Today I pause to remember one of my all-time favorite performers, an incredible actor who died thirty-four years ago yesterday, August 30, 1973.  Michael Dunn was not only an amazing actor, but he was a certified genius (his IQ hovered around 180), a talented singer, a writer, a sculptor, and so many more things.  It was a terrible loss to the entertainment world when he died at the age of only 39, the victim of the overwhelming physical stresses and illnesses resulting from Spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia, the condition that led to his dwarfism.

Born in Michigan to parents who doted on their brilliant, charming but severely physically challenged son, Michael Dunn – real name Gary Miller – was encouraged by his family to do anything that anyone else might do, and he went well beyond that.  He graduated high school early, entered college, excelled, and went to New York to begin a career as an actor.  His biggest success there was his acclaimed run in Edward Albee’s Ballad of the Sad Café, for which he received a Tony Nomination as Best Actor. 

It was in New York that he also began a career as a professional singer, teaming up with actress/singer Phoebe Dorin in a duo act that was hatched from impromptu performances held outdoors on the street, and graduated into a series of smash performances in hip nightclubs that were the talk of the town.  He was also profiled in Life Magazine around this time, in a piece with photographs by Roddy McDowall, who was an early fan of Dunn and Dorin and encouraged their act. 

After some TV guest star roles, Michael achieved big screen fame with his role in director Stanley Kramer’s 1965 film of Katherine Anne Porter’s novel Ship of Fools.  His role is key: Carl Glocken, the narrator/Greek Chorus of the film who sets the stage for the journey of a diverse group of passengers on their way to Germany just before Hitler’s rise to power.  Michael Dunn’s delightful, sly and intelligent portrayal earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor (though he lost to Martin Balsam).

That same year Dunn would begin a recurring role on TV that would ensure his entertainment immortality.  CBS’ new western-era spy adventure series The Wild Wild West brought him in to play arch villain Dr. Miguelito Loveless, surely one of television’s most memorable characters of all time, brought to brilliant life by Dunn.  In nine appearances over the series’ four year run, Michael Dunn fashioned a lovable bad guy, an eccentric genius with a vendetta against humanity, a hilarious wicked laugh, a grudging respect for Agent James West and a soft side that came out when he sang duets with his frequent co-star Phoebe Dorin, his real-life NYC singing partner.  Michael Dunn is synonymous with The Wild Wild West, and with the series now out on DVD, his brilliant episodes — universally considered the best of the series – are easily viewed and appreciated. 

As if appearing in one classic TV series wasn’t enough, he’s also in the TV Hall of Fame for his charming performance on a fairly bizarre third season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series.  Dunn rises far, far above the material and delivers a heartfelt and moving performance as Alexander, the put-upon servant of psychokinetically-enhanced bullies who get their eventual comeuppance thanks to Captain Kirk.  He also made memorable appearances on Bonanza (a particularly sweet performance which was virtually duplicated when Michael Landon was later making Little House on the Prairie, only this time starring Billy Barty) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea as a mad murderous clown.  He also appeared in the pilot episode of another TV classic, Get Smart. 

Clearly Dunn’s physical reality limited the choice of roles he was given, but there was no doubt that he could have done anything, had he been given the chance.  Unfortunately, his early death robbed us of so many brilliant roles we would never get to see him play.  We are lucky, though, that many of Michael Dunn’s most fascinating performances are available for us to enjoy today, and I highly recommend that you seek out his movies and especially his episodes of The Wild Wild West.  We have been too long without him, and yet, he really isn’t gone at all. 

“They say that every man has his star, that a guy should find his star out there. Unless he doesn’t have one… which is maybe the case with me. If what they’re sayin’ is right, then guys could just follow their stars. But not me, ‘cuz I don’t have one.”

From Pocket Money

In 1972, Lee Marvin had been active in film and television for over twenty years. The WWII veteran was an Oscar^®, Golden Globe and Silver Berlin Bear winner (for Cat Ballou) and a two-time recipient of the tony British Academy of Film and Television Award (for The Killers and Cat Ballou). He had produced and starred in his own television series (M-Squad for NBC) and had since 1965 been granted name-above-the-title status. In the years following his Oscar win, Marvin pounded out signature performances in The Professionals (1966), Point Blank (1967) and The Dirty Dozen (1968). Late life success had given him the cachet to pick more offbeat projects, from John Boorman’s rugged two-hander Hell in the Pacific (1968) with Toshiro Mifune to William Fraker’s revisionist western Monte Walsh (1970). Ever his own man, Marvin had turned down a role in The Wild Bunch (1969) to sing and dance as the star of Joshua Logan’s Paint Your Wagon (1969). In February of 1972, Lee Marvin turned 48. He had a dozen more feature films ahead of him and fifteen years to live.

