Seeing Double: “Cat Ballou”

I loved running across the factoid that Michael B. Jordan’s performance(s) in Sinners marked the second time that a Best Actor Oscar went to someone playing twins. (The  most famous literary work featuring two lookalikes is Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, in which Sydney Carton nobly sacrifices himself to the bloodthirsty mob because of his close physical resemblance to French aristocrat Charles Darnay. Several film adaptations have been made, notably the 1935 epic starring Ronald Colman, but I gather no actor has ever played both roles.)

 Once I read that the only previous Oscar-winner playing twins was Lee Marvin in 1965’s Cat Ballou, I felt obliged to check it out. A huge hit, it racked up five Oscar nominations. Several of them related to the film’s rollicking score and to the comic ballad used to narrate the proceedings. (It was sung on-screen by the delightful duo of Stubby Kaye and Nat “King” Cole, the latter of whom died of lung cancer shortly before the film’s release.) There was also recognition for the adapted screenplay and film editing. But the only win on Oscar night belonged to Lee Marvin, who took on the wacky dual roles of Tim Strawn, the tin-nosed hired assassin who threatens Cat and her gang, and Kid Shelleen, the legendary gunslinger who’s only effective when he’s drunk. The two men are eventually revealed to be brothers, though not necessarily twins, and its’ clear that Marvin relished every moment of 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 twenties back then, it was her ninth film, and she was firmly in the ingenue phase of her career, making movies like Barefoot in the Park and Barbarella in which she showed emotion by opening her eyes very wide. (For me her true acting breakthrough was in 1969’s grim They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?) In Cat Ballou, Fonda starts out as an innocent finishing-school grad traveling west. Through a series of mishaps she discovers love and bad behavior, ending up as the leader of an outlaw gang which of course is a good deal more virtuous than 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 impish Dwayne Hickman (much loved by young folk for his goofy TV role as perennial teenager Dobie Gillis, and here having fun as a pretend preacher). 

 But how did Marvin, whose dual roles are not particularly large or challenging, ever manage to win that Oscar? I can only conjecture. First of 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 liked supporting something that was musical and upbeat, despite its inclusion of Nazis threatening Austria. (Other Best Picture nominees included Doctor Zhivago, Ship of Fools, Darling, and one wry comedy, A Thousand Clowns.) Among that year’s Best Actor candidates were two Serious Thespians from Britain, Richard Burton (The Spy Who Came in From the Cold) and Laurence Olivier (Othello). Also nominated were towering dramatic performances by Oskar Werner (Ship of Fools) and Rod Steiger (The Pawnbroker). I think audiences in that era needed a laugh, and only Lee Marvin supplied one. It didn’t hurt that he was in Ship of Fools too, as an over-the-hill baseball player.

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

 

Jessie Buckley and the Luck of the Irish

Well, it’s all over now but the shouting. The 98^th annual Academy Awards ceremony is in the books, and most viewers (me included) are rather happy about the outcome. Timothée Chalamet was gracious in defeat as Michael B. Jordan was hailed for his lead performance(s) in Sinners. (Trivia time: the only other actor who won the Oscar for playing twins was Lee Marvin for Cat Ballou.) Some of the actresses on display looked suitably gorgeous while others (I’m looking at YOU, Renate Reinsve) just seemed, well, a bit weird. Host Conan O’Brien was a hoot wearing Amy Madigan’s red fright wig from Weapons, being chased up the aisle of the Dolby Theatre by a pack of very excited kids. The glamorous and uninhibited Teyana Taylor seemed to have surgically attached herself to the leg of Paul Thomas Anderson as he strode to the stage to receive one of three long-overdue statuettes. There was real heartfelt emotion in the In Memorian segment, particularly in Billy Crystal’s tribute to Rob and Michele Reiner.

 But I want to focus on one of the evening’s least suspenseful awards: that for Best Actress. Everyone seemed to agree from the get-go that Jessie Buckley was a lock for  playing Shakespeare’s grieving wife in Hamnet. I too loved her performance, but it made me more curious than ever about how her career evolved. I first spotted Buckley in a small 2018 film called Wild Rose. It focuses on a young Scottish single mother who loves American country music and dreams of traveling to Nashville. Buckley impressed me in that role, and I figured she was a talented young Scot with a bright career ahead of her. Wrong! Buckley is Irish, and apparently the first Irish actress ever to win a major acting Oscar. So her win was well-timed, just ahead of St. Patrick’s Day.

 As to the question of how Buckley’s career got started, I’ve discovered something quite charming. Back in 2008, at the ripe old age of 18, she was a contestant on a BBC competition show called I’d Do Anything. The show’s title came from a perky song in the musical, Oliver! (based on Dickens’ Oliver Twist) which was a massive hit in London and New York before being transformed into an Oscar-winning film. The gimmick of the TV show was that various aspiring young singing actresses were competing to win the star role of Nancy in an upcoming West End revival of Oliver!, with votes from the public making all the difference. You can find the show’s finale on YouTube, with Buckley and another singer-actress, costumed identically, each singing Nancy’s big torch number, “As Long as He Needs Me.” 

