The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (132 page)

The TV work is very varied:
Comedians
and
Country
are the social criticism of Trevor Griffiths, the first with a fine comic, Bill Fraser, the latter with a trio of great ladies—Jill Bennett, Joan Greenwood, and Wendy Hiller.
Laughterhouse
has Ian Holm playing a farmer with a flock of geese.
Past Caring
is a tribute to the fading glory of Denholm Elliott.
The Insurance Man
is by Alan Bennett, and a version of Kafka’s life and mood.
Tumbledown
is a striking critique of the Falkland Islands War.
Suddenly, Last Summer
is that impossible play again, with Maggie Smith not quite nasty enough in the Hepburn role.
The Absence of War
is a David Hare play, with John Thaw. And
King Lear
is the great Ian Holm production, which Eyre had originated at the National.

The Ploughman’s Lunch
was an early film, nagging at the lies and dishonor in English affairs, and not bad. But plainly by the time of
Iris
, Eyre was a different man. He still directs for the stage, but I’d guess that at last he feels committed to the screen.

F

Douglas Fairbanks
(Douglas Elton Ulman) (1883–1939), b. Denver, Colorado
There is a rare combination in Fairbanks of abilities required by the film world: he was a transforming movie actor whose presence so embodied the spirit of naïve adventure that, unwittingly, he made swashbuckling like verse; in addition, he was a man of sure commercial instinct, great organizing effort, and an innovator in film production and distribution. In the making and selling of adventure films, there is not another actor who has significantly improved on the noble Doug’s contribution. Yet his greatest legacy was in identifying modern celebrity. He was
so
famous; no one had been known in this way before Doug, Mary, and Charlie stumbled on stardom. And Doug was the most casual about it.

After a comfortable upbringing, it seems proper that Fairbanks enjoyed a playboy youth before going on the stage. By 1915 he was a star, and Triangle signed him up. His debut was in
The Lamb
(15, Christy Cabanne). D. W. Griffith, the seer at Triangle, rather scorned Fairbanks’s boyish high spirits, and most of his films were directed by John Emerson and Allan Dwan:
The Habit of Happiness
(16, Dwan);
The Good Bad Man
(16, Dwan);
The Half-Breed
(16, Dwan);
Manhattan Madness
(16, Dwan); and
The Americano
(16, Emerson). In 1917, Fairbanks left Triangle, with the two directors, and formed his own production company:
In Again, Out Again
(17, Emerson);
The Man from Painted Post
(17, Joseph Henabery);
A Modern Musketeer
(17, Dwan);
Mr. Fix-It
(18, Dwan);
Bound in Morocco
(18, Dwan);
He Comes Up Smiling
(18, Dwan);
Arizona
(18, Albert Parker); and
The Knickerbocker Buckaroo
(19, Parker).

In 1919, Fairbanks was the moving spirit in the formation of United Artists with Chaplin, Griffith, and Mary Pickford. Henceforward, his own productions were distributed by UA:
His Majesty the American
(19, Henabery) and
The Mollycoddle
(19). In 1920, he married his partner Mary Pickford (his second wife) and settled down to the adventure epics with which he is associated. As well as acting in them, he took the role of producer very seriously and was responsible for the insistence on authentic spectacle: he liked to do his own stunts and was wise enough to invest in proper historical research. The films he made in the 1920s were invariably handled by first-class action directors, and they still move dazzlingly well. Allan Dwan explained the nature of Fairbanks’s appeal:

… he was very athletic and active, liked movement and space, so he enjoyed every minute. Pictures were made for him. The theatre was too little.… He worked with speed and, basically, with grace.… The only thing that could possibly interest either one of us was a swift, graceful move—the thing a kid visualizes in his hero.… If he was to leap on a table to fight a duel, we’d cut the legs of that table so it would be just the leap he ought to make. He never had to reach an extra inch for anything. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be graceful—it wouldn’t be him and it wouldn’t be right. He was a good, strong athlete but he never strained.

He took time and trouble over these films and rationed them to one a year:
The Mark of Zorro
(20, Fred Niblo);
The Nut
(21, Theodore Reed), the only modern piece;
The Three Musketeers
(21, Niblo);
Robin Hood
(22, Dwan), twice as expensive as
Intolerance; The Thief of Bagdad
(24, Raoul Walsh);
Don Q, Son of Zorro
(25, Donald Crisp);
The Black Pirate
(26, Parker);
The Gaucho
(27, F. Richard Jones); and
The Iron Mask
(29, Dwan).

