The death of Elizabeth Taylor on Wednesday arguably leaves only one of the great Hollywood Legends left alive. I count an actor in this category if they were starring in movies from the 30's to the 50's, the heyday of the big Hollywood studios.
This set me thinking how old I really am because when I was starting out at Drama school in the early seventies, most of them were still around. Some of them were still making movies, albeit in most cases of dubious quality.
Bogart, Cooper and Gable has of course gone to comparatively early deaths but I saw James Stewart in a terrible disaster film with Jack Lemmon, who went on to make a great one with Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas called The China Syndrome based on the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island and he continued to make films into the nineties. My all time favourite actor James Cagney came out of a twenty year retirement in 1982 to make Ragtime with his old pal Pat O'Brien. Cary Grant didn't make films but was active in business and laterly took to touring a one man show. Gene Kelly directed his last film Xanadu in the early eighties. Orson Welles played the vile Louis XVIII in Waterloo opposite the King of OTT Rod Steiger who was still active into the 21st Century.
I personally had the great pleasure of meeting James Mason in 1983 who was strangely dressed from head to foot in denim. Glenn Ford turned up as Superman's earthly father while Tony Curtis had turned to painting. John Houseman and Don Ameche were fabulous as the amoral old bankers in Trading Places and Ameche went on to star in the Cocoon films. John Wayne didn't win his Oscar until 1970 for True Grit. Robert Mitchum got to appear in Scorcese's remake of his earlier Cape Fear and Charlton Heston even appeared in Friends and if that isn't bestriding the generations I don't know what is.
The story of the female Hollywood greats is altogether different. They tended to hang up their wigs and gowns in their thirties. I guess that particular brand of tinsel town glamour did not lend itself to ageing. Apart from Marilyn Munroe as a famously early casualty, (she died at 36), there were Marlene Deitrich and Greta Garbo vying for the role of most famous recluse. Joan Crawford lived till 1977 and she had been a star of the silent era. Wonderful starlets of the great MGM musicals like Ginger Rogers and Eleanor Powell all lived till ripe old ages and my favourite actress Bette Davis proved to be one of the exceptions by continuing to perform and make regular appearances till she was 80 as did Katherine Hepburn who turned up in On Golden Pond with Henry Fonda.
So who is left. Well there was a clue earlier when I mentioned his son making an appearance with Henry Fonda's daughter in The China Syndrome. It is of course the mighty and magnificent Kirk Douglas who was ninety four last December.
Oh damn. I forgot Ernest Borgnine! But let's face it, he wasn't Spartacus.
Friday, 25 March 2011
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Corpse
(In the following Blog I will use only the protagonists' initials to protect the innocent)
One of the scaliest problems ever to afflict me during the course of my affairs has reared it's fearful head once again. I refer to the actor's nightmare. Corpsing! The uncontrollable fits of giggles that overcome most actors at some time or another during their careers, either before the camera or on stage. I have found this an all too recurrent theme in my work.
The first time I can really remember it being a huge problem was at drama school in the dress rehearsal of George Bernard Shaw's "St Joan". During the trial scene, we, the non-speaking roles were encouraged to shout out and comment in an improvisational manner in order to give the scene pace, verite and a general ooomph which the director felt it otherwise lacked. Unfortunately, in a lull, my sole voice rang out, making the very unShavian interjection, in reference to the rather loquatious prosecuting council, "the man's a tit!". The run ground to a halt as the entire cast wept tears of uncontrollable joy. Not assisted by the fact that the director, the late, great, K McB decided to deal with the situation by coming to the front of the stage and adopting a "schoolmarm" face. Advice to all young directors presented with a group of actors giggling like a schoolgirl outing to a nudist colony... This approach does not work. The soothing tone and a twenty minute break is the only cure.
Much later I was in the Terry Johnson play "Dead Funny" at the West End's Savoy Theatre. SK and I found that the merest sight of each others performance would reduce us to pools of molten mirth and our leading ladies' irritation only fuelled the flames. But we actors are a resourceful bunch and we instinctively re-blocked the play so that even the most intimate moments were played by both of us staring wistfully into opposite wings of the theatre, resolutely back to back.
The separate eye-line approach was readopted by KB and I in a TV movie about Earnest Shackleton's voyage to cross the South Pole. In one poignant scene, we had to toast each other in his cabin, commiserating that our ship had become trapped in the pack-ice. One of us, I can't remember who now, had to clink the other's glass and give breath to the, in retrospect, perfectly reasonable phrase, "Damned Ice!". For some reason we were unable to get even close to this line without doubling up, eyes filled with tears like two men who had just received a firm boot to the testicles. The final cut of the scene has us both toasting each other in spirit while staring out of separate port-holes.
