Beverly Gray's Blog: Beverly in Movieland

The unstoppable Richard Orton, he of the keen eye and thepassion for movie art direction, just sent me two screen-shots proving that in1951 Paramount Studios used the same fancy set of decorative archways in twovery different films. One was George Stevens’ powerful romantic tragedy, APlace in the Sun. This film starring Montgomery Clift as a young man on themake, also featured Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, and murder most foul.The other film, completely unknown to me, was a screwball romantic comedy, TheMating Season. Dick helpfully advised me that’s possible to see TheMating Season, completely free of charge, on YouTube. The film’s above-the-title stars are John Lund and the gorgeous Gene Tierney.But it was when Dick told me that The Mating Season is considered one ofThelma Ritter’s best performances that I decided to check it out.

 

Thelma Ritter (1902-1969) was never anyone’s idea of aromantic lead. Diminutive, with a gravelly voice and a strong New Yawk accent, she was born to play tart-tonguedwomen of the working class. Making her uncredited screen debut as a frustratedshopper in 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street, she collected herfirst Oscar nomination—for the supporting role of Margo Channing’s maid—in1950’s All About Eve. The Mating Season won her a second nomination, andshe went on to accumulate four more noms (for With a Song in My Heart, Pickupon South Street, Pillow Talk, and Birdman of Alcatraz): it’sa supporting-actress record that has neve been broken. Only problem: none ofthe nominations resulted in a gold statuette. It’s an omission I wish we couldsomehow rectify, because Thelma Ritter—whether appearing in wacky comedy or atough-minded drama—was one of a kind.

 

For sure, The Mating Season would be dead in thewater without her. It’s the story of an eager young businessman (the blond andrather bland Lund) who falls for the sophisticated daughter of a former U.S.ambassador (Tierney). They marry, but rivals on all sides are rooting againstthe pairing. While Lund, trying to advance his business career, moves his brideinto a swanky apartment, rivals in his firm are working against the marriage aswell as his career prospects. I won’t go into all the complications that arise,but Ritter plays Lund’s salt-of-the-earth widowed mom, the good-heartedproprietor of a hamburger stand that’s in financial trouble. When she learnsthat her son and new daughter-in-law are trying to throw an elaborate dinnerparty for friends and business associates, she shows up to take over thekitchen, without ever revealing the family relationship.  Of course she triumphs, both at the stove andwith the grateful new daughter-in-law who at first doesn’t realize who she is.Eventually, there evolves a showdown of sorts with a new arrival, the bitchyand self-serving snob who is Tierney’s mother. She’s played by Miriam Hopkins,once a bright Hollywood leading lady herself but by this time quite convincingas an obnoxious older woman. Remarkably, Hopkins is billed above Ritter as asupporting player, when by rights Ritter should have had star billing, in astory that clearly revolves, from beginning to end, around her funny, feistycharacter.   

 

I’d love to convey how poignant Thelma Ritter can be, whenshe’s victimized in films like Sam Fuller’s noirish spy thriller, Pickup onSouth Street. But her acerbic wit shines through as the nurse looking afterJames Stewart in Rear Window, and in so many of her other roles. .Givethis gal an Oscar! Too bad it’s too late for that.  

 

 

Well, none of us is getting any younger. And Hollywoodactresses, who’ve always relied on youth and beauty to fuel their careers, knowbetter than most that ageing is tantamount to career suicide. Ten years ago,Amy Schumer went so far as to join with gal pals Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus,and Patricia Arquette in a darkly comic video short, all of them desperate tostave off the approach of their so-called “Last F**kable Day.”    

 

But things were perhaps even worse in Old Hollywood. WhenAudrey Hepburn, still under 30, was romantically paired with fifty-six-year-oldGary Cooper in 1957’s Love in the Afternoon, this confirmed the basicTinseltown understanding that—for women, at least—the freshness of youth waseverything. As for those talented actresses who weren’t as young as they usedto be, they had to accept that they were now considered by studio honchos to bedamaged goods. And so it happened that two of the Golden Age’s most reveredstars suddenly had to accept lesser projects to fill up their dance cards.