Lee Marvin’s name appeared twice on movie marquees in 1972. Both films were produced for and distributed by National General Pictures, an independent outfit acquired by Warner Brothers. NGP snuck Pocket Money out in February, typically a time of year in which studios dump their most unpromising product. Costarring Paul Newman and directed by Newman associate Stuart Rosenberg, Pocket Money followed a pair of lovable losers as they try to make a buck in the cattle business. John Gay’s adaptation opened up the novel by Tucson-based wrangler turned wordsmith J.P.S. Brown to make the property a buddy picture. (Even with this tailoring, Marvin doesn’t make his appearance for over 20 minutes.) Terence Malick’s shooting script is rich in comically meandering dialogue that fell flat on 1972 ears but plays better post-Jarmush, post-Coen Brothers. Two character studies for the price of one, Pocket Money evinces a negative capability bordering on Heideggerian gelassenheit, with its laconic antiheroes showing, for all their frustrations and failures, a core faith allowing uncertainty to remain uncertain. The film stops rather than ends, leaving Newman and Marvin as holy fools in a Waiting for Godot limbo. Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert called Pocket Money “all style, no movie” and nobody showed. The film’s poor reputation has followed it to DVD, where one critic branded it “the weak link” of Warner Home Video’s Paul Newman Collection. Another Internet wag evaluating the box set went on to declare that, although Pocket Money was the only Lee Marvin film he had seen, The Dirty Dozen was the "only film he's been in that still seems to be relevant.” Kid, you just had to be there.

"You haven't changed a bit, Nick."
"Nobody does. Not where it counts."

from Prime Cut

In June of 1972, NGP (in conjunction with Cinema Center Films) released Michael Ritchie’s Prime Cut, a bizarre take on the gangster genre that manages to be highly stylish and pared down to comic book efficiency. Barely feature length, the film follows Marvin’s Chicago enforcer Nick Devlin to Kansas to collect a fortune in skimmed profits from renegade wheeler/white slaver Gene Hackman. Playing former good friends who let a bad woman (Angel Tompkins) between them, Marvin and Hackman share a couple of strong scenes with ripe, quotable dialogue courtesy of Robert Dillon (who went from this to the Hackman starrer French Connection II) yet the bulk of Prime Cut is taken up with a string of improbable and mostly wordless setpieces that play by their own lunatic logic: a dead Mafiosi being reduced to sausages, a cattle auction of drugged, naked runaways (one of them Sissy Spacek), Marvin and Spacek scrambling to avoid a predatory wheat thresher, said reaper’s consummation of a Cadillac and Marvin piloting a big rig through a greenhouse as long as a football field as he makes a beeline to skin Hackman’s hide.

While the hopeless hardcases of Pocket Money were perpetually on the outside looking in, Prime Cut is a story of insiders, with Devlin realizing his world is dead and that life is only possible off the grid, in the arms of Spacek’s winsome naïf. (Director Ritchie and titles designer Don Record suggest that all the world’s a slaughterhouse as early as the title sequence, in which the principal players have their names neatly bisected.) While Hackman’s progressive, civic-minded gangster seems to be the face of the future of organized crime, his world is in-bred (Plan 9 from Outer Space star Gregory Walcott is a hoot as Hackman’s meathead brother Weenie) and cannibalistic to boot, paving the way for the horrors of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) two years later. While characters throughout mourn the passing of the good old days, Prime Cut ends on an unexpected hopeful note, as Marvin rides into Missouri to free the virginal inhabitants of the “orphanage” where Spacek was kept in captivity and prepped to feed a world hungry for flesh and dope. Critics and audiences were once again left scratching their heads. Prime Cut was both squarely of its time and ahead of its time, leaving us with the paradox that, while present day audiences are more comfortable with its sense of the absurd, no present day studio chief would dare release it.

