Bill Cobbs: That Thing He Did!

We all know who the big stars are, even if we haven’t always seen their movies. Their faces are on movie posters and magazine covers; their names are embedded on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and their footprints decorate the forecourt of the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd. Long after they’re dead and buried, we still talk about Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe. Their bodies may not have survived, but their reputations certainly live on and on. Greta Garbo’s career was before my time, but her image remains in my memory banks. Such is the power of movies.

 Most working actors in Hollywood don’t achieve that kind of celebrity. Even those who land fairly steady paychecks for their film and TV roles can expect to remain unknown to the public at large. I remember once interviewing a wonderful actor named René Auberjonois in his lovely Windsor Square home, complete with a verdant garden and a yoga hut. I’d delighted in seeing him many times in local theatre productions, usually playing lead characters who were charming and flamboyant. My interview with him, for the Los Angeles Music Center’s program magazine, of course emphasized his stage roles. But stage stardom is a sometime thing, and can’t often support a cushy lifestyle. Auberjonois mentioned to me in passing that he was lucky indeed: his looks and skill-set were in great demand in Hollywood, and he was paid handsomely to take colorful character parts. Examples: he was Father Mulcahy in the original Robert Altman film version of M*A*S*H, and had small but significant roles in both Star Trek VI and The Princess Diaries. He was also featured on television, and  did a great deal of voice work for animated films, TV, and video games. A household name? Hardly. But a very comfortable life indeed. When he passed away in 2019 at age 79, there were small tributes in the press.

 Another of those great journeyman actors has just reached the end of the line. Bill Cobbs made it to 90, still active through 2022. His film roles were sometimes modest, ranging from Man on Platform in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) to Man in Lunchroom in Silkwood (1983). Happily, his parts gradually got larger. He had a significant presence as Moses, the clock expert, in the Coen brothers’ screwball The Hudsucker Proxy, and played a sneaky security guard  in the first Night at the Museum (2006).

I cherish his performance in the first film Tom Hanks ever wrote and directed, That Thing You Do! (1996). The light-hearted story, set in the rock ‘n roll Sixties, is about four young amateur musicians who record an original pop song that unexpectedly tops the charts nationwide. Hanks gives himself the role of the A&R record exec who spots the quartet. The Wonders (as in “one-hit wonders”) seem poised for genuine stardom until—inevitably—their very different goals pull them apart. The four nicely-cast musicians are Johnathon Schaech as the ambitious lead singer, Ethan Embry as the naïve bass player who’d rather be a Marine, Steve Zahn as the stoner lead guitarist, and Tom Everett Scott (a young Hanks lookalike) as the drummer who has a deep-seated love of music. It is Scott’s character who, late in the film, happens upon a legendary jazz pianist, someone who reinforces his true passion for great musicianship. The film’s climax is their impromptu jazz duet, one that reminds young Guy of what he truly values in life. This is a small role for Cobbs, but a deeply appealing one. Bill Cobbs will be missed.

 

In Memoriam: After the Parade Passes By

As that exasperating year 2019 wanes, it feels appropriate to look back on the famous movieland folks we’ve lost. TCM has put together a short  but poignant video segment reminding us of some of the indelible faces and voices who now remain only in our movies and our dreams. I’ve written my own Beverly in Movieland tributes to some of these great performers: Doris Day,  Peter Fonda, Valerie Harper, Albert Finney, Bibi Andersson, Machiko Kyo. And I’ve lamented the loss of outstanding filmmakers like John Singleton, D..A. Pennebaker, Franco Zeffirelli, and Stanley Donen. In the field of music (for the screen as well as for the stage and the concert hall) there have been several indelible passings: André Previn, Michel LeGrand, and Broadway’s Jerry Herman, the exuberant composer of Hello, Dolly and Funny Girl.

Of course deaths don’t stop when the memorial video is posted online. Jerry Herman, who died last Thursday at the age of 88, didn’t make the final cut. A recent edition of The Hollywood Reporter also lists a few passings that TCM overlooked. One was D.C. Fontana, the very first female writer on Star Trek. (In an era less politically correct than our own, women writers found it smart to conceal their gender by turning their given names into male-sounding initials.) Another was Carroll Spinney, the gentle, spritely puppeteer who impersonated Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch and wore the feathers of Big Bird for nearly half a-century. I was particularly moved when Karen Pendleton passed on in October at the age of 73. Pendleton, one of the original Mouseketeers, was a regular on The Mickey Mouse Club for its entire nine-year run.  Though several of the Mouseketeers led tawdry adult lives, Pendleton was a major exception. After the show ended, she devoted herself to her education. When a 1983 car accident that damaged her spinal cord left her paralyzed from the waist down, she went back to college, earning a master’s degree in psychology. Putting her academic training to work, she served as a counselor at a shelter for abused women, while supporting the rights of the disabled by joining the board of the California Association of the Physically Handicapped. A life well lived, indeed.

I was sorry to read about the loss of masterful actors like Ron Leibman (so moving in Norma Rae) and Moonstruck’s Danny Aiello. And I shook my head ruefully at the passing of Jan-Michael Vincent, a talented action hero but one who cut his career short because of his personal weaknesses. (In later years he was reduced to appearing in Roger Corman war epics, like my own Beyond the Call of Duty, flying off to Manila to star in quickie flicks undermined by his drinking habits.)

But of courses the deaths that most moved me were those of celebrities with whom I’ve personally interacted. It seems like yesterday that I, as a writer of profiles for Performing Arts magazine, was welcomed at the home of the versatile character actor René Auberjonois, who lit up stage and screen with his eccentric portrayals. I will always think fondly of the late Dick Miller, my buddy in my New World Pictures days and years later a valuable source of information when I was researching my Corman biography. How wonderful that Dick          inspired both the loyalty of some of Hollywood’s finest directors and an affectionate 2014 documentary (That Guy Dick Miller) summing up his long career  And then there is good-guy Robert Forster, whose resonant baritone is—and always will be—on my answering machine. Hail and farewell. .