 

Bette Davis, who arrived in Hollywood in 1930, had somerough years before she triumphed in the powerful role of a slatternly waitress ina screen adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage: it led to a uniquewrite-in Oscar nomination. Thereafter she made her mark in a series of historicaland romantic dramas, including Jezebel (1938); Dark Victory (1939);Now, Voyager (1942); and the wonderful All About Eve (1950): she ultimately won the Best Actress Oscartwice, and was officially nominated a record ten times.  For years she was Warner Bros.’ mostbankable star, specializing in bold, uncompromising portrayals of strong women.

 

Joan Crawford, started out as a Broadway dancer, then in1925 was signed to a contract at classy MGM, where she first specialized inplaying flappers and then working girls who made good. Depression audiencesloved her, and she was a marvelous hussy in The Women (1939), but eventuallyshe wore out her welcome at MGM and moved to Warners in 1943. The noirish MildredPierce (1945) revived her career and won her an Oscar, but sharing theWarners lot with Queen Bee Bette Davis was a challenge.

 

By 1962, Davis and Crawford (both in their fifties) foundtheir careers had essentially dried up. That’s when someone got the bright ideaof pairing these two fading stars in a Grand Guignol-style horror movie, WhatEver Happened to Baby Jane? Their fabled real-life feud made audiences runto see them play two sisters who were once stars of the silver screen and nowlive together in a mansion where bad things happen. Someone has said that onfilm Davis is the quintessential sadist and Crawford (with her tremulousexpressions) the quintessential masochist. In this film, so it plays out.Davis’s character, once the golden-haired kiddie star Baby Jane, is a drunkwith a skewed view of reality. Crawford plays her sister, formerly a leadinglady but now confined to a wheelchair after a mysterious accident that isexplained (in a way that thoroughly baffled me) at the end of the film. Bothare essentially grotesque, but Baby Jane revived their popularity, andDavis (though not Crawford) thereby racked up one more Oscar nom.

 

Sad, though, that two fifty-year-old actresses needed tostoop to such trashy material. Happily, at least one great actress today stillhas her pick of roles. Everywhere I turn, I see photos of Meryl Streep, at 77,looking devastatingly glamorous in ads for The Devil Wears Prada 2.  Yes, she plays a sort of villain, but agorgeous one.

Revolutionary Road strikes me as a curious name for a novel,or a movie . . . or a street address. When I think of its implications, Iconjure up a battlefield, with a lot of Minuteman types carrying muskets and wearingtheir hair in a pigtail. But Revolutionary Road is the title of the 1961debut novel by Richard Yates that has nothing overt to do with the AmericanRevolution of 1776. Rather, it’s a domestic drama set in the leafy suburbs ofConnecticut circa 1955. The young couple who decide to start their family in abig white house on Revolutionary Road are hardly revolutionary in the militarysense. Nor are they, really, American patriots. But after some thought I’vecome to see Frank and April Wheeler as yearning for their own private revolution,one that will raise them high above their earthbound suburban neighbors.

 

Once the novel was in print, Hollywood came calling, and ascreenplay emerged. But for many years no one came forward to produce thismorose story with its grim ending. Then British actress Kate Winslet, alwaysripe for challenging roles, fell in love with the project and became determinedto play the female lead. Fortunately for her, she had a husband, Sam Mendes,with his own Hollywood cred. Primarily a stage director, he had won an Oscarfor helming his debut film, 1999’s American Beauty, which like ReluctionaryRoad took an intimate look at the collapse of an American marriage. Sincethat time he had won more acclaim, particularly for his very dark and poignant Roadto Perdition (2002). When 2008 rolled around, he was releasing a movie thatstarred not only his wife but also her close friend and one-time on-screen love,Leonardo DiCaprio.