“I only make movies to finance my fishing.” Lee Marvin

Post-1972, one senses that Marvin had a notion that things were all downhill from where he stood. To play Eugene O'Neill's periodical drunk antihero in John Frankenheimer’s adaptation of The Iceman Cometh (1973), Marvin no doubt took a considerable pay cut, the price of prestige. And the curse of Paint Your Wagon old coot roles even though he was not yet 50. He was a wily old hobo in Emperor of the North Pole (1973) and an aging outlaw in The Spikes Gang (1974), leading a an outfit of kids as his Man Who Shot Liberty Valance costar John Wayne had done in The Cowboys two years earlier. Marvin sat out the rest of the decade in bum assignments, from the astonishingly wrongheaded The Klansman (1974) and the Cat Ballouesque comedy The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday (1976) to the all-star, no-stars espionage bomb Avalanche Express (1979). Like a condemned man waiting for the axe to fall, Marvin's best work was when he was the most distracted.  In the triptych of The Big Red One (1980), Death Hunt (1981) and Gorky Park (1984), the old Marvin magic shone through but after that it was all glum paychecks, just fishing money. Yves Boisset’s Canicule (US: Dog Day, 1984) references Prime Cut’s wheat field scene in its opening frames, with Marvin an American bank robber on the run in rural France. The opening does have a startling visual quality but Marvin spends too much of the flick hiding in a barn. The made for television The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission (1985) was a pointless sequel and Menahem Golan’s The Delta Force (1986) pushed Marvin aside to make room for action star Chuck Norris. With the Norris the shape of the new American hero, there was no place at the table for Lee Marvin. He died the next year, on August 29, 1987, twenty years ago today.

Welcome to the 1st official Lee Marvin Blog-a-Thon, which commemorates the 20th anniversary of the great actor's death, on August 29, 1987. I'll be adding to this list as the day goes on, but so far we have a couple of blogs and links for you to check out.

First up:

Over at Radiator Heaven , JD examines Lee's iconic performance in The Killers (1964).

At Johnny La Rue's Crane Shot , Marty McKee looks back at the WWII veteran's guest work on the TV series Combat! and in a now obscure sequel to one of his greatest hits, The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission (1985).

Elsewhere on this blog, I've written about the two movies Marvin made in 1972, Pocket Money and Prime Cut.

At Film Forno, Joe D'Augustine writes about Marvin butting heads with a highly fetishized Marlon Brando in The Wild One and holding his own as a "crazy macho crown prince of anarchy."

Over at Clarkblog, Clarkman joins thoughts on the birthday of the late comic book genius Jack Kirby with his own impressions of Lee Marvin as a Kirby character come to life.  Great pictures as well of a 2002 screening of Point Blank at the Hollywood Forever cemetery.

Over at the United Kingdom's Mondo Esoterico, the Lee Marvin Blog-a-Thon not only rates a cool logo but there are thoughts on Robert Aldrich's  underrated Emperor of the North Pole as well.

At Arbogast on Film, a personal take on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

Cineaste associate editor Robert Cashill weighs in on the relative Marvin rarities Dog Day and The Spikes Gang over to his own blog, Between Productions.

And drop by Cinebeats.  If "Lee Marvin: A Sensitive 17 Year Old Boy" doesn't grab you, brother you're already dead.

Not part of this blog-a-thon but essential reading nonetheless are Brynn White's notes for a Lee Marvin retrospective screened this past spring at New York City's Walter Reade Theater.

Also from this past May, Simon Crowe plugs Point Blank at Mostly Movies.

Going back a bit further, The Melbourne Cinematheque down in Australia recently ran a retrospective they called Wandering Star: The Films of Lee Marvin.  As I helped myself to a few of their visuals, I can't not credit them with a belated plug.

Over at the Network and Premium Television page of the Mobius Home Video Forum , blogless Bill Picard has posted links to YouTube and a 1952 episode of Dragnet with an amazing performance by Lee Marvin.

Lots more to come, so stay tuned. Late links are always welcome!

It’s almost time to make my annual pilgrimage to the Telluride Film Festival. I’ve attended it every year, religiously, since 1995. Sure, there have been changes. The mountain area has certainly seen a shocking amount of growth and sprawl. Big money continues to alter the landscape and overall vibe. It’s expensive, and gets more expensive with each passing year. But despite these drawbacks it still sucks me back. I love the mountains, the box canyon, the crisp fall air, and (of course) the films. And I’m always impressed with the care and presentation with which the films are both selected and presented. When they did a Cinerama show they actually built a screen to Cinerama specs that mimicked the eyes curvature and had three interlaced projectors ready to go. They also had the film loop that was used on one projector in case of technical difficulties – and it was used for real, not just for show! Last year they lugged in 70mm projectors to show Jacques Tati’s Play Time (1967). And one of my all-time favorite highlights was a special show dedicated to the various 3-D formats (also including 70mm projection) – it blew my socks off.

