Picturing Raymond Chandler (in Living Black-and-White)

Raymond Chandler was no stranger to Hollywood. He was nominated for two screenwriting Oscars, for collaborating with Billy Wilder on Double Indemnity and for his solo outing on The Blue Dahlia. He also clashed colorfully with Alfred Hitchcock while hashing out a screen version of Strangers on a Train. He knew Hollywood well, both the workaday place and the state of mind. And no one is better than Chandler at capturing in prose the mix of seediness and splendor that marked the Hollywood of his day.

Hollywood was fascinated by Chandler too. Many of his taut little novels have been filmed, and his archetypal private eye, the tough-but-tender Philip Marlowe, has been played by some of the industry’s biggest names. I’m thinking especially of Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep, with Lauren Bacall as his love interest and a screenplay by none other than William Faulkner. Marlowe was also portrayed by Dick Powell, Robert Mitchum, and (of all people) Elliott Gould, who starred in Robert Altman’s somewhat goofy version of The Long Goodbye.

Since I’m both a lover of libraries and a devoted Santa Monican, I have long been involved with a Santa Monica Public Library program called Citywide Reads. Each year library staff and volunteers pick a novel, order many copies, and persuade lots of locals to read it. We then hold a series of book discussions – come one, come all! – along with film screenings, lectures, and special events. In 2012, to mark the program’s 10th anniversary, we’re spotlighting Raymond Chandler. After all, the Bay City described in his pages (a tawdry place, full of gambling dens, bad women, and crooked cops) is none other than our beloved home town. That’s why I’ve immersed myself in Chandler’s The Lady in the Lake. And why I watched one of the weirder films ever to come out of Hollywood.

Lady in the Lake (1947) stars Hollywood stalwart Robert Montgomery. He also directed, which may (or may not) help explain the film’s curious aesthetic choice. Though Montgomery plays Philip Marlowe, the viewer rarely sees him. He appears in the opening scene, sitting behind his desk, and explaining that he’s letting the audience solve his most recent case: “You’ll meet the people; you’ll find the clues. . . . You’ll see it just as I saw it.” This means that throughout the movie the camera becomes Marlowe’s point of view. Viewers hear his voice, follow his gaze, and occasionally see his hands (when he extends them to be handcuffed, or to land a punch). We catch occasional glimpses of him in a mirror, and the camera work sometimes suggests he’s gone woozy, on the brink of passing out.

MGM tried hard to sell this as “a revolutionary innovation in film technique.” The trailer breathlessly touts “the most thrilling of all mysteries, and YOU play the starring role with Robert Montgomery.” Moviegoers, possibly disappointed by the near-absence of the film’s star, stayed away. Chandler had worked on the screenplay, but heartily disliked the concept, and quickly extricated himself. (He may also have disliked the very Hollywood addition of a big romance for Marlowe, and a blissfully happy ending.) But for an example of genuine cinematic experiment within the studio system, Lady in the Lake is worth taking the plunge.

Also worth pondering is a book with a Roger Corman connection. Roger’s daughter Catherine – the one Corman offspring actively pursuing her own creative career – recently published Daylight Noir: Raymond Chandler’s Imaginary City. Her moody black-and-white photos, coupled with quotes from Chandler novels, showcase L.A. as “a city of well-guarded secrets.” So true, so Chandler.

(A free screening of Lady in the Lake will be held at the Santa Monica Public Library’s Martin Luther King Jr. Auditorium on Thursday, March 22, at 6:30 p.m.)

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: From March Madness into History

I seem to have let Black History Month slide by without a shout-out to the biggest black historian of them all. No matter: African-Americans are entitled to make history in months other than February. And March Madness is now officially underway. So it’s a perfect time to salute Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who has recently been named by the U.S. Department of State as an American cultural ambassador. Abdul-Jabbar, in case you haven’t heard, is the author of many serious books exploring black contributions to American life. He has chronicled the Harlem Renaissance, written about the unsung heroes of World War II’s mostly black 761st Tank Battalion, and just published a history of African-American inventors. Along the way, of course, he’s also played a little basketball. And made a surprising number of movies, the most famous of which is undoubtedly Airplane, in which (as co-pilot Roger Murdock) he spoofed his own public image as a serious, even humorless, guy.

