Ineptitude, Thy Name is Phillip Vandamm

Posted by Greg Ferrara on July 20, 2011

Most people don’t stop to think about it (and it’s their loss) but James Mason played the befuddled loser a lot. And splendidly! And I don’t mean “loser” as in “lowlife” or “petty thug” or something denoting someone on the losing end of life. No, I mean a guy who sets out to win but fails, epically and embarrassingly. Not a big tragic downfall, mind you, more of a “pie in the face” or “slip on a banana peel” downfall.

Remember his Humbert Humbert? Humbert loses Lolita in one humiliating stumble after another. Hell, at one point, he nearly gets committed to a mental hospital he fails so spectacularly! The only thing that could really complete the picture would be if Stanley Kubrick had Quilty give Humbert a wedgy just as Lolita is leaving with her new fiance.

Or how about Georgy Girl? There he plays James Leamington, used as a walking ATM by Georgy (Lynn Redgrave), who makes him financially take care of her adopted baby (that of her former friend played by Charlotte Rampling) until the final scene where they get married and she gives all her attention to the baby while Leamington looks confused, befuddled and, yes, humiliated. Even the theme song makes fun of him, assuring our heroine that “at least he’s a millionaire, you’re rich, Georgy Girl!”

And great politically serious drama gets in on the action, too. In Odd Man Out, his Johnny McQueen bungles the escape after a robbery, gets shot and then, to top it all off, falls out of the getaway car. When he gets up and the getaway car has stopped for him about twenty-five yards ahead, he runs in the wrong direction! Seriously, cue the “wah, wah, wah, waaaaaaaaaah” music.

Then there’s his brilliant turn as Norman Maine in A Star is Born, a role, it could be said, he was born to play, seeing as the role truly is around 90 percent embarrassing failure. Honestly, Norman Maine is near the top of the list of “most humiliated characters in movie history” and Mason, of course, plays him brilliantly.

And, finally, let’s not forget Ed Concannon in The Verdict and that beautiful “deer in the headlights” expression that falls across his face like the shadow of the Hindenburg on a clear day in Lakehurst, when Lindsay Crouse reveals she has a copy of the incriminating paperwork that will sink his client. When the verdict against his client is read, you half expect Paul Newman to cross the courtroom and spray seltzer in his face.

Yes, there’s no doubt about it, James Mason could play the humiliated loser to a tee. So what better actor to take on the role of one of the most inept, incompetent, bumbling villains in all of movie history, North by Northwest’s Phillip Vandamm. This guy is a master class in bad strategy.

Where to begin? Why not the beginning. First, Vandamm, a spy attempting to funnel microfilm to our enemies (Russians, maybe?), falls for a ploy by the government that a fictional agent, George Kaplan, actually exists. Okay, that can happen. Nothing bad yet. Then Vandamm’s goons grab the wrong guy and suddenly, Kaplan’s real, only he’s not, he’s advertising executive Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant). Vandamm wants him brought back to the house for questioning where he will be killed afterwards by making it look like an accident. Here’s Vandamm’s first serious slip-up of many: Why even make it look like an accident? If he really is a government agent on your trail, just kill him and dump the body. When you’re at war with your enemy you don’t try to make their death look like an accident, you just kill them. Later, “just killing him” is exactly what Vandamm tries to do so you wonder where the whole “let’s get him drunk and put him in a car” idea came from. Anyway, it fails, the first of many failures Vandamm will suffer at the hands of Thornhill, a man with absolutely no experience in espionage! Of course, when Vandamm’s your opponent, you don’t exactly need any.

Next, Vandamm has his lover, Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), seduce Thornhill on a train in which Vandamm and his associate, Leonard (Martin Landau), are in another compartment. The idea here is to have Eve keep him busy all night, successfully get him off the train without alerting the police (Thornhill is now wrongly accused of murder and the subject of a manhunt) and then tell him to go to a remote place where they can kill him. Instead of, you know, just killing him on the train and dumping the body off the side in the middle of nowhere. Oh, and did I mention Eve really works for the government? Hahahaaaaa! Oh man, Vandamm; what a fool.