Getting back to the subject of economics, I feel obliged to add that I appreciate the fact that even my friends who can’t afford a pass can still see free movies in the park at night and that the festival organizers do find creative options for people on a budget who can’t afford a film pass but really want to see some of the cinematic gems that are brought in, be it affordable late show tickets or the dedicated ACME pass. It’d be a shame to limit the offerings to only the affluent or well-connected, for at the core of the Telluride Film Festival is a careful selection of hand-picked films that honor both the past and the present that deserve to be seen by all.

As I approach my 12th Telluride experience and reflect on my favorite film experiences it strikes me how many of those highlights were in black-and-white. Although I’d already seen Dziga Vertov’s The Man with the Movie Camera (1929) several times on 16mm, it was at the 1995 Telluride Film Festival that it really came to life for me. The Alloy Orchestra was there to perform alongside it with a dynamic score, and its driving visual rhythm and self-reflexive genius was enhanced on 35mm. In 1997 I was completely captivated by Richard Fleischer’s The Narrow Margin (1952). In 1998 Telluride had a steady stream of classics: Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958), Erich von Stroheim’s The Wedding March (1928), Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), Paul Lemi’s The Man Who Laughs (1928), Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter (1955), and Joseph Losey’s M (1951) – I was very sad not to be able to see them all on the big screen and in 35mm. In 1999 they brought Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) and a historic restoration of Greed (1924). In 2000 it was F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). In 2001 they brought Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965), and so the list grows and goes from there.

I remember a fun book I read many years ago called Horror Writers on Horror Film: Cut!, edited by Christopher Golden. One of the excerpts (chapter 10) was written by Charles L. Grant and was titled Black-and-White, in Color. Therein Grant makes the argument that “color often robs a scene of intended drama simply by being there.” Later adding: “Without color, the eye, and the emotions, are drawn to the person. To the lines in the face, to the eyes, to the feature often concealed, or camouflaged, by makeup and the set of the head or the lips.” Grant’s bottom line keeps coming back to the idea that there is “More strength (and thus potent emotion) in suggestion than in depiction; there is a difference between being scared and being shocked or repulsed; and there is a vast difference in the reaction of the mind to images bright and colorful, and to images where color must be supplied.” He then goes on to discuss The Leopard Man (1943) and Cat People (1942) – exemplary films, both, in use of light and shadow – and many other titles. He also, intriguingly, discusses the idea of “films that have managed to approach a black-and-white sensibility without actually using it.”

This last conceit I mention by Grant, the notion that some color films can work on the same powerful and suggestive level normally reserved for the black and white film, is not a cheap loophole. In the way that a walk in your own neighborhood during a full moon reveals an alternate landscape that seems familiar but somehow more dream-like, which is a crowning attribute to most black-and-white films, there are some color films that take you to that same almost meditative state. And in my book a prime example would be Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai (1967) – my favorite film of the 1996 Telluride Film Festival.

Now that TCM’s inaugural Funday Night at the Movies series has come to a close, I think a review of this summer’s choices – and some suggestions for next year (if the channel chooses to continue it) – is in order.

This summer’s baker’s dozen consisted of:

• The Wizard of Oz (1939) – an essential for kids of all ages, no doubt
• Bringing Up Baby (1938) – somewhat appropriate because of all its zany behavior, and it does introduce two screen legends – Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant – to the youngsters, but it’s not altogether a great choice for this series IMO; screwball comedies are hit or miss with kids
• Sounder (1972) – Even though I remember watching this coming-of-age story as an eleven year old when it first came out, I think I got more out of it as an adult when I saw it again many years later.
• Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) – a fan favorite to be sure (I lost count of how many of the TCM GP contest entrants mentioned this as one of their programming choices), but I can’t help thinking that A&B’s humor is rather dated for today’s more "sophisticated" set
• Oliver! (1968) – I love this movie and think musicals are one of the best ways to introduce classic movies to children, but this one is a little bit long and dull in spots.
• Little Women (1949) – believe it or not, I think the 1933 B&W version with Katharine Hepburn (shouting "Christopher Columbus!") is better, though TCM probably chose this one because of its Technicolor.
• Treasure Island (1934) – a terrific choice, and if the channel has the rights to Walt Disney’s 1950 version (originally released by RKO), perhaps they could show it next summer instead
• The Pride of the Yankees (1942) – I really don’t think this was a very good choice for the series giving the plethora of other classics in the library; it’s a "boys only" story that’s a bit overlong.
• Singin’ in the Rain (1952) – an outstanding choice which should probably be repeated annually
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) – again, a great story, but it’s probably too long (and dull in places) for many, and it’s better suited for older kids
• Shane (1953) – good choice, though some parents may object to the violence in it (and most other Western classics, for that matter)
• The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) – yes, a classic that my kids will watch again and again
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) – the only Disney movie that made this summer’s series, and it’s a good (though not great) one

