My Lunches With Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles, Edited and With an Introduction by Peter Biskind

The outsized genius of Orson Welles (1915-1985) has become the stuff of legend.  Child prodigy, stage star and radio star and Oscar-winning film-maker at a stage in life when most young men are just learning to navigate the subway system on their own, Welles was both lionized and victimized by his designation as a “Boy Genius.”  The tragedy of most any prodigy is a suitable second act, and that was a dilemma beyond even Welles’ capabilities.  For what is a prodigy but someone who simply gets there first? 

And got there first, he did.  Welles went from star and celebrated director to television huckster and buffoon in record time.  It is hard for the generation who grew up watching Welles as pitchman for Paul Masson wines to realize that here was one of the most celebrated artists and intellects of his generation.  From Hamlet to Falstaff in just a few short years, Welles started isolating himself from the disappointments in life with layers of fat the way grit acquires layers of calcium carbonate to become pearls.

Later in life, Welles became the darling of the independent filmmaker set, who saw a kindred spirit in the maverick who so often bit the Hollywood hand that fed him.  And in this orbit of satellites was director Henry Jaglom (born 1938), who enticed a truculent Welles to appear in his film, A Safe Place (1971).  It was the start of a long friendship that would find Jaglom acting as friend, benefactor, baby-sitter and sometime agent to the fading genius.

Welles and Jaglom would meet regularly for lunch at Ma Maison, where the older auteur would hold court and entertain Jaglom with bits of wisdom gained in the artistic trenches, and with anecdotes from his amazing career.  Also in attendance was Welles’ toy poodle Kiki, who Welles used as another prop.

Jaglom taped their conversations from 1983 to 1985, when Welles died of a heart attack with a typewriter on his lap while writing a script.  He kept the tapes in a shoe box for years, until film historian Peter Biskind asked to have them transcribed.  The result is the book My Lunches With Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles, and a tasty tidbit it is, too.

The array of interests displayed here by Welles is captivating – it would be hard indeed to find better table talk.  Gifted with an actor’s memory, he could quote long passages from the classics; look at art in a new and refreshing way; and think through aesthetic problems with a speed and lucidity that was simply amazing.

He was also full of balloon juice.  That no one seemed to question Welles on many of his anecdotes is, frankly, a demonstration that hero worship is a very dangerous thing indeed.  For example, Welles tells Jaglom how he and Lionel and Ethel Barrymore once scoured town, looking for missing brother John Barrymore.  They would, Welles says, eventually find him in a whorehouse.  Great story, but, somehow… I’m not quite sure that Lionel and Ethel, both in their 60s at that time, would engage a 20-something youth in the search, no matter what a wunderkind he was.  Also amusing (though not included in this book), is Welles’ story that he understood the novel Dracula so well because he had tea with Bram Stoker as a boy – no small feat, considering Stoker died three years before Welles was born.

In the first line quoted below we catch Welles in another howler: that he spoke with Katherine Hepburn while in make-up for the film Bill of Divorcement while he was in makeup for Citizen Kane – the films were made nine years apart. 

Somehow, though, none of it seems to matter; I am reminded of what James Russell Lowell wrote of author Edgar Allan Poe:

There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge,

The genius is real, but so is the fudge.  Here is a sample of Wellesian table-talk from My Lunches With Orson:

H.J.: By the way, I was just reading ­Garson Kanin’s book on Tracy and Hepburn.

O.W.: Hoo boy! I sat in makeup during Kane, and she was next to me, being made up for A Bill of Divorcement. And she was describing how she was fucked by Howard Hughes, using all the four-letter words. Most people didn’t talk like that then. Except Carole Lombard. It came naturally to her. She couldn’t talk any other way. With Katie, though, who spoke in this high-class, girl’s-finishing-school accent, you thought that she had made a decision to talk that way. Grace Kelly also slept around, in the dressing room when nobody was looking, but she never said anything. Katie was different. She was a free woman when she was young. Very much what the girls are now. I was never a fan of Tracy.

H.J.: You didn’t find him charming as hell?

O.W.: No, no charm. To me, he was just a hateful, hateful man. I think Katie just doesn’t like me. She doesn’t like the way I look. Don’t you know there’s such a thing as physical dislike? Europeans know that about other Europeans. If I don’t like somebody’s looks, I don’t like them. See, I believe that it is not true that different races and nations are alike. I’m ­profoundly convinced that that’s a total lie. I think people are different. Sardinians, for example, have stubby little fingers. ­Bosnians have short necks.

H.J.: Orson, that’s ridiculous.