 

Also culled from the Titanic cast was Kathy Bates,who had once played Molly Brown on that ill-fated voyage and was now asked by Mendesto play a local realtor who befriends April and Frank. The key supporting roleof her truth-teller son was taken by Michael Shannon, a character actor whoended up with the Academy’s single acting nomination for Revolutionary Road.In all it was nominated for three Oscars (including Best Costumes and BestProduction Design), but won none of them. Most recently the versatile Shannon hasplayed the martyred President James Garfield in TV’s Death by Lightning anda key judge in last year’s Nuremberg.

 What is revolutionary about Revolutionary Road? Itfocuses in on a married couple determined to live a life of their own choosing.April, a frustrated local actress, is the one who comes up with the plan forher husband to quit his workaday job so the family can move to Paris anddiscover their bliss. Frank at first resists his wife’s urging but soon comesto accept the idea that in Paris he’ll intuit how to really put his undefined talentsto use. They make plans and tell all their neighbors . . . but reality gets inthe way. And the couple eventually discover that their thinking is not so insync after all. The ending, when it comes, is tragic, and the final scene givesthe family (and us) little solace.

 

Which is probably why the film, well-made as it is, did notdrawn in audiences. In Titanic, Jack and Rose were a couple madly inlove, until an iceberg destroyed their dreams of romantic bliss. Here the sameactors show romance crumbling because of their own unrealistic goals. Ironically,Winslet’s own eight-year marriage to Mendes didn’t last much beyond the film’s release.

 

 

 

I was delighted to see, on the People magazine site,an article about George Schlatter. George who? It seems there’s a brand-newdocumentary, Sock It to Me: The Legend of George Schlatter, now comingonto the market to celebrate Schlatter’s 96th year.  Backwhen I was a college kid, Schlatter was the producer of a little sketch comedyshow called Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. As a one-off TV special thataired on  September 9, 1967, the show generated such buzz—especially amongyoung audiences—that it returned as a weekly series, replacing the once-huge Manfrom U.N.C.L.E, at the beginning of 1968. It ran until July of 1973, whenits youthful sexiness finally ran out of steam. 

 

I take all this personally partly because Laugh-Inwas must-see TV where I lived. Itsinspired brand of silliness (Goldie Hawn frugging in a bikini and a lot offlower-power tattoos; Arte Johnson as a dirty old man constantly being whackedby Ruth Buzzi’s handbag; Lily Tomlin as precocious little Edith Ann proclaiming“That’s the truth!” and blowing raspberries) will always stay with me. At atime when public life seemed increasingly fraught, it was a joy to laugh atbad  jokes and sketches performed by talentedshowbiz newcomers.

 

 Hawn and Tomlin, inparticular, have certainly gone on to major Hollywood careers. But the show wasalso so trendy that it attracted guests with high star-wattage. When Schlatterand his writers unearthed Dewey "Pigmeat" Markham’s goofy “Here Comesthe Judge” routine, Sammy Davis Jr. started showing up regularly in a judicialrobe and powdered wig to increase the hilarity: I’m not exactly sure why welaughed so hard, but it was awfully funny. (Briefly there was even a car modelon the market called The Judge, meant to capitalize on the show’s catch-phrase.)There were also frequent guest appearances by major social and politicalfigures. Early on, one of the show’s recurrent gags was for a cast member tosay, “Sock it to me,” and then get doused by a pail of water. Pretty soon,there were quick cuts of celebrities—including presidential candidate RichardNixon—reciting variants on the “sock it to me” line. (Nixon was all innocence,quizzically asking, “Sock it to me?) 

 

The other reason I’m delighted to learn of George Schlatterbeing alive and well is that, as a long-ago budding journalist, I got to do asit-down interview with the guy.  It waslate 1968, I think, and I was writing on entertainment for the UCLA DailyBruin. With Laugh-In such a money-maker, Schlatter was launching a new and even more adventurous show. Called Turn-On, it was intended to makecreative and humorous use of computer technology. But critics hated it, andaudiences did too. By the time my article was published, Turn-On hadbeen turned off by the network, after a single episode hit the airwaves. It’sstill considered one of the biggest fiascos in TV history.