Each of the above films was introduced by SpongeBob’s Tom Kenny who, though his love for classic movies is genuine (per his night as Guest Programmer on July 12, 2005 when he chose, among others, Mad Love (1935) & He Who Gets Slapped (1924)), may have suffered because of the format the channel used. As host, he played a character that was ostensibly a classic movie paraphernalia dealer, and a bunch of neighborhood kids (who were obviously not trained actors) would arrive to discuss the movie with him during his intros and outgoes. The banter written for them was less than ideal – it didn’t seem to come from classic movie fans that actually had kids – and was even off-putting at times (in a different way than Ben’s sarcasm can offend). But hey, at least he wasn’t recommending Bergman movies like Fanny and Alexander (1982) to children like Mia Farrow inexplicably did during her GP spot in June, 2006!

TCM can do better, both in the presentation of these chosen classics for kids and in its selection of films (though admittedly the latter of these is difficult given the range in ages of its audience). Firstly, as a father of two, let me suggest some other choices for next summer’s Funday Night at the Movies series, which I think is a good idea that should continue (albeit with a slightly better execution). We’ve had a family movie night in our home for nearly 10 years now, and each of these has entertained (sometimes even educated) our children:

• I Remember Mama (1948) – Told through a series of vignettes, the film's story covers various hardships encountered by a family (led by Irene Dunne, in the title role) – financial struggles to afford schooling for the oldest son, the loss of a pet, an accident that puts one of the children in the hospital, the "coming of age" of a daughter – and how their love and teamwork help them to deal with these events. All the while, optimistic Mama and Papa impart some timeless values of unconditional love, hope and perseverance which contribute to making this movie an essential family classic, one that's very much worth the 134 minute time investment it takes to view it.
• Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) – this delightful musical comedy drama (set during the time leading up to the 1904 World’s Fair) can be enjoyed by the whole family; its story covers all the seasons, but especially the Halloween and Christmas holidays. Its wonderful cast is led by Judy Garland, making it a perfect bookend to The Wizard of Oz (1939). Two similar movies which TCM could show: On Moonlight Bay (1951) and its sequel By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953), both featuring Doris Day.
• Scaramouche (1952) – another must-see swashbuckling adventure that features (what was) the longest sword fight in the history of cinema; colorful, funny, and vastly entertaining with an intricate storyline that probably influenced George Lucas (per the first Star Wars movie; much of its plot is so similar). If your children don’t object to B&W movies, I’d also highly recommend The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) with Ronald Coleman; the 1952 version starring Scaramouche’s Stewart Granger is O.K. too.
• My Fair Lady (1964) – this Academy Award winning musical is one of my kids’ favorites, per the number of times they request it for movie night, because of its many great songs, beautiful presentation, and funny moments.
• The Secret Garden (1949) – a classic story that’s been remade so many times I’ve lost count and here is the best original sound version in the channel’s library (waiting to be shown). Featuring MGM’s Margaret O’Brien, Herbert Marshall and a young Dean Stockwell (among many others), this heartwarming tearjerker is appropriate for all ages.
• Roman Holiday (1953) – another Audrey Hepburn Cinderella-like story worth seeing, especially suitable for preteen and older girls
• The Court Jester (1955) – one of Danny Kaye’s most endearing performances and, as a bonus, it features Robin Hood’s villain Basil Rathbone
• The Mark of Zorro (1940), Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), National Velvet (1944), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) & The Yearling (1946) round out my top picks

Some of my other suggestions include: a couple starring Spencer Tracy – Captains Courageous (1937) & Boys Town (1938) – a different Frank Capra comedy – Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) – the Oscar winning Best Picture – The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) – an Alfred Hitchcock thriller – North By Northwest (1959) – another comedy, also starring Cary Grant – Father Goose (1964) – and two message pictures – These Three (1936) and (for teens and older) To Kill a Mockingbird (1962); my kids liked The Miracle Worker (1962) too. Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945) is good, and so is Sinbad the Sailor (1947) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Whether your kids would be interested in Fred and Ginger musicals like Top Hat (1935) & Swing Time (1936) or Charlie Chaplin (or Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton) silents, I don’t know. Tracy’s Edison, The Man (1940) is also excellent historical fiction, but younger children would probably be bored, and Oklahoma! (1955), Damn Yankees! (1958), The King and I (1956), & State Fair (1945) are some other pretty good musical choices. I know that Disney’s animated classics and others like Mary Poppins (1964), Miracle on 34th Street (1947) & The Sound of Music (1965) aren’t in TCM’s library, but they’re great family programming at any time.

