As 2018 draws to a close, I want to recognize a few notable performers who passed away this year. Specifically, three stars who are emblematic of Hollywood in the 1950s.
For a short time, Dorothy Malone, Tab Hunter, and John Gavin were household names, and their films were indicative of the heightened melodrama of forbidden love, family strife, and class conflict typical of the big-budget, Cinemascope spectacles of the decade. These were soap operas of the first order, where the men were men and the women were women. And everyone was beautiful.
Certainly, Malone, Hunter, and Gavin were beautiful. You could argue that none of them ever had much of a chance to prove their mettle as actors, but they certainly made a dent on the Hollywood of their era.
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| Malone, right around the time of "Written on the Wind." |
When you think of of the women who dominated the movies in the 1950s, Dorothy Malone doesn’t immediately come to mind. Instead, we think of the likes of Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, and Susan Hayward, dames who, like Malone, got their start the decade before. But Malone worked hard like they did, and made her mark when it counted. She deserves her due.
Malone spent the early 1940s in bit parts, often uncredited. But in 1946, she had a single sexy scene opposite Humphrey Bogart in “The Big Sleep.” In it, she demonstrated a wry slyness that underscored her best performances.
Despite the impact of that classic film noir, Malone lingered throughout the late 1940s in second leads. She wasn’t asked to do much throughout the early 1950s either, as she appeared (alternatively as a brunette or a blonde) in westerns and dramas. Her leading men included such stalwarts as Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott, Ronald Reagan, Robert Taylor, and Glenn Ford. Sometimes more than once.
In 1955, Malone joined a sprawling cast in the WWII movie “Battle Cry,” in which she portrayed a married woman who carries on an illicit affair with much-younger soldier Tab Hunter. (How could she resist? See below.)
Her breakthrough came in “Written on the Wind” in 1956 (blonde this time), opposite Rock Hudson and Robert Stack. She played the rich, sexy, spoiled daughter of a wealthy Texas oil family. The film, directed by Douglas Sirk, is emblematic of 1950s cinema, with plenty of Sirkian confrontations and recriminations, seething hatreds, heated exchanges, and unrequited love. The scene where she comes home from a night of debauchery and dances wildly around her bedroom as her father keels over from a heart attack on the majestic staircase is one of my favorites. She won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her unbridled performance.
Sirk’s follow-up to “Written on the Wind” was “The Tarnished Angles,” in which he re-teamed Malone, Hudson, and Stack. Throughout the remainder of the 1950s, she worked with still more legendary actors, including James Cagney, Errol Flynn, and Henry Fonda.
With 1960’s “The Last Voyage,” opposite Stack, and 1961’s “The Last Sunset,” opposite Hudson, Malone’s starring film career basically came to a close. She moved into television, taking on the role of Constance Mackenzie in T.V.’s “Peyton Place” (a character that Lana Turner originated in the 1957 film version). Hugely popular, the series ran from 1961-1964. After that, it was sporadic low-budget movies and television work, all the way to her final film role in 1992’s “Basic Instinct,” starring Sharon Stone, a blonde for a new era. Malone died on January 19 at 93 after over 25 years in relative obscurity.
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| Smoldering came naturally to Tab Hunter. |
When I was a kid and they aired movies on Saturday afternoon television, I remember seeing one called “War-Gods of the Deep,” set in a weird yet magical underwater city ruled by creepy Vincent Price. Years later I learned that the handsome male lead was Tab Hunter.
Hunter was a Hollywood creation made for the 1950s. What he lacked in acting chops he made up for with impossible good looks. He seemed like the kind of young man that any mother would want her daughter to date. The truth, however, was that Tab would be more likely to date her son. (But that’s another part of his story.)
He got his start in 1950, and made a big splash two years later in “Island of Desire,” a cheesy adventure that was a huge hit, due in large part to him being shirtless throughout most of it. Hunter was one of the last actors to be placed under an exclusive contract at Warner Brothers Studios, along with James Dean and Natalie Wood. He was off and running, billed as the “Sigh Guy” who made the girls swoon.
In 1955, he joined the cast of the WWII movie “Battle Cry,” and made an impression in his scenes with Dorothy Malone, as mentioned above. The following year Hunter was paired with Natalie Wood not once, but twice. A year later, he officially became a bankable recording artist with the No. 1 hit song "Young Love.” (Warner Brothers created their record label specifically for him.)
