Dennis Hopper passed away yesterday morning at the age of 74 from complications related to prostate cancer (he’d been diagnosed with it late in 2009). That same morning I heard of the news from over 12 Facebook posts by friends, and from there the tally continued to climb. Somewhere, someone has surely come up with a formula that matches the speed and quantity with which news of a passing celebrity gets around along with a correlating chart mapping out their iconic status. Clearly, in  Dennis Hopper’s case, that iconic status was cemented over the years, and for different generations, by various roles that tapped perfectly into the zeitgeist.  READ MORE

Street Corner (1948)

Everyone has seen them, but not everyone has noticed them.  And even fewer fully understand the purpose of the circular scratches that appear about every twenty minutes in a film, like subliminal postage stamps.  They are cue marks (aka cue dots), and they are the projectionist’s friend.  Worldly Morlocks may fully understand the cue mark, but even so, let us still pause and celebrate the usefulness of the flickering dot, because the dot (like the projection system that necessitated its use) is gradually vanishing from the screen and will soon be a baffling artifact over which future film historians will scratch their heads.       READ MORE

For this last installment of “First in Fear: Native Americans in Horror Films,” we turn to the subject of Helpful Indians – those shamans, scouts, sure-shots and spirit guides who help Anglos out of sticky wickets, both supernatural and otherwise.  I think we all know where to turn for the prototype of the Helpful Indian.  Tonto, the “faithful Indian companion” of The Lone Ranger, wasn’t the first Helpful Indian – I suppose that distinction should be bestowed upon Chingachgook, the Mohican companion of Natty Bumppo, the Anglo-blooded, Native-raised protagonist of James Fennimore Cooper’s five Leatherstocking Tales – but Tonto branded the notion of aboriginal bravery, cunning and loyalty in the service of the Great White Father.  Tonto was played most indelibly by actor Jay Silverheels, a Canadian Mohawk, on the long-running TV series and subsequent movie spin-offs.  Silverheels’ success engendered a backlash, with Tonto equated in popular culture with the Uncle Tom archetype of shuffling, subservient Negroes.  He took it in stride, I guess, acting when he could, doing good deeds for Native kids in his homeland, establishing a workshop for American Indian actors in Los Angeles and sometimes having a laugh at the role that made him famous (“My name is Tonto… I hail from Toronto… I speak Esperanto…”).  The Long Ranger/Tonto axis had a variant in Republic’s Red Ryder/Little Beaver vehicles starring Bill Elliot and a young Robert Blake.  MARSHAL OF LAREDO (1945) has a quasi-horror slant, with Little Beaver assisting his growed-up pal with his trademark “You betchum, Red Ryder.” Horror elements crept into a number of B westerns of this era but Helpful Indians in a true horror setting were a longer time in coming. READ MORE

A few weeks ago I wrote about Anthony Mann’s last film A Dandy in Aspic, which features Laurence Harvey in one of his best roles. At the time I expressed how much I liked Harvey even though many critics are quick to dismiss him. His reputation has been badly tarnished over the years thanks to shoddy journalism that often focuses on his run-ins with other actors or his sex life. It’s a shame that the negative press surrounding Harvey often outweighs the good but he’s had some notable defenders. When Harvey befriended a costar such as Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra or John Wayne, those friendships often lasted a lifetime.

I’ve always thought Laurence Harvey was an interesting actor who was occasionally miscast in roles that he seemed ill-fitted for. He was born in Lithuania and raised in South Africa so when he arrived in Britain in 1946 to study acting he was the odd man out. Harvey also openly flaunted his bisexuality at times, which seemed to bother a lot of his colleagues. He was eager to be taken seriously as a British actor but he wasn’t British and many of his costars never let him forget it.

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“…a long time ago, I made me a rule. I let people do what they want to do.”

I’m always surprised how many John Wayne films I’ve never seen. Not that seeing the young man playing Singin’ Sandy warbling “A Cowboy’s Song of Fate” in Riders of Destiny (1933) is going to enlighten me much about his evolution as an actor, though that and other minor motion pictures such as The Starpacker (1934), and  Randy Rides Alone (1934) do reveal how lithe, genuine and–forgive me, hardcore fans–artlessly sweet the actor appeared to be, even in barely B level programmers of his apprentice years on the screen, after his initial lead in Raoul Walsh’s The Big Trail (1930). It’s still fun to discover something new about the development of this iconic and familiar Homeric figure–even when he was not working for image makers John Ford or Howard Hawks. Somehow, over the years I’ve missed seeing Hondo (1953), which starred this day’s birthday boy, John Wayne, who arrived on earth 103 years ago today on May 26th, 1907.

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“This isn’t going to be some goddamned two-bit propaganda flick.”

-John Ford to Vice Admiral John Bulkeley, USN

John Ford put off making They Were Expendable for over two years. He was busy with his Field Photo Unit making war documentaries, and he wasn’t eager to to go off active service. He was completing post-production on The Battle of Midway (1942), and dealing with the negative reaction to December 7th (directed by Gregg Toland), a Pearl Harbor re-enactment whose depiction of a less than prepared Navy led to its shelving, and to the future censoring of the Photo Unit’s output. Joseph McBride, in his magisterial biography Searching for John Ford, writes that “the navy reacted to the long version of December 7th ‘by confiscating the print and ordering Ford to lock up the negative.”

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Hollywood has always relied on remakes and reworkings of previous movie hits as a strategy to lure audiences to the theater. As far back as the silent era, directors and producers remade films to speak to new generations, to showcase the talents and images of new stars, and to rework the material with updated techniques or technology. Just to be clear:  I am not speaking of movies based on famous source material, such as classic novels, standard plays, or legendary cultural figures. I’m referring to the remake of a property that is best known in its film incarnation even if its original source was literary.

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Repertory film is a hard sell on campus, but last night I watched an advance screener for a multi-layered, black-and-white, French-Italian co-production that’s being re-released by Oscilloscope Pictures next month – one that  reminded me (in part) of my college days, and hopefully it will still connect with both students and general audiences today. The Law (La Loi, 1959), was directed by Jules Dassin just a few years after his celebrated Rififi, and stars Gina Lollobrigida and Marcello Mastroianni. Although the people involved are all adults, the story still pivots around something very common on any campus: lots of lusty emotions, drama, and booze. But it also goes further. READ MORE

On screen in A CRY IN THE NIGHT (1956), he played the tormenter and she was his victim but offscreen the 38-year-old actor and the 17-year-old ingenue became close friends and possibly more during the shooting.   (The film will air on TCM on Monday, June 14th at 8 pm ET as part of our “Star of the Month” Tribute to Natalie Wood).    READ MORE