December 15, 2013 was the last day on earth for two Hollywood legends, Peter O'Toole and Joan Fontaine. I felt a connection to the O'Toole because of my high school love of T.E.Lawrence Seven Pillars of Wisdom. My connection to Joan Fontaine is through my parents.
Impressionistic memories swirl of my mother reciting that famous first line of Dauphne DuMaurier's Rebecca: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" . . . My father buying me 2 Dauphne du Maurier novels, Rebecca, and My Cousin Rachel, both important to read. When I finally saw the films, there was Joan Fontaine as the second Mrs. de Winter with Laurence Olivier as her Maxim, and then there was her sister, Olivia de Havilland as Rachel Ashley, along with Richard Burton in his Hollywood debut in 1952 My Cousin Rachel. I always loved that the siblings were a matched set for for these two great novels, in spite of their own longstanding feud. (Joan also starred in the less successful 1944 film Frenchmen's Creek, wonderfully articulated by Farran Nehme as Self-Styled Siren, based on another great DuMaurier novel.)
Bringing to life a character who has no first name is a particular challenge. Every note of Joan's performance in Rebecca is stellar, from the girl paid companion, to the unsure bride, to the chew toy for Mrs. Danvers, to the sleuth who insists on working through all the little clues. Her Mrs. de Winter is like Vivien Leigh as Scarlett---you can't imagine anyone else in the role---except much more quietly.
My father had a crush on Olivia de Havilland in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) when he was a boy, Joan was in the later swashbuckler Ivanhoe. . . My father could recite most of Kipling's Gunga Din by memory, and Joan was in the classic 1939 film.
Joan won her Oscar for Best Actress in 1941 for her Linda in Hitchcock's Suspicion, another timid bride, this time trying to suss out if her husband is trying to kill her. For me Cary Grant's performance as Johnnie is the more compelling one, but either way Joan got to be associated with the most sinister milk in film history, and I love that.
The panoply of characters that the sisters brought to life is extraordinary. And they played against some of Hollywood's greatest leading men: Joan got Laurence Olivier, Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.;, Olivia got Errol Flynn, Richard Burton, Montgomery Cliff. That's a lot of sibling connection to the golden age of Hollywood.
Joan also made a crazy movie with Billy Wilder, costarring Bing Crosby, called The Emperor's Waltz (1948). It did not turn out the way Wilder intended, and Joan said that Crosby wasn't very courteous to her, and seemed to not know who she was. But it adds a lovely bauble to her overall career.
Variety said the film "has a free-and-easy air that perfectly matches the Crosby style of natural comedy. Costar Joan Fontaine, better known for heavy, serious roles, demonstrates adaptability that fits neatly into the lighter demands and she definitely scores with charm and talent as the Crosby foil." In the clip below, a skeptical Fontaine dares Bing to sing ("The Kiss in Your Eyes").
It is a privilege to have gown up with an appreciation of this film work, and the connected memories.
I wrote this post in 2007 when Peter O'Toole earned what would be his last Oscar nomination, for the role of Maurice in the film Venus, which he would not win. This looks at his deep affinity for that first role of Lawrence of Arabia and for T.E. Lawrence himself. Requiescat in Pace.
“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.”
So wrote T.E.Lawrence in the introductory chapter of Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Peter O’Toole could have written it about his own acting:
All men act, but not equally. . . . Those who act by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the actors of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. This I did.
Like Gable as Rhett Butler, O’Toole as the strange, enigmatic Lawrence was a feat of casting that allowed sensibility—as best we can articulate it—to be embodied. Tall and stunning, he is clearly an idealization of the short, average-looking Lawrence. But he wasn’t actually portraying the man—he was giving life to the deeply lyrical nature of the Lawrence of Seven Pillars. And in the tradition of mythic characterization, O’Toole’s extreme beauty served that purpose well.
