James Darren, Deborah Walley, James CallanJames Darren
James Darren was born in 1936 in Philadelphia. He had a career as a pop singer in the late 1950’s and made his movie debut in “Rumble on the Docks” in 1956. His other movies include “The Brothers Ricco”, “Gidget”, “Let No Man Write My Epitaph,””The Lively Set”, “Diamond Head and “The Guns of Navarone”
TCM overview:
Born Jimmy Ercolini and raised on 10th Street between Ritner and Porter in the same South Philadelphia neighborhood that produced Fabian, Bobby Rydell and Frankie Avalon, James Darren grew into a tall, dark and handsome Italian heartthrob who would also enjoy a run as a teenage singing sensation. While studying acting with Stella Adler in NYC, a chance meeting with Columbia Pictures eastern talent scout Joyce Selznick opened the door to a screen career, and he joined the studio’s stable of fine young actors, delivering a standout performance in his feature debut as the juvenile gang leader and star of “Rumble on the Docks” (1956). Darren continued to impress in subsequent outings but really came into his own as Jeff ‘Moondoggie’ Matthews opposite Sandra Dee’s “Gidget” (1959). Especially effective as the young man torn between the carefree surfing life and the responsibilities of growing up, he also displayed a pleasant singing voice on the film’s title song and the even better “The Next Best Thing to Love”, launching a recording career that boasted five Top 10 singles during the early 60s, including the Grammy-nominated “Goodbye Cruel World” (1961), which peaked at Number Three.
Darren reprised his “Gidget” persona twice, contributing his ingratiating talent to “Gidget Goes Hawaiian” (1961) and “Gidget Goes to Rome” (1963), both a little lackluster compared to the original. Still, in some filmgoers’ minds, he was forever established as Moondoggie, despite his acclaimed work as best friend Eddie Sirota in “The Gene Krupa Story” (1959), as the slum kid who perseveres to become a concert pianist in “Let No Man Write My Epitaph” (1960), and as an underutilized member of the all-star gang of saboteurs in J Lee Thompson’s “The Guns of Navarone” (1961). Still, compared with his Philadelphian brethren Fabian, Rydell and Avalon, who all took their cracks in teen movies, Darren exhibited more staying power, segueing to a successful career as a TV actor after his pop-star status waned. His first role as a series regular came as time-traveling scientist Tony Newman in the ABC series “Time Tunnel” (1966-67), and he later spent three seasons as veteran patrolman Jim Corrigan, partnered with Heather Locklear’s Stacy Sheridan, on “T.J. Hooker” (ABC, 1983-85; CBS, 1985-86). When Darren made his directing debut with an episode near the end of that show’s final season, people liked what they saw, and he started to receive offers to direct for other series.
Darren began working exclusively behind the scenes, helming episodes of “Hunter” and “Stingray” (both NBC) and “Werewolf” (Fox), among others. “I figured this [directing] was a good way to stay in the business, and I didn’t have to worry about how I looked. I didn’t have to shave every morning. I would get up, shower, comb my hair back, put on a baseball cap and go to work.” (CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, September 27, 1999) He reteamed with Locklear, directing episodes of Fox’s “Melrose Place” from 1995-97, and eventually acted opposite her as the sleazy Tony Marlin during that show’s final season (1998-99), but only after creating the part of Vic Fontaine in the syndicated “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”. Calling his holographic Las Vegas lounge singer a “combination of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and myself,” Darren appeared in ten episodes (including the series finale) and revitalized his singing career. Never considered much of a pop-rock vocalist in his heyday, he released his 13th album, “This One’s From the Heart” (1999), which featured songs he had performed on the series, and garnered his first real critical acclaim as a crooner, having finally found himself in the idiom of Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Sammy Cahn and the like.
The above TCM overview can now be accessed online here.
Balin was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish parents. Her father, Sam Rosenberg, was a dancer, singer and comedian who worked the Borscht Belt. He later quit show business to join his family’s furrier business.
Balin graduated from high school at age 15 after having spent five years at a boarding school in Pennsylvania.
Balin did summer stock, which led to roles on Broadway. She first starred on Broadway in Compulsion, portraying Ruth. In 1959, she had the role of Alice Black in the comedy A Majority of One.
In 1966, Balin toured Vietnam with the USO on the first of many trips to the war-torn region. In 1975, she aided in the evacuation of orphans during the fall of Saigon. Eventually, she adopted three of these orphaned children. In 1980, she played herself in a made-for-television movie based on her experiences, The Children of An Lac.
While working on The Children of An Lac, she became acquainted with Christy Marx who, at the time, worked as a producer’s liaison for various television programs. According to Marx, she used Balin’s story as a basis for a character in the animated show Jem when she became a writer. The character of Ba Nee is based on Balin’s adopted daughter, Ba-Nhi. Ba Nee’s obsession with and struggle to find her birth father are the focus of several episodes of Jem.
Ina Balin, died on June 20, 1990 at Yale–New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut, aged 52, from complications of chronic lung disease, including pulmonary hypertension (high blood pressure of the lungs). She had been at the hospital awaiting a lung transplant.
A single mother, she was survived by her father, Sam Rosenberg; her three adopted children: Nguyet Baty, Ba-Nhi Mai, and Kim Thuy; a brother, Richard Balin; and two grandchildren. Ba-Nhi Mai and Kim Thuy were raised by Hollywood talent agent Ted Ashley and his wife Page (née Cuddy).
In 1959, Balin won the Theatre World Award for her performance in the Broadway comedy, A Majority of One.
Anne Francis, who has died of complications of pancreatic cancer aged 80, is now best remembered mainly due to the lyrics “Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet \ Oh-oh at the late night, double-feature, picture show”, which were sung over the opening credits of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), and for the cult science-fiction movie to which they refer, Forbidden Planet (1956). The only woman in the cast of Forbidden Planet, Francis had a sprightly charm and a wide-eyed child-like innocence as Altaira, the space-age Miranda in the transposition of Shakespeare’s The Tempest to a distant planet.
The mini-skirted teenaged daughter of the exiled Dr Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) has never seen any man except her father until a group of US astronauts, led by Commander John J Adams (Leslie Nielsen), arrive. While never exactly exclaiming “O brave new world that has such people in it!”, she expresses it with her eyes and is quite curious and happy to learn about man-woman relationships, and the art of kissing, from the new arrivals. Warned by her father to avoid contact with the earthmen, she beams up Robby the Robot (Ariel). “Robby, I must have a new dress, right away,” she tells the android. “Again?” he responds. “Oh, but this one must be different! Absolutely nothing must show – below, above or through.” “Radiation-proof?” “No, just eye-proof will do.”
The curvaceous, blonde, 5ft 8in Francis, with a becoming little mole next to her mouth, was never eye-proof, especially during the films of the 1950s that launched her career proper and sealed her fame. Born in Ossining, New York, she came to public notice in her childhood. “I didn’t come from a show-business family; neither of my parents were involved in it,” she said in 1997. “Actually, someone said to my mom that they thought I’d make a good child model, so she took me up to the John Robert Powers modelling agency, which was the top one in New York City at that time. We were sitting in the outer office with a lot of other folks and Mr Powers himself came out of his office door, looked around the corner, pointed at me, and said, ‘I’ll take that one!’ And that’s how it all started, when I was just six years old.”
The Rack, poster, Paul Newman, Anne Francis, 1956. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
She started performing on children’s radio and then moved on to Broadway, aged 11. Billed as Anne Bracken, she played alongside Gertrude Lawrence and Danny Kaye in the Kurt Weill musical Lady in the Dark (1941). There followed several radio soap operas before she signed a one-year contract with MGM. However, the studio only gave her bit parts in three films. It was not until 1950 that she was given her first chance to act on screen, in the United Artists production So Young, So Bad. Although the latter half of the title was also applicable to the latter half of this tale of delinquent girls in an authoritarian reform school, Francis was excellent as an abused teenage mother, lusting after the humane doctor (Paul Henreid).
The role brought her to the attention of the studio boss Darryl F Zanuck, who signed Francis to a 20th Century-Fox contract. Among the five films she made for Fox were two lightweight pictures in which she played the daughter of prissy Clifton Webb, Elopement (1951) and Dreamboat (1952), before being allowed more maturity and period dress as a landowner in 19th-century Haiti in the title role of Lydia Bailey (1952).
But it was on her return to MGM that she co-starred in a range of good movies with a range of good parts, belying her reputation, derived from Forbidden Planet, of an innocent, doll-like performer. In Rogue Cop (1954), she plays the drunken discarded moll of a gangster (George Raft). In John Sturges’s superb Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) – where she was, as in Forbidden Planet, the only woman in the cast – she takes the role of a seemingly tough garage owner in jeans, who doesn’t want to help John J Macreedy (Spencer Tracy) discover the secret of her town where “somethin’ kind of bad happened”, and who meets a tragic end.
Francis was also involved in the then sensational, now dated, juvenile delinquent school drama, Blackboard Jungle (1955). She played the pregnant wife of a dedicated teacher (Glenn Ford), who is the victim of threatening notes and phone calls from a depraved student. It was a strong performance among many, though the film is best remembered for being the first with a rock’n’roll soundtrack, by Bill Haley and the Comets. She was even more impressive as Paul Newman’s war-widow sister-in-law in The Rack (1956), and in The Hired Gun (1957), she is sentenced to hang – unusually, for a woman in a western – for the murder of her husband.
It was not long, however, before she “disappeared” for many years into television, only to emerge spasmodically on to the big screen to remind audiences that she was still around. “I had reached the end of my rope as a contract player at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. They were always looking for a new face, so I thought, forget it, I want to go back and do television. In those days, that was the death knell for an actor. You worked television, you didn’t do film. Of course, they cross over all the time today.”
Among the films in which she starred was Girl of the Night (1960), a bold (for the time) and gritty film noir in which she portrayed a high-priced prostitute, exploited by her madam and pimp, until she finds help in psychotherapy. “It is the one film I’m most proud of,” Francis stated. “I was going through analysis at the same time and I was playing going through analysis on that film. It was quite a workout, and it really beat me up.”