And now we really start to see Vandamm’s incompetence shine through. After successfully getting Thornhill to travel to the middle of Butthole, Nowhere, does he have someone in a car drive by, slow down, shoot him and drive off? Hahahaaaa, oh my [catches breath], you really haven’t been paying attention. No, he sets up a crop dusting plane to do his dirty work. And here’s the thing: the plane actually is a crop duster! We know this for certain because it, in fact, drops clouds of pesticide both onto the ground and Roger Thornhill. But it also has guns! That means, they had to get a crop duster and outfit it with machine guns. You can’t just rent a cropduster and quickly attach machine guns to it that day, you need time. So either they bought a surplus World War I fighter plane with still-working guns and outfitted it with a pesticide drop bay or they bought a cropduster and outfitted it with guns. Either way, what the…? Phillip Vandamm can seriously complicate a shooting!

Of course (does it even need to said) this plan fails. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to hit a moving target from a steady vantage point on the ground with a scope but in a freaking plane, I imagine it’s close to impossible. Through all of this, I envision Leonard shaking his head and thinking, “Jesus, this guy’s a moron. When do I get promoted?”

So, now we’re back in city and there’s an auction where Vandamm gets the statue with the microfilm. No simple drops for Vandamm, where one spy hands off the info to the other or hides it in a place to be later retrieved by the pick-up. Oh no, it’s in a statue sold at public auction meaning you run the risk a very rich person deciding they just have to have that statue and then, well, you’re screwed. But no one would possibly expect Phillip Vandamm to think that far ahead.

Later, after Vandamm gets the statue and heads to South Dakota, Thornhill pursues and catches up with him at a tourist cafeteria at the foot of Mount Rushmore. It is here that Eve shoots Thornhill with blanks, utterly convincing Vandamm that she has killed him but, frankly, the blanks seem superfluous. At this point it wouldn’t surprise me if it was enough to convince Vandamm by simply pointing her index finger at Thornhill and shouting “bang, bang.”

Finally, Leonard’s had enough and shows Vandamm how Eve faked the shooting. This results in Vandamm getting mad at Leonard and punching him, at which point we’re treated to the sight of Vandamm holding his hand and writhing in pain from said punching. Mason truly makes this performance the gift that keeps on giving.

It’s not long before Thornhill shows up, Eve grabs the statue from Vandamm and Vandamm does… nothing. When Eve makes the grab and takes off, Leonard and the idiot henchman pursue but Vandamm? He just stands there, dumbfounded, confused and, once again, humiliated. After all the trouble, all the schemes, all the hassle, there goes his statue running towards Mount Rushmore while he’s taken into custody. One last pie in the face. Surely, by this point, Leonard’s steaming.

When the movie ends, Roger and Eve are together, happy and safe. Vandamm is somewhere in the American Judicial System, indicted and convicted, probably given the stiffest possible sentence having hired, I can only assume, an unlicensed accident claims lawyer to handle his case. And I like to think someone, somewhere, in some faraway country, received an invoice for tens of thousands of dollars for a crop duster outfitted with machine guns and, shaking his head, thought, “Vandamm. Never again.”

North by Northwest succeeds mightily as a jaunty thriller (it really is one of Hitchcock’s best) because Vandamm is never very threatening as a villain so we can enjoy Cary Grant outwitting him and gallivanting across the country without anything becoming too weighted down or serious. On IMDB, the plot blurb for the movie reads, “A hapless New York advertising executive is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies…” This is exactly backwards. It should read “savvy advertising executive” and “hapless spies.” And you couldn’t have asked for a better actor to play that hapless spy than James Mason. It’s the kind of role he excelled at: A character who gives the appearance of refinement, grace and wisdom but is really just a big, dumb oaf. People don’t appreciate how good James Mason was at letting himself look vulnerable, outwitted and, frankly, kind of dim. He was a great actor, and in North by Northwest, gives one his finest, and most enjoyable, performances.

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36 Responses Ineptitude, Thy Name is Phillip Vandamm

Posted By dukeroberts : July 20, 2011 12:02 pm

I never thought of it that way. You have opened my eyes.

Posted By Rachel : July 20, 2011 12:09 pm

Awesome, incredibly funny post, reminds me of David Cairns’ take on The Crimes of Gavin Elster. Oh you Hitchcock villains and your Rube Goldbergian plots. Of course, the government agents in NbyN don’t exactly tear up the competency field either. Thornhill accomplishes in a matter of days what they haven’t managed in several years.

On the subject of James Mason and his ability to play bunglers, what about his blackmailer in Ophuls’ The Reckless Moment? In no time flat, this guy falls in love with the housewife he’s supposed to be blackmailing and ends up doing her grocery shopping for her. Surely one of the more inept blackmailers I’ve seen on film. But Mason plays it with style.