He was having a hot streak, impressing as the bad guy in the western “Gunman’s Walk,” followed by the hit musical “Damn Yankees.” In 1959, he was romantically paired with Sophia Loren in “That Kind of Woman.” All this time, the studio was working overtime to hide any indications that Hunter was homosexual.
By the early ‘60s, Hunter’s career began to falter. While he co-starred with Debbie Reynolds and Fred Astaire in the delightful "The Pleasure of His Company," he lost the male lead in the film adaptation of “West Side Story” and starred in a failed namesake T.V. comedy. The ‘60s saw a series of undistinguished films, including a low-budget war movie, a surfing picture, and several Italian and British productions (including “War-Gods of the Deep”).
In the 1970s, Hunter was mostly employed by television, everything from Police Woman and Hawaii Five-O to Charlie’s Angels and The Love Boat. In 1981, cult camp director John Waters wittily cast him in “Polyester” as Todd Tomorrow, which parodied his dreamboat image. He made a few more low-budget movies up until 1992, when, like Dorothy Malone, he retired for good.
His final act was publishing an autobiography, “Tab Hunter Confidential,” in 2006, which confirmed the rumors that had swirled around him from the very beginning of his career: Yep, Tab Hunter was gay. The book became a fascinating documentary in 2015. After what seems like a very happy and content life with his partner of over 30 years, Hunter died on July 8 at 86.
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| No one made a better Julius Caesar than John Gavin. |
John Gavin was so much the archetypal Handsome Movie Star that within the first decade of his career, he was spoofing his good looks. But while his acting range was limited, he had the right looks, and the distinction of appearing in several bona fide classics.
After a few parts in OK movies, Gavin was cast as Lana Turner’s boyfriend – and dubbed “Most Promising Male Newcomer” -- in the seminal 1959 Douglas Sirk-directed/Ross Hunter-produced weeper “Imitation of Life,” in which Sandra Dee played Turner’s teenage daughter. (Sirk had directed Gavin for the first time, in "A Time to Live and a Time to Die," the year before.)
In 1960, he was cast in three big-league films: As doomed Janet Leigh’s lover in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”; as Julius Caesar in Stanley Kubrick’s epic “Spartacus;” and as Doris Day’s suspected tormenter in the highly popular “Midnight Lace” (also produced by Ross Hunter, who produced a number of Dorothy Malone's films).
A year later, Sandra Dee had grown out of her teenage incarnation and was paired as Gavin's romantic counterpart in the comedies “Romanoff and Juliet” and “Tammy Tell Me True,” wholesome fare emblematic of Hollywood in the early 1960s.
Square-jawed and stoic, Gavin was identifiable with the high-gloss sheen of big-budget American cinema. But that style began to fade out by the end of the 1960s. He lost the role of James Bond twice in the 1970s, and spent the remainder of his acting career into the early ‘80s mostly in television.
Perhaps it was Gavin's tenure as president of the Screen Actors Guild in the early '70s that led President Ronald Reagan to appoint him ambassador to Mexico, a role that was not without controversy. Gavin considered running for office in 1991, but then retired from public life. After nearly 40 years away from the camera, Gavin passed away on February 9 at 86, the same age as Tab Hunter, both handsome holdovers of the fabulous fifties.
Perhaps it was Gavin's tenure as president of the Screen Actors Guild in the early '70s that led President Ronald Reagan to appoint him ambassador to Mexico, a role that was not without controversy. Gavin considered running for office in 1991, but then retired from public life. After nearly 40 years away from the camera, Gavin passed away on February 9 at 86, the same age as Tab Hunter, both handsome holdovers of the fabulous fifties.
Malone, Hunter, and Gavin were not perfect actors, but they created performances molded at a time when going to the movies still meant seeing larger-than-life characters in larger-than-life situations. Beautiful in life, they did what we'll all do: age and then leave the earth. They had their time to live and their time to die; but their screen impressions will remain beautiful, and untarnished, forever.
Footnote:
When Tab Hunter published his autobiography, his book tour came to Pittsburgh. He was extremely gracious as he took questions from the audience. I sat rapturously listening to him recount the stories behind his films. I still regret not asking him what it was like to work with Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, John Wayne and others. I think I was intimated by his charm and good looks, which were still very evident. I admired his attitude about being gay in Hollywood in the 1950s. “Coming out, what does that mean?" he once queried. "What I'm concerned about is people as human beings. Are you a decent human being? What are you contributing? That's important.”