Roger Ebert once called O’Toole a strange actor, and he is. His elegance, charm, and aristocratic manner have a discomfiting side in a way that Ricard Burton, Peter Finch, and Richard Harris did not. Sensualists all, O’Toole exudes a unique combination of generic hedonism and British eccentricity of the intellectual kind.
It’s not surprising, then, that the actor eccentric became obsessed (his own word) with the military one (I was stuck there myself for a bit, once upon a time). E.M. Forester called Seven Pillars “a masterpiece.” David Garnett wrote, “As a writer, one of T.E.’s most striking qualities is his relationship with language. He uses English, both in his original writing and in his translation of The Odyssey, as an inventor, or a self-trained mechanic uses familiar materials and tools for quite new purposes. He is completely free from affectation. . . . This gives his style an astonishing, unexpected richness, which is yet the furthest removed from the sought-after richness of a Pater.”
Beyond the achievement of SP lies a universe of interesting people: Robert Graves, Bernard Shaw, B. Liddell Hart, Churchill, Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Garnett, Jonathan Cape—the list is long, and particularly literary. For anyone with such yearnings, O’Toole included, it’s intoxicating.
And that’s in addition to the psychological quagmire, which can tantalize.
Lawrence was the illegitimate son of the Anglo-Irish Sir Thomas Chapman of County Westmeath and his governess, Sarah Lawrence. Chapman left his first wife and four daughters and moved to Wales with Sarah as Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence, where Thomas Edward was born. The Lawrences eventually settled in Oxford, with five sons.
Those who have seen Lawrence of Arabia know the basic outline of how Lawrence became involved with the Arab Revolt. What's not covered in the film is where/how he came to be on that motorcycle that caused his early death at 46.
After Lawrence returned to England, he reenlisted in the RAF under the name John Hume Ross, about which he wrote a short, startling memoir called The Mint (not published until 1955), best known for its vivid passage of extreme motorcycling. Lawrence’s true identity was shortly found out and he was discharged. He was then formally permitted to enlist in the tank corps under the name T.E. Shaw, and then to transfer back to the RAF, where he served from 1925 to March 1935, two months before his death, (which was three years after Peter Seamus was born in Ireland). It is a tortured, remarkable story, from every angle. He was not ordinary. “All right, I’m extra-ordinary.”
And so the little-known English actor from Ireland took it all on. His performance is informed by this knowledge. It hits the right spirit and tone, and it’s knowing and comfortable with its subject in an intimate way. Both Lawrence and O’Toole are Celtic souls in an English world—both loved language deeply and were unique, natural masters of it. They had many communions.
Nonetheless, O’Toole lost out to the Gregory Peck's quiet Southern lawyer in To Kill a Mockingbird, and six times more. Now he is nominated for the role of Maurice in the film Venus, the custom-fit role that has been described as creepy and “still” masterful.
Maurice has elegance and wit and a love of literature and its offshoot, acting. He also insists on the pleasures of the flesh to the end—however it needs to happen. O’Toole is at ease in that “dirty old man” place, seeming to like a raw counterpoint to the frou-frou but sweet dancing in the church (a wink to The Stuntman?)
O’Toole chose a role that demands that we not just swoon over his ascots and sonnet speak—the bread and butter of his own life—but that we acknowledge and accept the side of the life force that does not quench “respectably” with age. I always had the feeling that flaunting his outré side throughout his career buffered him from feeling contempt for being so damnably adored.
The son of the bookie has been lobbying heavily recently, and the Irish bookmakers are upping his odds to win. A friend’s brother saw him at the nominee’s luncheon, and insists he was wearing heavy white powered make-up to look even more cadaverous so the Academy would say, oh, he’s going to die soon, give him the Oscar. “Yes sir, that’s my baby,” as Arthur Kennedy said in the film Lawrence of Arabia when TE's showmanship was flashing.
But the films. His body of work is the real thing. His stage work is masterful (except for that MacBeth). He is extra-ordinary. It may be that the Oscars can only measure degrees of excellence between the ordinary actors, not the dangerous ones. Too bad for Peter.
