Eli Wallach: Two to Tango

The late Mickey Knox once told me he’d thought of calling his 2004 memoir The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. This seemed apt, because it was Mickey who – while sojourning in Italy during the blacklist era – adapted the script of Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti western into American English. But upon learning that his longtime pal Eli Wallach was considering the phrase for the cover of his own upcoming book, Mickey quickly stepped aside. He figured that Wallach had earned the right to borrow the title of Leone’s second Fistful of Dollars follow-up. After all, the movie’s most famous moments involve the scruffy Tuco, the cheerfully malicious and notably “ugly” character played by Wallach with infectious zest. Clint Eastwood may have been the film’s leading man, but it’s Tuco we most fondly remember. 

Mickey’s book about his oddball career ended up being called The Good, The Bad, and the Dolce Vita: The Adventures of an Actor in Hollywood, Paris, and Rome. Wallach’s own memoir, which came out a year later, bears the puckish title The Good, the Bad, and Me: In My Anecdotage. You can be sure it contains some lively reminiscences about working with Leone. It also covers his other celebrated bandido role, that of the gold-toothed Calvera in 1960’s The Magnificent Seven. There’s no telling why a short Jewish Method Actor from Brooklyn became typecast by Hollywood as a South-of-the-Border outlaw, but Wallach made the two roles his own in a way that the movie industry has never forgotten. Thereafter he was offered a long string of colorful bad-guy parts (thieves, hitmen, Mafia dons) and seemed to relish every one of them. 

But despite his lucrative movie career, he continued to return to the New York stage, where he took on roles by Shakespeare, Shaw, Ionesco, Arthur Miller, and his longtime friend, Tennessee Williams. Six years after making his Broadway debut, he won a Tony for Williams’ The Rose Tattoo.  He also created the role of Kilroy in Williams’ ambitious Camino Real, thereby missing out on playing Maggio in a hit film, From Here to Eternity. His part went to Frank Sinatra, who won an Oscar. 

Wallach was remarkable not only for living long but for living well. By the time he died on June 24 at age 98, he had wracked up 90 film credits. His final feature, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, appeared in 2010, when he was a mere 94. A video interview appeared in the New York Times that same year, just prior to Wallach receiving the Motion Picture Academy’s Governors Award “for a lifetime’s worth of indelible screen characters.” The interviewer was Times critic A.O. Scott, who addressed his subject as Uncle Eli for good reason: Scott’s late grandfather was Eli’s older brother. The footage reveals a man who, though aged, is still very much alive. Given how many youngish actors we’ve lost recently – Philip Seymour Hoffman comes to mind – it’s encouraging to see an oldster with a functioning body and an unquenchable spirit.

 Not only was the elderly Eli Wallach still capable of being charming. He was also a participant in a love story that lasted sixty-six years. He met Anne Jackson in 1946, when they were cast opposite one another in Tennessee Williams’ This Property is Condemned. They married in 1948, raised three children, and continued to appear in plays together as late as 2000. (Cautioned Jackson, “We're not the couple we play onstage. For us, it's fun to separate the two.")  

Long life; long marriage. Who in Hollywood is ever going to be able to equal that record? 

Up in the Air at the Movies

The other night I watched Non-Stop, a 2014 Liam Neeson thriller set aboard a transatlantic flight to London. Moviegoers have flown the unfriendly skies at least since 1954, when washed-up pilot John Wayne fought to save a planeful of passengers in The High and the Mighty. In today’s increasingly precarious world, engine trouble is the least of our worries. Neeson stars as a (yup!) washed-up sky marshal who must fight to save a planeful of passengers from an extortionist who threatens, via text message, to start killing people unless $150 million is deposited into his bank account. And then the mysterious deaths begin.

It’s all very complicated, and more than slightly implausible. But that didn’t stop me from being on the edge of my seat, trying to figure out who aboard the plane – the female lead? the guy with the shaven head?  the devout Muslim? the little girl? -- was sending those ominous texts. At the film’s end, after many high-flying emotions, I was very glad to be back on solid ground.