O.W.: Measure them. Measure them! I never could stand looking at Bette Davis, so I don’t want to see her act, you see. I hate Woody Allen physically, I dislike that kind of man.

H.J.: I’ve never understood why. Have you met him?

O.W.: Oh, yes. I can hardly bear to talk to him. He has the Chaplin disease. That particular combination of arrogance and timidity sets my teeth on edge.

H.J.: He’s not arrogant; he’s shy.

O.W.: He is arrogant. Like all people with timid personalities, his arrogance is ­unlimited. Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably ­arrogant. He acts shy, but he’s not. He’s scared. He hates himself, and he loves himself, a very tense situation. It’s people like me who have to carry on and pretend to be modest. To me, it’s the most embarrassing thing in the world—a man who presents himself at his worst to get laughs, in order to free himself from his hang-ups. Everything he does on the screen is therapeutic.

Waiter: Gentlemen, bon appétit. How is everything?

O.W.: We’re talking, thank you. [Waiter leaves.] I wish they wouldn’t do that. If I ever own a restaurant, I will never allow the waiters to ask if the diners like their dishes. Particularly when they’re talking.

H.J.: What is wrong with your food?

O.W.: It’s not what I had yesterday.

H.J.: You want to try to explain this to the waiter?

O.W.: No, no, no. One complaint per table is all, unless you want them to spit in the food. Let me tell you a story about George Jean Nathan, America’s great drama critic. Nathan was the tightest man who ever lived, even tighter than Charles Chaplin. And he lived for 40 years in the Hotel Royalton, which is across from the Algonquin. He never tipped anybody in the Royalton, not even when they brought the breakfast, and not at Christmastime. After about ten years of never getting tipped, the room-service waiter peed slightly in his tea. Everybody in New York knew it but him. The waiters hurried across the street and told the waiters at Algonquin, who were waiting to see when it would finally dawn on him what he was drinking! And as the years went by, there got to be more and more urine and less and less tea. And it was a great pleasure for us in the theater to look at a leading critic and know that he was full of piss. And I, with my own ears, heard him at the ‘21’ complaining, saying, “Why can’t I get tea here as good as it is at the Royalton?” That’s when I fell on the floor, you know.

H.J.: They keep writing in the papers that, ever since Wolfgang Puck left, this place has gone downhill.

O.W.: I don’t like Wolfgang. He’s a little shit. I think he’s a terrible little man.

H.J.: Warren Beatty was just saying that TV has changed movies, because for most of us, once you’re in a movie theater, you commit, whether you like it or not. You want to see what they’ve done, while at home …

O.W.: I’m the opposite. It’s a question of age. In my real movie-going days, which were the thirties, you didn’t stand in line. You strolled down the street and sallied into the theater at any hour of the day or night. Like you’d go in to have a drink at a bar. Every movie theater was partially empty. We never asked what time the movie began. We used to go after we went to the theater.

H.J.: You didn’t feel you had to see a movie from the start?

O.W.: No. We’d leave when we’d realize, “This is where we came in.” Everybody said that. I loved movies for that reason. They didn’t cost that much, so if you didn’t like one, it was, “Let’s do something else. Go to another movie.” And that’s what made it habitual to such an extent that walking out of a movie was what for people now is like turning off the television set.

H.J.: Were things really better in the old days?

O.W.: It’s terrible for older people to say that, because they always say things were better, but they really were. What was so good about it was just the quantity of movies that were made. If you were Darryl Zanuck, and you were producing 80 moving pictures under your direct supervision, how much attention could you pay to any one picture? Somebody was gonna slip something in that’s good.

I got along well with even the worst of the old moguls. They were all easier to deal with than these college-­educated, market-conscious people. I never really suffered from the “bad old boys.” I’ve only suffered from lawyers and agents. Wasn’t it Norman Mailer who said that the great new art form in ­Hollywood is the deal? Everybody’s energy goes into the deal. Forty-five years I have been doing business with agents, as a performer and a director. As a producer, sitting on the other side of the desk, I have never once had an agent go out on a limb for his client and fight for him. I’ve never heard one say, “No, just a minute! This is the actor you should use.” They will always say, “You don’t like him? I’ve got somebody else.” They’re totally spineless.

H.J.: In the old days, all those big deals were made on a handshake. With no contract. And they were all honored.

O.W.: In common with all Protestant or Jewish cultures, America was developed on the idea that your word is your bond. Otherwise, the frontier could never have been opened, ’cause it was lawless. A man’s word had to mean something. My theory is that everything went to hell with Prohibition, because it was a law nobody could obey. So the whole concept of the rule of law was corrupted at that moment. Then came Vietnam, and marijuana, which clearly shouldn’t be illegal, but is. If you go to jail for ten years in Texas when you light up a joint, who are you? You’re a lawbreaker. It’s just like Prohibition was. When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society. You see?