Francis had her own TV series, Honey West (1965-66), in which she shone as a sexy and liberated detective, aided by John Ericson (who had played her weak brother in Bad Day at Black Rock). The role won her a Golden Globe and she was also nominated for an Emmy. For the next three decades there followed scores of television guest spots, including four episodes of Dallas in the early 1980s.
In 1982, Francis wrote a book entitled Voices from Home: An Inner Journey, which was about her belief in mysticism and psychic phenomena. In 2007, she was diagnosed with lung cancer, and immediately underwent chemotherapy and had surgery to remove part of her right lung. Francis, who was married and divorced twice, is survived by two daughters, Maggie and Jane.
Anne Francis – ‘Time’ magazine appreciation.
ee androids fighting Brad and Janet / Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet / Uh-uh-uh-uh, oh-oh — At the late night, double feature, picture show. — “Science Fiction Double Feature,” a song from Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show
The poster artwork for Forbidden Planet — MGM’s 1956 reworking of Shakespeare’s The Tempest into a science-fiction parable of ego vs. id — showed a fearsome cyborg holding a sleeping blond in a diaphanous gown that highlighted her gaudy curves. The blond was Anne Francis, the machine was Robby the Robot, and the poster had nothing to do with the movie: Robby was a gentleman scholar among automatons, a protector of Francis’s character Altaira, not a menace to her. But that image may be the one that sprang to the minds of moviegoers this week, when the actress’s death was announced. Francis died Sunday, Jan. 2, of pancreatic cancer at a rest home in Santa Barbara, Calif. She was 80.
A lifelong trouper in radio, TV, theater and films, Francis is best known for a flurry of mid-’50s MGM features, for a couple of indelible episodes of The Twilight Zone and for her one-season TV sleuth series Honey West in 1965-66. In her admirers’ memories, she conjures up a description that her co-star William Lundigan enunciated in their 1951 comedy Elopement: “Tall, blond, willowy, sort of ripples when she walks… She’s got those Minnie Mouse eyes, turns ‘em on you like a pair of headlights. Her voice is soft and husky — kind of makes you feel as though your back is being scratched.” (See NewsFeed’s tribute to Anne Francis.)
It happens that Lundigan is talking about another woman, but the attributes fit Francis, who was only 20 during theElopement shoot. She was tall (5ft.-8in.), a seemingly natural blond, with large, lasering blue eyes and an expressive alto voice. Francis also had a forehead so high and smooth that she could have been one of the Metalunans from another ’50s space epic, This Island Earth. The actress’s signature feature — a mole just to the right of her lips — was so distinctive, it was written into the Elopement script. “What’s that?” asks her groom-to-be Lundigan. “It’s a mole,” she replies. “I was born with it. Don’t you like it?” He smiles and whispers, “I like everything you were born with.”
She was born Sept. 16, 1930, with that mole and a work ethic that never quit. The daughter of Philip Marvak, a businessman, and his wife Edith, Anne was a photographer’s model by her fifth birthday. (Pictures from the breadth of her career can be seen on annefrancis.net, the website she maintained until shortly before her death.) She was on television when it was just a gadget, appearing in CBS-TV’s first color tests before World War II. At 10 or 11 she was on Broadway with Gertrude Lawrence in Lady in the Dark and spent her teens in countless radio soaps, including Portia Faces Life and When a Girl Marries, where her child’s voice matured into its permanent, woman timbre. In 1948, when she was 17, she got bit roles in the MGM musical Summer Holiday and David O. Selznick’s Portrait of Jennie. She was back in New York, working on TV’s proto-thriller series Suspense in 1949, when Hollywood casting directors noticed that this reliable young actress was also a knockout.
There’s no doubting Francis’s worthiness as a pinup. Yet what came across, in her two-decade movie and TV prime, was not sultry ostentation but a preternatural poise and a questioning intelligence. Her beauty cloaked her brains without obscuring them. In one sense, she was a blend of Hollywood’s two most popular female types in the ’50s: the bombshell blonds Monroe and Mansfield — an adolescent’s notion of squeaky-voiced sexuality — and smart, slim vixens like Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly. You’d think someone would have seen Francis as the golden mean between these extremes, yet the studios that employed her (Fox from 1951 to 1954, then MGM for the next three years) had trouble deciding what to do with her.
Their frequent solution: cast her as a gorgeous bookworm, whose closest relationships are with father figures. That prim, stern comedy star Clifton Webb played her doting dad in two films: Elopement, with Francis as a prodigy of architectural design, andDreamboat (1952), where her character is a literary scholar in horn-rimmed glasses and a trim gabardine suit; she’s writing her college thesis on the contention that Homer was not the sole author ofThe Iliad and The Odyssey because “No one man could write so much trash.” In Forbidden Planet she is the science-loving daughter of the planet’s only adult human, Walter Pidgeon; and in The Rack she is Pidgeon’s daughter-in-law, trying to help young Paul Newman through a wartime charge of aiding the enemy. In these roles, her hair was always pulled back, in an implicit dare for any man to let it down and unleash the beast. That was the goal of Francis’s young male co-stars: the thawing of an ice goddess.
The women Francis played usually saw men as curious subjects for further research. She treats her first kiss with Jeffrey Hunter in Dreamboat as an alien-earthling encounter, peculiar but pleasing. In her best-known role as Altaira, isolated on the Forbidden Planet after catastrophes have wiped out her mother and the rest of the colony, has grown up with only her father and a deer and a tiger she treats a pets. When she spots her first male humans — astronauts from Earth — she says, “I so terribly wanted to meet a young man, and now three of them at once!” When she invites spaceship commander Leslie Nielsen to join her for a swim in the pool, he notes regretfully that he didn’t bring his bathing suit. “What’s a bathing suit?,” she asks. Teetering toward camp, the movie is played seriously by the whole cast. And no one had a tougher challenge than Francis, since she’s wearing either various forms of a 23rd-century cheerleader tunic, or nothing.
In these busy years she played opposite some of Old and New Hollywood’s top leading men: Newman, Dick Powell in Susan Slept Here (as a vamp who morphs into a spider-woman during the film’s comic ballet sequence), Spencer Tracy in Bad Day at Bad Rock (as the only woman in a threatening town) and Glenn Ford in The Blackboard Jungle(as Ford’s ailing, pregnant, jealous wife). She appeared with Ford again in the 1957 Navy comedy Don’t Go Near the Water, with Earl Holliman stealing her from wolf-man Jeff Richards, just as Nielsen had from Warren Stevens inForbidden Planet. That comedy, which demoted her to second female lead, ended her MGM contract and, oddly, cued a three-year absence from major film and TV work when Francis was still in her 20s — and at the presumed peak of her appeal.
Movies were increasingly a man’s preserve; women who wanted meaty roles often went into TV drama, where the pay was less and the shooting schedules brisk but the rewards of fully imagined and realized characters greater. In his first season of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling gave her one such juicy part in the episode “The After Hours.” She played Marsha White, a young woman shopping in a department store for a gift, a golden thimble, for her mother. But an elevator operator takes her to the store’s ninth floor, deserted except for an insulting sales girl and, in the showcases, just one object: her thimble. Locked in overnight, she comes to realize her strange destiny. A gloss on the Philip K. Dick theme of the android who dreams he’s human, “The After Hours” focuses every scene on Francis, monitoring her face for clues, as bafflement escalates into rage and then settles into acceptance. It’s a splendid use of Francis’s persona: at once friendly and doll-like, human and otherworldly.
In 1960 she took the starring role in Girl in the Night, an indie-style drama about a lonely call girl misused by her madam (Kay Medford). Francis thought this was her best film work, and the film is remembered warmly but fuzzily; it is not available on DVD. She did lots more TV, including her second Twilight Zone: the ultra-weird “Jess-Belle,” Earl Hamner, Jr.’s folk-horror tale about a mountain girl so desperate for another woman’s man that she makes a pact with a witch and turns into a leopard. That was 1963, and two years later Francis got a shot at starring in her own TV action drama, Honey West.
The first hour-long series named for its female character, Honey West was based on Skip and Gloria Fickling’s pulp-novel series about a woman who took over her late father’s detective business. Mixing clichés from private-eye and international espionage stories, then flipping the gender, Honey was a Bond babe — Jane Bond — put in charge of the franchise, and comfortable with the power it gave her. She bested bad men with her karate skills, navigated hairpin turns on high-speed chases in her top-down sports car and, just as important, displayed the business-running executive skills only men of the era were supposed to possess. Honey had a hunky male assistant, Sam Bolt (John Ericson), but he was there mainly as eye candy for the women in the audience. The men had Francis’ efficient allure, her newly fluffy blond hair and, of course, her facial mole, which was featured so prominently in the opening-credit sequence you’d think it was the co-star.
Aaron Spelling, the show’s executive producer, was no militant feminist; 11 years later he would multiply Honey by three, give this trio the sort of patriarchal boss Honey never needed, and call it Charlie’s Angels. As the overseer of Honey West, Spelling made sure sensuality took precedence over suspense. A smarty-pants sex object, Honey wore earrings she could toss like darts to emit tear gas. She often sported tights that looked as if they’d been borrowed from Diana Rigg in The Avengers. Once she went undercover in a showgirl outfit with tiger stripes, which was appropriate for this feral beauty, since her character also kept a pet ocelot named Bruce (a cousin to Francis’s tiger playmate in Forbidden Planet and to the leopard she morphed into on (The Twilight Zone). All this animal attraction should have kept the show running for years, but it was canceled after one 30-episode season.
Truth to tell, that was about it for the iconic phase of Anne Francis’s celebrity. She was 35 when Honey West went south, and the actress who entered show business as a child would keep working for another 35 years. In the 1968 musical Funny Girl she was billed a generous fourth but virtually invisible, except when Barbra Streisand disses her at the start of the first act’s climactic (and climatic) number “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” Thereafter, Francis had no big roles in big movies, instead becoming one of those aging performers of medium wattage who stay employed by joining the perennial bus-and-truck company of TV series guest stars. Webb, as her stuffy father in Dreamboat, had sneered at television as a phenomenon that “encourages people who dwell under the same roof to ignore each other completely.” But for Francis it was a meal ticket that she cashed in for 60 years, from those early color tests in 1940 until her retirement in 2000.