Posted By Tom S : July 20, 2011 12:54 pm

In Bigger than Life, he gets his ass kicked by Walter Matthau. WALTER MATTHAU. Life is hard on James Mason.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : July 20, 2011 1:07 pm

duke, just doing my job.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : July 20, 2011 1:14 pm

Rachel – The Reckless Moment, yet another great example of Mason’s sublime ability to play the incompetent fool. And Cairn’s piece is terrific. I hadn’t seen it before now but I’m thinking maybe we should start digging deeping into all Hitchcock villains.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : July 20, 2011 1:18 pm

In Bigger than Life, he gets his ass kicked by Walter Matthau. WALTER MATTHAU. Life is hard on James Mason.

The cortisone only made the humiliation greater.

Posted By DBenson : July 20, 2011 2:45 pm

Even as a good guy . . . in “Murder by Decree,” his Dr. Watson is arrested for soliciting a prostitute (actually a two-bit shakedown he stumbled into while searching for clues). After Watson is cleared, Inspector Lestrade still enjoys a very long and very public laugh at Watson’s humiliation when Holmes arrives to collect him.

Perhaps the genius of Mason is being able to convince us, at least for the film’s running time, that foolish, easily-defeated schemes are in fact the dangerous machinations of a great intelligence. The way good stunt men convince us they’re being outfought by aging action stars, or focused young actresses convince us they’re overcome by lust by same.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : July 20, 2011 3:14 pm

Perhaps the genius of Mason is being able to convince us, at least for the film’s running time, that foolish, easily-defeated schemes are in fact the dangerous machinations of a great intelligence.

I’ll give him credit for that. He was a great actor because a great actor is never afraid of looking foolish, knowing the audience will be able to figure out their characters are foolish, not them. Some actors never want to look bad. Mason didn’t care about that. He didn’t necessarily like being upstaged by Peter Sellers in Lolita, but he went all out looking foolish, and did a great, great job in the process.

Posted By suzidoll : July 20, 2011 3:34 pm

Wow! Way to knock the nuances right out of an actor’s star image as it is tweaked and used from role to role.

Just saw THE RECKLESS MOMENT in a class, in which his character was discussed at length by about 20 students of all ages and backgrounds. Don’t recall the phrase “big dumb oaf” being brought up once.

Posted By Emgee : July 20, 2011 4:09 pm

I’m sure those microfilms were blanks: Vandamm was just a human MacGuffin allowing the real spies to get out of the country.

Posted By Rachel : July 20, 2011 4:19 pm

Suzidoll, speaking for myself, I certainly didn’t intend to rob Mason of his nuance or the many facets of his star image. He’s one of my favorite actors. I think the “incompetency” or failure of so many Mason characters had to do with the fact that he played a lot of damaged, villainous characters so of course, he had to fail (in accordance with the Code). And I love that he was attracted to playing those kind of characters, he wasn’t trying to protect himself.

And as for Reckless Moment, he may be an inept blackmailer but his character is far from being a dumb thug. He’s inept at it because he desperately wants to be the hero and knows he can’t be.

Posted By Christopher : July 20, 2011 4:41 pm

Suddenly I’m imagining North By Northwest as being created by Jay Ward and the Rocky and Bullwinkle team.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : July 20, 2011 4:41 pm

Don’t recall the phrase “big dumb oaf” being brought up once.

And you call that a discussion?!

All jokes aside, and there are a lot here, I certainly appreciate Mason’s magnificent skills as an actor. This is all tongue in cheek. Just a bit of fun with his “loser” characters.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : July 20, 2011 4:44 pm

Emgee, I like to think he didn’t even know about the microfilm and was under the impression the foreign agents he was working for just wanted that statue really bad.

Posted By dukeroberts : July 20, 2011 6:26 pm

I can just hear James Mason saying “Hate Moose and Squirrel” in that lovely, refined, nasally accent.

Posted By DBenson : July 20, 2011 8:15 pm

In “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” his Captain Nemo is defeated by Kirk Douglas’s Ned Land, a Joe Almost-Average who manages to dispatch dozens of bottled messages (swiping bottles from Nemo’s lab, I think) without Nemo or any of his crew thinking to keep tabs on the obvious troublemaker.

