Lena Horne - Death of a Gunfighter

Considering Lena Horne's Only Dramatic Role - 'Death Of A Gunfighter'

By Sergio | Shadow and ActSeptember 30, 2015 at 6:08PM

 

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Death Of A Gunfighter'

It would be fair to state that Lena Horne, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 92, and being the legend that she was, would herself say that her film career was something of a major disappointment.

She appeared in only about 18 films in almost 60 years, from her first, the 1935 short film "Cab Calloway’s Jitterbug Party," where she appeared unbilled as a dancer, to her last in 1994, where she appeared as herself to introduce some MGM film musical sequences in "That’s Entertainment III."

But she was mainly relegated to appearing in brief musical numbers in movies, most of them for MGM where she was under contract, in which she usually just sang a song or two and then left, never to be seen again.

And most of the time, her appearances were separated and totally unrelated to the rest of the film, so that, in the South, her scenes could be easily cut out, so as to not offend southern audiences and their delicate sensibilities, who would have been disturbed to see a beautiful black woman on the screen.

Horne, herself, talking about her limited screen time in movies, once remarked that, in most of her films, she felt that she "was like a butterfly pinned to a pillar'.

The one exception during that period was, of course, in Fox’s 1943 musical "Stormy Weather," in which she played the romantic female lead to dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson who was literally 39 years older than she was, when he co-starred with her in the film. (Grandpas needs love too)

But It wasn’t until 1969, at 52 years old and some 13 years after her previous film role, did Horne finally get her one and only chance to play a major dramatic character in a film (and got above-the-title billing to boot) - the Universal western "Death of a Gunfighter."

Starring Richard Widmark in the lead, the film deals with a sheriff who, over the years, has spent his life taming the town to peace and respectability. Conflict arises when the town’s citizens, all now good, respectable folk, want him out, being a relic of its violent past that they want to forget. Naturally he refuses to leave his post, which eventually leads to a tragic climax, as the title of the film suggests.

It’s not a classic by any means, and it has a flat, studio bound, over lit visual quality, similar to TV shows from the period. But the film does have a haunting, sad, elegiac quality to it of impending doom that makes it worth watching. (The film is currently available on Universal Home Video DVD-on-demand label Universal Vault through Amazon).

However it is definitely Horne who plays Widmark‘s longtime lover, who captures your attention. Admittedly, though the film could have fleshed out her character more, one cannot deny that she really commands the camera’s attention. She gives a good performance and you can’t take your eyes off her every time she’s on the screen. Her relationship with Widmark, like the film itself, has a gentle, wistful quality. They both make it obvious that they understand, by what they don’t say, that their relationship is doomed.

And keep in mind, back in 1969, it was pretty radical and progressive to portray a loving, interracial relationship in any movie, made more interesting by the fact that Horne's character's race is never once mentioned in the film.

That the firm turned out better than expected is a miracle, since it had a chaotic production. The original director was Robert Totten, a TV director, but he and Widmark did not get along at all, and Totter was finally fired with two weeks left to shoot.

Widmark brought in director Don Siegel (the original 1956 "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," "Dirty Harry," "Two Mules for Sister Sara," and "Escape from Alcatraz") who directed Widmark the year before, in the critically-acclaimed and excellent cop movie, "Madigan."

However, Siegel refused to take credit as director for the film since, of course, he only directed for the last couple of weeks. And Totten refused credit, since the finished version was not what he envisioned for the film. So the Director’s Guild of America created the pseudonym of "Alan Smithee" for the picture, which immediately became the official DGA pseudonym for any film on which a director refused to take credit for any reason.

And "Smithee" has, since 1969, directed some 76 feature films and TV movies, making him maybe the most prolific director in film history.

But as for Horne, not surprisingly, she never got another opportunity to show off her serious acting chops. It’s a pity too because one can only imagine what she was capable of achieving as an actress.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/considering-lena-hornes-only-dramatic-role-death-of-a-gunfighter-20150930 

Noir heroes

Richard Widmark may have come in towards the end of film noir, but the other great names of that genre didn't just disappear.  Like him, as film changed, they changed, taking on other roles in other genres, some fitting to their previous work and characters, and some not.  The degree of success may have been down to audience appreciation as much as their own adaptability.