Richard Burton comes to the table.

Richard Burton: Orson, how good to see you. It’s been too long. You’re looking fine. Elizabeth is with me. She so much wants to meet you. Can I bring her over to your table?

O.W.: No. As you can see, I’m in the middle of my lunch. I’ll stop by on my way out.

Burton exits.

H.J.: Orson, you’re behaving like an asshole. That was so rude.

O.W.: Do not kick me under the table. I hate that. I don’t need you as my ­conscience, my Jewish Jiminy Cricket. Especially do not kick my boots. You know they protect my ankles. Richard Burton had great talent. He’s ruined his great gifts. He’s become a joke with a celebrity wife. Now he just works for money, does the worst shit. And I wasn’t rude. To quote Carl Laemmle, “I gave him an evasive answer. I told him, ‘Go fuck yourself.’ ”

Master Magicians and Phantoms: An Interview with Lee Falk, Part II

We continue our interview with Lee Falk (1911-1999), creator of the Phantom and Mandrake the Magician, first conducted in 1996.

What did you think of the Mandrake radio show?

It was pretty good. I had nothing to do with it, because I was in the Army. They had permission, of course. But it was rather good. I met the man who played Mandrake in the Army.

Raymond Edward Johnson?

Raymond Edward Johnson! He was a very distinguished stage actor, he played Jefferson on Broadway.  I met Ray when I was a corporal in the Army, down in Virginia. He was kinda a blue guy when he got in the Army. He had already done Mandrake. I pulled him in, and helped him get through his first few days of military life.

Johnson was one of these very successful radio actors who would do maybe half dozen shows a day, going from one studio to the next.  He was one of the few who did that. He was also the host of Inner Sanctum. He was a very successful stage actor, too. He then got Muscular Dystrophy. And over the years, I just lost track of him.

Last time I saw him was at the Friends of Old Time Radio Convention, out in Newark, New Jersey. They have them every October. Now you see, I was also a theater director, and this convention invited me over to direct a recreation of the old Mandrake radio show. And Raymond Edward Johnson, it turns out, is a favorite of these people! He's wheeled out on a bed, and he can't move at all, except for his head a little. So they prop this script up in front of his bed, and we did Mandrake that way. He was amazing; his voice was so strong and so good! He sounded exactly the same. His mind was still sound, after all these years. He is just an amazing man.

Now what about the Mandrake movie serial?

I didn't like it. That was also made when I was in the Army, by Columbia. In those days, I was told later, that Republic made much better serials. At the time, I thought Columbia was the bigger name. But Columbia bought both Mandrake and the Phantom. I had nothing to do with it. King Features acted as my agent through all of that, and they paid a little royalties, very little. I remember I came back on a three day pass to see some of them, and thought Mandrake was just terrible. There were some good actors in it, oddly enough, Warren Hull played Mandrake, a good actor at that time, and Lothar was reduced in size to about five foot seven! He wore a turban to make him Egyptian, instead of a tall black man. There may have been some race thing going on there, I don't know.

But it was badly and unimaginatively done. Here you have a magician, an illusionist. And with trick photography you could've done things, made chairs move across the floor, all kinds of things even without the present technology, to sell the idea of magic and illusion. But they didn't. It became a cops and robbers thing, with lots of automobiles chasing round, and all that. Mandrake didn't even wear a mustache, and that disappointed me. I thought they just did a bad job, though Hull was a good actor.

Mandrake is one of the most impressive looking characters in comic strips. Look at him, and you think of Warren William, or young John Barrymore.

You're so right! Those are the men I wanted to play him in the movies. Warren William was a matinee idol of that period, and he would've been perfect. Same for Douglas Fairbanks Jr., there were quite a few of them who could've done it. It would've been wonderful at that time. I know Doug Fairbanks, by the way. He's now close to 90, and still upright. He's terrific.

I just ran into him at a festival honoring Buster Keaton, and he looks just remarkable.

Isn't he, though?  He still has his charm, as always. Charming and bright, a very gracious man. My wife directed him something, and was friendly with him, and she always thought he was an enchanting man.

Didn't Fellini plan to make a Mandrake film at one point?

Yes, he did. He loved Mandrake. I first met Fellini, when he was 17. When I first came to Italy, I was in my early 20s. Mandrake was already established in Italy. I went to visit the publisher in Florence, just to say hello. They didn't put him out in newspapers, but in big albums, in Italian.