 

As Turn-On was being readied for that fatal firstairing, Schlatter was delighted to be interviewed by a young collegejournalist. He was cordial and funny. After the Turn-On debacle and thepublication of my interview, he took time out from licking his psychic woundsto write me a thank-you note. After all these years, I’d have a really hardtime digging out either the published interview or his response. But I rememberI had quipped that he—then almost forty—relied in conversation on a“predictably with-it vocabulary.” He answered back, “At the risk of exhaustingmy predictably with-it vocabulary, your piece is a gas!” 

Keep on trucking, George!  

 

It’s been a long time—easily 50 years, in fact—since I sawthe second Godfather film. I know that, snob that I was, I didn’t seethe first Godfather when it debuted, because I was too arty back then tobe interested in crime dramas. It wasn’t until a friend with impeccableintellectual credentials told me that The Godfather was essentialAmericana that I discovered for myself the brilliant picture that Francis FordCoppola had given us of the underside of the American dream. As it turned out, GodfatherII would be a feather in the cap of my former boss, Roger Corman. It wonsix Oscars, including several for Corman alumni. Francis Ford Coppola , who gothis start fresh out of film school as Roger’s assistant, took home statuettesfor Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, while Robert DeNiro (who’d been featured in Corman’s Bloody Mama) was honored with theBest Supporting Actor Oscar for playing the youthful Vito Corleone. Moreover,Corman graduate Talia Shire became a Best Supporting Actress nominee for herrole as the godfather’s sister. 

 

I returned to The Godfather Part II in part to savorthe work of the late Robert Duvall, who plays it close to the vest as TomHagen, the godfather’s indefatigable fixer and adopted son. But I was alsocurious to see how a film could be both sequel and prequel to what had gonebefore. Honestly, I don’t think Godfather II (the first sequel ever towin a Best Picture Oscar) is quite as strong as its predecessor; by cuttingbetween two stories set in two very different eras Coppola sometimes weakensthe film’s throughline, and the ultimate conclusion doesn’t pack the wallop ofthe earlier film. Still, there’s much to admire. I was strongly impressed by DeNiro’s work in the Sicily scenes, and the Lower East Side sections of the filmallowed us to see his evolution from eager immigrant togodfather-in-the-making. And Coppola clearly had a marvelous time filmingmassive period crowd scenes, letting us in on the local color of New York’sLittle Italy in all its tawdry splendor.

 

By contrast, there’s the rustic but tony compound of MichaelCorleone and family at Nevada’s Lake Tahoe, where they hole up while he’s busydeal-making with Las Vegas honchos. And we also get glimpses of both Miami andpre-Castro Havana. It is striking watching Al Pacino’s Michael becoming, inthis film, more and more his father’s imperious son, the master of all hesurveys. Pacino never won an Oscar for playing Michael in three Godfather filmsThough he earned Oscar nominations for the first two, it took him until 1993(and the semi-interesting Scent of a Woman) to take home the goldenstatuette. But when I checked out the dates, I was struck by the fact that lessthan a year after Godfather II hit the screen, Pacino gave anothermasterful Oscar-worthy performance in a favorite film of mine, Dog DayAfternoon. That heist film, based on a true story, had Pacino as Sonny, ahapless young man determined to knock over a Brooklyn bank to finance hislover’s sex-change operation. If you see Dog Day Afternoon not longafter Godfather II, I suspect you’ll be surprised that Pacino suddenlyseems much younger, much shorter, and much more inept than in the previousfilm. That, of course, is what acting is all about.

 

I should also mention that both Godfather II and DogDay Afternoon also feature the gifted John Cazale, an ominous-lookngcharacter actor who died much too young. 

 

Over the past weekend, I watched two movies that made astrong visual impression on me. At a massive local cineplex, I saw Hollywood’svery welcome new Netflix blockbuster, Project Hail Mary. At home on mycouch, I enjoyed re-watching what is probably Wes Anderson’s most significantfilm, 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel.