In her post-Honey decades, Francis guested on a few comedy series — The Drew Carey Show and, as Bea Arthur’s college roommate, on The Golden Girls — but concentrated on the hour-long dramas. She graced The Fugitive, Mission: Impossible, Gunsmoke, Columbo, Kung Fu, Barnaby Jones, Police Woman, Dallas (in a recurring role),Jake and the Fat Man, Murder, She Wrote and such Spelling confections as S.W.A.T., The Love Boat, Vega$, Fantasy Island (four times) and, it’s only fair, Charlie’s Angels. All in all, in the second half of her career, she racked up credits in more than 100 films and TV shows. Could that be a record for most series as a guest star? Hard to say, but the gal kept gamely at her craft.
She married twice, both times for three years: at 21 to director Bamlett Price, Jr., and at 29 to Dr. Robert Abeloff; they had a daughter, Jane. After the dissolution of her second marriage in 1964, Francis was on her own. In 1970, she became the first single woman in California to be allowed to adopt a child — a girl named Maggie. Francis wrote a self-help book in 1982 and lent her support to many charities, including Direct Relief, which sends medical supplies to victims of civil unrest, and Angel View, for the physically challenged. She promoted these causes on annefrancis.net, which currently carries this message from 2009: “Dear Friends, Due to health issues, I’m unable to process my fan mail in a timely manner…. For those of you who’ve previously sent me fan mail and autograph requests, I’ll try to process them when I am able to do so.”
Even though she had retired 10 years earlier, survived lung cancer in 2004, and was ailing from the pancreatic cancer that finally felled her, the brainy, beautiful blond from the Forbidden Planet never stopped working, never ceased doing what she did best: being Anne Francis.
For this affectionate tribute to Anne France by “Time” Magazine, please also click
Burt Lancaster was an intriguing actor who gave many tremendous performances although he sometimes, to my mind, marred some movies with his overuse of his grin. He was born in New York in 1913. He began his show business career as a circus acrobat and used his athletic prowess in many of his movies. He had a starring role opposite Ava Gardner in his first movie “The Killers” in 1947. He has had many cinema highlights including “The Flame and the Arrow”, “The Professionals”, “The Leopard”, “Airport” and “Atlantic City”. He died in 1994 at the age of 80.
TCM overview:
Fame came to Burt Lancaster with his first film role, as the doomed Swede in Universal’s “The Killers” (1946), but the former circus acrobat knew better than to leave his career in other hands. After less than two years in Hollywood, Lancaster formed his own production company and took the lead in such popular successes as the Technicolor swashbucklers “The Flame and the Arrow” (1950) and “The Crimson Pirate” (1952) and the noble failure “Sweet Smell of Success” (1959), later called one the greatest films of all time. The athletic, savvy but passionate Lancaster remained a box office draw for 20 years, winning a 1961 Academy Award for playing the corrupt evangelist “Elmer Gantry” (1960), but his power to pull in moviegoers waned with the death of the studio system and his own disinterest in acting the Hollywood hero. Lancaster took chances in such challenging films as “The Swimmer” (1968), “Castle Keep” (1969) and “Ulzana’s Raid” (1972) while his best work through the next decade was often in European features like “1900” (1976) and “Atlantic City” (1980), which netted him an Oscar nomination. In his later years, the actor was better known to younger Americans from TV spots for MCI, the ACLU, and AIDS research, and for his final film role in the hit “Field of Dreams” (1989). Five years after his death in 1994, the American Film Institute pointed a new generation of film fans Burt Lancaster’s way when they conferred upon him the posthumous designation of living legend. Burton Stephen Lancaster was born on November 2, 1913, in the largely immigrant community of East Harlem in New York City. Lancaster’s father, a second generation Irish-American and postal clerk at Manhattan’s General Post Office, had won song and dance competitions in his youth based on the strength of his rich tenor voice and his mastery of several musical instruments. His mother, the former Elizabeth “Lizzie” Roberts, had had three children before him and one after his birth, who died in infancy. Lancaster’s given name was in tribute to the surgeon who delivered him. Growing up in an Irish-Protestant household, he learned the ideals of honesty and charity but developed a yearning for adventure while exploring the streets of Manhattan. Early work came with a paper route and a job shining shoes outside of Macy’s Department Store. A preteen Lancaster was knocked down by automobiles no less than eight times and once broke his nose falling from a fire escape. During the Depression, he performed in plays at the Union Settlement House in East Harlem and worked as a basketball coach. An incident in which Lancaster was stabbed accidentally by a friend led to a near fatal staph infection and a year’s confinement in bed. A star basketball player at DeWitt Clinton High School, Lancaster continued to New York University on an athletic scholarship. He quit NYU in 1932 to join the one-ring Kay Brothers Circus. After a single season, Lancaster moved to the Russell Brothers Circus and, later, with his marriage to acrobat June Ernst, to the three-ring Barnett Brothers Circus. Lancaster finished out the 1935 summer season working at Luna Park in Coney Island before going on government relief. Applying for a job with the Works Progress Administration, he performed in WPA-sponsored circuses. After an injury to his hand and the dissolution of his first marriage, Lancaster worked as a lingerie salesman in Chicago and singing waiter in New Jersey before joining the U.S. Army’s Twenty-First Special Service Division during World War II. As part of the Army Service Forces, Lancaster put on shows for shell-shocked soldiers fresh from the frontlines, relying on his talents as a gymnast and vaudevillian to entertain the troops and his facility as a scrounger to retrieve props and costumes from bombed out buildings in Rome. Back in the United States post-war, Lancaster pursued an acting career with some diffidence. He made his Broadway debut as Burton Lancaster in Harry Brown’s wartime drama “A Sound of Hunting,” the source for Edward Dmytryk’s 1952 film “Eight Iron Men.” Though the production closed after 12 performances, Lancaster caught the eye of Hollywood agent Harold Hecht. Hecht provided Lancaster with an introduction to producer Hal Wallis, who paved the way for the actor’s debut as the doomed Swede in Robert Siodmak’s noir classic “The Killers” (1946) at Universal. Siodmak and cinematographer Elwood Bredell employed stark chiaroscuro lighting to offset Lancaster’s angular face and chiseled physique, creating an instant Hollywood star, along with his co-star Ava Gardner. Reviews of the day referred to Lancaster as a “brawny Apollo” and a “brute with the eyes of an angel.” He celebrated his success by inhabiting plush new digs in Malibu’s Pacific Palisades, into which he would move his family and his second wife, Norma Anderson, with whom he had already conceived one child. Lancaster’s film roles through the next few years traded on his tough guy image in such films as Jules Dassin’s “Brute Force” (1947), Byron Haskin’s “I Walk Alone” (1948) and Robert Siodmak’s “Criss Cross” (1949). He varied the image slightly, playing Barbara Stanwyck’s weakling husband in Anatole Litvak’s “Sorry, Wrong Number” (1948) and Edward G. Robinson’s conscience-bound son in Irving Reis’ “All My Sons” (1948), a personal project for which he took a $50,000 salary cut. With agent Hecht, Lancaster formed his own production company. Hecht-Lancaster enjoyed its first popular success with the swashbuckler “The Flame and the Arrow” (1950), directed by Jacques Tourneur. This and subsequent films, such as Michael Curtiz’ “Jim Thorpe: All American” (1951) and Robert Siodmak’s “The Crimson Pirate” (1952), allowed the actor to showcase his natural athleticism, while straight dramas such as Daniel Mann’s “Come Back, Little Sheba” (1952) and Fred Zinnemann’s “From Here to Eternity” (1953), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, encouraged him to stretch and mature as a performer. Pushing into middle age, Lancaster enjoyed a string of star turns in such high-profile productions as Robert Aldrich’s “Vera Cruz” (1954) opposite Gary Cooper, Daniel Mann’s “The Rose Tattoo” (1955) with Italian actress Anna Magnani, and as the title character in Joseph Anthony’s “The Rainmaker” (1956), co-starring Katharine Hepburn. Lancaster tried his hand at directing a feature with “The Kentuckian” (1955) and financed with Hecht and producer James Hill the Academy Award-winning “Marty” (1955), starring Ernest Borgnine. A pet project was the Hecht-Hill-Lancaster production “Sweet Smell of Success” (1957), a scalding expose of the New York publicity industry with Lancaster playing a thinly-veiled caricature of gossip columnist Walter Winchell. Shot on location in Manhattan by James Wong Howe and briskly directed by Alexander Mackendrick, the film was a box office disappointment whose failure wounded Lancaster deeply. More successful that year was John Sturges’ “The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” (1959), in which Lancaster played frontier lawman Wyatt Earp to Kirk Douglas’ hair-trigger Doc Holliday. Lancaster won an Academy Award for his portrayal of corrupt evangelist “Elmer Gantry” (1960) but the milestone also marked the downward arc of his tenure as a Hollywood leading man. Nonetheless, the actor received another Oscar nod for playing Robert Franklin Stroud, a criminal recidivist known as the “Birdman of Alcatraz” (1962), and traveled to Italy to work for Luchino Visconti in “The Leopard” (1963), opposite Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale. A crowd pleaser for Lancaster was “The Professionals” (1966), a rousing Western co-starring Lee Marvin, Woody Strode and Robert Ryan. More pet projects included John Frankenheimer’s “The Train” (1964), Frank Perry’s “The Swimmer” (1968), and Sydney Pollack’s “Castle Keep” (1969). Uninterested in playing heroes or characters with whom he was in agreement politically, Lancaster seemed to relish thwarting audience expectations. Going through the motions in Arthur Hiller’s cash cow “Airport” (1970), Lancaster was more in his element in a string of revisionist Westerns, among them Robert Aldrich’s grim Vietnam parable “Ulzana’s Raid” (1972). He directed a second film, the murder mystery “The Midnight Man” (1974), and traveled to the Middle East to appear as “Moses, the Lawgiver” (1976), with his own son Bill contributing a cameo as the young Moses. Better late-life roles for Lancaster were as Robert De Niro’s autocratic grandfather in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “1900” (1976) and as a military advisor in the Vietnam War drama “Go Tell the Spartans” (1979), directed by Ted Post. Now firmly in elder statesman mode, the actor scored sterling notices for his roles as an aging gangland flunky in Louis Malle’s “Atlantic City” (1980) – which earned him his fourth and final Academy Award nomination – as an elderly outlaw in Lamont Johnson’s distaff Western “Cattle Annie and Little Britches” (1981), and as an astronomy-obsessed Texas oilman in Bill Forsythe’s wry comedy “Local Hero” (1983). Near the end of his life, Lancaster capped his career by reteaming with frequent co-star Kirk Douglas for Brian De Palma’s “Tough Guys” (1986), playing the dying patriarch of a sprawling but dysfunctional Long Island family in Daniel Petrie’s “Rocket Gibraltar” (1988) and appearing in the small but memorable role of an aging baseball rookie who remembers his glory days with the Chicago White Sox in the Kevin Costner classic “Field of Dreams” (1989). The production marked Lancaster’s last feature film appearance and one of his most successful. In his final years, Lancaster was a tireless spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the People for the American Way, liberal political organizations either targeted for derision by then-President George H. W. Bush as un-American or founded to counter the demographic swing in the United States toward conservatism. Lancaster also appeared in print ads supporting aid for AIDS and TV spots that urged consumers to be wary of the bold claims of the large pharmaceutical companies. Though he projected the image of ageless vitality well into his seventies, Lancaster was plagued by heart troubles, requiring quadruple bypass. In 1990, he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. Burt Lancaster died of a heart attack on Oct. 21, 1994, at his home in Century City, CA, just weeks before his 81st birthday. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked the actor at 19th on its list of “50 Male Movie Legends.” By Richard Harland Smith
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
James Caan is regarded as one of the leading actors of film in the 1970’s. He was born in the Bronx, New York in 1970, His first major film role was in 1964 when he played a punk in the Olivia De Havilland movie “Lady In A Cage”. Stardom came with his role as the brain damaged football player in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Rain People” in 1968. Coppola cast him as one of the Corlone brothers in the iconic “The Godfather” in 1971 with Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. Caan and Pacino’s career really took off and throughout the 1970’s both enjoyed major stardom. Caan’s films at this time included “Rollerball”, “A Bridge Too Far” and “Come A Horseman”. Caan though turned down some major box office hits such as “Blade Runner”, “Kramer V’s Kramer” and “Apocalypse Now”. He stopped acting on fim between 1982 and 1987 and then resumed his career in a more low key fashion in such films as “The Way of the Gun”, “The Yards” and “This Is My Father”.