It’s surprising (or maybe it isn’t) how many star athletes have ended up in movies. I once wrote an L.A. Times piece on a USC course in which student athletes –- including a future Heisman trophy winner –- fulfilled their fine-arts requirement by studying acting fundamentals. Their hope, of course, was to luck into a lucrative and glamorous Hollywood career, once their playing days were over. But despite their admirable physical grace, most star athletes don’t make great actors, because they’re not terrific at articulating lines on camera. Still, some have done well. Among former football greats, Merlin Olsen had a featured role on TV’s Little House on the Prairie, and even starred in his own series, Father Murphy. And Jim Brown, who debuted in major action flicks like The Dirty Dozen, is still taking on varied roles. Not to mention O.J. Simpson, who racked up a number of screen credits before he was (ahem) otherwise engaged.

In my Roger Corman days, when we were churning out routine thrillers by the dozens, Roger got the mad notion that the mere presence of a sports star would increase our audience. In one film he gave a supporting role to popular Dodger Steve Garvey. In another, he cast running back Roger Craig as a police detective, and made sure he was prominent in a chase scene so that fans could watch him run. Neither fledgling actor showed much talent, and I’m certain they didn’t increase our viewership of Bloodfist 6 or Naked Obsession.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, I suspect, would not have stooped to such exploitation. At least, when he and I were UCLA classmates, he projected a fierce dignity. He was Lew Alcindor then, the most recruited (and the tallest) player in college basketball. We were both enrolled in Professor Albert Hoxie’s Western Civ class, along with a few hundred other undergraduates. One day, I switched to an unfamiliar discussion section. I sat in the front row, and suddenly a huge shadow loomed behind me. Then two giant feet appeared, one on either side of my desk. I was so rattled that I dropped my pen on the floor, and just let it lie.

Professor Hoxie, a gifted lecturer with a flair for tracing the social and intellectual currents of an era, died at age 86 in 1999. His obituary in the Times noted that his most famous former student had lauded him in print. In the opening pages of his Black Profiles in Courage, he wrote that Hoxie “taught me that authentic history was not dry, lifeless facts, but rather the living legacies of real human beings.” Not bad for a white guy who couldn’t jump.

It’s a Sherman World After All (or it used to be)

With “It’s a Small World After All” running through my head on a cerebral tape-loop, I’m thinking about the late Robert Sherman. Along with his look-alike younger brother Richard, he created hundreds of family-friendly tunes, many for Walt Disney. Sons of a Tin Pan Alley songwriter, the Sherman brothers had two essentials for success: talent and excellent timing. They hit their stride in an era that welcomed original movie musicals.

Starting out with Disney’s The Parent Trap (“Let’s get together, yeah yeah yeah”), they soon got the chance to set the adventures of P.L. Travers’ beloved English nanny to music. The result was Mary Poppins, a magical confection that charmed both the young and the young at heart. (How well I remember, as a high school senior, seeing it multiple times with my friends. On the brink of graduation into the real world, we were trying to hold onto our childhood as long as we possibly could.)

Mary Poppins earned the Shermans two Oscars: Best Song (for “Chim Chim Cher-ee”) and Best Musical Score. Their nominated 1968 song "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" may not have been a tune for the ages, but it definitely had broader appeal than the 2005 Oscar-winner, “It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp.” Visitors to Disneyland won’t soon forget their infectious soundtrack for the “Tiki Tiki Tiki Room” (even if they’d like to), and if you’re old enough you probably also recall their syrupy “Carousel of Progress” paean to modern technology: "There's a great big beautiful tomorrow/Shining at the end of every day.” They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

Today, of course, most movies don’t have song scores. Only Randy Newman, responsible for the musical moments in most Pixar films, seems even faintly comparable to the Shermans. And when’s the last time someone paid Newman to write a full-out screen musical? Lately the field for the original song Oscar has become so sparse that last year there were only two candidates on the ballot: “Real in Rio” and “Man or Muppet.” (The latter, which won, is an amusing spoof of the heartfelt movie ballads of old, but hardly something you come out of the theatre humming.) Nor is today’s Broadway any more hospitable to song-writers. Many of the Great White Way’s current musical hits are oldies, like How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and even a revival of Cole Porter’s 1934 Anything Goes. Others are stage versions of Hollywood musicals (including Mary Poppins) or re-purposed compilations of familiar pop tunes (Jersey Boys). If the Sherman brothers were starting out now, I don’t know where and how they’d catch on.