Let’s face it: when it comes to suspense, airplanes and movies just seem to go together. That’s what I was thinking recently when I toured the Museum of Flying, located on the grounds of the Santa Monica Airport. This being Southern California, the museum features aircraft that had co-starring roles in several Hollywood films. Like the sleek little BD-5 micro jet piloted by Roger Moore as James Bond in Octopussy. And the replica of the Wright Brothers’ original Flyer that appeared in Night at the Museum.

In tracing the history of Southern California aviation, the Museum of Flying of course devotes space to a flyboy who went on to make movies of his own. Howard Hughes—inventor, engineer, airline owner, aerospace honcho—also made his mark on Hollywood. In 1930, he produced and co-directed one of his most successful films, Hell’s Angels. This was a rough-and-tumble story of World War I combat pilots, and its aerial dogfight sequences won particular praise. Over seventy years later, Martin Scorsese focused on Hughes’ all-consuming passion for flying in his 2004 biopic, The Aviator.

I also learned the story of Douglas Aircraft, which once occupied the land where the museum now sits. During World War II, the Douglas aircraft plant turned out 300,000 planes for military use. This was such a fantastically large figure that Hitler himself deemed it mere propaganda. But the totals were genuine, thanks to round-the-clock shifts by a legion of dedicated workers, many of them Rosie the Riveters. Yes, at the height of the war, a full 40% of the Douglas workforce was female. 

Following Pearl Harbor, company founder Donald Douglas worried that his workplace, located only three miles from the Pacific Ocean, might be vulnerable to Japanese air attack. And so began a little-known collaboration between Hollywood and the aircraft industry. Set builders from Warner Bros. were delegated to create a fake city that completely camouflaged the plant. From the air, busy Douglas Aircraft looked like a collection of houses, buildings, and streets, with nearby runways disguised as farmland. 

Today, Hollywood and the airline biz are continuing to merge in curious ways. Recently, flying Delta, I saw a safety featurette that reminded me of the spoofy Airplane. As a chirpy-voiced stewardess described the plane’s features, the camera panned to passengers who were outrageously in dress and behavior. One slithered up the aisle on his belly like a trained seal; another breakdanced into his seat. Demonstrating the oxygen mask was an ALF-like muppet. And who was that giving us the thumbs-up from the cockpit? Yup, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The Fault in Our Stars -- Just An Old-Fashioned Love Story?

What can you say about a teenage hottie who died? Such is a key questions broached by The Fault in Our Stars, a breakout summer hit among the younger set. The Fault in Our Stars is a faithful adaptation of a romantic YA novel that’s topped the bestseller lists since its debut in January 2012. Because of its focus on attractive young people coping with cancer, it put me in mind of the three-hankie novel and movie that some of us remember from 1970. Of course I’m talking about Love Story.

Improbably, Love Story was written by a young Harvard professor of classics, Erich Segal. I’m told he tried to sell a screenplay version, but was advised by a literary agent to publish a  novel first. It appeared on Valentine’s Day, 1970, becoming the year’s top-selling work of fiction in the U.S., while also being translated into upwards of 20 languages. The film, released in December of that same year, was a runaway hit. When Oscar season rolled around, Love Story was nominated in seven categories, among them Best Picture, Best Director (Arthur Hiller), Best Actress (Ali MacGraw), and Best Actor (Ryan O’Neal). In the end, it won only for Francis Lai’s swoony score (cue the violins!), which went on to be featured in thousands of wedding ceremonies thereafter. The Love Story legacy also includes a #9 slot on the AFI’s all-time list of great movie romances. And, I suspect, it’s the reason that so many Americans born in the 1970s are named Jennifer and Oliver. (It will be fun to see whether, given the current popularity of The Fault in Our Stars, Hazel and Augustus will soon end up becoming baby names of choice.) 