TE, in a 1980's Granada mini series found my performance as an ex-alchoholic football genius SO ludicrous that even the sound of my stockinged feet, softly padding down a thickly carpeted staircase would reduce him to a choking consumptive. In that case staring at our feet seemed to help us, if not the director.
Corpsing is not only confined to ones fellow actors. The director and now big-shot Hollywood TV producer IT felt that my portrayal of SAS hard-man Johnny Donahue in "The Contract", pulling a gun on a Soviet spy in a field in Yorkshire was so rib-ticklingly hysterical that the first assistant director suggested he turned his back on the scene. This only seemed to exacerbate the situation. Eventually he was banished to an adjacent meadow with a megaphone where an assistant director would shove him under a bush after he shouted "Action!'. He never managed "Cut!"
My present trouble involves myself and CE. The star of my new pilot "P" for WB and ABC. Everything was going swimmingly for him in his finely tuned performance, one of wit, charm and dexterity until I showed up. He instantly became a five year old, seeing one of the better Punch and Judy shows for the first time with me as the string of sausages.
Oh well, give it time. I am sure we will both find somewhere to look!
One of the scaliest problems ever to afflict me during the course of my affairs has reared it's fearful head once again. I refer to the actor's nightmare. Corpsing! The uncontrollable fits of giggles that overcome most actors at some time or another during their careers, either before the camera or on stage. I have found this an all too recurrent theme in my work.
The first time I can really remember it being a huge problem was at drama school in the dress rehearsal of George Bernard Shaw's "St Joan". During the trial scene, we, the non-speaking roles were encouraged to shout out and comment in an improvisational manner in order to give the scene pace, verite and a general ooomph which the director felt it otherwise lacked. Unfortunately, in a lull, my sole voice rang out, making the very unShavian interjection, in reference to the rather loquatious prosecuting council, "the man's a tit!". The run ground to a halt as the entire cast wept tears of uncontrollable joy. Not assisted by the fact that the director, the late, great, K McB decided to deal with the situation by coming to the front of the stage and adopting a "schoolmarm" face. Advice to all young directors presented with a group of actors giggling like a schoolgirl outing to a nudist colony... This approach does not work. The soothing tone and a twenty minute break is the only cure.
Much later I was in the Terry Johnson play "Dead Funny" at the West End's Savoy Theatre. SK and I found that the merest sight of each others performance would reduce us to pools of molten mirth and our leading ladies' irritation only fuelled the flames. But we actors are a resourceful bunch and we instinctively re-blocked the play so that even the most intimate moments were played by both of us staring wistfully into opposite wings of the theatre, resolutely back to back.
The separate eye-line approach was readopted by KB and I in a TV movie about Earnest Shackleton's voyage to cross the South Pole. In one poignant scene, we had to toast each other in his cabin, commiserating that our ship had become trapped in the pack-ice. One of us, I can't remember who now, had to clink the other's glass and give breath to the, in retrospect, perfectly reasonable phrase, "Damned Ice!". For some reason we were unable to get even close to this line without doubling up, eyes filled with tears like two men who had just received a firm boot to the testicles. The final cut of the scene has us both toasting each other in spirit while staring out of separate port-holes.
TE, in a 1980's Granada mini series found my performance as an ex-alchoholic football genius SO ludicrous that even the sound of my stockinged feet, softly padding down a thickly carpeted staircase would reduce him to a choking consumptive. In that case staring at our feet seemed to help us, if not the director.
Corpsing is not only confined to ones fellow actors. The director and now big-shot Hollywood TV producer IT felt that my portrayal of SAS hard-man Johnny Donahue in "The Contract", pulling a gun on a Soviet spy in a field in Yorkshire was so rib-ticklingly hysterical that the first assistant director suggested he turned his back on the scene. This only seemed to exacerbate the situation. Eventually he was banished to an adjacent meadow with a megaphone where an assistant director would shove him under a bush after he shouted "Action!'. He never managed "Cut!"
My present trouble involves myself and CE. The star of my new pilot "P" for WB and ABC. Everything was going swimmingly for him in his finely tuned performance, one of wit, charm and dexterity until I showed up. He instantly became a five year old, seeing one of the better Punch and Judy shows for the first time with me as the string of sausages.