 Project Hail Mary was of great interest to me bothbecause there are several engineers (and an engineer-to-be) in my life andbecause many of my current screenwriting students—a group with a wide range ofaesthetic tastes—are enthusiastic about this film. I have not read the novel onwhich the film is based, and I admit that the scientific (andpseudo-scientific) aspects of the plot leave me completely boggled. But it boastsa bravura solo performance by Ryan Gosling as a reluctant astronaut stuck inspace, as well as an eclectic score I often found enchanting. Beyond this, ProjectHail Mary enjoys the advantage of a wonderful visual sense.Even when I had no idea what was going on, I enjoyed basking in the glow of thefilm’s otherworldly cinematography.

 

Project Hail Mary is, of course, very much about thefuture: about a possible grave danger to our solar system, about the exoticinter-terrestrial discoveries that may save us all, and about the non-humanbeing with whom our hero allies in the course of his eventful mission. Bycontrast, The Grand Budapest Hotel devotes itself to the past. In astory that is probably Anderson’s most ambitious ever, we move between severaldifferent twentieth-century eras. The film starts in 1985, with the visit ofa  young woman to a snowy Europeancemetery. There, holding a thick book titled The Grand Budapest Hotel,she pauses at the shrine of the book’s once-famous author. We then flash backto the author’s 1968 visit to the sadly-faded hotel, where he hears the storyof its origins from its now-aged current proprietor. This whisks us back to1932, the heyday of this majestic structure set among Alpine crags and reachedby a charming funicular. The 1932 version of the hotel—with its celebrityguests and suave omnipresent concierge (a delightfully debonair  Ralph Fiennes)—looks like a huge pink weddingcake, complete with Roman baths and every other amenity man can devise.

 

But nothing can outlast the onward rush of history, and wesee for ourselves how manners and mores change over time. World War II ofcourse takes its toll, as do other more personal tragedies, and the glamour ofthe 1930s gives way to Soviet-style utilitarianism and even furtherindignities. (We gather that as of 1985 this grand hotel is gone for good.)What makes the film so fascinating is Wes Anderson’s unforgettable flair fornon-realistic visuals. The exterior of the hotel as we see it looks very muchlike an elaborate dollhouse, and the staging of the film’s actors  (many of them celebrated Anderson veterans)emphasizes their unreality too. While  ProjectHail Mary makes the far corners of Outer Space look thrillingly real, TheGrand Budapest Hotel ensures that all of its people and all of its placeslook like artifice. Which has a certain undeniable logic. When we think of thepast—even just one or two generations back—it often turns into a candy-coatedfantasyland. And Wes Anderson is just the writer-director to convert TildaSwinton, Adrien Brody, Saiorse Ronan, Jeff Goldblum, and Bill Murray (amongothers) into living paper dolls. Which leaves me wondering: how would Anderson,with his acute visual sense, handle a movie set in outer space?

 

 

Lovers of outrageously silly comedy all know about MontyPython. This zany troupe was founded in 1969 by six talented Brits who were allgraduates of Oxford or Cambridge. The British taste for low humor hadpreviously given birth to The Goon Show (a 1951-1960 radio broadcastthat launched the career of Peter Sellers, among others) and Beyond theFringe (a slightly more satirical revue that gave the world Dudley Mooreand three other talented chaps).  ThePythons were formed in 1969, first starring in a BBC sketch comedy that lasted until1974. Their first movie, And Now For Something Completely Different, wasa compilation of comic sketches that hit the big screen in 1971. Next theydecided to try on a film that had something of an actual plot. The much-lovedEnglish legends of King Arthur seemed ripe for spoofing, and so Monty Pythonand the Holy Grail was launched (to the sound of coconut shells beingclapped together) in 1975.