This concerns me because my son Jeffrey (who grew up loving Gilbert and Sullivan, Rogers and Hammerstein, and other great song-writing duos) is determined to enter the musical theatre field. At Manhattan’s prestigious BMI workshop for composers and lyricists, he became friendly with Robby Sherman, one of Robert’s sons. Through Robby he learned something of the Sherman brothers’ working method. As tensions rose between them, Robert relocated to London while Richard remained in Beverly Hills. But the partnership continued via long-distance phone and electronic media, proving once again that it’s a small world after all. (A 2009 documentary film, The Boys, gently explores their strained relationship.)

My son Jeff lacks Robby Sherman's family connections in the musical theatre field. He has talent (and an award from the New York Fringe Festival to prove it), but his timing is hardly the best. Nonetheless he and his collaborators have great expectations for a March 12 reading of their latest show, about rival paleontologists. Jeffrey, here’s hoping The Bone Wars proves to be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Whitney Houston and Zina Bethune: Two Who Died Too Soon

No doubt about it: the sudden death of Whitney Houston was a sad moment for Hollywood and the world. Yet as much as I lament over a great talent gone to waste, I can’t help feeling frustrated that Houston’s tragedy seemed to be mostly of her own making. From all I hear, she lived large, loved deeply but not too wisely, and was caught up in the self-obsession so common to show biz royalty. In Hollywood circles, of course, that hardly made her unique.

On February 11, 2012, Whitney Houston was found dead in the bath tub of her suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Less than twenty-four hours later, just after midnight on February 12, sixty-six-year-old Zina Bethune died on Forest Lawn Drive in L.A.’s rustic Griffith Park.

Zina who? I remembered her name from an old CBS TV series called The Nurses. This was the era when Vince Edwards starred as an intense young doctor on Ben Casey and Richard Chamberlain found fame as an intense young intern who butts heads with the medical establishment on Doctor Kildare. Both doctor series got their start in 1961, and The Nurses -- an obvious attempt to play up the female aspects of hospital drama -- first aired one year later. Bethune, a youthful veteran of the New York City Ballet, was cast as an intense student nurse who (yes, of course) butts heads with the medical establishment. After the first season, The Nurses changed its name to The Doctors and the Nurses, so that men could be around to help solve the women’s problems. To be honest, I don’t think I ever saw the show.

But I did see Zina Bethune playing the nice-girl part in Who’s That Knocking at My Door, the ambitious but muddled love-and-sex story that helped launch Martin Scorsese on his long career. The film contains a flashback to a brutal rape, and I found myself blaming the scene’s cinematic stiffness on Bethune’s limitations as an actress. Hard to say, but there’s no question that hers was not a terribly impressive career.

It was what she did after Hollywood that intrigues me now. After the roles stopped coming, she remained in Southern California, married, and devoted herself to a life in the arts. In 1980 she founded and served as choreographer for Bethune Theatredanse, a nonprofit multimedia company that has toured internationally, even performing at the White House. Another of her ventures was Infinite Dreams, a dance and theatre outreach program for children with disabilities. More than 8,000 physically, emotionally, and cognitively disabled youngsters have been welcomed into classes held throughout Southern California. Bethune, who as a young girl battled scoliosis and other ailments, tells the world on the organization’s website: “We don’t ask how much can you move, we simply say . . . come dance with us.”

Bethune’s work earned her numerous commendations. But she never ceased caring about those who were smaller and more helpless than herself. On February 12, she stopped her car on a dark stretch of road to tend to an injured possum. Sadly, she was struck by a car traveling in the opposite direction, and then by a second vehicle that dragged her 600 feet. Neither driver stuck around, so neither was present when she died of massive head injuries. On March 8 those who loved her gathered in a local theatre for a memorial service. It was not nationally televised.

(Chris) Rocking the Voice Actors’ World

One of the most talked-about parts of this year’s Oscar broadcast has been Chris Rock’s comic riff on supplying voices for animated characters. Said Rock, “I love animation because in the world of animation, you can be anything you wanna be. If you’re a fat woman, you can play a skinny princess. If you’re a short, wimpy guy, you can play a tall gladiator. If you’re a white man, you can play an Arabian prince. And if you’re a black man, you can play a donkey or a zebra.” Obviously, Rock was making a social point – and a good one. But he went on to declare that “voice-acting is the easiest job in the world,” a simple matter of walking into the booth, saying a few lines, and collecting a million dollars. Nice work if you can get it, and a well-known performer like Rock (or Eddie Murphy or Mike Myers or Antonio Banderas or Tom Hanks) certainly enjoys million-dollar paydays that don’t even require him to learn his lines or wear makeup