"New York City is the capital of the American Christmas. The Puritan settlements to the north banned the holiday as Popish and pagan; and so it was, descended from the ancient Roman solstitial Saturnalia."
Thus saith John Updike in his foreward to Christmas at the New Yorker, a compendium of thematic stories, poems, humor, and art since its 1925 founding. It is a terrific book, a veritable universe of stellar writing from Thurber, Perelman, Mencken, Nabokov, Keillor, and so on.
The Puritans didn’t get their way, and so we continued to have the annual December celebrations, for some connected to the birth of Christ, but for many, not.
The weekly covers of The New Yorker---a cultural epicenter of the capital of the American Christmas--are haikus on the spectrum of the season, from the holy to the wholly kitsch.
Some of the most appealing are from Rea Irvin, the father of Eustace Tilley himself. Born in San Francisco in 1881, he had an extraordinary range of styles and visions but is not referenced much these days.
Here is Emily Gordon on Irvin, from a 2008 article in Print: "Despite his pivotal role in defining The NewYorker in its earliest years, Irvin has not garnered the attention given to his editorial counterparts, and much of his life and work remain a mystery." Wiki tells us that he died at the ripe old age of 90, in 1972, in Frederiksted, Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands.
Irvin's Christmas Covers
The cover up top is one of my favorite: A chic turn on Gloria, In Excelsis Deo, hovering above what might be Palm Beach of the 1930s. Since he died on St. Croix, I like to think he got his vision for seeing that chic archangel.
Next I like the roaring twenties (1925), toy Daddy Fat Cat plying the Toy Ballerina with pearls, one of those hints of the adult world that ebbed and flowed over the years in the magazine.
Then there is a pair of strange Santa depictions. 1926 speaks to the universal need for Santa, with ethnically diverse men all sporting Santa hats and fake beards. A very global vision for its day.
1931 brings a disturbing, hulking Kris Kringle, menacing what I imagine is a "nonbeliever in Santa" while he sleeps with a garish, serpent-like toy. Some tribes believe that demons can enter the body through the ear. Let’s leave it at that.
1932 brought a trio of angels bearing tokens of Wall Street: a banker's tie, box of cigars, and basket of cash. Their upward gaze suggests they are entreating the Higher Power with these early gifts, which is a little chilling given the Crash of 1929 and Great Depression with so many people's lives ruined.
1944 saw a somber cover for a readership still at war.
Several years ago Dan Eisenberg of put out a call for a one-day Blog-a-thon, when those things were happening, on It’s a Wonderful Life. He wanted people to either explain what all the fuss is about, or agree that it could be added to Mary and Yale’s Academy of the Overrated, (joining Gustav Mahler, Isak Dinesen, Karl Jung, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lenny Bruce, Vincent Van Gogh, Ingmar Bergman).
Oh, the fuss is well deserved.
MARY'S VOICE I love him, dear Lord. Watch over him tonight. JANIE'S VOICE Please, God. Something's the matter with Daddy. ZUZU'S VOICE Please bring Daddy back.
It’s a Wonderful Life tells a story that would exist whether Philip Van Doren Stern had ever written his 1943 short story it's based on, “The Greatest Gift,” or not. It’s part of being a sentient person to wonder what would things be like if you weren’t here, either from your death now, or backdating the idea to never being on the planet.
But what raises it up to a great film is its earthiness and common-sense sensibility. It draws situations with just a few strokes that have deep resonance for the experience of the solid middle class after World War II and following generations, like the family dinner scene before the high school graduation dance, the father’s fatigue at working at a job he doesn’t like, and George’s ideas of getting out: “I'm shakin' the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I'm gonna see the world.”
But most importantly, it captures the anger that lies just beneath the surface of so much of “nice” domestic life, a byproduct of all the primal life forces held in a precarious balance for family life to be possible at all.