TCM overview:
Despite an up-and-down career that was mired by excess and irrational behavior, actor James Caan was a gifted performer who was as capable of pulling heart strings as he was of breaking someone’s kneecaps. Caan emerged from the cauldron of New York City’s thriving acting scene in the 1950s to become a noted player on the stage and on television. Though he graduated to films soon after his salad days in New York after swearing off television for the next several years, he had his first big breakthrough on the small screen, playing dying football player Brian Piccolo in “Brian’s Song” (ABC, 1971). His performance in what was considered to be one of the best television movies ever made earned Caan considerable acclaim, as well as an Emmy Award nomination. But the following year put Caan on the map permanently, with his energetic portrayal of the hot-headed Sonny Corleone in “The Godfather” (1972), a role with which he was forever identified – most notably in the numerous mobster roles he played in the ensuing decades. While he had several bright spots as a leading man throughout the years, including as a television regular on “Las Vegas” (NBC, 2003-08) and as the victim of an obsessive fan in the disturbing film, “Misery” (1990), Caan settled into a niche as character actor more often than not, performing some variation of the mobster role that made him famous.
Born on March 26, 1939 in The Bronx, NY, Caan was raised in Sunnyside, Queens one of three children by his father, Arthur, a butcher and his mother, Sophie. Both his parents were Jewish immigrants from Germany who fled the Nazis before the war. He attended P.S. 150 – Christopher Street School in Brooklyn, where he caused untold amounts of trouble and was eventually kicked out, though whether or not dropping a fellow student out of a window on a bet contributed to his departure remained unclear. Caan eventually made his way to the Rhodes Preparatory School, where he continued raising hell while stuffing the ballot box to become president of the student body, as well as playing several sports, including baseball, basketball and football. After graduating a year before his fellow classmates, Caan attended Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI. He majored in economics and continued playing football, but soon found himself homesick. Caan soon transferred to Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY, which is where he discovered acting.
With the prospect of entering the meat delivery business with his father as his one career option, he began taking acting seriously, studying with such esteemed coaches as Wyn Handman at the American Place Theatre and Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. After spending several years honing his craft in the classroom, he had one of his first parts in “La Ronde,” Arthur Schnitzler’s examination of early 20th century class division and sexual mores. He made the jump to the small screen with episodes of various popular television shows, including “Naked City” (ABC, 1958-1963), “The Untouchables” (ABC, 1959-1963) and the anthology series “Alcoa Premiere” (ABC, 1961-63), which featured a new one-hour drama every week. Following episodes of “Doctor Kildare” (NBC, 1961-66) and “Ben Casey” (ABC, 1961-66), Caan began his film career with an uncredited walk-on as an anonymous soldier in the Billy Wilder comedy “Irma La Douce” (1963). He made his official film debut in the campy thriller “Lady in a Cage” (1964), playing a ruthless thug who terrorizes a wealthy widow (Olivia de Havilland).
Within just a few years after making his screen debut, Caan landed his first leading role, starring in Howard Hawk’s tense race car drama, “Red Line 7000” (1965). He followed with a supporting turn as a young gunslinger opposite John Wayne and Robert Mitchum in Hawks’ gritty, but redemptive Western, “El Dorado” (1967). Now determined to carve a career in film, Caan starred in the psychological thriller, “Games” (1967), which he followed with a turn as an American astronaut who journeys to the moon only to discover the Russians beat the United States to the punch in the early Robert Altman feature, “Countdown” (1968). After starring in forgettable movies like “Journey to Shiloh” (1968) and “Perlas Ng Silangan” (1969), Caan was a brain-damaged hitchhiker who encounters a disillusioned housewife (Shirley Knight) trying to escape the trappings of her domestic life in one of Francis Ford Coppola’s first features, “The Rain People” (1969).
Continuing along in features, he starred as the titular former high school basketball player in the failed adaptation of John Updike’s “Rabbit, Run” (1970). In the long-forgotten romantic comedy “T.R. Baskin” (1971), he was the short-time beau of a naïve young woman from the country (Candice Bergen) trying to make it in Chicago. Though he vowed to stay away from television, Caan eventually returned to the small screen for what became his breakout role; playing cancer-stricken professional football player Brian Piccolo in “Brian’s Song” (ABC, 1971). Based on Piccolo’s life and career, Caan delivered a moving performance as the Chicago Bear running back whose brief life was enhanced by his close friendship with football legend Gayle Sayers (Billy Dee Williams). Their mutual respect and admiration helped both through trying times – Piccolo helped Sayers in his struggles with injuries and racism, while Sayers was by Piccolo’s side throughout his fatal illness. Widely hailed as one of the most affecting television movies of all time, “Brian’s Song” was a significant boost for Caan, who earned an Emmy nomination for leading actor.
Caan’s triumph in “Brian’s Song” was mere prelude for his next performance in Coppola’s opening installment of his legendary crime saga, “The Godfather” (1972). Though he originally auditioned to play the cold and calculating Michael Corleone, a role that eventually went to then-unknown Al Pacino, Caan was deemed more suited to play the hot-headed Sonny, the eldest son of crime family head Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) and next in line to take over. Sonny’s impetuous nature opens the floodgates to violence when he inadvertently paves the way for a hit on his father, which in turn leads to bloody retaliation while the Don recovers. In one memorable scene among many, he delivers a savage beating on his brother-in-law, Carlo (Gianni Russo), who is caught abusing Sonny’s sister, Connie (Talia Shire). But Sonny’s vengeance ultimately leads to his downfall when Carlo sells him out to a rival family, who take him down in a hail of bullets at a toll both by a gang of Mafia hit men. More than the sum of its parts, “The Godfather” was a huge hit while being hailed as a cinematic masterpiece at the same time. Numerous awards and nominations were bestowed upon the landmark film, including a Best Supporting Actor nod for Caan at the Academy Awards.
Building off his newfound fame derived from playing Sonny Corleone – a role with which he would be forever identified – Caan starred in the loose adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella, “The Gambler” (1974). Caan played a well-respected literature professor hopelessly addicted to gambling, which gets him into serious trouble with a local bookie (Paul Sorvino). That same year, he co-starred with Alan Arkin in “Freebie and the Bean” (1974) before moving on to play a sailor who falls for Marsha Mason in “Cinderella Liberty” (1975). As Billy Rose, he oozed charm as well as displayed a passable singing voice opposite Barbra Streisand’s reprisal of Fanny Brice in “Funny Lady” (1975), the entertaining, but familiar sequel to “Funny Girl” (1968). But most of his post-“Godfather” turns during the 1970s were either less-than-prestigious or box office duds. His one bright spot was starring in the futuristic sci-fi sports actioner, “Rollerball” (1975), playing a legendary veteran of a brutal sport caught up in a world where violence has been outlawed, resulting in an oppressed population needing an outlet to satisfy their bloodlust. Though not the biggest hit at the time of its release, “Rollerball” became a cult classic for later generations.
From “Rollerball” on throughout the rest of the century, Caan struggled to return to his heyday of the early 1970s. Though he failed for the most part, there were occasional turns where the Caan of old emerged. Meanwhile, he suffered several personal setbacks due in large part to his restless and unruly behavior, problems with substance abuse, and multiple marriages plagued by rumors of abuse. Caan was lost among an all-star ensemble cast that included Sean Connery, Robert Redford, Michael Caine and Gene Hackman in Richard Attenborough’s epic war film, “A Bridge Too Far” (1977). He gave a solid performance as an easy-going cowboy in the uneven contemporary Western, “Comes a Horseman” (1978), followed by a solid turn opposite Marsha Mason in the film adaptation of Neil Simon’s autobiographical play, “Chapter Two” (1979), which was unable to duplicate its Broadway success. Caan delivered one of his best performances in years with Michael Mann’s feature debut, “Thief” (1981), playing a professional jewel thief who longs for a normal life, but only after he pays off a crime boss (Robert Prosky) with one last job.