The curious thing about Love Story is that it’s not really about leukemia. Despite its famous opening lines – “What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant? That she loved Mozart and Bach, the Beatles, and me?” – it does not spend most of its pages on illness. Instead, it’s a very polite and romanticized tale of class struggle, featuring the forbidden love between an upper-crust Harvard WASP and a working-class baker’s daughter. They meet in the school library; they spar (she disparagingly calls him “Preppie” at lot); they reconcile; they marry, after which Oliver’s banker-dad disinherits him. That’s when illness strikes, though father and son tearfully reconcile just after poor Jenny expires, having taught her young husband that “love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Prior to that, the movie’s been filled with now-common romantic tropes, like pretty young people romping through fields of flowers in slo-mo, their long locks flowing in the breeze. And, of course, illness itself looks pretty too: the sicker she gets, the more beautiful she looks. (The Carol Burnett Show brilliantly spoofed the film, via its hilarious “Lovely Story.”)

In writing The Fault in Our Stars, novelist John Green (who had worked as a chaplain in a cancer hospital and became a close friend of one young patient) was determined to cut the crap. True, his Hazel and Gus are both physically good-looking, and many elements of their story can be seen as pure YA wish-fulfillment. There is, for instance, that romantic trip to Amsterdam, where they drink champagne and fall into bed together, with her mother’s tacit approval. Still, their struggles with cancer – the toll it takes on them and on those around them -- are portrayed with heightened realism. Frankly, it’s encouraging to see a YA hit that deals with real-world problems, not the sex life of vampires. 

---

My Friend’s Place: In Search of Morgan Freeman

“I Wish Morgan Freeman Narrated My Life.” That’s what it said on one of those gag buttons for sale at my local pharmacy. I found the idea striking: who wouldn’t want to have her life story chronicled by a man whose voice conveys sincerity, downhome nobility, and hard-earned wisdom? (I’m told that March of the Penguins, that 2005 documentary set at the South Pole, didn’t turn into a global blockbuster until Freeman’s voice was substituted for that of the original French narrator.)

 There was a time, about seven years ago, when the dream of a Morgan Freeman voice loomed large in my creative endeavors. As a member of Women in Film, I was deeply involved with the PSA committee, whose goal was to craft professional-grade public service announcements for worthy charitable groups. Film professionals hoping to perfect new skills volunteered to join forces on these PSAs. I, with my background in writing, was paired with an experienced cinematographer who planned to make the leap into the director’s chair. Dana Kroeger, who’d been part of the camera crew on Terrence Malick’s The New World, had plenty of ideas and plenty of chutzpah. It would be my job, as both writer and associate producer, to rein in her enthusiasm and make this PSA happen.

Out of all the applying charities, Dana and I chose My Friend’s Place, a shelter for homeless teens in Hollywood. We learned everything about My Friend’s Place, and then sat down to create a vision that could be conveyed to the public via 15 and 30-second TV spots. The biggest challenge: as per Women in Film rules, all of our filming needed to take place in a single day. Dana, always ambitious, imagined two  very different scenarios. One of our nearly-silent vignettes showed a young girl who’d lost her parents, and then lost her grandmother. Another portrayed a teenage boy, hounded by abusive parents, heading out into the unknown on his skateboard. In each case, the kid ends up – in a stark black & white photo – living on the streets. After which, a strong, compassionate Morgan Freeman-esque voice intones, “Behind every homeless teen, there’s a story. Join My Friend’s Place, and help us help America’s forgotten youth.”

I can’t begin to tell you how many challenges we faced as we went through the casting process, dealt with Screen Actors Guild paperwork, rented equipment, found locations, and assembled an all-volunteer crew. There were some memorable personality clashes, and an experienced line producer we badly needed dropped out at the very last second because she’d been booked to appear on a short-lived reality show. Filming at two locations (an Altadena cemetery and an Echo Park home) in a single day required lots of hustle, and our shoot stretched from near-dawn to after dark. As a newly-minted script supervisor (one of several hats I ended up wearing) I loved being where the action was. And my family got involved too. My loyal spouse, serving as a production assistant, schlepped equipment, and proudly took part in the symbolic handshake that provided a coda for our various versions. Later my son contributed the musical score. Eventually, our PSA won some prizes for excellence, a true happy ending.