Take, for example, Lee Cobb.  The first time I came across him was as Mafia-type gangster Masionetti in The Trap, a part for which he was perfectly cast.  But in a previous existence he also starred in one of the more well-known noir films Boomerang, based on a true story, and (rather ironically for anyone who knows him best as a gangster) he played the cop.  Not only that, but his hair was an improbable, wavy, blond.  Cobb was a big fellow, a heavyweight, with a raspy bass voice and so, like Widmark, he could play either a rough good guy or a real bad guy and do either with conviction.   The only oddity was that hair colour!

Another such was Gary Merrill.  I saw him first in what was to become my favourite war film - The Frogmen starring Richard Widmark as the UDT specialist and a real martinet, a stickler for the rules and for discipline, no matter what the cost.  Merrill in that film was a real nice guy, an older man with far more experience, willing to extend a degree of leniency rather than harsh enforcement of Navvy rules and regs.  In Frogmen, he seems far older than Widmark's young Commander Lawrence - though in reality they were nearly the same age - in fact Merrill was the slightly younger man.  But see him in the noir classic Where the Sidewalk Ends and you see a very different character; a real Mafia type shyster, a gambler, a chancer.  Someone in fact, rather reminiscent of some of Widmark's occasional roles...

Last but not least, a mention for the only lady to feature in two very well known noirs; Gene Tierney. She appeared in Where the Sidewalk Ends and also had a fairly major role in Widmark's most famous noir Night and the City, being given another chance by director Jules Dassin as she was by then already showing signs of the depression which would haunt her throughout the late 1950s. But she made a lot of films, from 1940 through to the 1960s.  She was a beautiful woman with a lovely singing voice and deserves to be remembered.     

Frogmen - News item from the Alameda Journal, 13 May 2015

The USS Hornet Museum will host a May 30 talk by World War II veteran and former U.S. Navy frogman William Goehner Jr. on the "Birth of the Original Navy SEAL: The Underwater Demolition Team (UDT)."

Actor Richard Widmark portrayed Goehner in the 1951 Oscar-nominated film, "The Frogmen," which depicted a midnight "suicide" mission successfully led by Goehner in 1944.

Goehner is expected to describe his background, including a mission that he participated in to mine a German submarine base in the Baltic Sea and another mission that led to an encounter with a German soldier at Normandy in France just before D-Day.

The talk will begin at 1 p.m. Normal museum admission prices apply. The USS Hornet Museum is located at 707 West Hornet Ave., Pier 3, in Alameda. For information, visitwww.uss-hornet.org or call 510-521-8448.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_28110755/alameda-attic-fire-breaks-out-bay-farm-island

- Alameda Journal

POSTED:   05/13/2015 05:14:34 PM PDT

Review of Film Noir Night & the City

Well this comes hot on the heels of just having watched Night and the City  again, a classic film noir if ever there was one; yet if you watch the interview with Jules Dassin (made many years later) he claims that he didn't know what film noir was at the time.  Which is reasonable, actually.  He was an American producer; he'd been blacklisted, which led to his exodus to Europe and let's face it, Night and the City was only made in 1950; film noir had only been around as a pretty experimental form for a couple of years.  And it's rather like a verb that takes a mood rather than a specific tense; film noir isn't ever actually classified as a genre.  But I think when we see it, we know what it is.

It's amazing though that Dassin didn't know what he was doing whilst he was actually doing it, and making one of the best films of all time.  There are RW films such as Kiss of Death (obviously), Street with no Name and Roadhouse but also others, often featuring old friends, such as Boomerang and Where the Sidewalk Ends.

It really doesn't matter that these films are in black and white.  It really doesn't matter that they were made a whole generation ago.  (Or even more.  For me - 1950 - my grandparents might have gone to see this).  Let's face it, we all have our favourite era.  I think this is mine.  Paul Merton, the famous stand-up comedian,  goes back even further; he prefers films from the silent era and even favours  Laurel & Hardy (who I've never been able to like).  Horses for courses, as they say.

It's interesting, that Dassin in his interview, says he'd liked to have made Hamlet with RW.  That's probably my favourite Shakespeare play, but absolutely not one I'd see Richard Widmark in.   No, for my preference, I would cast him as Iago (a part he played in radio) in Othello, and I would have loved to have seen him play the eponymous part in  Richard III.  But this is a digression, because Night and the City is a really great film and I'm really not surprised that Widmark lost so much weight doing it.  Just look at the amount of running going on.  What a seriously physical and very much underrated actor he was. 