 

The movie was a true Python affair, with members GrahamChapman, John Cleese, Erric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, and Michael Palinall playing multiple roles. The two Terrys directed a script in which all thePythons had a hand. The major thread was Arthur and his knights on a grailquest, but there were frequent digressions into silliness of many kinds: aTrojan rabbit that fails spectacularly to transport the knights into a castle; aBlack Knight who is determined to keep fighting after all his limbs have beencut off; a Las Vegas-style Camelot; a nonsensical encounter with a band of KnightsWho Say "Ni,” and an appearance by God. The film was shot in Scotland (socheaply that the clapping together of coconut shells was used to replace the on-screenappearance  of actual horse hooves).Despite its low-rent style, The Holy Grail was a huge hit, first inBritain and then among comedy lovers everywhere.

 

I bring this up because, back in 1975, the movie gave riseto a stage musical wittily dubbed Spamalot. Python’s Eric Idle had a lotto do with the show’s songs and book, and Mike Nichols was the originalBroadway director. Over some 1575 Broadway performances, the show was cheeredby more than two million theatregoers and raked in many millions. I saw ityears ago, and now it’s back at L.A.’s fabulously art deco Hollywood PantagesTheatre, updated a bit by Idle (there’s quite a funny George Soros joke).

 

The fun of the musical is that it combines some of the oldfamiliar moments (like that cranky French sentry) with some satiricalexploitation of musical-theatre tropes. The Lady of the Lake belts out sexysongs in a wide range of keys, and the overlong second act has a great deal offun gently mocking the convention that musical theatre attracts performers whoare either Jewish or gay—or maybe both. The song “You Won't Succeed on Broadway”(Without Jews) was a highlight with the Pantages audience, especially when thatGeorge Soros gag was worked in. Shortly afterward, attention turned to a gaybridegroom-to-be who successfully outed Sir Lancelot the Brave (as well, Igather, as Sir Robin, the-not-quite-so-brave-as-Sir-Lancelot).

 

The show ends with audience participation, including asingalong of a Python classic (from the Jesus satire, The Life of Brian): “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” At the Pantages, over two thousandplaygoers joined in. Given the state of today’s world, looking on the brightside is about the best we can do. A big thank-you to Eric Idle and the Pythonsfor making it possible.

 

 

I loved running across the factoid that Michael B. Jordan’sperformance(s) in Sinners marked the second time that a Best Actor Oscarwent to someone playing twins. (The  mostfamous literary work featuring two lookalikes is Dickens’ A Tale of TwoCities, in which Sydney Carton nobly sacrifices himself to the bloodthirstymob because of his close physical resemblance to French aristocrat CharlesDarnay. Several film adaptations have been made, notably the 1935 epic starringRonald Colman, but I gather no actor has ever played both roles.)

 

Once I read that the only previous Oscar-winner playingtwins was Lee Marvin in 1965’s Cat Ballou, I felt obliged to check itout. A huge hit, it racked up five Oscar nominations. Several of them relatedto the film’s rollicking score and to the comic ballad used to narrate theproceedings. (It was sung on-screen by the delightful duo of Stubby Kaye andNat “King” Cole, the latter of whom died of lung cancer shortly before thefilm’s release.) There was also recognition for the adapted screenplay and filmediting. But the only win on Oscar night belonged to Lee Marvin, who took onthe wacky dual roles of Tim Strawn, the tin-nosed hired assassin who threatensCat and her gang, and Kid Shelleen, the legendary gunslinger who’s onlyeffective when he’s drunk. The two men are eventually revealed to be brothers,though not necessarily twins, and its’ clear that Marvin relished every momentof his time on-screen.

