was a dud.

After a few more American movies, Morgan went back to France, where she maintained a long career in French and international productions right up to a TV movie in 1999. She said fini, entered retirement, and died on December 20, 2016 at the ripe old age of 96.

Back to Jeanne Moreau. A later generation from Darrieux and Morgan, by the late 1950s, Moreau emerged as the female face of the French New Wave. She worked with the craftsmen who shaped that filmic movement, directors like Louis Malle, Francois Truffaut, Roger Vadim, Michelangelo Antonioni, Luis Buñuel and others. Her blasé attitude, with an undercurrent of melancholy, made Moreau an art-house favorite in the states.

While her performance in the 1962 New Wave classic “Jules et Jim” was a huge international success, I’ll remember seeing her on the big screen at the American Film Institute in a retrospective of Truffaut’s homage to Hitchcock, 1968’s “The Bride Wore Black.” As a woman whose husband was accidentally killed on her wedding day, she methodically exacts revenge on the men responsible. My friend Dave Singleton and I agreed: Her characterization is cold and pragmatic, but she maintains an air of almost indecipherable humor throughout -- in the classic Hitchcock vein.

Film styles come and go, and eventually the New Wave became an old wave. But Moreau’s career evolved beyond film fashion. She never abandoned her realistic intensity, bringing a world-weary sadness to all her work. She made her last film in 2015 and died on July 31 at age 89.

Mary Tyler Moore

“I’ve had the fame and the joy of getting laughter - those are gifts.”

Two superheroes from television passed away this year: Batman’s Adam West and The Green Lantern’s Van Williams. But there’s another superhero I want to focus on: Mary Tyler Moore.

Ok, maybe she’s not a superhero in the classic sense. But in the 1970s, she became a symbol for women – and men – representing freedom and possibility. She showed that you could make it after all.

After toiling in television for the better part of a decade, she was cast as Dick Van Dyke’s wife on his eponymous TV show in 1961. Hers was a fresh female face for a new decade. As Laura Petrie, she was no ‘50s housewife in the Lucy mold; she was streamlined for a new decade, effusive and smart, chic in her capris and sleeveless tops. And she was a great foil for Van Dyke’s pratfalls.

When the series ended in 1966, MTM tried her hand at feature films, making four between 1967 and 1969, including “Change of Habit,” as a nun opposite Elvis Presley. (It's probably better left forgotten.)

But what really catapulted MTM to immortality was her own TV show, which debuted in 1970. As Mary Richards, Moore captured the zeitgeist of the Seventies as a single career woman who was branching out on her own for the first time – with trepidation and optimism.

She became the leading female TV star for the 1970s, showing what a single professional woman could do, at a time when the women’s liberation movement was taking hold. She was inspiring, not just to women, but men too. (Okay, definitely gay men.)

Yet, there was more to her. In 1980’s “Ordinary People,” she turned the brightly optimistic, self-effacing character of Mary Richards on its head, playing a cold and loveless upper-class suburban wife and mother who can only show her best self to strangers. She was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her steely performance.

After that, her film and TV career never really measured up to what she had accomplished earlier, but that’s ok; The Mary Tyler Moore Show has remained highly popular even four decades after it went off the air. As Moore herself put it: “Reruns are wonderful because it usually indicates that they had something going for them to begin with and that's why you're still looking at them. And in both my shows, they were so well written and so good they hold up.”

Moore passed away on January 25 at age 80. To me, she’ll always be the fresh-faced, bright-eyed Mary Richards, turning the world on with a smile.

Footnote: Another one of the indelible characters from The Dick Van Dyke Show also passed on this year. Rose Marie played Sally Rogers, one the affable writers at the TV studio where Van Dyke's Rob Petrie worked. She always had a wisecrack, but Rose Marie was a showbiz pro going way back to her childhood. After a career that spanned over 90 years -- maybe the longest in entertainment history -- Rose Marie died a few days before Christmas, at age 94.