This publishing house originally was created by the man who did Pinocchio. Collodi, was his name, I think. Based on the success of Pinocchio, they created a little publishing house. Then they put out Mandrake, and later, the Phantom. So when I went there, I met this little group of 15 people, or so. One of them was a 17 year old Fellini. Years later, I didn't remember him, but he always remembered me, the young American cartoonist, he would not forget that. Years later I returned to Italy, and I, of course, later, I knew who he was by reputation. And we met again, this is the early 1960s, and we became good friends. I saw him whenever I was in Rome, and he'd visit whenever he was in New York. And for years, he wanted to make a Mandrake film. Every time I saw him, he brought it up.

But there were always conflicts. Mandrake, at the time, was optioned by somebody else. Or he was otherwise busy. And this went on for thirty or forty years, and somehow, it just never got made. He wanted Marcello Mastroianni for Mandrake, he wanted Claudia Cardanale for Narda, which I thought was marvelous. When he died two years ago, I hadn't seen him in several years. But a lady named Chandlers wrote of very good biography of him, called I, Fellini. For 12 years she taped his talk, and the whole book is just his talk. A fascinating book. She told me that just a few months before he died, he was still talking of doing a Mandrake film. It never happened, and I'm so sorry about it. I remember that people, at the time, told me, that if he did it, he'd change it. And I'd say, any changes he made would've been for the better!

He said Mandrake influenced him very much. He loved the whole world of illusion. His second film is called, The White Sheik, a very funny film. It's based on an Italian tradition of comic strips, where there are illustrated stories, illustrated with photographs that have dialogue balloons. It's a terrific film.

What was the origin of The Phantom?

The Phantom is combination of Tarzan, I grew up on Edgar Rice Burroughs, and also Kipling's Jungle Book. In fact, I sort of paid homage to that by calling The Phantom's pygmy friends The Bandar, which comes from the monkey tribe who were friends with Mowgli.

Was he an evolution for you, or did you create him complete and whole from the start? The whole myth of The Ghost Who Walks and The Man Who Cannot Die...

That all evolved. In the very first six months of it, I had a playboy named Jimmy Wallace, who at nights was The Phantom. He had a girlfriend named Diana, who The Phantom later married, some many years later. The original stories were about pirates, somehow this young heiress Diana got involved, and The Phantom was a Mystery Man who came at night and helped her. Then she'd dream about him during the day, never dreaming it was her old pal Jimmy Wallace who was just a friend. She was nice to Wallace, but that's all.

It started that way. And as it went on, I got the idea of a Jungle Man. I changed it without telling the reader! Jimmy Wallace just disappeared. And here was The Phantom, running through the jungle. Later on, I gave him a horse, and I just thought of him as a modern Tarzan. Gradually, the idea of the generations of The Phantom, where each successive son become The Phantom, creating the myth of a deathless avenger, and the stuff about the Skull Cave, all evolved in the first year.

I was just in Australia for two weeks during the filming of The Phantom movie, on The Gold Coast. This is The Phantom of 50 years ago.

He's a character with a very mythic quality.

Exactly. This is not accidental. Part of my reading was The Tales of Gods and Heroes, which is all about the mythic heroes of Western Europe, and also India and Asia. You see, The Phantom has always been the Number One adventure strip around the world, in terms of distribution and readership. And people continually ask me why. I hope that it's maybe because it's good. But I also think that people of various countries, and he's published in 25 languages, all have their own myths and heroes. And they all identify with The Phantom, because he's some of the old myths and legends modernized.

In one Phantom story, for example, I put him through the 12 tasks of Hercules. I had The Phantom do this in modern times, and that's the kind of things I do to keep him fresh. I update the tales of myths and heroes, and legends.

Another thing that kept him fresh was the idea of the generations of The Phantom. This is now the 21st Phantom. But I could always go back and tell stories of the first Phantom, or the tenth, and so forth. This gives me a lot of range. In fact, The Phantom almost stopped after the second Phantom. This was when the first son was sent out of the jungle, and back to the country of his mother, in this case, England. There, he was to be educated by monks. But the young man ran away and joined the Globe Theater in England to become an actor! So he ends up in the opening night of Romeo and Juliet, where he played Juliet! You see, they didn't allow women on stage in Shakespeare's time, and young men played women's parts.

His father, meanwhile, was a macho, big, powerful guy, comes roaring over there for the opening night, with Shakespeare shivering in the wings on opening night. The Phantom has the courtesy not to break up the show, but after the performance he goes backstage, pulls the wig off his son, and says: "You're coming back to the jungle with me!"