In “Lord Jim,” if I recall correctly, Mason’s character seems confident that philosophical debate with Peter O’Toole’s title character will determine a life-or-death struggle. And O’Toole seemed to accept that.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : July 20, 2011 8:56 pm

Suzidoll, speaking for myself, I certainly didn’t intend to rob Mason of his nuance or the many facets of his star image.

Oh my goodness, Rachel, you didn’t. That’s what this is all about. It was Mason’s nuances that built these characters. I’ve written about acting for years (started acting at five, majored in theatre, acted wherever I could) but I’ve never wasted a post writing about bad acting. What Mason did, creating characters with the veneer of refinement barely disguising insecurity and incompetence underneath was something very few actors could have ever achieved.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : July 20, 2011 8:58 pm

DBenson, that’s exactly the type of “Mason” role I’m talking about. He projects authority and wisdom yet underneath, he’s just not up to the task.

Off topic, has anyone ever done a better song number in a movie than Kirk Douglas? That’s a whale of a song, I tell you lads, a whale of a song or two.

Posted By dukeroberts : July 20, 2011 9:43 pm

I love “Whale of a Tale”. I have that song on a Disney collection CD. I used to infuriate people at work when I played it.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : July 20, 2011 10:01 pm

I had the VHS (plastic bookcover amaray) and I wore out that one section, playing it over and over! What is it about that number? And I’m being serious, it hooks you. Now, of course, I have the collector’s edition DVD and you can go right to it, no fast-forwarding necessary. I swear by my tattoo!

Posted By Suzi : July 20, 2011 11:02 pm

Glad there is lots of love out there for JM. It seemed like you all were ganging up on him for a while.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : July 20, 2011 11:16 pm

Suzi, I wouldn’t have written “He was a great actor” otherwise. He’s always been a favorite of mine and everything I joke about in this post comes from a love for his tremendous ability to play hopelessly vulnerable, something that made his performance in A Star is Born so brilliant.

Posted By KC : July 21, 2011 12:51 am

Though I’ve always seen James Mason as the guy who gets the raw deal, I never thought about it much. That Odd Man Out scene in particular made me cringe. I think that’s why I like The Seventh Veil so much. He seems like he’s going to be the loser again, but he ends up doing pretty well for once.

Posted By tdraicer : July 21, 2011 2:12 am

Mason is one of my favorites as well.

I’m only sorry he never did a movie with Claude Raines-imagine those two voices in one film!

Posted By Greg Ferrara : July 21, 2011 2:07 pm

KC, when I first saw Odd Man Out I remember being surprised at its setup. Mason is really just used as the setup for vignettes from other actors. It was one of his first prominent roles and showed his capacity for being at once, striking and memorable but also able to fade into the background as needed.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : July 21, 2011 2:09 pm

tdraicer, that’s funny because while I was writing this I was thinking of Rains’ turn in Notorious! That’s precisely the kind of loser role that Mason could have played expertly had the movie been made later. Of course, Rains, one of the greatest actors in the history of cinema, did an outstanding job himself.

Posted By Al Lowe : July 22, 2011 7:37 am

Mason, of course, comes off badly in NORTH BY NORTHWEST due to the necessities of plot. And that plot is pretty hard to swallow.

Remember, when Mason’s men bring in Cary Grant near the start of the movie, James is throwing a party.

What the Hell? What kind of party is this and how do you induce people to come?

What does the invitation say? Hi, I am holed up in the home of an United Nations big shot while he is living in New York. Lets celebrate this. See you there.

There are other strains on credibility. For example, Cary Grant forgives Eva Marie Saint. He feels love in spite of her nearly having him killed. His attitude is: No big deal. I know that you were only trying to do your job.

It reminds me of when W.C. Fields is thrown across a field in one of his films. Folks rush up and ask if he is all right. He responds, “Getting thrown across a field and landing on your back. Why in the world would that bother a person?”

And that is Cary Grant’s attitude. Being sent to the middle of nowhere and being chased by a cropduster plan with pilots shooting at you. Why in the world would that bother a person?

As for Mason the actor, he didn’t seem to worry about such things. In an interview for some obscure film magazine (I can unearth it if absolutely necessary) Mason admitted that he sometimes accepted jobs like “Island in the Sun” because of the opportunity to visit glamorous locales and to party.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : July 22, 2011 7:49 am

What the Hell? What kind of party is this and how do you induce people to come?