Oh well, give it time. I am sure we will both find somewhere to look!
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
Seven Letters
My life, at the moment, is ruled by seven letters. They are, alphabetically, B,C,D,I,M(twice) and T. Less cryptically they are TCM and IMDB. I fill much of my down time here in Toronto watching classic movies on the wonderful Turner Classic Movie channel. But it is taking me, on average, three hours to watch a ninety minute film. The reason for this is obvious and is a symptom of that most modern complaint.... information overload. No sooner am I settling into the plot of one of Holywood's Golden Age greats than I recognise an actor from countless other movies and simply have to know his name. The film is paused and IMDBpro opened. The name retrieved I need to remind myself of the other films he has been in and catch a glimpse of a familiar face along the way and start to investigate her. Fifteen minutes later I find myself trying to discover exactly how many kangaroos played Skippy and I have to start the movie over.
Of course this random fact gathering indicates an obsessive behaviour. Which has it's roots, in my case, from having left school early. Train spotters and stamp collectors are all in the same boat. I imagine people who completed their education successfully do not have such grasshoppper minds. My bedside table is littered with half read books on subjects ranging from Cosmology to Evolution, covering such esoterica as Quantum Loop Gravity and Devonian Rock formation.
Stephen Fry once told me that he could tell I had an incomplete education just by the fact that I read such books. Anyone who has gone through a university education would never willingly pick up such stuff again. Of course, my lack of education also makes me prone to a sort of mawkish sentimentality. I can be frequently found, late at night, sobbing uncontrollably, reading IMDB, with TCM on pause, as I discover that the fresh faced beauty smiling at me from "The Public Enemy" or "Bombshell" died at the tragically young age of 26 (Jean Harlow in 1937). Equally tragic will be the discovery that the chirpy young songbird, warbling her way through 'Oh, You Beautiful Doll" was to leave films in 1953, join a convent , then marry Fred MacMurray (June Havers) only to live till the age of 80 and pass away in 2005 before I had a chance to love her talent.
But it isn't all wasted youth and missed opportunity. Occasionally you learn of something wonderful.
Luise Rainer won two Oscars, back to back, 1937 and 1938 before retiring from public life. The second of her Oscars, was for a wonderful film called "The Good Earth" in which she starred with the great Paul Muni. This film was recently restored and will be shown at the TCM film festival in Hollywood this April. The first showing of the picture will be introduced by... Luise Rainer herself. She will be 100 years old.
Of course this random fact gathering indicates an obsessive behaviour. Which has it's roots, in my case, from having left school early. Train spotters and stamp collectors are all in the same boat. I imagine people who completed their education successfully do not have such grasshoppper minds. My bedside table is littered with half read books on subjects ranging from Cosmology to Evolution, covering such esoterica as Quantum Loop Gravity and Devonian Rock formation.
Stephen Fry once told me that he could tell I had an incomplete education just by the fact that I read such books. Anyone who has gone through a university education would never willingly pick up such stuff again. Of course, my lack of education also makes me prone to a sort of mawkish sentimentality. I can be frequently found, late at night, sobbing uncontrollably, reading IMDB, with TCM on pause, as I discover that the fresh faced beauty smiling at me from "The Public Enemy" or "Bombshell" died at the tragically young age of 26 (Jean Harlow in 1937). Equally tragic will be the discovery that the chirpy young songbird, warbling her way through 'Oh, You Beautiful Doll" was to leave films in 1953, join a convent , then marry Fred MacMurray (June Havers) only to live till the age of 80 and pass away in 2005 before I had a chance to love her talent.
But it isn't all wasted youth and missed opportunity. Occasionally you learn of something wonderful.
Luise Rainer won two Oscars, back to back, 1937 and 1938 before retiring from public life. The second of her Oscars, was for a wonderful film called "The Good Earth" in which she starred with the great Paul Muni. This film was recently restored and will be shown at the TCM film festival in Hollywood this April. The first showing of the picture will be introduced by... Luise Rainer herself. She will be 100 years old.