The son refuses, and the father goes back without him. He stays for awhile and becomes an actor, and then the father is fatally wounded, and the boy is sent for. He returns to the jungle, and goes through the ceremony and becomes the second Phantom. Blood is thicker than water.

What a terrific story.

I've done stories about all 21 Phantoms, I guess.

Now The Phantom is the first costumed hero in comic strips, right?

Yes, he is. He was number one. This was in 1936. There were a whole slew of them afterwards. I think Batman came about three years later.  A lot of young guys around read The Phantom, and it inspired them, I think. Batman is almost a take-off on The Phantom, what with the Batcave and the Skull Cave, and so forth.

Of my two strips, Mandrake was always harder to do. He is fantasy, and originally, he was the bigger of the two strips worldwide. Then gradually, The Phantom took over and became much bigger than Mandrake. Fantasy, as you may know, has a limited appeal to the realistic, and The Phantom, while he seems like a fantastic fellow, is a very realistic person. And the stories are more realistic, about real people. He's a remarkable hero. In all the 60 years I've done him, he's never shot anybody, never wounded anybody.

I was always against too much violence in comic strips. Some of the more recent ones, through the years, comic books particularly, which I've read from World War II on, got very rough.

I think they are too rough, and the whole industry's a mess.

They've brought out all of these things! They're drawn very well, but the writing is disturbing in most of them. There're exceptions, of course, but the gore is inexcusable.

It's inexcusable, and it seems to take all the fun out of it.

I think so. I think they're just awful, and they get wilder and wilder trying to get story ideas. A friend of mine was doing the inking on one of them; you had four or five guys lying down that the Punisher has knocked down. He then shoots them all in the head to make sure they're dead! They're just unbelievably bad.

More Lee Falk tomorrow!

An Evening With Celeste Holm

One month ago today we lost Celeste Holm (1917-2012), one of the few remaining figures from Hollywood’s Golden Age.  Of that august body, the only four survivors that come to mind are Olivia de Havillland (born 1916), Kirk Douglas (born 1916), Mickey Rooney (born 1920), and Shirley Temple (born 1928).  I’m sure it’s possible that, some 60 years hence, someone will write an appreciation of Ben Affleck while contemplating with nostalgia the Millennium Era of Hollywood, but I somehow doubt it.

It’s hard for people born into the era of movies like The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises and yet another version of Spider-Man, to remember (or understand) that films were once made by, and for, adults.  (And, seriously, does our culture really need a “realistic” Batman movie?  Isn’t the very phrase fairly insulting?  Could you imagine anyone with a straight face 40 or 50 years ago suggesting that adult audiences would greet the notion of a “dark” superhero film with anything other than blank incomprehension or withering disdain?  And isn’t this stuff supposed to be fun, anyway?  Please don’t get me wrong – I enjoy a Batman film as next as the next fellow, and was entertained by both the 1960s comedy series and the Tim Burton films.  But … have we degenerated so as a culture that the story of a millionaire dressed like a giant bat so he could punch a homicidal clown is now considered worthy of an “adult” take?)  In such an atmosphere, it’s somehow consoling to remember that films were once made by adults and not a culture of arrested adolescents.

Holm was a staple on Broadway and film for decades.  She won an Academy Award for her performance in Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), one of the first films to seriously address anti-Semitism, and was nominated for her performances in Come to the Stable (1949) and the classic All About Eve (1950).  On Broadway she originated the role of Ado Annie in Oklahoma!, and in 1991 I was lucky enough to see her as an aging actress in Paul Rudnick’s comedy about the ghost of John Barrymore, I Hate Hamlet. 

Holm had a very distinct screen persona.  Her somewhat plain, non-glamorous beauty hinted at an inner warmth, and her natural reserve suited her for roles as patrician or distant women.  Always more convincing as a socialite than a tart, Holm managed to bring an element of Yankee gentility to any endeavor.  To see two disparate sides of Holm, watch her nearly incandescent turn as a nun in Come to the Stable and then see her as chanteuse Flame O’Neill in the riotous comedy Champagne for Caesar (1950).  For a taste of her range, watch Holm cornered by the duplicitous Anne Baxter in All About Eve here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=987UWPKQVQA.

About 15 years ago I had the great pleasure to dine with Holm at the apartment of lyricist Fred Ebb  (1928-2004).  My friend, film scholar and writer Jim Nemeth, had “won” Holm for dinner at a charitable auction, and she regaled us for over four hours with stories alternately salty and scandalous.  For a woman so composed and serene onscreen, she could be quite surprising in the flesh.  (There is a reason it’s called “acting.”)  She spared nobody.