What does the invitation say? Hi, I am holed up in the home of an United Nations big shot while he is living in New York. Lets celebrate this. See you there.

I’m still not even sure (and remember, I’ve seen 20+ times!) why they’re at Townsend’s house. I mean, if you’re going there to root around and see what you can find you 1) Don’t bring an abductee there and 2) don’t throw a party! Leornard is out back playing crocquet for god sakes!!!

But it’s a credit to Hitchcock and the actors that things like that and the use of a cropduster (?!?!!) to kill someone don’t bring the movie down.

And the movie world will only ever be interesting as long as their are actors like Mason, willing to look foolish because the part calls for it.

Posted By dukeroberts : July 22, 2011 7:56 am

I have always wondered about the party too. Why take the abductee to the party? It makes no sense, but in that movie, who cares?

Posted By Jenni : July 22, 2011 6:32 pm

Great topic and I also had never examined James Mason’s role in NbyN. You almost make it not worth seeing, if one had never seen it before! I immediately thought of his roles in Bigger than Life, where cortisone almost does him in and destroys his family-love that part you wrote about Walter Matthau! And of course, Captain Nemo, the disillusioned by mankind, sort of crazy undersea captain of the Nautilus. Loved him when I saw it as a kid in the 1970s, when it was reshown on The Wonderful World of Disney-loved that beard! When I read Angela’s Ashes a few years back, by author Frank McCourt, he remembered listening to the housewives chitchatting with one another in his Irish neighborhood and the #1 actor they all loved to discuss and wished they could invite to tea was none other than James Mason.

Posted By kcruver : July 22, 2011 7:29 pm

I’m with you about the Odd Man Out set-up Greg, though Mason never faded into the background for me. I was so mesmerized by him in those early scenes that I thought about him constantly when he wasn’t on the screen.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : July 23, 2011 10:30 am

Jenni, through all of this, what keeps coming back to me is how much more interesting, hell, fascinating, these characters are because they were lucky enough to be portrayed by James Mason. When you’re a great actor you don’t just read the lines properly and do your bit for the camera. You add constant detail. For instance, the teeth over the lip as Mason grabs his hand after punching Landau – how much more human could you get?! Vandamm never becomes a dull, faceless villain because he is so terribly, terribly human.

Posted By Greg Ferrara : July 23, 2011 10:35 am

kcruver – And how about that ending? I didn’t see that coming at all. (SPOILER) I kept expecting him to make it back and probably be arrested but the whole Johnny and Kathleen going down together… (END SPOILER) just didn’t see that coming. And didn’t expect it to have the emotional impact it did.

Posted By peggy : July 23, 2011 12:54 pm

If we’re going to discuss Mason’s brilliant losers, his Brutus inh “Julius Caesar” should not be left out of the discussion. As many times as I’ve seen it, I never fail to feel a sympathic jolt at the moment the sword goes in at his assisted suicide. And he looks more anguished to be killing Caesar than Caesar is to be killed!

And much love to Captain Nemo… and “A Whale of a Tale.”

Stewart Granger (who was Mason’s friend) once talked about being in a British costume picture where Mason played a complete rotter who was to be shot in a duel by Granger. Granger assumed everyone would cheer his own heroism. But then, with cameras rolling, Mason pulled out a rose, gave it a melancholy sniff and tossed it aside. And he knew Mason had just claimed the audience sympathy. The women coming out of theatre had forgotten every evil thing Mason’s character had done and were sobbing over his tragic death!

Didn’t his Rupert of Hentzau live to fight another day?

Posted By Juana Maria : August 5, 2011 3:04 pm

This article makes me think of the line in “The Princess Bride”:
humiliations galore! Oh, I can’t believe I’ve seen so many of James Mason’s films. He was so good as a bad guy wasn’t he? It seems like every film I have ever seen him in he dies by the end of the film, either by suicide or the hero comes along and kills him. :-(

Posted By Frank Wells : November 15, 2011 6:42 pm

Just read this and loved it, as NBNW is one of my favorites. I’m hoping this was more than a little tongue in cheek as the movie doesn’t work if you don’t believe Mason is potentially dangerous. And I wouldn’t confuse the illogic of the plot with evidence of his incompetence, and if you take those plot holes to undermine him they must undermine the whole movie as well. But you do make a good point, a cropduster with machine guns would not be nearly as effective, practical, or cost-effective as a shark with laser beams.

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