That year marked a turning point in Caan’s personal life, when his beloved sister, Barbara, died of cancer. Devastated by her loss, Caan spent the ensuing years trying to recover and even declined to speak of her death decades after. Meanwhile, his career began to spiral, with Caan suffering a box office dud playing the ghost of Sally Field’s lovable, but philandering choreographer husband – modeled on Bob Fosse – in “Kiss Me Goodbye” (1982). Frustrated with the direction his career was taking, Caan unofficially retired from the business and spent the next five years away from filmmaking. Instead, he split the majority of his time between his children and sinking deeper into drug addiction. He also watched his bank account dwindle, thanks to a shady accountant who helped relieve him of some money. But he re-emerged in the latter half of the decade to play a disillusioned Army sergeant who tries to dissuade a young private (D.B. Sweeney) from fighting in Vietnam in Francis Ford Coppola’s mediocre, “Gardens of Stone” (1987). He followed with a turn as a cop who is angry and resentful of an alien race integrated into human society in “Alien Nation” (1988).
As Caan entered the 1990s, the features in which he starred were more hit and miss, with many projects falling on the latter side of the ledger. Though noted for his sympathetic turn as a successful writer held captive by a deranged fan (Kathy Bates) in “Misery” (1990), he failed to win any converts with his song-and-dance routine alongside Bette Midler in “For the Boys” (1991). Caan delivered an inevitable spoof on his gangster image in “Honeymoon in Vegas” (1992), a modest hit that claimed to be nothing more than a slice of madcap entertainment. After starring as a coach of an unruly college football team in “The Program” (1993), Caan won critical plaudits for his turn as the cranky father of a small-time business man (Dennis Quaid) in “Flesh and Bone” (1993). It was around this time that Caan became fodder for the tabloid news. First, he was one of the first stars to be associated with notorious Hollywood madam, Heidi Fleiss. Just a month later, he was questioned for 10 hours by police when he woke up in a friend’s apartment with an aspiring actor, Mark Alan Schwartz, dead on the lawn after falling several stories from the fire escape. Schwartz’s death was later determined to be accidental.
While his marriage to third wife, Ingrid Hajek, was deteriorating, Caan was noted for his longtime friendship to Ronald Lorenzo, a drug trafficker who was sentenced to 11 years hard time in federal prison. In early 1994, he was arrested in North Hollywood on a misdemeanor for allegedly waving a loaded semiautomatic pistol in the face of rapper Derek Lee, a charge that was later dropped due to lack of evidence. Making life even more difficult were accusations of physical abuse, when a woman named Leesa Anne Roland sued Caan for battery, accusing that he beat her in a Century City hotel. The suit was later dismissed. Meanwhile, a year after being linked to Heidi Fleiss, Caan checked into the Exodus Recovery Center in Marina Del Rey, CA to treat his addiction to cocaine. Though tarnished, he continued to work regularly, emerging from the ashes to star alongside his son, Scott, who was making his acting debut in the crime drama, “A Boy Called Hate” (1995). In director Wes Anderson’s own debut, “Bottle Rocket” (1996), Caan played an eccentric con man who enlists three aimless young men (Luke Wilson and Owen Wilson) to perform a daring, but ill-conceived heist.
Though long associated with violent films, Caan was a surprise choice to co-star opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in the action thriller “Eraser” (1996), which he followed by appearing opposite Adam Sandler and Damon Wayans in the action comedy “Bulletproof” (1996). After a barely noticed turn in the stark Western, “North Star” (1996), Caan returned to television for his first small screen role since “Brian’s Song,” playing famed gumsh Phillip Marlowe in the less-than-stellar adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s unfinished novel, “Poodle Springs” (HBO, 1998). Having appeared to have put his controversial private life behind him, Caan turned out a series of solid journeyman performances, playing a Mafioso in “Mickey Blue Eyes” (1999), a movie stunt man targeted for murder in “In the Shadows” (2000), a mob-tied lawyer in “The Way of the Gun” (2000), and a corrupt New York Transit Authority employee in “The Yards” (2000). After reviving his 1974 gambler for the contrived “Luckytown” (2001), Caan found himself back on television again, playing a former outlaw-turned-prison warden in “Warden of Red Rock” (Showtime, 2001).
Caan returned to the small screen as his career advanced, not only finding more available work, but also more challenging material. He starred as a Navy captain trying to cover up the causes of an explosion aboard the U.S.S. Iowa that killed 47 sailors in the fact-based docudrama, “A Glimpse of Hell” (FX, 2001). In “The Lathe of Heaven” (A&E, 2002), he was a demented psychiatrist who uses a young man’s (Lukas Haas) ability to alter reality with his dreams to remake the world to match his vision of perfection. He next turned in a performance as a small town sheriff investigating the death of his son with the police officer (Johnathon Schaech) who may have killed him in “Blood Crime” (USA Network, 2002). After a career that had now spanned several decades, Caan made his debut as the star of a television series, “Las Vegas” (NBC, 2003-08), playing tough-as-nails casino security chief “Big Ed” Deline, who is also a loving family man despite his past as a director of counter intelligence for the CIA. Though not exactly Emmy material, “Las Vegas” debuted to strong ratings and favorable reviews throughout its run. Caan lasted four years and was replaced by Tom Selleck for the show’s final season.
Caan had a few tricks left in his movie career when he turned in a tough comedic performance as the flummoxed birth father of a man raised by North Pole elves (Will Farrell) in the goofy holiday charmer, “Elf” (2003). In “City of Ghosts” (2003), actor Matt Dillon’s directing debut, he was a shady businessman whose front man and partner (Dillon) comes looking for him in Cambodia. After a small turn as the unnamed Big Man in Lars Van Trier’s “Dogville”(2004), Caan joined his co-stars Marlon Brando and Robert Duvall to reprise their famous roles for the video game, “The Godfather: The Game” (2005). Once free from his obligations to “Las Vegas” in 2007, the actor was able to star in more projects, including a return to the Mafia world for “Wisegal” (Lifetime, 2008), a fact-based crime drama about the rise of a female mobster (Alyssa Milano). He then appeared as the President of the United States in “Get Smart” (2008), the big screen adaptation of the beloved 1960s television series, starring Steve Carell as the awkward government agent Maxwell Smart.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
“For a brief period Kim Novak looked like being one of the cinema’s godesses. At the beginning of 1955 she was virtually unknown. By the end of the following year, she was second only to Marilyn Monroe as the biggest female draw in pictures. You could hardly move without being confronted by pictures of her or articles in the press. (like Grace Kelly a while earlier). ‘Time’ magazine profiled her. Director Richard Quine was only one to analyse her appeal ‘ she had, he said, the proverbial quality of the lady in the parlor and the goddess in the bedroom. Kim has a ladylike quality, but it goes a step further. She had a combination of that with sex appeal and a childlike quality’. She was beautiful, not unlike a Botticelli woman with a haunding quality reminiscent of the young Dietrich. She was the sort of girl that Hollywood dreamed”. – David Shipman – “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years” (1972)
Kim Novak
Kim Novak was one of the loveliest actress in Hollywood movies of the 1950’s. She retired early in the last 1960’s for a life of rural domesticity in Northern California. She gave luminous performances in “Picnic”, “The Eddy DuchinStory” and of course Hitchcock’s master pievce “Vertigo” with James Stewart in 1958, which was just voted the best film ever by an international panel of cinema critics beating out for the first time ever, Orson Welles’s masterpiece of 1941, “Citizen Kane”.
TCM Overview:
A rare combination of icy aloofness and earthy sensuality helped to make actress Kim Novak one of the top box office stars in Hollywood during the 1950s and early 1960s. The former model was originally envisioned as a replacement for Marilyn Monroe by Columbia chief Harry Cohn, but Novak floundered in her early roles, which required her to provide eye candy and little else. Later films like “Picnic” (1955) and “The Man with the Golden Arm” (1955) gave her the chance to display her dramatic and even vulnerable sides, but it was Alfred Hitchcock who provided her with an enduring showcase as the object of James Stewart’s affections in “Vertigo” (1958). Sadly, her career began to fade just as it had reached its peak – by the ’60s, she was floundering in lukewarm comedies and melodramas, which precipitated a hiatus from acting at the end of the decade. Novak made occasional returns to film in the 1970s and 1980s; none of which could match the intoxicating spell she cast on moviegoers during her heyday three decades prior. Her absence from the public eye only increased the allure of her legend, and preserved her status as one of postwar Hollywood’s most mysterious and appealing actresses.
Born Marilyn Pauline Novak on Feb. 13, 1933, she was one of two daughters born to her Czech parents in Chicago, IL. She began her career in front of the cameras as a teenaged model for a local department store, eventually touring the country as “Miss Deepfreeze” for a refrigerator company. The job took her to Los Angeles, where she landed an uncredited cameo in the 3-D Jane Russell feature “The French Line” (1954) for RKO. Novak’s shapely figure and cool demeanor caught the eye of Columbia talent director Max Arnow, who brought her to the attention of studio chief Harry Cohn. Novak was signed to a long-term contract and molded as a bombshell in the fashion of Marilyn Monroe, whose popularity was on the wane, thanks to her chronic health and personality issues.
Kim Novak
According to Novak, Cohn informed her in decidedly offensive terms that she was to change her name – Kit Marlowe was the original suggestion, but both parties eventually agreed on Kim Novak – and lose weight. She was also required to take acting lessons, for which she was to pay out of her own pocket.
Novak captured the attention of critics and audiences alike with her first role, a femme fatale in the noirish “Pushover” (1953) with Fred MacMurray. Her appeal spiked even further after her turn as a Monroeesque starlet in “Phfft!” (1954), a gentle sex comedy with Jack Lemmon and Judy Holliday. She broke from the sexbomb mold with her next picture, a screen adaptation of William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Picnic”(1955), which cast her as a small town innocent who runs afoul of William Holden’s broken-down ex-football star. The film earned her a nomination from the BAFTA Film Awards. She continued to prove her dramatic skills as a sympathetic neighbor to Frank Sinatra’s drug addict in “The Man with the Golden Arm” (1956) and opposite Tyrone Power in “The Eddy Duchin Story” (1957). But Columbia viewed Novak as a star rather than an actress, and continued to place her in lightweight material like “The Jeanne Eagles Story” (1957) and the musical “Pal Joey” (1957) in which she tried to out-sex the studio’s aging Love Goddess, Rita Hayworth.