Asked about her Caesar co-star Vincent Price, Holm asked, “why would you want to know about him?  He couldn’t act.”  That was a comment not nearly as withering as her take on Stable costar Loretta Young, whom she called “a chocolate-covered black widow spider.”

About her Eve costars, she was equally brutal.  Hugh Marlowe was “dull,” and she had no comment on George Sanders, who she claimed only spoke to the director and never to the rest of the cast.  She called Baxter “ambitious,” and Bette Davis a word that rather rhymes with “ambitious.”

She had some genuinely nice things to say about her High Society (1956) co-star Frank Sinatra, but added, “you wouldn’t want to cross him.”  She dismissed Nicol Williamson (Barrymore in I Hate Hamlet) as a “drunk” and pronounced Julie Andrews (they worked together in television’s Cinderella) “cold.”  The biggest mistake of her career was not made by herself, but, rather, the producers of the film version of Oklahoma!, who did not ask her to reprise her stage role as Ado Annie.  Perhaps my favorite Holm-ism was her take on her fans:  “When someone tells me they like Gentlemen’s Agreement, I know they’re a West Side liberal.  When they mention Eve, I know they’re gay.”

It was, in short, an unforgettable evening.  Though I found the real Celeste Holm very different from the reel one, she was a woman who will be greatly missed.

Important Birthdays: Judy Garland and Basil Rathbone

I could not let the week close without marking two birthdays important to our shared popular culture: singer-actress Judy Garland (June 10, 1922) and actor Basil Rathbone (June 13, 1892).  This year marks the 90^th anniversary of Garland’s birth and the 120^th for Rathbone.  An unusual paring, to be sure, but we at The Jade Sphinx are nothing if not eclectic.

So much has been written about Garland since her death in 1969 that most anything I could add at this point would be superfluous.  Let us note, however, that she was a remarkable talent: simply one of the most gifted singers or her era (and a focal point of the Great American Songbook), as well as an actress of unusual depth and sensitivity.  Younger audiences perhaps know her best from her turn as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939), and this is something of a shame.  Not that she is less than terrific – in fact, it remains one of the few “perfect” movies – but that there is so much more to Garland’s oeuvre than this one perfect film.

Readers interested in knowing the woman that Garland eventually became should seek out several films that showcase her varied talents.  Garland delivers a magnificent, subtle, non-singing performance in The Clock (1945), where she is wooed and wed by soldier Robert Walker in a brief 24-hour period; she is equally delightful in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), which may be her best musical film.  (Yes – better than Oz.  Rent it and see.) 

Garland was set loose by her studio, MGM, after executives managed to squeeze everything possible they could out of the young woman, casting aside the exhausted and ruined husk as no longer viable.  Garland was to prove them wrong in 1954, when she financed A Star is Born, her ‘comeback’ picture, which garnered her an Academy Award nomination.  This started the second half of her career, which was more interesting (if not as stellar) as the first half, and included a series of concert performances culminating in her great success at the Palace. 

The challenge in writing about Garland today is that any critic has to deal with the cult that has grown up around her.  Cult status has ruined our ability to fairly assess – to greater or lesser degrees – such diverse figures as Garland, James Dean, H. P. Lovecraft and fictional constructs like Star Trek or Sherlock Holmes.  (One day I will tell of my visit, as a journalist, to a Dark Shadows convention, which might rank as the single most surreal and grotesque occurrence of my life.) 

The problem with cults is that the one must cut through the miasma of fandom before reaching some kind of sane critical evaluation – and that is often the thing most cults want least.  It is my belief, for instance, that the well-meaning but fatuous groups of Sherlock Holmes aficionados (“Sherlockians”) have kept both aesthetes and academe from seriously assessing the literary contribution of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Cultists protect their fetishistic properties with a fierce devotion, and woe to any of the uninitiated who seek to make a balanced critical judgment.

The Garland cult is somewhat less potent today: Tracie Bennett currently stars on Broadway in End of the Rainbow, which chronicles Garland’s final days.  This has met with some success, but also with uncomprehending shrugs.  The great  multitude that made up most of her fan base – gay men of a certain age – are no longer cultural arbiters, and younger fans are often without a clue as to what the fuss is all about.  I contend that if Garland’s legacy was shared by the multitudes rather than a smallish cult, her cultural currency would be greater today.

Sir Philip St. John Basil Rathbone was something commonplace today but unique in his era: a classical actor who specialized in popular entertainments.  Rathbone was, simply put, one of the most gifted actors of his generation:  handsome in a leonine way, blessed with a mellifluous voice and perfect diction, poise and hauteur, and an incredible range and physicality.  If Rathbone were alive today, his career would be similar to that of Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellen, both classical actors who have made popular successes.  (Indeed, one can only imagine Rathbone as Professor X or Gandalf!)