Guess what! Buckley came in second, though guest panelist Andrew Lloyd Webber passionately campaigned on her behalf. For me, looking back on the competition after several decades, Buckley was a star in the making. I am not expert enough at singing to comment on the technical prowess of the two contestants, but there’s no question that Buckley was better at pouring into this song a deep well of emotions. Clearly, she understood the lyrics. 

 The Jessie Buckley of 2008 was not exactly the woman we saw on stage at the Dolby. At 18 she was very slim with a mop of curly hair and a fair amount of makeup, not the more austere look she seems to favor these days, as a wife, a new mother, and a recognized dramatic actress. She was adorable back then, but I wouldn’t have guessed what she’d go on to do. Now, though, the sky’s the limit. Brava! 

 

 

Spending a Good Evening at Black Rock

Bad Day at Black Rock is by no means a small movie. This 1955 MGM western, shot in color and Cinemascope, features three past Academy Award winners: Walter Brennan, Dean Jagger, and star Spencer Tracy. Also prominent in the film are Oscar nominee Robert Ryan and two rising talents who would win future Oscars, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin. Director John Sturges, a former editor, would go on from Bad Day at Black Rock to helm The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape. The film’s wide-screen cinematography beautifully emphasizes the wide open spaces of the Lone Pine locales, and the mood is enhanced by André Previn’s haunting score.

  So this is hardly a modest indie. And yet it contains many of the elements I’ve learned to admire in B-movies. For one thing, it’s short and tight, coming in at a mere 81 minutes. Locations are limited; dialogue is clipped and to the point; tension is strong; bursts of action are prized. A mystery bubbles beneath the surface. There’s also, along with moments of dark humor, a subtle strand of meaningful social commentary. (I’m certain my former boss, Roger Corman, deeply admired this film, which captures many of his own aesthetic and social values.)

 Set in the California outback, circa 1945, the film begins with a passenger train arriving unexpectedly at a rural outpost. It disgorges a stocky man in a black suit and fedora, carrying a briefcase. The lounging locals are suspicious, especially when they notice the new arrival has only one arm. As played by Spencer Tracy, he is taciturn and unflappable, even when faced with a decided lack of hospitality. He’s hard-pressed to get a room at the one hotel, even though it clearly lacks for paying guests. When he introduces himself as John J. Macreedy of Los Angeles, and explains that he’s looking for a homesteader named Komoko, everyone becomes icier still. The cowpokes and ranchers hanging around the hotel lobby all seem to be sharing a secret. Down the town’s one main street, the sheriff (Jagger) appears to be drinking himself into oblivion. The veterinarian/undertaker (Brennan) lets slip that Komoko is no more.

 Managing with some difficulty to rent a Jeep, Macreedy heads over the hills toward the burnt-out mess that was once Komoko’s homestead. But the town’s unofficial boss, Reno Smith (Ryan) is not about to leave this intruder to his own devices. He sends the sadistic Coley Trimble (Borgnine) in pursuit, leading to a taut action sequence.

 It would be unfair of me to spell out precisely what happens next. Suffice it to say that eventually we learn what happened to Macreedy’s arm, why he’s so eager to find Komoko, and who among the townfolk eventually come to his aid. I’ll say also that this is covertly a story about the effects of racism and xenophobia, in the wake of World War II. And that, after all the anger and mistrust, the film ends in a moment of modest but genuine hope for a better future.

 The year 1955 was a great one for American dramas, many drawn from the Broadway stage, including Mr. Roberts, Picnic, and The Rose Tattoo. Two of James Dean’s three starring films, Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden, were also released. Ironically, Borgnine’s supporting turn in Black Rock was eclipsed by his Oscar-winning good-guy role in Marty, which was also named Best Picture. Though Black Rock was nominated for its script, its direction, and Tracy’s performance, it went home empty-handed. Still, it will live on, in my memory banks and (since 2018) on the National Film Registry.

 

 

 

 

 

Chasing After “The French Connection”

Some years ago, backstage at the West Hollywood Festival of Books, I chanced to chat with William Friedkin. It wasn’t much of a conversation: I was hardly a fan of The Exorcist, and didn’t have much in the way of insider questions to pose to the famous director. Nor did he seem to really welcome my interest in his career. Still, he was an Oscar winner, and a leading light among the New Hollywood filmmakers of the 1970s. So the news of his passing sent me to re-watch his most acclaimed thriller, 1971’s The French Connection.