Despite the undermining of her burgeoning talent, the studio helped to place her in the Top 10 box office attractions of the late 1950s. Her popularity was underscored by her regular appearance in the tabloids of the day, which linked her to a variety of leading men, including Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr. – a scandal at the time, given he was an African-American – and Cary Grant. One of her suitors, Ramfis Trujillo, whose father was Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, even made her the subject of debate on the floor of the United States Congress after she received the gift of a sports car from him.
After Vera Miles was forced to bow out of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” (1958) due to her pregnancy, the acclaimed suspense director cast Novak in the dual role of the blonde and mysterious Madeleine Elster and her bookish brunette double, Judy Barton; both of whom become obsessions for private detective James Stewart. Hitchcock made excellent use of Novak’s seductive qualities, as well as her own internal conflict over her image and its manipulation by others. The result was one of the director’s finest and most enduring efforts, as well as the best role of Novak’s film career. Sadly, it would also prove to be the last time she would receive such a standout role on screen.
She reunited with Stewart and Lemmon that same year for a film version of the popular play “Bell, Book and Candle” (1958), but the results were flat and Novak’s comedic skills seemed woefully inadequate. Subsequent efforts followed the same downward path; “Strangers When We Meet” (1960) was a sudsy drama about neighborhood affairs, while “The Notorious Landlady” (1962) and “Boys’ Night Out” (1962) emphasized her physical charms over her acting abilities. Novak’s appearances in these mediocre projects were made all the more baffling by the list of films she rejected – among them were “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961), “The Hustler” (1961) and “Days of Wine and Roses” (1962). A 1964 remake of “Of Human Bondage” resulted in critical brickbats, and Billy Wilder’s “Kiss Me, Stupid” (1964) was overwhelmed by the wave of outrage from religious and moral groups over its casual attitude towards sex. The film later earned a cult following among devotees of the director and Novak.
Novak ended her long reign at the box office with “The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders” (1965), an underwhelming adaptation of the Daniel Defoe novel. Like “Kiss Me, Stupid,” it tanked with ticket buyers, though Novak gained a husband in her co-star, English theater actor, Richard Johnson. The couple was married less than a year. She soon turned her back on moviemaking for three years, only to return for another miserable flop, Richard Aldrich’s morbid camp drama “The Legend of Lylah Clare” (1968). Its failure drove her back into retirement, though there were occasional forays into TV-movies like the effective “Satan’s Triangle” (1975). There were sporadic film appearances during the decade as well, though few would consider the British horror anthology “Tales That Witness Madness” (1973) or “The White Buffalo” (1979), which pitted Charles Bronson against a bison the size of a steam liner, as worthwhile additions to Novak’s credits.
Novak began the 1980s with appearances in David Hemmings’ “Just a Gigolo” (1980), which marked the return of Marlene Dietrich to motion pictures, and the Agatha Christie mystery “The Mirror Crack’d,” which cast her and Elizabeth Taylor as – appropriately enough – fading movie queens. From 1986 to 1987, she enjoyed a recurring role on the primetime soap opera “Falcon Crest” (CBS, 1981-1990) as a shady lady on the run from European criminals who poses as the stepdaughter of wealthy industrialist Peter Stavros (Cesar Romero). The show’s producers paid tribute to Novak’s Hollywood legacy by naming her character after her original nom du screen, Kit Marlowe. She also appeared in the pilot for NBC’s revival of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” (NBC/USA, 1985-89) opposite John Huston in an unsettling remake of “The Man from the South,” a memorable episode from the original series (CBS/NBC, 1955-1965).
Novak’s final screen appearance came in 1991 with “Liebestraum,” a thriller by Mike Figgis about a young man who discovers unpleasant truths about his family after returning home to visit his estranged mother (Novak). The experience was reportedly a difficult one, due to clashes between Novak and Figgis over how to play the role, and she effectively quashed any further comebacks by retiring to her home in Oregon to raise horses and llamas. Sadly, Novak lost the residence and many valuable mementos in a fire in 2000. The actress was the subject of numerous tributes in the late 1990s and early 2000s; the theatrical revival of a restored version of “Vertigo” sparked interest in her career, while the Berlin Film Festival and Eastman Kodak gave her lifetime achievement awards in 1997 and 2000, respectively. In 2010, fans were saddened to hear the 77-year-old actress had been diagnosed with breast cancer, but were heartened to hear it was caught in its early stages and that the actress was expected to make a full recovery.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
FALCON CREST, Kim Novak, TV GUIDE cover, October 25-31, 1986. TV Guide/courtesy Everett Collection Ref:TVGC003 H5320 PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: xx TVGC003 H5320
Narrow-faced, black-haired, snake-eyed but handsome American actor. (A former child performer). He was a great success in his first film as a smiling villain and repeated the trick four years later with his portrait of gangster Legs Diamond. Otherwise he perhaps failed to make the most of the changes proffered although he made a series of colourful adventure years on the Continent. Later emerged briefly as a director of independent shockers. Married and divorced from Julie Adams.
TCM Overview:
Handsome lead with dark good looks and sleek black hair who began his career as a child actor on radio and appeared in early live TV dramas in New York. After making his film debut in “Chief Crazy Horse” (1954), Ray Danton gained notice for his portrayal of Lillian Roth’s first love in the soapy biopic “I’ll Cry Tomorrow” (1955). Danton is best remembered for his portrayal of ruthless mobster “Legs” Diamond in both Budd Boetticher’s gangster melodrama, “The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond” (1960), and the 1961 biopic of gangster Dutch Schultz, “Portrait of a Mobster”. That same year he also starred in the title role of “The George Raft Story”.In 1964 Ray Danton moved to Italy, where he starred in numerous low-budget films and turned to directing with “Deathmaster” (1972). He formed his own production company in Barcelona before returning in 1975 to the US, where he become a TV director for Universal. Danton helmed episodes of “Cagney and Lacey”, “Quincy”, “Fame” and “Dallas” and served as supervising producer on “The New Mike Hammer” TV series (1986-87). Danton was at one time married to actress Julie Adams.
Handsome and smooth natured leading man who often played oily individuals, Ray Danton was born in New York and dramatically trained at Carnegie Tech. First debuted on-screen as a moody Native American in Chief Crazy Horse (1955) and regularly guest-starred in many 1950s TV shows including Playhouse 90 (1956), Wagon Train (1957), and77 Sunset Strip (1958)…often as a gunslinger or a slippery criminal.
Ray Danton found plenty of demand for his talents and appeared in several minor films including The Night Runner (1957), Tarawa Beachhead (1958), during which he met his wife, Julie Adams, and then as a serial rapist in The Beat Generation (1959). However, his most well remembered role was as the vicious prohibition gangster Jack Diamond in the superb The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960) also starring a young Warren Oatesand directed by Budd Boetticher. Danton reprised his Legs Diamond role only a year later in the unrelated, and not as enjoyable Portrait of a Mobster (1961).
Cornering the market on playing shady characters, Danton then portrayed troubled actorGeorge Raft in The George Raft Story (1961), but he was back on the side of good in 1962 playing an Allied officer at the invasion of Normandy in The Longest Day (1962). Europe then beckoned for the virile Danton, and like many other young US actors in the early 1960s, he made several films in Italy and Spain between 1964 and 1969 with a mixture of success. Ray Danton returned to the USA in the early 1970s and appeared in several other low budget features; however, he also turned his hand to direction and his first film was the AIP production of Deathmaster (1972) starring Robert Quarry who was riding high on the success of the Count Yorga vampire films. Danton directed another couple of minor horror films before becoming involved in television and directing episodes of some of the most popular TV series of the 1970/80s including Quincy M.E. (1976), The Incredible Hulk (1978), Magnum, P.I. (1980) and Cagney & Lacey (1981).
His final directorial work was on the TV series Vietnam War Story (1987) in 1987. Danton passed away in 1992 from kidney failure aged only 61.
Charlotte Rampling began her film career in the 1960’s and became a delight of the critics with some key films in the 1970’s and 80’s. Her first film was the Boulting Brothers “Rotten to the Core”. She supported Alan bates, James Mason and Lynn Redgrave in “Georgy Girl”. In 1969 she made”The Damned” in Luchino Visconti” and then later in Hollywood “Farewell My Lovely” opposite Robert Mitchum and “The Verdict” with Paul Newman.
TCM overview:
An alluring presence in features and on television since the 1960s, actress Charlotte Rampling defined sexual freedom and fearlessness over the ensuing decades in such films as “Georgy Girl” (1966), “The Damned” (1969), “Vanishing Point” (1971) and “The Night Porter” (1974). Though her immediate appeal was her physicality, Rampling became a cinematic icon in the 1970s, thanks to a screen presence that was at the same time confident, passionate and reserved. After star turns in “The Verdict” (1982) and “Angel Heart” (1987), her star waned in the late 1980s due to personal turmoil, though she rebounded in the late 1990s as Aunt Maude in “Wings of a Dove” (1997). Rampling went on to impress audiences with performances as Miss Havisham in “Great Expectations” (BBC, 1999), as well as critical darlings “Under the Sand” (2000) and “Swimming Pool” (2003). As she entered her sixties, Rampling’s career was in full bloom, with steely supporting turns in “The Duchess” (2008) and “Never Let Me Go” (2010). The definition of class for many a moviegoer the world over, Rampling’s formidable body of work made her one of the most respected actresses on two continents.
She was born Tessa Charlotte Rampling on Feb. 5, 1946 in the village of Sturmer, in Essex county, England. Her father was Godfrey Rampling, a Royal Army officer and three-time gold medalist in the 400 meter and 4×400 meter relays in the 1932 and 1936 Summer Olympics, while her mother, Anne Isabelle Gurten, was a painter from France. Her childhood was spent in transit, moving throughout the U.K., France and Gibraltar with her father’s reassignments. She was educated in part at the Jeanne d’Arc Academie Pour Jeunes Filles in Versailles, which she later described as a lonely experience due to the language barrier. Happiness was found in a cabaret act she enjoyed with her older sister, Sarah, who died by her own hand in Argentina in 1967 after the premature birth of her daughter. She briefly studied Spanish at a college in Madrid before dropping out in 1963 to travel with a cabaret troupe. Upon her return to England in 1964, she modeled to support herself while learning the craft of acting at the Royal Court Stage School. At 17, she made her television debut in a commercial for Cadbury’s chocolates; her feature debut came with a bit role of a water skier in Richard Lester’s 1965 film “The Knack And How to Get It.” More supporting roles preceded her breakthrough in “Georgy Girl” (1966) as Lynn Redgrave’s glamorous yet shallow flatmate, who gives up her baby to pursue a hedonistic life. The character’s combination of icy beauty, open sexuality, and disregard for responsibility – which the press dubbed “The Look,” per a comment from her frequent co-star, Dirk Bogarde – would serve as a template for many of her future performances.