Like many actors with a gift for the classics, Rathbone was often most effectively cast as characters from a more romantic and swashbuckling past: Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Murdstone, Sir Guy of Gisbourne, Karenin, Levasseur and Ebenezer Scrooge.  Sadly, only one of his Shakespearean performances survives on film: Tybalt, in the largely ill-conceived MGM 1936 production of Romeo and Juliet.  Rathbone and John Barrymore, as Mercutio, are the only members of the cast to deliver striking performances.

The most gifted fencer in Hollywood, Rathbone was the “go-to” guy for costume dramas.  He often joked that he could easily have bested his frequent co-star Errol Flynn in most of their on-screen duels, significantly changing the plotlines had he done so.  This close identification with swashbucklers led him to be cast, later in his career, in the Danny Kaye comedy The Court Jester (1955), where he effortlessly sent-up his own image.

The year 1939 was a pivotal one for Rathbone.  Author Margaret Mitchell supposedly wanted Rathbone to play Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind (imagine his icy delivery of “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”).  Instead, he made The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, two films that would forever identify him with the Great Detective and limit his career as a serious actor.

Today, such an identification would lead to greater roles in big-budget junk movies (look at Robert Downey, Jr.); in Hollywood in the 1930s-40s, it meant an endless procession of B-pictures.  Rathbone toiled on Hollywood’s Baker Street for nine years before returning to Broadway.  There, he made a triumphant return in 1948 as Dr. Sloper in The Heiress, winning the Tony Award for Best Actor.  But, in the eyes of Hollywood, he was only Sherlock Holmes and the role in the film adaptation went to Ralph Richardson.  That Rathbone’s performance was not committed to film remains one of the great tragedies in movie history.

Sadly, Rathbone ended his career in low-budget horror films in the 1960s.  Despite these indignities, he also managed to perform a one-man show at the White House for President John F. Kennedy, recorded many classics for Caedmon Records (including the finest interpretations of Edgar Allen Poe ever conceived), and appearing in a live television musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol, The Stingiest Man in Town.

Rathbone was a singular film persona: he managed to bring a sense of glamour and romance to each and every role, often taking audiences out of the contemporary world into a more romantic vision of the past.  Ours is, sadly, a world too often too busy for such romance, and the world is poorer without it.  For those who relish such things, Rathbone’s many film performances remain a delight.

Grand Hotel at 80

Greta Garbo and John Barrymore

in the divine Grand Hotel

Though your correspondent is an avid film buff (one might say a rabid film buff), I also must acknowledge that cinematic masterpieces are few and far between.  But during the Golden Age of American Cinema (roughly the silent era through about 1947), most of the greatest American movies were made.  The secrets of many arts are sometimes lost (ask any serious painter trying to recreate the now forgotten techniques of the classic Academic manner), and as a result we sometimes look at a work of art and marvel, how did they do that?

These thoughts crossed my mind as I remembered that Grand Hotel, one of the greatest American movies, was released 80 years ago this month.  To my readers who consider Chariots of Fire to be an “old movie,” Grand Hotel must seem positively ancient. However, anyone who seeks out Grand Hotel will be delighted by the deft storytelling, the intricate and adult plot and fabulous performances that are as fresh today as they were 80 years ago.

Based on a 1929 novel by Vicki Baum, Grand Hotel was the first of a new type of motion picture – a multistory film based on a central location.  The Grand Hotel of Berlin, where the action takes place, is virtually a character in the film, and the detailed and artful photography gives a wonderfully solidity to the Art Deco setting.  (Indeed, there is only one exterior shot in the film, when we watch the corpse of one of the main characters carted away.)

In short, ballet-dancer Gursinskaya (Greta Garbo) has burned out, and entertains thoughts of suicide.  Baron Felix von Gaigern (John Barrymore) is a penniless aristocrat turned hotel thief with eyes for Gursinskaya’s pearls.  Lionel Barrymore is Otto Kringelein, a bookkeeper with a terminal illness spending his last few dollars at the Grand Hotel so he could die in high style.  His former boss, General Director Preysing (Wallace Berry) is also staying at the hotel, making a shady business deal.  Joan Crawford, in what is simply the best performance of her career, is Flaemmchen, a stenographer employed by Preysing, who may soon need to be a kept woman in order to make ends meet.

