Book Review: Who the Hell's In It: Portraits and Conversations

(Bought at a used bookstore near Hudson, NY for 50 cents): Peter Bogdanovich’s 2004 collection of profiles and interviews of 25 film stars is a total delight. Even at almost 500 pages, it’s a fun, fast read. The author has worked with most of the subjects as a director (Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazzara, Sidney Poitier), or had long, admiring friendships with them (Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart). He analyzes their style and appeal with precision and objectivity, though he goes a bit overboard on Jerry Lewis, devoting 70 pages to the manic comic director-producer-writer-clown. Lewis was never one of my favorite, but Bogdanovich’s profile offers explanations of his juvenile appeal and surprising masterful technical mastery behind the camera. Many of the pieces had appeared in journals and there is some overlap in stories. Several include the tantalizing prospect of a Western to be directed by Bogdanovich, written by Larry McMurtry and starring John Wayne, Stewart and Henry Fonda. When the project failed to materialize, McMurtry turned his screenplay into the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove and continued with many prequels and sequels.   

I most enjoyed the snapshots of the stars at work. An on-set visit to Jack Lemmon during the filming of Billy Wilder’s Irma La Douce was my favorite for its intimate capturing of the actor’s day-to-day life. I just viewed Bogdanovich’s first film Targets and his portrait of its star Boris Karloff takes us into the changes in Los Angeles, the movies and the actor’s checkered career. The recent death of Gena Rowlands gave the chapter on her husband John Cassavetes an added melancholy and a strong desire to rewatch their quirky, intense films.

The volume is bracketed with portraits of two screen goddesses of different eras and influences whom the author briefly encountered in real life: Lillian Gish and Marilyn Monroe. Gish was the first movie incarnation of innocence and Monroe the last avatar of sexiness in the Hollywood studio system. Both chapters give us the director’s insights into what the movies give us and how its stars filled our dreams.

Like his hero Orson Welles, Bogdanovich never quite recaptured the stunning success of his first feature (The Last Picture Show, one of my favorite movies), but this book imparts his lifelong love of cinema and its stars. 

Note: The American edition is subtitled Conversations with Hollywood's Legendary Stars. I bought the British edition which is subtitled simply Portraits and Conversations. Instead of William Holden and Audrey Hepburn on the cover, mine has Marilyn Monroe in the Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend number from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Binging on John Ford: Part 4

The fifth season of TCM's The Plot Thickens podcast focuses on Ford and I recently finished the last episode. The series exposed more details about the complex father figure. A beloved bully. A raging alcoholic who often drank to avoid dealing with his problems. (In later-life interviews, he would slur his words.) He would often chew on a handkerchief on set like a baby with a security blanket. His infamous fist fight with Henry Fonda on Mr. Roberts came about through a lack of communication. Fonda had played Mr. Roberts on Broadway for over a year and knew where the laughs were. Ford was racing through the dialogue and Fonda felt the audience would cover too much of the words with laughter. (If you notice several film versions of hit stage comedies have long pauses to allow for moviegoers' giggling reaction. Auntie Mame comes to mind.) Fonda grumbled between takes. Ford called him to his office and asked if his star had any complaints. The actor began by praising Ford and telling him how he was perfect for this picture due to his Navy experience, but the star objected to racing the dialogue. As soon as Fonda began stating his objections, Ford sucker punched him, knocking a surprised Fonda to the floor. Ford evidently could not handle an actor challenging his absolute authority and rather than discuss the situation calmly, he resorted to violence. 

After that, Ford did apologize but was soon replaced by Mervyn LeRoy, allegedly for health reasons. (Ford did have a gall bladder operation and showed his incision to Betsy Palmer.) The close relationship between the director and the actor, who worked together on Young Mr. Lincoln, Drums Along the Mohawk and The Grapes of Wrath, was shattered. They were also pals off-screen, Fonda being a frequent guest on Ford's yacht. The two did not speak for decades, but did reconnect towards the end of Ford's life. There are different versions of the background of this incident. Ben Mankiewicz of TCM points out on The Plot Thickens that Fonda fought to have Ford helm Roberts, while Peter Bogdanovich in Who the Hell's In It says Ford equally insisted Fonda repeat his Broadway role when the studio didn't want him. 

To continue with viewing Ford's oeuvre, I found a DVD collection of five Ford films for Columbia Studios on Ebay for $20 and several of his works are on YouTube in their entirety. 

The Iron Horse (1924, YouTube): The silent film that put Ford on the map and established many of the repeated tropes of the Western genre--the cattle drive, the Indian attack, the cavalry to the rescue, even Abe Lincoln makes an appearance. The visuals are exciting and transcend the script's melodrama. 

Three Bad Men (1926, YouTube): Another silent work dripping with sentiment, but brilliantly paced so that you fall for the obvious manipulations despite yourself. A trio of desperadoes are transformed into guardian angels by the charms of a young girl whose father is killed in an attempted robbery. The Iron Horse focused on the building of the transcontinental railroad, here the centerpiece is the Dakota Gold Rush. The highlight is the mad dash of settlers racing to stake a claim. Hundreds of extras, horses and covered wagons recreate the mayhem of gold-lust. In one famous shot, a baby is right in the path of a frenzied frontier mob about to be run over, only to be snatched to safety in the nick of time by a stunt rider. Ford placed an actual infant in harm's way in order to get this breathtaking shot. This shows you where his priorities lay, with the picture, not with safety. 

Theatergoing Memories, Part 2: National Tours

Now that we've discussed summer stock, how about national tours? Here are the ones I remember seeing as a kid in Philly (at the Forrest or Locust Street Theaters) and as a college student in Pittsburgh:

Jane Alexander and Henry Fonda
in William Saroyan's 
The Time of Your Life

Sleuth with Michael Allinson; Jean Simmons, Margaret Hamilton and George Lee Andrews in A Little Night Music; Dawn Welles from Gilligan's Island in Chapter Two; Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn in The Gin Game, Krapp's Last Tape and Not I (Samuel Beckett one-acts) and The Many Faces of Love, their two-person program of readings from poems, stories and plays incl. Tandy recreating her original Blanche DuBois; Hair with future rock star Meat Loaf in the ensemble; a production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown at the Theater of Living Arts on South Street before it was gentrified; Forrest Tucker and George Dzunda in That Championship Season; The Time of Your Life by William Saroyan with Henry Fonda, Jane Alexander, Gloria Graham, Strother Martin, a young Richard Dreyfuss and Lewis J. Stadlen.

More: for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf (can't remember cast); The Elephant Man (can't remember cast); Twigs with Sada Thompson repeating her Tony-winning performance as three disparate sisters and their crotchey old mother, Daniel J. Travanti (long before Hill Street Blues) and Oscar nominee Joe Mantell (Marty); Good Evening, a very funny two-man revue written by and starring Dudley Moore and Peter Cooke (I recall a hysterical sketch satirizing the life of Jesus long before Monty Python's Life of Brian and the classic bit about a one-legged man auditioning for the role of Tarzan); Barbara Rush (I think) and Tom Troupe in Same Time, Next Year; Equus with Douglas Campbell; Julie Harris in The Belle of Amherst; Children of a Lesser God; Lily Tomlin in her first solo show, Appearing Nitely; Dame Judith Anderson in a program of readings incl. an excerpt from Medea where she played all the characters.

Sada Thompson in Twigs