Rampling’s smoldering intensity was best served in roles that required her to plumb the depths of the human experience. In Luchino Visconti’s “The Damned” (1969), she was the wife of a German company’s vice president, who paid for his opposition to the Nazi regime by being sent to the Dachau concentration camp with her children. Her Anne Boleyn in “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” (1972) also trod a delicate line between seductiveness and sadness as she attempted to bend the will of Henry (Keith Michell) to hers before meeting her fabled end. Her most famous role during this period was in “The Night Porter” (1974), Liliana Cavani’s controversial film about a Holocaust survivor (Rampling) who became immersed in a sado-masochistic relationship with an SS officer (Bogarde) while interned at a camp, only to resume their tortured couplings years after the war. The film was condemned and celebrated with equal fervor during its release, but all parties agreed that Rampling’s performance, which featured her in feverish scenes of morbid fetishism, was the film’s highlight. The picture did much to cement Rampling as the thinking man’s sex symbol, as did a 1973 layout for Playboy shot by Helmut Newton and a widespread rumor that she lived in a ménage-a-trois with her then-husband, publicist Bryan Southcombe, and male model Randall Laurence.
“Night Porter” would prove a difficult film to surpass for any actress, but Rampling wisely sidestepped the problem by focusing on films that satisfied her as an actress, rather than those that simply generated more publicity. She criss-crossed the Atlantic on numerous occasions, playing an alluring femme fatale who ensnared Robert Mitchum’s world-weary Philip Marlowe in “Farewell, My Lovely” (1975), then made her American TV debut as Irene Adler, the ideal woman for Sherlock Holmes (Roger Moore) in the 1976 TV movie “Sherlock Holmes in New York” (NBC). Little needed to be said about films like “Orca” (1977), which pitted Rampling against a killer whale, but these were largely forgotten in the wake of pictures like “Stardust Memories” (1980), writer-director Woody Allen’s bittersweet tribute to his cinematic idols, Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman, with Rampling cast as a psychologically troubled former lover of Allen’s whose memory of her he simply cannot shake. Rampling also shone in a pivotal role in Sidney Lumet’s “The Verdict” (1982) as lawyer Paul Newman’s lover, whom defense attorney James Mason hired to keep track of him.
In the latter half of the decade and for much of the 1990s, Rampling stepped away from Hollywood product, preferring to – or, perhaps, finding more opportunities in – international films with a decided arthouse bent, including collaborations with Claude Lelouch with “Viva le vie” (1984) and Nagisha Oshima, who cast Rampling as a diplomat’s wife who left her husband for a chimpanzee in “Max mon Amour” (1986). In 1985, she was nominated for a French Cesar as the mistress of a murder victim who seduced inspector Michel Serrault in Jacques Deray’s “On ne meurt que 2 fois.” There were also supporting turns in American features, most notably as a victim of a grisly murder in Alan Parker’s “Angel Heart’ (1987) and the moribund remake of “D.O.A.” (1988).
During this period, Rampling also suffered from depression, which led to a nervous breakdown in the early 1990s. Therapy helped her emerge from this dark period and, quite possibly, made it possible to deal with the very public fallout from tabloid reports that revealed numerous infidelities committed by her second husband, composer Jean Michel Jarre. The dissolution of their marriage came about in 1997, the same year the Oscar-nominated “The Wings of the Dove” (1997) was released; her most widely-seen film in years, she was cast as Helena Bonham Carter’s cautious aunt who was determined her young charge would not follow in the footsteps of her disgraced mother. The worldwide success of “Dove” launched a revival of interest in Rampling, who soon resumed a steady and impressive schedule of quality projects. She was a ravishingly ruined Miss Havisham in the BBC’s 1999 adaptation of “Great Expectations,” then joined Alan Bates and Gerard Butler in Michael Cacoyannis’ 1999 film version of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.”
Her most substantive work during this period, however, came in partnership with French director Francois Ozon. Their first collaboration, 2000’s “Under the Sun,” gave her talent a magnificent showcase as a woman crippled by grief and doubt over her husband’s mysterious disappearance. Critics raved over the complexity of her performance, which explored unsettling depths of denial in its attempt to make sense of the tragedy, and for her work, Rampling received her second Cesar nomination. Her sophomore project with Ozon, 2003’s “Swimming Pool,” was a deeply personal project for the actress, as it allowed her to finally come to terms with her sister’s suicide. Rampling and her father had kept the truth about Sarah’s death from her mother for decades, until her own death in 2001; in the aftermath, Rampling began to develop a better understanding of her sister’s life and actions, and used her as motivation for her performance in “Swimming Pool.” She even used her sister’s name for her character, a mystery author plagued by writer’s block whose retreat to a country house in France is interrupted by a seemingly unhinged young woman (Ludivine Sagnier) who claimed Sarah was her mother. Another critical success, the film brought Rampling a third Cesar and a European Film Award for Best Actress.
As Rampling reached her sixth decade, her career showed no signs of slowing down. A fourth Cesar nod came in 2005 with “Lemming,” a psychological thriller with Rampling as the neurotic dinner guest whose arrival signaled an explosion of ill feelings and violence. More prominent turns followed, including that of Keira Knightley’s chilly royal mother in “The Duchess” (2008), a self-loathing woman who endured a one-night stand with paroled child molester Ciaran Hinds in Todd Solondz’s “Life During Wartime” (2009), and an instructor at a mysterious boarding school in Mark Romanek’s well-received “Never Let Me Go” (2010). Rampling also made news during this period for launching a lawsuit in 2009 to prevent the publication of a biography, penned by a close friend, that detailed her emotional travails in the wake of her sister’s suicide and the infidelities inflicted upon her by Jarre.
Meanwhile, Rampling starred “Rio Sex Comedy” (2010) opposite Bill Pullman and Fisher Stevens, and joined an ensemble cast for the biblically-themed drama “The Mill and the Cross” (2011). After playing the mother of Kristen Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg in Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia” (2011), she narrated the animated box office hit, “Cars 2” (2011), before earning critical kudos as the dying matriarch of a family struggling to maintain control over the affairs of those around her in “The Eye of the Storm” (2011), co-starring Geoffrey Rush and Judy Davis. From there, Rampling was the superior of a Secret Service agent (Sean Bean) determined to stop a suicide bombing in the taut British thriller “Cleanskin” (2012). She went on to earn critical praise and A SAG award nod for her turn as a mother whose daughter investigates her past as a World War II spy in the made-for-cable movie “Restless” (Sundance Channel, 2012), which was adapted from William Boyd’s award-winning novel.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Val Kilmer is one of the most interesting American actor on film. As he is moving into character parts. his weight gain and maturity brings an extra shade and nuance to his roles. His early movies include “Top Gun” in 1984, “Willow” and as ‘Jim Morrison’ in “The Doors”. He starred with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro ion “Heat”, “Batman Forever”, “Deja Vu” and “Felon
TCM overview:
Once described as Hollywood’s most difficult leading man, actor Val Kilmer accumulated his share of proponents over the years to offset the howls of his surprisingly vocal detractors, few of whom would argue that his best work rivaled Hollywood’s top leading men. Kilmer first made himself known as the chief rival of Tom Cruise in the blockbuster “Top Gun (1986) before delivering an uncanny performance of poet-singer Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s “The Doors” (1991) and a mesmerizing turn as Doc Holliday in “Tombstone” (1993). Around that time, the public began hearing rumblings of Kilmer’s difficult on-set persona. While playing the Caped Crusader in “Batman Forever” (1995), Kilmer entered into the low-point of his vampish behavior, which led to on-set shoving matches between himself and director Joel Schumacher. Following a strong supporting turn in Michael Mann’s epic crime drama, “Heat” (1995), he had more on-set shenanigans with “The Island of Dr. Moreau” (1996), which actually marked the beginning of a turning point with his questionable behavior. Kilmer starred in such box office duds like “The Ghost and the Darkness” (1996), “The Saint” (1997) and “At First Sight” (1999) before taking more interesting turns with the crime thriller, “The Salton Sea” (2002). Kilmer had his strongest performance in years as a gay private detective opposite Robert Downey, Jr.’s dimwitted thief in the hilarious “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” (2005), which led to a revitalization of his image as one of the most in-demand actors for both major Hollywood movies and independent films.
Born on Dec. 31, 1959 in Los Angeles, Kilmer was raised by his father, Eugene, an aerospace equipment distributor and real estate developer who made – and lost – a fortune developing a ranch once owned by Roy Rogers, and his mother, Gladys. After attending Chatsworth High School, where he was classmates with Mare Winningham and Kevin Spacey, and the Hollywood Professional School, Kilmer became the youngest student at the time to be allowed entrance into the famed Julliard School. While at Juilliard, he and his classmates wrote and performed “How It All Began,” a play that was eventually produced at the New York Shakespeare Festival with Kilmer in the lead. Meanwhile, he landed parts in “Henry IV, Part I” at the NYSF and “As You Like It” for the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, MN. Kilmer soon made his Broadway debut opposite Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon in “The Slab Boys” (1983). The following year, he made his feature debut with a starring role in “Top Secret!” (1984), a spy parody and all-around Hollywood spoof from the goofy minds of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker which later achieved a cult following.