 Despite its title, most of this down-and-dirty film is set in the mean streets of New York City. In early scenes I was pleased to see a few genuine glimpses of the Vieux-Port of Marseille, where some European baddies are planning a major drug deal, sending $32 million worth of heroin to the Big Apple in the trunk of a car being shipped across the Atlantic. By the time they and the dope arrive, two scruffy NYPD detectives (played by Roy Scheider and the Oscar-winning Gene Hackman) are on their trail, and most of the film becomes a cat and mouse game, with the cops pursuing the “frogs” through dingy alleyways and traffic-heavy streets. The mid-film chase involving a hijacked commuter train pursued by Hackman (as “Popeye” Doyle) in a commandeered sedan is what stood out in my mind from my long-ago first viewing of this film, and it’s just as exciting now, some fifty years after the initial release. (Wow! – the woman with the baby carriage really sets the heart athumping.) But there are lots of other great action sequences as well.  I’ve read that in directing this film, Friedkin took his inspiration from the French thriller Z, in which director Costa-Gavras filmed a fictional story about a political assassination in documentary fashion, thus heightening its drama. As Friedkin was to put it, “It was a fiction film but it was made like it was actually happening. Like the camera didn't know what was gonna happen next.” With Z as a  model, he shot The French Connection similarly, using a sense of rawness and uncertainty to pump up the adrenaline of audiences.

 I was surprised to learn that the budget was a modest $1.5 million, though the filmmakers went $300,000 over. But because of what was, even in the Seventies, modest budgeting, Friedkin couldn’t hire a glamorous star like Paul Newman or Steve McQueen. Tough guys Lee Marvin, Peter Boyle, James Caan, and Robert Mitchum turned down the Popeye role, which eventually went to Hackman. He had Hollywood cred, including a Supporting Oscar nomination for Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, but The French Connection is what truly put him on the map.

 Though Popeye and his partner are based on specific New York cops, I was surprised this time around to recognize that the film makes little effort to characterize them outside of their on-the-job behavior, Popeye’s pork-pie hat, and his leering way of challenging others: “Do you pick your feet?” Frankly, they seem to have no life beyond their profession. Their language is raw and their behavior is often beyond the pale. In fact we learn that a former partner of Popeye’s died when one of his hunches backfired. Even when Popeye and Cloudy ultimately triumph, there’s a painful irony: the final crawl makes clear that none of the drug-runners they’ve brought down ever really faces serious punishment, and the kingpin of the whole operation gets away scot-free. Just another day in the life of New York’s Finest.

Dirt on “The Dirty Dozen”

My colleague Dwayne Epstein is perhaps the world’s #1 fan of tough-guy Lee Marvin. In 2013, after years of research, he published Lee Marvin: Point Blank. It’s an in-depth tribute to the gruff action star, whose world view was shaped by his combat experience in the Pacific. Now Dwayne has published an in-depth appraisal of one of Marvin’s biggest films, one that topped the box office in the volatile year 1967. This April saw the release of Dwayne’s Killin’ Generals: The Making of The Dirty Dozen, the Most Iconic WWII Movie of All Time.

 Since I myself have written books about the movie year 1967, I’ve wrestled with the popularity of this exciting but disturbing film. I was lucky enough to interview the late E.M. Nathanson, who wrote the best-selling 1965 novel on which the film was based. Dwayne was lucky too: I shared with him my unpublished transcript of that interview, and in his Acknowledgments he graciously thanks me for my contribution to his book. (Nathanson had praised to me Robert Aldrich’s film adaptation, and particularly its new climax, in which the ragtag American GIs take a particularly gruesome revenge on a cluster of Nazi generals and their consorts, saying: “Aldrich had a lot more balls to put that on screen than I did.”) 

 The Dirty Dozen is a World War II movie with a difference. Major John Reisman, played by Lee Marvin, has been put in charge of twelve dangerous men. They’re a motley bunch, coming in many shapes and colors, but all of them are American soldiers who’ve been convicted of criminal offenses, including rape and murder. With D-Day fast approaching, Reisman’s mission is to whip these felons into shape, then take them far behind enemy lines for a daring assault on a German stronghold.

Through finding its heroes among hardened outlaws and criminals, the film taps into a late Sixties inclination to challenge authority. Still, The Dirty Dozen, vigorously directed by Aldrich, is in many ways a glossy and old-fashioned war movie. The men’s crimes are mostly explained away, or quickly forgotten. A training segment (in which they discover group solidarity and earn their nickname by jointly refusing to shave) is played chiefly for laughs. So is an extended war-games sequence in which the Dozen use dirty tricks to stymie the pompous military brass, thus earning the sympathy of every viewer who’d ever butted heads with what the Sixties called the Establishment. By the film’s climax, when the tone turns deadly serious, virtually all of Reisman’s men come through in the clutch. Once they reach the chateau that harbors a large contingent of German officers, only one of them reverts to being the sociopath he once was. The filmmakers have taken several of the novel’s hardest cases—a rapist, a racist, and a pervert—and rolled them into a single character. True to the spirit of the Sixties, with its deep-seated commitment to civil rights, it is the Southern racist (played by the very unlikely Greek-American Telly Savalas) who proves to be beyond redemption. The others, under Reisman’s canny leadership, join forces to do their job bravely and well. Most of them end up laying down their lives for the Allied cause. Patriotic music swells as the mission’s few survivors are given military commendations, and a solemn voiceover tells us that the fallen men “lost their lives in the line of duty.”  

 What message is The Dirty Dozen sending? Critics of the day vigorously debated what Aldrich was saying about the nature of war. I’ll leave it to Dwayne Epstein to sort it all out.