And if Tom Kenny’s not available next summer, I’d be happy to host the series;-)

Though it’s wonderful to get a day of Kirk Douglas on TCM – any Kirk Douglas – I wished the selection could have included one of my possibly inexcusable and inexplicable favorites, 1960’s Strangers When We Meet, directed by Richard Quine and co-starring the luscious Kim Novak.  A steamy adult tale of suburban love, lust, guilt and everything in between, Strangers features Kirk as a married-with-children architect who falls hard for sexually frustrated and emotionally fragile Kim Novak as a housewife with an unappreciative and carnally-repressed husband.  Truly, if two people, circa 1960, are going to fall in love on screen, I can hardly think of a more perfectly emblematic couple than Kim and Kirk.

Based on novelist Evan Hunter’s 1958 novel, and of course with the book’s frank depictions of sexuality toned down for the screen, Strangers When We Meet nevertheless manages to capture the heat of a forbidden love affair between these two extremely attractive individuals.  In addition to the sheer physical charisma of the Kim as Maggie, and Kirk as Larry, the movie also establishes a warm friendship and camaraderie between the two, naturally in contrast to the colder and definitely less exciting lives they lead with their respective spouses, played by John Bryant and Barbara Rush.  Kim’s husband is just a cold fish, but Barbara Rush as Eve, Larry’s wife, is a well-rounded character whose marriage is going on the rocks through no fault of her own, really, just a victim of the monotonous drone of mid-20th Century monogamy as practiced in the United States. 

Also along for the ride is Walter Matthau, in the days before he was a big star, playing Larry’s neighbor Felix, a smarmy neighborhood lothario with a dirty mind and a wife, played by Helen Gallagher (Maeve from the famous old ABC soap Ryan’s Hope), without a clue about her husband’s nasty nature.  More amusing and utterly delightful is the egotistical but likable and humane best-selling novelist, played by the brilliant comedian/actor Ernie Kovacs, for whom Kirk designs a spectacular hillside house.  (This house, which was specifically built in swanky Bel Air, California, for the movie — and was later purchased by director Quine as a love pad for himself and his inamorata Miss Novak — was given an extensive renovation/makeover [look under Projects, Wolf Residence) a couple of years ago for its current owner.)   Kim’s mother in the movie is played by veteran actress Virginia Bruce, who was once married to silent screen idol John Gilbert.

I’d also mention as a big plus the lush score by frequent and fantastic Columbia Studios composer George Duning.  Anyway, Strangers When We Meet is the Kirk Douglas movie I wish I could have seen yesterday.  TCM ran the title a year or so ago in a tribute to movies about architects (but evidently not in letterbox!), and let’s hope we get to see it again someday (the right way).  It is available, at least, on DVD, and I highly recommend it to folks looking for a poignant souvenir of days and mores gone by, set in a bright and fascinating Los Angeles.  I know that I also particularly love the movie for this look, as I was six years old when this movie came out, and the suburban L.A. I grew up in was the one depicted here.  In fact, though I certainly can’t prove it, I have always thought that the scene with the kiddie carnival might have been filmed close by where I lived.  Can’t prove it – though I’m sure somebody could – but that area and the Von’s looks awfully familiar.  Maybe I’m dreaming, but it’s a good dream! 

I don’t know why I feel the need to defend older movies from those who don’t appreciate them, but I do. Even though I may not have liked the specific movie mentioned very much myself, I’ll still get upset if I hear or read some ignoramus – whose idea of a great movie is, for example, Napoleon Dynamite – say or write something bad about it. Most classic film fans are used to hearing contemporary moviegoers generalize by saying that they hate black-and-white movies (or silent films); some of us even take this personally. It’s not that I can’t stand negativity (O.K., maybe it is), but if someone is going to tell me that they didn’t like a particular movie, I think that they should be able to articulate their reasons why they feel that way (versus simply stating that it sucks), that is if they want anyone (like me) to respect their opinion.

Of course, some people never have anything positive to say regardless of the topic at hand, but it can take a while to figure that out; then, avoidance can be the most prudent course of action. On most Internet message boards, it doesn’t usually take very long to identify those individuals that are just trolling for shocked reactions and responses of outrage to their derogatory proclamations concerning the subject matter. Having participated in several different on-line communities with diverse sets of topics (e.g. not just movies) over more than twenty years, I know that disruptive individuals are a fact of life in such discussion groups. When I was younger, I used to take the bait and respond to anyone who wrote something negative about anything with which I had a personal connection. As I’ve grown older (and hopefully wiser), I’ve learned to engage newbies less frequently, and debate only those whom I respect.