Cold War Memoirs
I won the Order of Lenin. Well nearly. Let me explain. During the eighties, working actors were divided into two camps. Half were in India making lavish films about the Empire, and the other half were wandering around Europe making slightly cheaper TV films and series about the Cold War. I fell into the latter group. Starting with the now forgotten "Enigma" starring Martin Sheen and Sam Neill I soon progressed to starring in a three parter as a retired SAS man sent deep under cover to rescue a Physicist from the East. We shot in Duisberg and Berlin in the summer of '86 and it was here that I suffered one of the hairier moments of an eventful career. Visiting East Berlin as I loved to do during my breaks I was returning via Alexander Platz station when I saw the Trans Siberian Express steaming up to start it's journey to... well Siberia I guess. This famous, exotic train in the impressive architecture of the old Wehrmach era station seemed a photo opportunity too ripe to miss. Sadly I was forgetting the travellers Golden Rule when in hostile territory, that it is unwise to photograph anything you can bomb and within seconds of taking the picture I was hauled off to an interrogation hut by three uniformed Stazi to have the film ripped from my camera and after a nerve-wracking twenty minutes was sent on my way a wiser and slightly more right-wing man. To this day I feel my photo of the Brandenburg Gate could have been an award winner.
Which all reminds me of the highly amusing time that me and my mate Bernard were filming in Israel and hired a Jeep. We got lost in the hills above Eilat and were stopped by a soldier in a shiny silver hat carrying a sub machine gun. He asked us where we thought we were, which seemed a tad patronising until he informed us we had wandered into Egypt without the required stop at border control. Worse still the particular part of Egypt we had wandered into was an Air Force base and off limits even to Egyptians. Luckily he took the broad view and gave us three minutes to turn around the way we had come before he started firing.
But all this is digression. The point I am trying to make is that in 1989 I was offered a role in a TV movie on the life of Stalin. Robert Duvall was to play the eponymous role and I was to bring to life the character of Kirov. He of ballet fame and, in the nineteen twenties, the communist party's blue-eyed pin-up boy till he was shot in the back of the head by one of Stalin's henchmen.
We were due to start filming in August when Boris Yeltsin occupied the Parliament building in Moscow and Michael Gorbachov was under virtual house arrest in his Dachau on the Black Sea. This Coup d'Etat made for a politically volatile situation and filming was postponed.
A year later the dust had settled. The Wall was down and the Evil Empire was no more. Half of equity was soon to be out of work or forced to find jobs in posh films on the Indian subcontinent. It was while I was filming the murder of Kirov in the bowels of the Kremlin that the Russian actor playing my assassin dealt the devastating blow. He commiserated with me on the delay we had suffered starting filming. It seemed that had we made the film the previous year, I, like all actors playing a Hero of the Union would have been brought to the Kremlin in great pomp and awarded the Order of Lenin. I was devastated. I had, in my opinion, been overlooked by London's theatre establishment for years in the gong department and now a cruel twist of fate had robbed me of the Soviet Union's greatest prize.
I returned home numb.
In retrospect I must have banged on a little about this tragedy over the years because finally in 2006 my good friend Beth bought the medal online and gave it to me. It now takes pride of place, by my bed, along with my Cycling Proficiency Certificate (1966) My RADA Gold Medal ('75) my Blue Peter Badge ('07) and a National Socialist Party Member Pin from one of my Nazi films.
So things didn't turn out too badly.
Which all reminds me of the highly amusing time that me and my mate Bernard were filming in Israel and hired a Jeep. We got lost in the hills above Eilat and were stopped by a soldier in a shiny silver hat carrying a sub machine gun. He asked us where we thought we were, which seemed a tad patronising until he informed us we had wandered into Egypt without the required stop at border control. Worse still the particular part of Egypt we had wandered into was an Air Force base and off limits even to Egyptians. Luckily he took the broad view and gave us three minutes to turn around the way we had come before he started firing.
But all this is digression. The point I am trying to make is that in 1989 I was offered a role in a TV movie on the life of Stalin. Robert Duvall was to play the eponymous role and I was to bring to life the character of Kirov. He of ballet fame and, in the nineteen twenties, the communist party's blue-eyed pin-up boy till he was shot in the back of the head by one of Stalin's henchmen.
We were due to start filming in August when Boris Yeltsin occupied the Parliament building in Moscow and Michael Gorbachov was under virtual house arrest in his Dachau on the Black Sea. This Coup d'Etat made for a politically volatile situation and filming was postponed.
A year later the dust had settled. The Wall was down and the Evil Empire was no more. Half of equity was soon to be out of work or forced to find jobs in posh films on the Indian subcontinent. It was while I was filming the murder of Kirov in the bowels of the Kremlin that the Russian actor playing my assassin dealt the devastating blow. He commiserated with me on the delay we had suffered starting filming. It seemed that had we made the film the previous year, I, like all actors playing a Hero of the Union would have been brought to the Kremlin in great pomp and awarded the Order of Lenin. I was devastated. I had, in my opinion, been overlooked by London's theatre establishment for years in the gong department and now a cruel twist of fate had robbed me of the Soviet Union's greatest prize.