But Rock’s put-down of voice-acting didn’t sit well with those workaday folks who earn their living supplying voices for commercials, games, and cartoons. On the Voice Acting Alliance site, many pointed out the obvious: that when you’re Chris Rock, you’re hired to sound like Chris Rock. Voice-acting specialists, though, need to be credible in a wide range of roles, covering many moods, age groups, and character types. When a producer is looking to save money, you may end up having a conversation with yourself, even if the scene involves (let’s say) an old lady chiding a little girl. Or perhaps you’ll be asked to play three young boys, each requiring a distinctive sound.

I have special affection for voice actors because long ago, in that era when Roger Corman took time out from T&A to distribute art-house flicks, New World Pictures acquired an animated feature from France. Known as Planète Sauvage (or Fantastic Planet), it was a lush depiction of a faraway world where humans were kept as pets by giant blue creatures, some of them benign. For the benefit of the American drive-in crowd, Roger wanted the characters to speak English. So we translated the script, tailoring the new lines to fit as closely as possible the mouth-positions of the characters, and then looked for a handful of actors who could play all the roles while also meeting the technical demands of a hurry-up looping session. We were lucky indeed to cast veterans of the Golden Age of Radio, including deep-voiced Olan Soulé, who liked calling himself the world’s oldest Batman. Another treasure was cuddly Hal Smith, who’d graduated from playing the live-action part of Otis, the town drunk, on The Andy Griffith Show to re-creating famous character voices for Disney animation.

Then there was Janet Waldo, who began her acting career as a giddy teenager, Corliss Archer, on a popular radio show that debuted in the 1940s. Janet’s first brush with animation came when she played daughter Judy Jetson for Hanna-Barbera’s futuristic sitcom, The Jetsons. Though she continued to star in youthful roles on such cartoon series as The Adventures of Penelope Pitstop and Josie and the Pussycats, she proved equally adept at supplying the voices of crotchety grannies, tough dames, and children of both sexes.

Today, Janet Waldo is enjoying her seventh decade in show business. We’ve just chatted on the phone, and her voice sounds as youthful as ever. So maybe Chris Rock was right: voice acting is easy. Or maybe it’s the challenges involved that have kept Janet Waldo young at heart.

“The Artist” Sings L.A.’s Praises

It’s a curious year when the Best Picture Oscar – Hollywood’s highest honor – goes to a low-budget black-and-white silent film made by a creative team from France. But Oscar host Billy Crystal pointed up an interesting irony: The Artist was the only one of the nine Best Picture nominees that was shot entirely in the city of Los Angeles. In paying tribute to the early days of the motion picture industry, The Artist also paid tribute to the city where that industry took root as it has done nowhere else in the world.

The growth of the L.A. metropolis has always been intertwined with the making of movies. Reading Cari Beauchamp’s Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood, I got a vivid picture of the dawn of L.A.’s film industry. Circa 1912-14, long before the big studios had come into being, you could find cameras cranking, men with megaphones shouting, and costumed actors emoting all over the streets of L.A. Writes Beauchamp, “Fire or police chases of any kind were fair game to be used as backdrops, as were horse races, sporting events, and parades.” In the words of Agnes de Mille, choreographer and niece of Cecil B. DeMille, “The Keystone cops would take over a street and do what they had to do before the real police arrived.”

At first the shenanigans of movie folks were barely tolerated by the upstanding citizens of L.A. Soon, however, it became clear that there was good money to be made from this new local industry, and that everyone stood to benefit. I was reminded of this fact recently while on a tour of historic L.A. landmarks. So many local buildings have become movie icons, starting with L.A.’s distinctive City Hall tower. It was destroyed on-screen in 1953’s War of the Worlds, but survived to appear as the Daily Planet headquarters in the early TV series Adventures of Superman. Sharp-eyed visitors to L.A. can also spot less obvious movie locations. My tour bus cruised down Carroll Avenue, a street of nicely-restored Victorians in an old L.A. residential neighborhood called Angelino Heights. Our guide noted that the facades of some of these houses were featured in A Nightmare on Elm Street and loomed large in Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video.