The action is watched by Lewis Stone, as hotel physician Dr. Otternschlag, a man whose face was horribly scarred in the Great War.  Stone is seldom directly involved in any of the action, and his distance keeps him from connecting to the human drama evolving all around him.  In fact, he closes the film with, “Grand Hotel.  Always the same.  People come.  People go.  Nothing ever happens.”

Grand Hotel was directed by Edmund Goulding (1891-1959), and won the Academy Award for Best Picture.  Amazingly, it is the only Best Picture winner not to be nominated for other major awards (Best Actor, etc), a fact that astonishes me to this day.  Goulding was the megaphone behind The Dawn Patrol (1938), Dark Victory (1939) and Nightmare Alley (1947), great movies all and highly recommended.

The real treat of Grand Hotel is watching some of the finest actors in the history of the movies at the top of their form.  One of the great paradoxes, to my mind, is that the name John Barrymore (1882-1942) is now, to some, shorthand for over-the-top acting.  A look at any of his films (particularly his early sound films, like Dinner at Eight, Svengali and Moby Dick) would give lie to that impression, particularly his stellar performance in Grand Hotel.  Barrymore here is 50 years old, and very soon time and chronic alcoholism will take its toll, transforming this extraordinarily handsome man into an aged relic almost overnight. Barrymore was also one of those great rarities: a deft character actor with the looks and physique of a leading man.  His performance here is one of great charm and pathos, and the chemistry between him and both Garbo and Crawford is simply astonishing. 

Joan Crawford (1905-1977) is often a conundrum to contemporary viewers.  One of the challenges is that her name, visage and reputation have suffered irreparable damage at the hands of Faye Dunaway with the risible Mommie Dearest (1981).  Another challenge is that Crawford’s career was so multiform and diverse that it’s nearly impossible to comfortably encompass her persona.  There are the wonderful, multi-dimensional parts she enjoyed at MGM in the 1930s, her hard-bitten victim pictures in the 1940s at Warner Brothers, her character parts in the 1950s, and her horror films of the 1960s.  What gets lost in all of this is that each iteration of Crawford is wonderful.  In Grand Hotel Crawford has a deeply affecting vulnerability, mixing both sentiment and cynicism.  Her interplay with John Barrymore is genuinely sexy, and her exchanges with Lionel Barrymore filled with sympathy.  It is, to my mind, the finest performance in a career rich with great star turns.

Lionel Barrymore (1878-1954) lacked both the good looks and glamour of his brother, John.  This ability to inhabit everyman roles have led some to mistakenly believe that he is the superior actor of the two, but a quick look at their films together gives the lie to that impression.  Though Lionel’s Kringelein is not a bad performance, it is filled with all the fussy hamminess that John is frequently accused of.  He also plays the role in such a subservient, mincing key that one sometimes sympathizes with Wallace Beery and we long to take a fist to him.

But perhaps the most mythic performance in the film is that of Greta Garbo (1905-1990).  Garbo’s performance here is pure alchemy.  Though often in repose, she is completely believable as a ballerina, as a figure of movement.  And her glacial beauty and subtly expressive eyes render her both remote and human.  There is something of the goddess about Garbo, but a wounded, introspective goddess.  The role of Grusinskaya played to Garbo’s natural tendency towards melancholy and her despair seems all too palpable.  Her moments with John Barrymore are galvanizing – mostly because each performer gives to the other.  In some marvelous way, the efficacy of their performances relies on the reaction of the other.  Garbo was deeply touched by Barrymore the man, and had hoped to work with him again – sadly it never happened.

Readers interested in Garbo could do no better than finding a copy of the magisterial Star Acting: Gish, Garbo, Davis by film historian and biographer Charles Affron.  It is a wonderful book using frame blow-ups from various films to detail the technique of the three stars.  The section on Garbo is liberally illustrated with frame blow-ups from Grand Hotel, and it’s almost possible to capture the very moments in which she achieves her greatest effects.  This book is highly recommended to any serious cineaste.

Grand Hotel was indeed lightning captured in a bottle, and its magic has never been successfully resurrected.  MGM tried again with a 1945 remake, Week-End at the Waldorf.  But MGM’s salad days were over and Waldorf is surprisingly limp.  It was adapted for the off-Broadway stage as a disco musical in the 1970s (an experience from which your correspondent is still trying to recover), and later, a large-scale Broadway musical in 1989.  The show, though a Tony Award winner, was really a rather sad affair, memorable mostly for the stage business of people pushing chairs around the stage.  Or, as one wag said, “Grand Hotel.  People come.  People go.  People move furniture.”

Grand Hotel is available on DVD and through Netflix.  It is a film not to be missed.