Jimmy Stewart’s performance is strong throughout, and his anger is particularly convincing in various scenes.
In the phone call scene with Mary he portrays “panic of commitment” without cliché.
Script direction: George can stand it no longer. He drops the phone with a crash grabs Mary by the shoulders and shakes her. Mary begins to cry. “Now you listen to me. I don't want any plastics and I don't want any ground floors. And I don't want to get married *ever* to anyone! You understand that? I want to do what I want to do.”
He’s angry and his sexual energy is dangerous as he’s drawn to Mary, his lust overwhelming his wanderlust. This is not a sentimental vignette. It is a clear-eyed look at one of the age-old realities of civilization: men don’t particularly want to participate.
George’s anger at Uncle Billy when he discovers the money has been lost is sharp: “Where's that money, you silly stupid old fool? Where's that money? Do you realize what this means? It means bankruptcy and scandal and prison. That's what it means. One of us is going to jail - well, it's not gonna be me.”
When George gets home he isn’t able to tell Mary what’s happened, he can only RAGE against the pedestrian details of his life: the broken banister, the kid banging on the piano, how cold the house is, the teacher who sent ZuZu home sick.
He is a hulking presence, terrorizing the family with his anger:
Mary (in an outburst) “George, why must you torture the children?”
That’s when George runs out of the house and to his appointed destiny with Clarence.
PETE Is Daddy in trouble? JANIE Shall I pray for him? MARY Yes, Janie, pray very hard. TOMMY Me, too? MARY You too, Tommy. (on phone) Hello, Uncle Billy?
George’s sojourn in the universe where he never existed is carefully plotted, and the details are deep. The town is ugly and the people mean and crass. He finds his mother is a harsh, suspicious landlady and Mary a withered, mousy woman. Mr. Gower is a rummy child murderer, his brother is in the cemetery and by extension, all the men in the transport because his brother wasn’t there to save them. The dots are strongly connected, and his actual impact on these lives is clear. Again, I see no mawkish sentiment here.
George’s nightmare is short-lived, as he returns to the bridge and prays to live again: "I want to live again. I want to live again. Please, God, let me live again."
The snow returns and he is back to his life. My favorite part is him running through the town; it is the perfect visualization of a feeling of unbridled hope and joy. For the moment, anger—-which is fueled by the maddening details of life and experience-- is banished by the desire for life itself.
I think it is an excellent film. I think if Clarence’s line “Ridiculous of you to think of killing yourself for money,” helps one person gain perspective and stop from hurting themselves when things are grim, then it’s more than an excellent film. And I like its realistic depiction of prayer. It reminds us that we don’t know how grace works, but people have experienced its power, and so it should show up occasionally in our cinema lives in a real way.
Here’s a great gift from Imdb: the whole script is online.
There’s a cosmic intersection between John Lennon and John F. Kennedy, besides both being named John and both being murdered by guns. I first noticed it during the Paley Center for Media’s documentary festival in 2010. Its October lineup opened with two films about John Lennon: the bio pic Nowhere Boy, and the new American Masters documentary, LENNONYC; and it closed with a new film from cinema verite pioneer Robert Drew, In the Company of JFK, a compilation from four of his extraordinary films about Kennedy, with startling footage from the unprecedented access he was given .
These films were chosen for their subject matter and obvious merits. It was just happenstance that it meant the festival was bookended by two of the most culturally important murders of the 20th century.
Then, on November 22, 2010, on the 47th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, PBS premierd LENNONYC nationally, bringing the two deaths near each other again. It’s as though the universe itself still needs to reconcile the violent, early death of these two icons of the last century who meant so much to so many people.