Blond male actors

Have you ever stopped to think; What is it about Richard Widmark that makes him such a stand-out actor for me? ... Perhaps you never have, either because you think it's so blindingly obvious, or it's just never occurred to you (I assume that I'm talking to fellow fans, of course) or he isn't, in which case you're in the wrong blog :-)

I've tried - struggled - to identify what makes him so special.  That voice.  Those cheekbones.  That attitude.  That smile.  But perhaps a major part of it is something that ought to get a special mention all of its own.  That hair.

You have to admit that in 1950s Hollywood. Widmark's was an unusual look, especially for a lead man.  In an age where leading male actors were - generally - required to be, in no particular order, tall, dark and handsome, he didn't bother ticking any of those boxes but just barged his way in, straight to the top.

Tall?  At 5'10" he wasn't exactly short.  Modern actors can get away with being far shorter than that.  Danny Devito is just 5' tall.   Tom Cruise - who played Jack Reacher, an ex-Marine built like the proverbial outhouse (described as being well over 6' tall and nearly as wide) - is 5'7".   So  5'10" in the scheme of things is not short.  Being exactly that height myself (tall for a girl) I happen to think it's pretty perfect.  But for Widmark in the 50s, leading men were generally over 6' tall. Just look at two of his co-stars -  Gregory Peck (Stretch, Yellow Sky) and Gary Cooper (Hooker, Garden of Evil), both 6'3".  Victor Mature (Kiss of Death) was 6'2"; Cornel Wilde (Roadhouse) 6'1".  Dana Andrews, Widmark's subordinate officer in Frogmen, topped him by an inch as did Lee J Cobb (The Trap).  His co-star in Warlock and Swarm Henry Fonda's height is given as 6'1.5".  I guess that extra half-inch makes all the difference.

The actors of the day were dark too; at least dark of hair.  If you watch the later colour films closely, you'll quite often see the classic Celtic colouring of very dark hair and blue eyes.  The combination of dark eyes and hair is usually reserved for natives or baddies; Mexicans, Indians or Italians (usually Mafia).  As for dark skin ... well let's just say that's an area that Hollywood struggled with.  Sidney Poitier broke into the movies with his debut in No Way Out in 1950 but Widmark still had to argue with the execs to get Poitier on board for The Long Ships in 1964, and Widmark's Frank Patch couldn't have a really romantic clinch with  lover Clare Quintana (Lena Horne) in Death of a Gunfi.ghter even though they actually got married during the course of the film... because he was white and she wasn't.

This picture (left) is the point at which he's proposing to her.  Even in 1969 when that film was made, the first TV interracial kiss on US TV had only taken place in 1966.  The land of the free, eh?  But I digress.

Handsome?  Again, Hollywood actors had A Look.  The square jaw, the resolute set to the mouth, the straight nose, the slicked-down hair.  Oh they were handsome, alright.  But Widmark wasn't in that class.  His was a face that could go either way, from goofy to desperate, from sneering and distorted to something that Kent Jones described in his must-read 'Hidden Star' article* as 'extraordinarily beautiful'.

Yep, that brought me up short when I first read it, too.  Beautiful?  Not an adjective you often find describing a man.  But yes, just look at some of those gorgeous close-up shots in Street with no Name.  Like this one...

Michelangelo would have wept.  But moving on.  Never mind the most famous cheekbones in Hollywood, the wonderfully moulded mouth that could curl into a sneer, the eyes that could be hooded, and as cold as a March wind or wide open and guileless as a child's.  The hair is the thing.

Having watched quite a few old movies now, you begin to see a bit of a pattern as regards hair colour.  Let's discount the b/w films, because they can be misleading; even Widmark sometimes looks dark of hair in those.  It's the lighting ... or something.   Actually he even sometimes looks dark in later colour films - when he was going grey.  But there are those where he looks very very blond, and you realise how unusual that is.  Not for the women, obviously.  Brunettes looked gorgeous and then came the battalion of bottle-blondes.  There were even some redheads too.  Not so many red-headed leading men, but that's a whole other story.