Also at the time, Kilmer had a supporting role in “One Too Many” (ABC, 1985), a rather stark “ABC Afterschool Special” that cautioned teens against drunk driving. In the comedy “Real Genius” (1985), he played a brilliant science student at a fictional university who teams up with a freshman (Gabe Jarret) to stop a wayward physics professor (William Atherton) from experimenting on unsuspecting students. Graduating from teen comedies to big studio films, Kilmer kick-started his career by costarring opposite Tom Cruise in one of the biggest movies of any decade, “Top Gun” (1986), playing the cocky F-14 pilot and chief antagonist Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, who butts heads with an equally brash Navy pilot, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise), over the coveted Top Gun award. Despite upstaging Cruise with the critics, Kilmer was left behind in the dust professionally, as the other actor rocketed to superstardom. Meanwhile, he stumbled with his next few projects while murmurings that he was a “difficult” actor began to arise. After publishing My Edens After Burns, a collection of poems that included fond remembrances of former companion Michelle Pfeiffer, Kilmer displayed a flair for fantasy heroics as the dwarf-friendly lead in Ron Howard’s “Willow” (1988), a lavish but uninvolving fantasy from producer George Lucas that proved to be a commercial disappointment. While building his career throughout the decade, he also developed a reputation as something of a ladies man, dating a wide range of actress, including Cher – who was many years his senior – and Ellen Barkin.
Kilmer met his future wife Joanne Whalley on the set of “Willow,” and following their marriage in February 1988, the pair co-starred together in “Kill Me Again” (1989), director Tom Dahl’s post-modern noir about a seedy private detective (Kilmer) hired by a woman (Whalley) to fake her own death in order to escape mobsters from whom she had stolen money. Kilmer next earned considerable attention and plaudits for one of the best performances of the year when he carved out an uncanny portrait of tortured singer Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s metaphysical, but often muddled biopic, “The Doors” (1991). In order to secure the part, Kilmer videotaped himself singing Door songs. Though Stone was initially unimpressed, former Doors producer Paul Rothchild was struck by Kilmer’s ability to mimic Morrison’s voice. Stone cast the actor in the pivotal role, which proved in retrospect to be a wise decision: without Kilmer’s domineering performance, the film may have performed worse than it did, thanks to an uneven portrayal of the singer and weak supporting performances. Meanwhile, Kilmer’s method acting demands – including that everyone call him Jim on set – later prompted Stone to acknowledge that the actor “is passionate about his work; with the wrong approach, you may see a side of him you don’t like.”
Kilmer enjoyed a critical hit as the star of Michael Apted’s “Thunderheart” (1992), an engrossing crime drama in which he played a part-Sioux FBI agent who confronts his heritage while investigating a murder on an Oglala Sioux reservation. Part-Cherokee himself, Kilmer delivered a finely tuned performance noted for its subtle intensity. He put his film career back on commercial track with an acclaimed performance as the tubercular gunslinger, Doc Holliday, stealing the thunder from Kurt Russell’s strong portrayal of Wyatt Earp in the surprise hit Western, “Tombstone” (1993). Even though it proved to be successful both at the box office and with critics, “Tombstone” was marred with onset difficulties, including the firing of original director, Kevin Jarre. Let go after a month of shooting, Jarre later remarked that “[t]here’s a dark side to Val that I don’t feel comfortable talking about.” To back his claim, he relayed an anecdote to Entertainment Weekly about Kilmer taking a locust from an excited stand-in and eating it in front of him before saying, “As you know, I have a reputation for being difficult. But only with stupid people.” Meanwhile, Kilmer lost his father in April 1993, which precipitated a falling-out with his own brother, leading to their estrangement from each other for many years thereafter.
After giving a quirky portrayal of Elvis, complete with a rendition of “Heartbreak Hotel,” in the Quentin Tarantino-scripted “True Romance” (1993), Kilmer starred in “The Real McCoy” (1993), a crime thriller in which Kim Basinger played a burglar just released from prison and forced to pull one last heist to save her son. His on set troubles continued when news surfaced that he lost control during an argument with director Russell Mulcahy over changing his scenes, leading to him firing a prop gun at a car. Following a one-year absence from the screen, Kilmer had a banner 1995 when he was tapped by director Joel Schumacher to succeed the departing Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader in “Batman Forever” (1995). Pitted against notorious scene stealers Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones as the Joker and Two-Face respectively, Kilmer brought more intensity and humor to arguably the best installment of the franchise, a blockbuster earning over $200 million worldwide. But again, stories about Kilmer’s onset behavior emerged, with Schumacher refusing to mince his words when relaying details about a shoving match between the two: “He was rude and inappropriate. He was childish and impossible. I was forced to tell him that this would not be tolerated for one more second. Then we had two weeks where he did not speak to me – but it was bliss.” The normally gentile Schumacher later told Premiere magazine, “Val is the most psychologically troubled human being I’ve ever worked with. The tools I used to work with him – tools of communication, of patience and understanding – were the tools I use on my five-year-old godson.”
Both Warner Bros. and Schumacher were happy to see Kilmer leave the Batman franchise in favor of casting George Clooney for “Batman & Robin” (1997). But director Michael Mann, who cast Kilmer in a supporting role for his crime epic, “Heat” (1995), had nothing but praise for the actor. Mann was a lone voice of support from the directors encountering Kilmer in the mid-1990s; John Frankenheimer also had zero tolerance for the actor after taking over the disastrous sci-fi horror thriller “The Island of Dr. Moreau” (1996) from fired helmer Richard Stanley. Whenever Kilmer sought to contribute his ideas, Frankenheimer snapped and said, “I don’t give a f*ck!” Kilmer also ran afoul of a cameraman, whom he burned with a cigarette while seemingly joking around. Of Kilmer, Frankenheimer was unrelenting in his assessment: “I don’t like Val Kilmer. I don’t like his work ethic, and I don’t want to be associated with him ever again.” But of himself, Kilmer said, “Often I have been accused of being difficult, when in fact it’s a difficult character that I’m playing. (Hollywood) confuses the two. I work hard. I don’t know anybody who’s good at their job who doesn’t get into trouble.” Amidst the height of his reputation as a difficult actor, Kilmer was criticized for his performance in Stephen Hopkins’ “The Ghost and the Darkness” (1996), which earned the actor a Razzie award nomination for Worst Supporting Actor.
As if things were not difficult enough, Kilmer split with long-time wife, Joanna Whalley, shortly after the birth of their son, Jack, in 1995. But he soon found himself in the arms of model Cindy Crawford, though that particular relationship failed to last very long. Meanwhile, his penchant for casually slipping into different voices and guises led him to choose the role of Simon Templar, “The Saint” (1997). Though hopes for establishing a franchise were high, the ridiculously implausible story doomed Leslie Charteris’ debonair detective to inhabit yet another sub-par movie. By the time he voiced Moses in DreamWorks’ debut animated feature “The Prince of Egypt” (1998), Kilmer was determined to bury his bad boy image. He played the doting dad to his two children for journalists and ditched Hollywood for Pecos, NM, where he enjoyed fly-fishing and other outdoor activities on his 6,000 acre ranch. Back on screen, he played a blind man romancing Mira Sorvino, whose life is upended when his vision is restored in the mawkish “At First Sight” (1999).
Following a brief, but memorable turn as artist Willem DeKooning in director-star Ed Harris’ “Pollack” (2000), Kilmer made a career misstep when he starred as an astronaut on Mars in the seemingly commercial, but oxygen-deprived sci-fi vehicle, “Red Planet” (2000). He next starred in the meth-fueled neo-noir thriller “The Salton Sea” (2002), in which he played a crystal meth addict who tries to find his wife’s murderer by working with a pair of undercover narcotics cops (Anthony Lapaglia and Doug Hutchison) while trying to save his abused neighbor (Deborah Kara Unger). After a few little seen turns in low-profile projects, Kilmer returned to the limelight with his convincing portrayal of 1970s porn king John Holmes for the true-life crime drama, “Wonderland” (2003), based on the porn actor’s alleged involvement in the bloody drug-related murders on Los Angeles’ Wonderland Avenue in 1981. He next received positive reviews as a maverick government agent trying to recover a politico’s kidnapped daughter (Kristen Bell) in writer-director David Mamet’s crime drama “Spartan” (2004). Kilmer then starred as Moses in a controversial stage version of “The Ten Commandments” (2004), a glossy musical that appeared to many as being a Hollywood parody. The musical was forced to cut back performances for retooling following scathing reviews.
Kilmer reunited with Oliver Stone to co-star in the director’s epic drama, “Alexander” (2004), an ambitious, but ultimately failed look at the rise to power and eventual fall of conqueror Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell). Amidst the lavish excesses of Stone’s production and the endless narration from Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins), Kilmer delivered a convincing portrayal of Alexander’s controlling father, King Philip II. Following a brief appearance as an FBI instructor in “Mindhunters” (2005), he was nothing short of brilliant as a homosexual private investigator partnered with none-too-bright petty thief (Robert Downey, Jr.) who is dragged into a murder investigation in “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” (2005), written and directed by Shane Black. Undeniably, the comedic chemistry between Kilmer and fellow reformed bad boy Downey, Jr. was infectious both on screen and off. Following a supporting role in the period crime thriller “10th and Wolf” (2006), he took a supporting role as a government agent who has knowledge of why an ATF agent (Denzel Washington) suddenly has strange memories about the future regarding a cataclysmic explosion in “Déjà Vu” (2006).
Over the next few years, Kilmer kept something of a lower profile despite working steadily in small budget films and on television. Following an episode of “Numb3rs” (CBS, 2004-10), he was the voice of KITT in the re-imagining of “Knight Rider” (NBC, 2008), which started as a two-hour television movie and wound up being a short-lived series during the 2008-09 season. Kilmer next had roles in little seen features like the crime thriller “Conspiracy” (2008), the Western “Comanche Moon” (2008) and the prison drama “Felon” (2008). Continuing along with independent film, he co-starred opposite Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes in “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans” (2009), Werner Herzog’s remake of Abel Ferrera’s crime drama, “Bad Lieutenant” (1992). After a supporting role in “American Cowslip” (2009), an offbeat black comedy about an agoraphobic heroin addict (Ronnie Gene Blevens), he played Dieter von Cunth, sworn enemy to distracted special ops agent, “MacGruber” (2010), played by Will Forte, based on his recurring sketch on “Saturday Night Live” (NBC, 1975- ).
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Sam Elliott, Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer & Bill PaxtonVal Kilmer & Lucy Gutteridge