I returned home numb.
In retrospect I must have banged on a little about this tragedy over the years because finally in 2006 my good friend Beth bought the medal online and gave it to me. It now takes pride of place, by my bed, along with my Cycling Proficiency Certificate (1966) My RADA Gold Medal ('75) my Blue Peter Badge ('07) and a National Socialist Party Member Pin from one of my Nazi films.
So things didn't turn out too badly.
Monday, 21 March 2011
Closed
I was talking about prime numbers to a friend the other day, in reference to on-line internet security when they put up their hands and said "Not listening. Numbers! They are a turn off!" I have heard this before. And my answer is this. What if the number was 555-647-8931 hastily scrawled on a wrap of cocaine and surreptitiously passed to you under a table by your favourite film star at the Vanity Fair post-Oscar Party? Huh? Right! Not so bloomin' innumerate now are we?
I suppose the point I am driving at is I hate a closed mind. This may be to do with the fact that I suffered from them so much in my youth. Whether it was my parents not allowing me to drink at family gatherings, that hot new director unable to see that I was the ideal choice for his groundbreaking new movie or that dazzling girl at the bar completely resistant to the idea of going home with me, I have been dogged for decades by the intransigence of others.
In the interests of fairness I should mention the exception that proves the rule. For many years I believed there was no such thing as tone deafness. I considered this to be a closure of the mind on behalf of the apparent sufferer brought about by low self esteem and a lack of confidence fostered by a poor musical education. However, exposure to bright, confident young people in the world's karaoke bars who seem unable to be dragged from the mike or to carry the simplest of tunes has taught me that it is indeed an illness which requires major financing by the government to eradicate.
To further this spirit of fairness and honesty I must admit to my own black spots. I am one who, when meeting you for the first time will gladly hear your tales of pets' illness or bizzare dreams and listen attentively, remembering every detail. But tell me your name and my mind shuts down after the first syllable. Thus, on second meeting, a Jonathan can become a Jim, a Beverly can become a Bill and god help a Cuthbert. Experience has taught me a woman is darling and a bloke is mate.
Directions. Same thing. When my SatNav lets me down as it does frequently there is no point pulling over to ask the nearest native how to get to the civic hall. The moment their brow furrows, their eyes look off into the middle distance and their arms raise in helpful semaphore all sound is suppressed under my brains MP3 version of the last five minutes of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.
These exceptions aside a closed mind is life's anathema. Strange I should find my own forgivable but other's... abhorrent. Perhaps I need to open my mind. Nah!!!
I suppose the point I am driving at is I hate a closed mind. This may be to do with the fact that I suffered from them so much in my youth. Whether it was my parents not allowing me to drink at family gatherings, that hot new director unable to see that I was the ideal choice for his groundbreaking new movie or that dazzling girl at the bar completely resistant to the idea of going home with me, I have been dogged for decades by the intransigence of others.
In the interests of fairness I should mention the exception that proves the rule. For many years I believed there was no such thing as tone deafness. I considered this to be a closure of the mind on behalf of the apparent sufferer brought about by low self esteem and a lack of confidence fostered by a poor musical education. However, exposure to bright, confident young people in the world's karaoke bars who seem unable to be dragged from the mike or to carry the simplest of tunes has taught me that it is indeed an illness which requires major financing by the government to eradicate.
To further this spirit of fairness and honesty I must admit to my own black spots. I am one who, when meeting you for the first time will gladly hear your tales of pets' illness or bizzare dreams and listen attentively, remembering every detail. But tell me your name and my mind shuts down after the first syllable. Thus, on second meeting, a Jonathan can become a Jim, a Beverly can become a Bill and god help a Cuthbert. Experience has taught me a woman is darling and a bloke is mate.
Directions. Same thing. When my SatNav lets me down as it does frequently there is no point pulling over to ask the nearest native how to get to the civic hall. The moment their brow furrows, their eyes look off into the middle distance and their arms raise in helpful semaphore all sound is suppressed under my brains MP3 version of the last five minutes of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.
These exceptions aside a closed mind is life's anathema. Strange I should find my own forgivable but other's... abhorrent. Perhaps I need to open my mind. Nah!!!
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