Most men had dark hair, and they wore it short.  It stayed put.  The look you saw at the start of the film, you saw at the end; it didn't change substantially.  Not so Widmark.  He had quite long hair and although it was usually cut to length where it met his collar (no shoulder-length hippy-ness going on here, thank you!) his hair was long enough to be a dramatis personae in its own right.   They showed The Alamo on TV today.  You know exactly when Jim Bowie is wounded, because his hair starts flying all over the place.  Every fight Widmark's character is in, its his hair that gives the evidence of violence and motion.  Roadhouse, Warlock, The Trap, Backlash, Secret Ways... too many to mention.  Most of the time his hair is perfectly styled, kept firmly in place with whatever gunk men put on their hair in those days.  But get him into a fight and the hair will tell you that this is a man of action, a real tough-guy, despite his lack of height and physicality.  And it's so blond ... and that shining head usually stands out in all movies** - at least after he's lost his hat. ***

To sum up:

You don't need height when you've got great presence.
You don't need big muscle when a cold, hard stare from grey eyes can give such a sense of menace.
And why settle for handsome, when you could be beautiful?

And he was.

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* http://www.filmcomment.com/article/hidden-star-richard-widmark
Well worth a read; highly recommended.

** Except for The Long Ships of course - they're Vikings; they're nearly all blond.

*** You can tell how a movie is progressing by how much clothing he's ditched along the way; hat, coat, waistcoat, tie and sometimes shirt as well.
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24 March - sad anniversary

Widmark fans know two dates that don't mean anything to anyone else; 26 December 1914 and 24 March 2008.  Richard Widmark's dates of birth and death.  A long life, and a productive one, especially for the film work we love so much and especially given that he didn't even start in Hollywood until his 30s.  On Boxing Day last year the fans celebrated the hundredth anniversary of his birth.  Some in Princeton even managed to get together for the occasion.  And what about this day?  It's spring, the days are getting longer, everything is bursting into life ... it doesn't seem appropriate to be sad, but to celebrate instead.  There's an awful lot of films and other drama to watch and radio to listen to.  Whatever you choose to see or listen to in his memory I hope you enjoy it.  I've been working through some of his best bad-guy roles recently.  Jefty in Roadhouse ... he was a right psycho, wasn't he?  And of course, playing villains meant that we get to see Richard Widmark die - a lot.  His characters are the sort that usually meet a bad end, either at the wrong end of a gunfight, or in a hail of bullets fired by those dispensing rough justice, or most memorably, stabbed to death by not one but a whole queue of people.  To misquote Leonard Cohen*:

Visiting Death till he wore out his welcome
Visiting Death till the right disguise worked.

Yes, he got to die a lot.  We could forgive him that, because he did it so beautifully and we knew we'd see him again in another film, sometime later.  But 24 March 2008 was the last time, for him and for us.  He was a man of his time, and that time came to an end.  But at least we can remember him, and hopefully do so without regret.


* Leonard Cohen Two went to sleep

Westerns and Greek Theatre - stereotypes in Garden of Evil

Well I thought I was done with this blog but then after watching 'Garden of Evil' through over the course of about a week (it doesn't help when you keep falling asleep!) I got to musing about the similarities between Westerns and what we know of Ancient Greek theatre.  Not a huge amount of similarities, maybe, but I think there are some.

First and most obvious is the stripped-down cast.  It's not that they were short of folk who could go on stage and perform in 5th century BC but there were rules, and these rules limited the number of main speaking parts to two; a bit later on, to three.  (There's some scholarly debate about that as I'm sure you can imagine, but let's keep it simple, here).  

From the plays I've read the characters are what we might think of as stereotypes, though try to imagine that with the pejorative overlay the word has acquired with more modern usage.  You have the doomed, tragic hero.  You have the Woman.  In a comedy you have the Fool.  Each starring character has his fatal flaw of course, which is what ultimately leads to his destruction - Widmark's character Mike Latimer makes reference to this in 'Run for the Sun'.  And other than your starring characters, the Greeks had the Chorus, who danced and sang but who also occasionally entered into dialogue with the main guy, providing background information and asking the questions that we, the audience want answered.  You might think of them as the ancient version of a narrator or continuity announcer. 

Lastly for the sake of this blog, because it's not a scholarly treatise, just the musings of someone that happens to like Westerns and the plays of Ancient Greece, you have the person of the Messenger, the person who comes on and who changes the whole course of the action.   In Oedipus, for example, it's a shepherd who reveals that Oeidpus isn't the son of the king he thought he was nor the son of a shepherd either (sorry for any spoilers, folks). 