 

The film’s story is something of a masterpiece of silliness.The title role is played by Jane Fonda. Though she was still in her twentiesback then, it was her ninth film, and she was firmly in the ingenue phase ofher career, making movies like Barefoot in the Park and Barbarella inwhich she showed emotion by opening her eyes very wide. (For me her true actingbreakthrough was in 1969’s grim They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?) In CatBallou, Fonda starts out as an innocent finishing-school grad travelingwest. Through a series of mishaps she discovers love and bad behavior, endingup as the leader of an outlaw gang which of course is a good deal more virtuousthan the honchos of the little prairie town in which the action mostly unfolds.Other actors along for the ride include the agreeable Michael Callan and impishDwayne Hickman (much loved by young folk for his goofy TV role as perennialteenager Dobie Gillis, and here having fun as a pretend preacher). 

 

But how did Marvin, whose dual roles are not particularlylarge or challenging, ever manage to win that Oscar? I can only conjecture. Firstof all, at the ceremony held in 1966, the big winner was The Sound of Music.The Sixties were difficult years, politically speaking, and I think voters likedsupporting something that was musical and upbeat, despite its inclusion ofNazis threatening Austria. (Other Best Picture nominees included Doctor Zhivago, Ship of Fools, Darling, and one wry comedy, A ThousandClowns.) Among that year’s Best Actor candidates were two Serious Thespiansfrom Britain, Richard Burton (The Spy Who Came in From the Cold) and LaurenceOlivier (Othello). Also nominated were towering dramaticperformances by Oskar Werner (Ship of Fools) and Rod Steiger (ThePawnbroker). I think audiences in that era needed a laugh, and only LeeMarvin supplied one. It didn’t hurt that he was in Ship of Fools too, asan over-the-hill baseball player.

 

Disappointingly, in Cat Ballou Marvin’s two outrageouscharacters are never on screen at the same time. Kudos to Sinners forseamlessly accomplishing that feat. 

 

I first decided to re-watch the 1976 film, Network,in tribute to the late Robert Duvall. Of course I (like pretty much everyone)had seen the movie when it first came out. This dark satire of the televisionnews industry—written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet—was amajor hit in a very good year for movies. When Oscar nominations were revealed,Network was up for nine awards, including best picture. The top winnerturned out to be Rocky, but other big films of that year included Allthe President’s Men, Bound for Glory, and Taxi Driver, so the competition was clearly fierce. Network wonfor its original screenplay, and also nabbed three of the four acting awards:for Beatrice Straight as a cast-off wife, for Faye Dunaway as a TV exec who’lldo anything to manufacture a hit show, and (most memorably) for Peter Finch.Finch, playing the newscaster whose firing because of low ratings sends himmentally ‘round the bend, was the first star ever to win an Oscar posthumously.He suffered a heart attack in January 1977, just after a TV talk-show appearanceto promote the film, and died at age 60.

 

Finch’s big line in Network—”I’m as mad as hell, andI'm not going to take this anymore!"—is still with us. And so, of course,is the idea that TV execs (like the one effectively played by Duvall in thefilm) are more concerned with ratings than with quality content. But in manyrespects, Network surprised me. First, of course, is the fact thattelevision today is far from what it was in the 1970s. Back then there existeda limited number of major networks: CBS, NBC, ABC. Much of the American publicgot its news from respected anchors like Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor.The film invents a fourth network, UBS, for dramatic purposes: when itslongtime anchorman goes berserk and starts hollering out of windows, a largeslice of the nation pays attention. Today, by contrast, our news sources are sowidespread and so splintered that it’s hard to imagine public attention beingfocused on a single individual in quite the same way.

 

I was also surprised by the film’s shifting tone. From whatI’ve read, this was quite deliberate on the part of Chayefsky and Lumet, withlow-key realistic scenes at the start of the film gradually giving way tostylized moments full of manic energy. A beautifully played early scenefeatures Finch, as the newly-fired anchorman, and the great William Holden ashis longtime pal who’s now the news division president. Two veteran newsmen,they commiserate with one another about how times have changed, making jokes tocover their mutual dismay.