We also passed the Wilshire Blvd. Temple (1929), home congregation of most of Hollywood’s early movie moguls. Among its treasures are the Bible-themed murals commissioned by the brothers Warner and painted by studio artisans. A far less opulent place is the wood-paneled Welsh Presbyterian Church on Valencia Street in midtown L.A. It too was first built as a synagogue, but has been lovingly tended by parishioners of Welsh descent since 1925. The Welsh traditionally love to sing, and current congregants still take pride in the fact that their choir was featured on the soundtrack of How Green Was My Valley, a poignant Welsh saga that beat out Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon as the Best Picture of 1941.

With the advent of location shooting, today’s Los Angeles has far less need to be ready for its closeup. If Woody Allen or Martin Scorsese wants to show Paris, he goes to Paris. But L.A. continues to spawn unique film-industry types, like the professional seat-filler who was saluted by Billy Crystal at this year’s Oscar ceremony. Meanwhile, young guerrilla filmmakers of the Roger Corman school are still out on L.A. streets, filming crowd scenes and chases without permits. If their chaotic presence prompts a traffic accident, they’ll shoot that too. Hey! It’s show biz.

This post is dedicated to Stuart Bernstein, who encouraged me to find my voice and start this blog. Stuart is one of those rare souls born on February 29, so tomorrow is his first birthday in four years. That’s one way to stay forever young!

Bonnie and Clyde: When Theadora Went Wild

No matter which film captures this year’s Oscar for best costume design, one thing is certain: the winning clothes will not be nearly so influential as those worn by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde. The two outlaws’ outfits -- Bonnie’s berets, soft scarves, and mid-calf skirts; Clyde’s snappy fedoras and well-tailored suits – took the fashion world by storm. Young women who’d been strutting around town in thigh-high minis suddenly discovered the elegance of 1930s styling. Overnight they traded the baby-doll Twiggy look for Bonnie’s bias-cut silks and hems well below the knee.

The designer of those captivating clothes was Theadora Van Runkle, working on her very first film. Later Van Runkle credits include Bullitt, The Godfather Part II, and Peggy Sue Got Married, as well as Myra Breckinridge, which she herself called “arguably the worst movie ever made.” Awed by her reputation (and that remarkable name), I was sure that Theadora would be haughty and unapproachable. Hardly. When I phoned her to talk about film in the Sixties, she turned out to be delightfully chatty. We got along so famously that we tried making plans to meet. Alas, it was not to be. Theadora passed away last November at age 83.

Theadora’s movie career came out of nowhere. A single mom supporting herself as an illustrator, she couldn’t afford to see many films. But one day she took the kids to a bargain screening of Lawrence of Arabia. Theadora remembered, “I was so inspired – I came home and I was watering the garden, and this rainbow appeared over the roses. I said, ‘I’ve got to have some recognition for my art work. I’ve got to.’ I begged the universe to give me recognition.” The following day, she got a call from legendary costumer Dorothy Jeakins, who knew her sketch work. Jeakins, who was off to Rome to work on Reflections in a Golden Eye, passed on to her "a little cowboy movie at Warner Bros.” that turned out to be Bonnie and Clyde.

Van Runkle’s portfolio impressed director Arthur Penn and producer/star Warren Beatty, but she was such a novice that she thought movies were shot in sequence. Early only, when Beatty saw her working on Faye Dunaway’s frock for the film’s opening sequence, he chewed her out. Theadora insists he was right, that she didn’t know what she was doing. She learned quickly, though. Dunaway, she discovered, had a passion for detail, as well as the perfect body for languid Thirties styles that could be worn bra-less. (By contrast Estelle Parsons wore bits and pieces because she rejected Van Runkle’s designs, except for one iconic jodphur outfit.)

When it came time to verify screen credits, Beatty assumed she’d modify her moniker, since he considered Theadora Van Runkle “the ugliest fucking name I ever heard.” (“Thea Vee” was his suggested fix.) But Theadora stuck to her guns, and soon her full name appeared among the ranks of Oscar nominees. She didn’t win -- that honor went to John Trescott, whose exquisitely detailed work on Camelot was not really captured by the cameras. But Theadora moved on to other films and other kudos, including one unforgettable publicity event.

In 1968 the brand-new Century City Shopping Mall, sitting on land that was once the Fox backlot, held a weeklong festival with a Bonnie and Clyde theme. Shops put fake bullet-holes on their windows, and announced that their prices were “a steal.” Theadora and Faye, dressed in period finery, were special guests, and she never forgot the coverage given to “Miss Dunaway’s beauty and Miss Van Runkle’s shapely legs.”