So having watched Garden of Evil pretty thoroughly, let's start there with the sterotypes.

You couldn't really get a more stripped-down cast.  There are three main characters and five that hang together pretty much all the way through.  There's what might laughably be called a crowd in the bar of Puerto Miguel at the very start, and a crowd of bloodthirsty Indians at the end (more stereotyping) but really all the action is focused on this handful of people who have to get to know each other, just as we have to get to know them.   And if you want to talk stereotypes, just look at this picture: -

From left to right: The Lawman, the Woman, the Gambler, the Mexican and the Lowlife. 

The Lawman - well Hooker confesses to having been a sheriff in a previous life, but it's not just that, more that he quietly exerts his authority throughout and the others accept it.  He's prepared to use violence if necessary and is handy with fists and guns, but prefers dialogue to resolve conflict.  Naturally, Westerns are usually set in pretty lawless places along the emerging frontier, so nearly every Western features one somewhere - a sheriff, a Marshall or just a gunfighter seeking justice. Sometimes they'll put a twist on it and make the lawman a baddie - you might think Jake Wade fills that role; he's certainly conflicted to say the least.  And as for Bull Harper in Last Wagon ....

The Woman.  And what a woman.  In the bar, Fiske draws a card, a Red Queen, and in she walks in person.  An extraordinary woman with an extraordinary proposition (in this of course, she also fills the role of Messenger, changing the course of the action).  A woman who also fills the film noir role of a femme fatale; someone who will make men literally willing (in her husband's bitter words) "to work and fight and even die" for her. And indeed she is the fatal woman, leading nearly all of them to their early deaths.   Surely Leah Fuller deserves the title of The Woman even more than did Sherlock Holmes' Irene Adler.  Westerns are pretty light on decent female lead roles and it's great to see a good, strong character like this one. 

Then Fiske, the Gambler.  Not a new role for Widmark; but Fiske is a bit nicer to know and more of a rounded character than Dude of Yellow Sky.  In  Warlock the role is filled by Tom Morgan and in  Cheyenne Autumn (a far more realistically crowded film)  by James Stewart as Wyatt Earp.   Not every western has gambling though it's more often there than not, even if only in the background, and the idea of playing dice (or chess) with Death certainly isn't new.   Or cards, in Garden.  I'm reasonably sure that the card Fiske draws to beat Hooker's seven is the same Red Queen he drew at the start of the film.  

Daley is harder to piegonhole; I've called him a lowlife (because he is) but his role is usually that of the common man, the cowboys, the miners, the wagon drivers, the bartenders, usually one with a chip on their shoulder or a grudge to avenge.  He's usually a coward, dislikes or hates the hero and will throw a spanner into the works just because he can. Consider Rebel, the barman in Backlash, appearing to work for Bonniwell but unwilling to help Slater find him if it's to go and work for him, or Ridge in Last Wagon. 

The Mexican; or the indigenous character, the cohort.  This was certainly an interesting role, having someone that couldn't speak English in a supporting role.  Naturally he's brave and tough as well as slightly dangerous and unpredictable.  (In Garden, he also seems to be the only one who doesn't fall in love with Leah.)  

As for the Chorus, who is there to fill the role in Garden but the only English-speaking character left - John Fuller?  He is the one around whom the whole premise of the film revolves, and yet he's the outsider, he's not party to what's been going on between his wife and this bunch of outcasts.  But he observes and he comments and in so doing, fleshes out the situation for us, the viewer.  He also provides someone different for the rest to bounce some dialogue off, something Fiske could have done with in at least one of his early conversations with Hooker which sounds downright rhetorical, because when he asks a question, he then has to answer it himself.

So that's it, a fairly brief summary.  There'll always be villains, whether they're Persians or Spartans, or Indians or Mexicans, or Russians or Arabs or the English,  and there'll always be a brave hero willing to stand against evil and hopefully get through with his life intact and end up with the girl - unless of course he's the doomed tragic character who has set his feet to the path of destruction and must follow it to its ultimate conclusion (Clint Hollister, Dude, Frank Patch, Jim Bowie to name but a few)... but they all do it so well, don't they?  And that's why we love them.