 

But then Faye Dunaway’s Diana Christensen enters thepicture, and the whole mood changes. She sees in the crazed on-airpronouncements of Howard Beal (Finch) a new direction for TV news broadcasts, andquickly turns a hard news show into “infotainment,” of a sort that (alas) wouldnot be so surprising today. Moreover, while spinning journalism as a form ofpublic amusement, she also captures the heart of the long-married Holden, withpredictable results. Late in the film, as Diana looks for new stars-in-the-making,there are some pointed references to a group of Symbionese LiberationArmy-style young radicals who’ll do pretty much anything to be featured on TV.It’s very dark and, sometimes, very funny. Though the Patty Hearst era and thenear-shooting of President Ford by Squeaky Fromme seem like ancient historynow, Network brings them back to those of us old enough toremember.  

 

The passing last week of martial-artist-turned-actor ChuckNorris (1940-2026) has sent me down Memory Lane. Looking at his longfilmography, which begins in 1968, I’m amused to see that Norris had a cameo asa karate instructor in The Student Teachers, a Roger Corman New WorldPictures film from 1973. But his roles got bigger over the years, first on filmand then on television. His Walker, Texas Ranger series ran on CBS from1993 to 2001.In 2010, he and his producer-brother were named Honorary TexasRanger Captains by Governor Rick Perry, who said that "together, theyhelped elevate our Texas Rangers to truly mythical status."

 

Martial arts movies, featuring Chinese-style one-on-onecombat, were popular in the 1970s. While at New World Pictures  I survived the writing and casting of 1974’s TNTJackson, a so-called blaxploitation flick in which the bodacious JeanneBell plays a martial-arts cutie investigating her brother’s disappearance inHong Kong. (As frequently happened with New World product, Hong Kong was playedby Manila, and the film was directed—after a fashion—by the unsinkable CirioSantiago.) 

 

But it was when I returned to Cormanland in the late 1980sthat the martial-arts-flick craze really kicked into gear. In 1988, Jean-ClaudeVan Damme burst onto the scene with Bloodsport. The Cannon film,budgeted at a mere $1.5 million, made him an international star, and launchedthe careers of copycats like Steven Seagal. Needless to say, Roger Cormanwanted to get in on the action by finding a bona fide kickboxing star of hisown.

 

While Van Damme was riding high with Bloodsport, Don “The Dragon” Wilson got a message on his answeringmachine: “Hi, my name is Roger Corman.  Ifyou’re the Don Wilson that’s the kickboxing champ, I’d like you to come in andread for my film.” Wilson, a longtime world light-heavyweight kickboxingchampion, duly auditioned, and was told by Corman, “You’re going to become abig motion picture star.” They shook on a deal that gave Wilson $1000 a weekfor his first film and a flat $25,000 for his second.  Corman’s faith in Wilson was fully justified.Bloodfist I took in $1.7 million inlimited theatrical release, while also selling 80,000 video cassettes. Bloodfist II, a hastily-made follow-up,sold 50,000 cassettes. Before long, Wilson was being paid a year-round $4000 aweek to appear in six more Bloodfist films,and Corman was launching his own video distribution company. 

 

Bloodfist was aconventional but effective story about a martial artist who seeks revenge inthe ring for his brother’s death. Three years later, I was asked, as Roger’sstory editor, to move the script’s locale from Manila to Los Angeles and changethe inscrutable old Chinese mentor into a black street bum. The project cametogether in two weeks, to fill a Christmas-time production gap at Corman’sstudio: Full Contact (starringmartial artist Jerry Trimble) was released on video in early 1993.  Three months later, I helped transport thesame script into outer space; this time it was dubbed Dragon Fire. A female variation, Angelfist, with Catya Sassoon in Wilson’s original role, appearedlater in 1993, and at one point we contemplated a Medieval sword-and-sandalversion.

 

As Wilson told me, Corman “manufactured an action star.” Heappreciates Roger’s shrewdness in seeking out a true kickboxing champion,because serious fans of martial arts know the difference between a genuineathlete and a wannabe. But Roger himself was hardly a purist.  Before the martial arts craze largely playeditself out, he was promoting sexy Cat Sassoon as a female world champion, untilWilson advised him to desist.