Still, I’ve come to regard classic movies with a certain kinship; after a while, the films and their actors begin to feel like old friends to me such that any failure on my part to come to their defense feels disloyal. I have the ability to sit down a watch an old black-and-white movie with one of my favorite actors and choose to be entertained, whether the plot is any good or not. I’ll even allow myself to be manipulated by the story’s sentimentality (or film score). Recognizing the particular film’s limitations, I can chill and enjoy it. Later, I can be critical about it in my review (or synopsis) without stomping on anyone’s love for it. Sure, there are times when I’m in a particularly foul mood – usually completely unrelated to the movie at hand – such that my memory of a specific movie may be clouded with those disassociated thoughts, and my review may therefore be uncharacteristically harsh, but hopefully those times have been infrequent.

As I’ve stated before in my first official blog entry last October, my approach to this art-form is an open, honest, and straightforward one with more of an historian’s view than a critical one … I strive to find something good to say about almost any film and tend to accentuate the positive vs. the negative. For example, recently I found myself defending one of Alfred Hitchcock’s lesser efforts, Under Capricorn (1949), because I’ve always thought Margaret Leighton’s villainous performance rivals Leopoldine Konstantin’s in Notorious (1946), and even Judith Anderson’s Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (1940). It’s a shame that the director didn’t give us more female characters like these in his films (I think Grace Kelly is to blame for starting his obsession with flawed blonde ice queens such that he never revisited truly evil women again). Likewise, when this respected friend wrote that Call Northside 777 (1948) as awful, I acknowledged that it is indeed dated, but that a lot of earlier crime dramas, especially the documentary style ones, are difficult to appreciate out of the context of their times because the methods used to solve the mysteries are taken for granted today. However, in their day, fingerprints and photo analysis were just as compelling as today’s cutting edge forensic techniques are now (per many of the top rated TV shows).

I know loyalty is a lost art, kind of like using turn signals, but insult my "friends" at your peril;-)

Sometimes a film comes along that no marketing department can get a handle on and as a result it just gets tossed out there to fend for itself and to find an audience on its own. That was the case with DEEP END, released in 1971 by Paramount Pictures to selected art houses and whatever theatre chain was willing to book it. I saw it at the Westhampton Theatre in Richmond, Va. which was obviously run by an Anglophile – you could almost count on any new British film to play there. Of course, DEEP END is only British on the surface. It was set in London but the majority of the film was shot in West Germany. It was also the second English language film for Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski and the cast was relatively unknown to American moviegoers with the possible exceptions of former English sex bomb Diana Dors and Jane Asher, whose main claim to fame at that point was having the dubious distinction of being Paul McCartney’s ex-girlfriend…despite her accomplished work in such films as MANDY (1952, as a child star), THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964) and ALFIE (1966).

The tagline for the poster reads “If you can’t have the real thing – you do all kinds of unreal things” over an image of a teenage schoolboy ensnared in the long flowing hair of a red-headed woman. In some ways, the publicists weren’t too far off the mark but this approach couldn’t begin to convey the quirky and inspired movie hiding behind the poster. On the surface, it looked like another coming-of-age film and it did play off some of the clichés of that well-worn genre. But it’s much trickier…and deeper…and darker. And also unexpectedly funny.

Set in a seedy bathhouse in a working class borough of London, the film introduces us to a fifteen year old boy named Mike on his first day at work there as an attendant to the clients. Showing him the ropes of the trade is Susan, a provocative and sexy 23-year-old employee who has a fiancé…and is also having an affair with Mike’s former gym teacher. In this strangely cloistered and private environment Mike’s fantasy life runs wild, obviously encouraged by his observation of some of the regular clients, especially an overweight blonde with a football fetish (Diana Dors in one of the film’s more bizarre sequences).