Where was Morgan Freeman in all this? We couldn’t hope to land him, but briefly tried to get his female counterpart, Whoopi Goldberg, as our narrator. Of course we failed, but found Laura Leyva, whose strong but gentle voice was a good substitute. Laura also voiced the screechy mom in one of our spots. Quite a change of pace, but that’s Hollywood!  

Self-Judgment after Nuremberg: Jack El-Hai’s “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist”

Moviegoers get much of their knowledge of the Nuremberg Trials -- in which prominent Nazis had to answer  to American military tribunals for their crimes against humanity -- from Stanley Kramer’s 1961 courtroom drama, Judgment at Nuremberg. That long but fascinating film is a rare example of Hollywood royalty banding together to confront an evil from the recent past.  Judgment at Nuremberg stars such luminaries as Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift, Marlene Dietrich, and (in a powerful dramatic role) Judy Garland.  It incorporates actual footage shot by British and American soldiers upon entering Dachau, thus becoming the first Hollywood movie to introduce audiences to the piles of corpses and the skeletal survivors that the Nazis left in their wake. But the film is not about the prosecution of infamous Nazi leaders. Instead it’s a fictionalized look at the Judges’ Trial, in which prominent German jurists of the World War II era were called to account for their handling of the odious racial laws of the Third Reich. As a film it’s slow going, but definitely worth the effort.

Jack El-Hai may love movies, but he writes books. In the past he’s explored such troubled (and troubling) men as Walter Freeman, known as the Father of the Lobotomy. The Lobotomist was made into a PBS American Experience documentary in 2008, and has been optioned for a motion picture adaptation. Now Jack has turned his attention to the aftermath of Nazi Germany. The result is The Nazi and the Psychiatrist, which chronicles the coming together of two complex and fascinating figures, German Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and the pioneering American psychiatrist who observed him as he languished in a Nuremberg prison cell.

Major Douglas McGlashan Kelley, grandson of a Northern California lawyer obsessed with the fate of the Donner Party, was sent by the US Army to maintain the mental health of Nazi prisoners awaiting trial. That’s how he came to rub shoulders with such notorious men as Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess, Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher, and Hans Frank, the brutal governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland. Kelley’s early use of the Rorschach inkblot test was one way through which he sought to explore whether top Nazis shared a common psychological profile. In this he was particularly drawn to Göring, a deceptively cartoonish figure whose intelligence and highly theatrical nature in some ways mirrored Kelley’s own. 

Göring, for his part, clearly looked forward to his frequent interaction with Dr. Kelley. When, with  the Nuremberg trials not yet over, Kelley announced that he was returning to civilian life, the  Reichsmarschall wept. Before Göring met his fate (in a way that I will not spell out here), Kelley was back in the U.S. In 1949 he was named Professor of Criminology at the University of California, meanwhile advancing his career by consulting with police departments and others regarding the criminal mind. Director Nicholas Ray, for one, consulted with him while making Rebel Without a Cause.

Adept at stage magic, Kelley tried to tap into early television by launching a reality series called Fakes, Frauds, and Fools. It didn’t fly, but he received $50,000 to help create and host a twenty-part educational TV series, Criminal Man. In the long run, Kelley – with his love of showmanship – became his own worst enemy. Author Jack El-Hai, who himself doesn’t lack for dramatic flair, begins his book with a prelude that left me gasping. Where did he find the model for this decidedly cinematic opening, one that tours Kelley’s last home and plants hints of what lies ahead?  From, of course, the original trailer for Hitchcock’s chiller, Psycho.