Posts tagged: This Week’s Birthday

THIS WEEK’S BIRTHDAY: ROBERT RYAN

November 10, 2011, by No comments yet

There he is, in Act of Violence, Joe Parkson, limping, gat in hand, desperate and obsessed with blowing away clean-living Frank Enley, maybe even taking Enley’s wife out in the process.

You can’t get that one out of your head, and then there’s Crossfire, and he’s Montgomery, the anti-Semite, a vile, vicious bully, who kills a man simply for being a Jew.

He was a womanizing projectionist with a mean streak in Clash by Night. The racist happy to beat a cripple in Bad Day at Black Rock, and the racist who’s just as eager to throw over his black accomplice in Odds Against Tomorrow. His men were cowardly, they were hateful, they were mean to kids, to women, to minorities.

But most of all, they seemed to hold a special loathing for themselves.

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This Week’s Birthday: Orson Welles, International Man of Mystery

May 5, 2010, by No comments yet

How do you narrow down the mystery that is Orson Welles? Like trying to make a disc of the greatest sounds of the planet earth,  really, it’s fairly impossible to do, yet fun to try. We can bask in the warm glow of Citizen Kane and marvel that it was made; gnash our collective teeth at the wonton destruction of The Magnificent Ambersons, Touch of Evil, Lady from Shanghai, or shake our heads at the brilliant lunacy of F for Fake. Oh, yes, and in-between, there’s Shakespeare films, and somewhere, floating between here and the Shah of Iran is his last movie, the Other Side of the Wind.

Orson revolutionized theater. Radio. Movies. The few bits he had on TV suggest that would have been his catnip as well. F for Fake predates and out-maneuvers documentarians like Errol Morris. But try to write a biography of the man, and, well, you get conflicting stories. Like Mr. Arkadin based on the novel Confidential Report, written by Orson Welles.

Only he didn’t. Write it, that is. Who did. Who knows? That’s one of the many mysteries of Orson Welles. Exaggeration. Hyperbole. Duplicity. Fraud. Aggrandizement. Trickery. Legerdemain. Magic. Yes. That’s it–magic.

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THIS WEEK’S BIRTHDAY: MONTY PYTHON’S FLYING CIRCUS

October 5, 2009, by No comments yet

That’s right: Monty Python. A television show? And why not? Is television not a part of the medium? And did not the madness of this troupe of six perhaps over-educated actors, writing their own material, change the face of television… and movies? Show me an unconventional comedy–perhaps like this last weekend’s Zombieland–and I will show you Monty Python.

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THIS WEEK’S BIRTHDAY: TERRY O’QUINN

July 12, 2009, by No comments yet

Yes, there’s Peter Lorre. Bernard Herrimann and Sam Peckinpah, Warren Oates. The great cinematographer Gregg Toland, Elisha Cook Jr., Thelma Ritter, John Huston and his dad, Walter. I can talk about the stars in Hollywood’s firmament, and the ones who weren’t stars but could have–and often did have–books written about them, or at the very least articles by esteemed scholars. And I will, trust me I will.

But there’s scores of modern character actors who haven’t yet been the subject of countless reminiscences, or who will earn their paychecks, put in a great day’s work, retire when they can’t remember their lines, and then vanish. Later, when watching one of their movies, you might snap your fingers and go, “who was that guy?” and then forget instantly as some star or famous face more intriguing comes on screen. Terry O’Quinn is one of those character actors that command our attention–until that bigger name comes along.

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THIS WEEK’S BIRTHDAY: WARREN OATES

July 5, 2009, by No comments yet

“Because there was once a god who roamed the earth named Warren Oates.” –Richard Linklater, on one of the sixteen reasons he loves Two-Lane Blacktop

Rumor has it that there’s a documentary out there about Warren Oates, something that might sum up the man from Depoy, Kentucky. I doubt it… I mean, really, how do you sum this guy up? In fact, he should’ve been ridiculous, the way that Elisha Cook Jr.–a great character actor by any standard–often was portrayed.

Look at Oates in my favorite role of his, as G.T.O. in Two-Lane Blacktop. The screenplay, a ridiculous thing that could have resulted in a pretentious three-hour affair, has G.T.O. as some sort of blond-haired former frat boy. Someone got the bright idea to put Oates behind the wheel of the yellow Goat instead, change the frat boy to some former military scrub just trying to get by in this world. There he is, clad in a polyester v-neck sweater that changed colors daily, knuckle-less driving gloves and loafers, smiling that big grin of his and telling a different life story to every hitchhiker who sat in the passenger seat.

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THIS WEEK’S BIRTHDAY: BERNARD HERRMANN

June 28, 2009, by No comments yet

Who was Bernard Herrmann? Well, he was one of the top men in Hollywood for a very long time, a man whose work you’re probably familiar with. See, Herrmann was a composer. He did the scores for so many classic films that it simply boggles the mind. Citizen Kane, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Taxi Driver. That theme for “The Twilight Zone” you whistle when things get strange? Bernard Herrmann.

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THIS WEEK’S BIRTHDAY: PETER LORRE

June 22, 2009, by No comments yet

“He hardly seems dead, just as it is difficult to believe he was ever clinically alive.” –David Thomson

I don’t know about this Peter Lorre. Look at him there in The Maltese Falcon. A pretty man, supposedly drenched in some lilac cologne (though it wouldn’t surprise me if he sprinkled on perfume, either), gloved, and pointing a gun at Humphrey Bogart. A great scene that first meeting between the two icons. Bogie laughing, knocking the gun out of Lorre’s effeminate hand. But don’t you feel that little twinge? That feeling of “watch it, Spade, watch it.” Because if there’s one thing that Peter Lorre traded in, it was unpredictablility. That silly fellow with the curls and the white bow tie could kill you without a second thought.

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