At first the film maintains a wonderful balance between reality and surrealism but as Mike’s sexual obsession with Susan begins to grow the sense of real and unreal become entwined until you can’t tell the dancers from the dance. Skolimowski switches emotional gears often and seamlessly from hilarity to angst to tenderness to tragedy without losing credibility or momentum. And it’s this very quality that divided the critics when it first premiered in the U.S. The ending, in particular, disturbed and angered many but if you are paying attention the road signs are there marking the way. It is not, after all, a coming-of-age film in any ordinary sense but a black comedy about the fears and fantasies of an adolescent male, one whose virginity is more troubling to him than we could ever imagine. Here are just a few of the varied responses it received from the nation’s foremost critics at the time:

“DEEP END seems likeable and promising until it begins to drift, morbidly and irreversibly, off the deep end. I think the final result is rather weird and loathsome…Judging from DEEP END, Skolimowski has a fairly distinctive personality, but it happens to be a split personality, split in a way – half-Truffaut, half-Polanski – that I find rather disconcerting and unappealing.” – Gary Arnold, The Washington Post

“Jerzy Skolimowski has finally put it all together in DEEP END: passion without hysteria, intelligence without derision, and compassion without special pleading. DEEP END is the best of Godard, Truffaut, and Polanski, and then some; nothing less, in fact, than a work of genius on the two tracks of cinema, the visual and the psychological.” – Andrew Sarris, The Village Voice

“A pop-psych tragedy…basically pointless and shallow – a demonstration of artlessness imitating lifelessness.” – Arthur Cooper, Newsweek

“Skolimowski has created a masterpiece, a picture that freezes the smile on your face…Without uttering a word of social protest as such, Skolimowski has created an impassioned denunciation of society’s evils…Before that chilling moment of truth, DEEP END is a very funny film.” – Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

“…as clumsily contrived to provide visual thrills as ever any corny old melodrama was contrived to provide chase thrills…The symbolism of the bathhouse is patent; so are the colors. We even see walls being painted red as the passions hot up. (The idea of Red Desert trivialized into Red Dessert.)” – Stanley Kauffmann, The New Republic

“….John Moulder-Brown and Jane Asher – They take a vision that had been sober, fateful and heavily ironic and help render it alert, subtle, graceful and sensitive.” – Roger Greenspun, The New York Times

“A canny black comedy, executed with a surrealistic flourish…transforms the rite of puberty into a frenzied and often wildly funny vaudeville.” – Jay Cocks, Time

“Skolimowski mistakes artiness for artistry.” – Hollis Alpert, The Saturday Review.

And there you have it. For me, DEEP END remains as fresh and inventive as any of the French New Wave films of the early sixties (as several critics noted above) such as Godard’s BREATHLESS or Truffaut’s THE 400 BLOWS but has never enjoyed the reputation or following of either. The only things that betray its age are superficial details – the hair styles and fashions of the early seventies plus a music score that features a theme song by Cat Stevens (“But I Might Die Tonight”) and one by Can – “Mother Sky” – which provides the hypnotic beat over one of the film’s most riveting sequences and involves the Soho nightclub scene, a Chinese hot dog vendor and a bed-ridden prostitute wearing a full leg cast rigged to a pulley.

Last but not least are the subtle but complex performances of both Jane Asher and John Moulder-Brown who continue to work in films and television today but are rarely singled out for their excellence or their fascinating filmographies. Asher can be seen in the recent DEATH AT A FUNERAL while Moulder-Brown’s most recent credit is the Greek-Egyptian-UK co-production of  YOUNG ALEXANDER THE GREAT (2007). Like Asher, Moulder-Brown was also a child actor (ROOM AT THE TOP, 1959) but is best known by horror film buffs as the deceptively innocent hero of Narciso Ibanez Serrador’s LA RESIDENCIA aka THE HOUSE THAT SCREAMED (1969) and for VAMPIRE CIRCUS (1972).

And why am I talking about DEEP END after all these years when it’s been unavailable in any format? Because TCM will be showing it for the first time in its late night franchise, TCM Underground, on January 15, 2010 at 2:30 am ET.

Now if  only The Criterion Collection would give it their deluxe treatment

Just a quick Leeminder to all those Marvinophiles out there that the official Lee Marvin Blog-a-Thon is this Wednesday, August 29th! If you're interested in writing about the great man, star/costar of M SQUAD, THE WILD ONE, GORILLA AT LARGE, THE BIG HEAT, RAINTREE COUNTY, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, VIOLENT SATURDAY, DONOVAN'S REEF, SHACK OUT ON 101, THE COMANCHEROS, THE KILLERS, CAT BALLOU, SHIP OF FOOLS, THE PROFESSIONALS HELL IN THE PACIFIC, THE DIRTY DOZEN, POINT BLANK, PAINT YOUR WAGON, MONTE WALSH, PRIME CUT, POCKET MONEY, EMPEROR OF THE NORTH POLE, THE KLANSMAN, SHOUT AT THE DEVIL, DEATH HUNT, THE BIG RED ONE, DOG DAY, DELTA FORCE and so many others, leave your name and URL in the comments section below so that directing readers to your site is ease-i-Lee done.