Words are flying out like endless rain into a paper cup They slither while they pass They slip away across the universe Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting thorough my open mind Possessing and caressing me
Jai guru deva om Nothing's gonna change my world
John, Pre & Post Beatle
The two Lennon films were to honor the 70th anniversary of his birth on October 9, 1940 and acknowledge the 30th anniversary of his death on December 8, 1980. The bio pic Nowhere Boy takes a lot of poetic license, but the Quarrymen who were at the Paley Center screening said that it captured the essence of their teenage years together, rising from a skiffle band to rock & roll. LENNONYC captures the last 10 years of John’s life in New York with Yoko (and Los Angeles without her). The archival material is amazing, with home movies and studio footage you’ve never seen.
In the fictional Nowhere Boy we meet the boy who was abandoned by both his parents when they divorced and was raised by his Aunt Mimi(his mother’s sister). His uncle dies early, and he reconnects with his mother for a few years before she’s hit by a car and dies. He’s on his way to Germany with fellow townsmen Paul McCartney and George Harrison, and you know the rest.
LENNONYC captures John’s story with Yoko, after the band broke up in 1970. It’s a story that is not as well known as the Beatles years. As Rob Salem of the Toronto Star says, it’s about the various John Lennons: “peace-seeking protester; avant-garde artist; philandering party boy; Nixon-designated national threat; beleaguered refugee and blissfully domesticated dad.”
Some of the best moments in LENNONYC are from producers Roy Cicala and Jack Douglas, and guitarist Earl Slick who bring the musician John to life with their stories. They articulate beautifully the sheer talent in John’s music, which is the root of why we all fell in love with him in the first place. What's also striking about the documentary is how much voiceover they use of Lennon himself. It really feels like he's still with us.
And then, on that horrible day in December, 1980, when John and Oko were returning home, a madman shoots John four times in the back. He was pronounced dead 15 minutes later. What a shock. How is it possible that a Beatle is murdered in New York, on his own front doorstep? Our rock stars have died in plane crashes, they’ve died from drugs, but pop culture icons just aren’t murdered in cold blood, are they?
Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes That call me on and on across the universe Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box they tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe
John, on November 22, 1963
Robert Drew’s film A President to Remember: In the Company of JFK draws on footage from four of his early films: Primary; Adventures on the New Frontier; Crisis; and Faces of November. It is an astonishing new work that captures JFK from the Wisconsin primary against Humphrey, through to his state funeral.
What Drew’s film doesn’t touch on is this cosmic coincidence: Wiki tells us that on November 22, 1963, CBS Morning News ran a 5-minute piece about Beatlemania that was sweeping Great Britain. The piece was to be rebroadcast in the evening, but it was canceled because of the assassination. Walter Cronkite then decided to run it on the CBS Evening News on December 10. It lead to a spike in sales of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and 8 weeks later the Beatles were at John F. Kennedy International Airport (which had just been renamed on December 24, 1963).
Kennedy’s assassination still haunts the country. The Lee Harvey Oswald/ Jack Ruby explanation becomes less and less satisfactory, but the country had to move on. Some say The Beatles invading ten weeks later were part of that healing process with their youth and style and new sound.
“Anybody here seen my old friends John”
Let’s imagine John Lennon on February, 7, 1964, arriving at JFK airport with the Beatles, full of excitement in the rush of their gargantuan success at home and number one hit here. Even with the depth of his poetic soul and all his hidden mysticism, he could not have imagined that 46 years later, a documentary about the last nine years of his own life—-which artfully deals with his murder—-would be premiering to an American audience on the date that JFK was assassinated. We will not know their like again. Such is the nature of the journey of souls, across the universe . . .
Sounds of laughter shades of life are ringing through my open ears exciting and inviting me Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns It calls me on and on across the universe
John Lennon on his song “Across the Universe": “It's one of the best lyrics I've written. In fact, it could be the best." Rolling Stone interview 1971
Joan won her Oscar for Best Actress in 1941 for her Linda in Hitchcock's Suspicion, another timid bride, this time trying to suss out if her husband is trying to kill her. For me Cary Grant's performance as Johnnie is the more compelling one, but either way Joan got to be associated with the most sinister milk in film history, and I love that.