For his first talking picture, he played Petruchio, opposite Mary Pickford in
The Taming of the Shrew
(29, Sam Taylor). His voice was not good and he was now forty-seven. He made three more films in America—
Reaching for the Moon
(31, Edmund Goulding),
Around the World in 80 Minutes
(31, Victor Fleming), and
Mr. Robinson Crusoe
(32, Edward Sutherland)—before going to England to make
The Private Life of Don Juan
(34, Alexander Korda). In 1935 the marriage with Pickford ended and Fairbanks retired. He married Lady Sylvia Ashley and spent his last years relaxed, despite the strain of a weak heart.

A revival of his films in 1973 showed the scapegrace vitality unabated, the fondness for make-believe still enchanting.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr
. (Douglas Elton Ulman Jr.) (1909–2000), b. New York
The son of Doug senior and Rhode Island heiress Anna Beth Sully, Doug junior was more voguishly handsome than his father. Doug Sr. always had rather narrow eyes, a hooked nose, and a tendency to double chins. The son was, and remains, the epitome of glossy charm, even if nothing he has done has ever suggested a man aspiring beyond the attempt to live up to his father. The parents separated when Doug was nine and he lived with his mother until, at age fourteen, he was coaxed into movies by Jesse Lasky. Lasky only wanted the pull of the great man’s name, and Doug Sr. was, not surprisingly, hostile to his son’s career for many years. The irony is that Jr. tried all the harder to swashbuckle honorably whereas the screen evidence suggests that he might have been more telling as a gigolo, weakling, or black sheep of the family.

His career dragged on until he and Britain took to each other during the war. By 1951, he retired as an actor, went into production, and became a prominent figure in London society. (He was a figure in the great Duchess of Argyll scandal of 1963.) Most of his films are easily forgotten, but here are some that have lasted better or that had some local significance in his overshadowed career:
Stephen Steps Out
(23, Joseph Henabery);
Wild Horse Mesa
(25, George B. Seitz);
Stella Dallas
(25, Henry King);
Padlocked
(26, Allan Dwan);
Man Bait
(27, Donald Crisp);
Women Love Diamonds
(27, Edmund Goulding);
The Power of the Press
(28, Frank Capra);
The Barker
(28, George Fitzmaurice);
A Woman of Affairs
(29, Clarence Brown);
Our Modern Maidens
(29, Jack Crawford), with Joan Crawford, his wife at that time;
Loose Ankles
(29, Ted Wilde);
The Dawn Patrol
(30, Howard Hawks);
The Way of All Men
(30, Frank Lloyd);
Little Caesar
(30, Mervyn Le Roy);
Chances
(31, Dwan);
Union Depot
(32, Alfred E. Green);
Love Is a Racket
(32, William Wellman);
Scarlet Dawn
(32, William Dieterle);
Morning Glory
(33, Lowell Sherman);
The Life of Jimmy Dolan
(33, Archie Mayo); and
Captured!
(33, Roy del Ruth).

He went to Britain to play the tsar opposite Elizabeth Bergner’s
Catherine the Great
(34, Paul Czinner) and stayed for
Mimi
(35, Paul L. Stein);
Man of the Moment
(35, Monty Banks);
The Amateur Gentleman
(36, Thornton Freeland);
Accused
(36, Freeland); and
When Thief Meets Thief
(37, Raoul Walsh). He went back to America to be a very merry black-satin Rupert of Hentzau in
The Prisoner of Zenda
(37, John Cromwell);
Joy of Living
(38, Tay Garnett);
The Rage of Paris
(38, Henry Koster);
Young in Heart
(38, Richard Wallace);
Gunga Din
(39, George Stevens);
Rulers of the Sea
(39, Lloyd);
Green Hell
(40, James Whale); and
Angels Over Broadway
(41, Ben Hecht and Lee Garmes). Then, having played twins in
The Corsican Brothers
(41, Gregory Ratoff), he went into the U.S. navy and was in Britain for much of the war. He had one last fling in the peace as
Sinbad the Sailor
(47, Richard Wallace); as the escapee Charles II in
The Exile
(48, Max Ophuls);
That Lady in Ermine
(48, Otto Preminger and Ernst Lubitsch); then to Britain for
State Secret
(50, Sidney Gilliat) and
Mr. Drake’s Duck
(51, Val Guest).

He did a little producing thereafter—
Another Man’s Poison
(52, Irving Rapper), a Bette Davis film, unavailable for many years later on, and
Chase a Crooked Shadow
(58, Michael Anderson). He acted only rarely:
The Crooked Hearts
(72, Jay Sandrich), with Rosalind Russell;
The Hostage Tower
(80, Claudio Guzman);
Ghost Story
(81, John Irvin); and
Strong Medicine
(86, Guy Green).

Peter Falk
, b. New York, 1927
Peter Falk played the part of Lieutenant Colombo fifty-four times between 1971 and 1990. After that there were over a dozen sequels or one-offs. The show was such a hit that Falk could easily have had it turn into a weekly series, but he liked the long episodes and he preferred to take them gently. Who was going to argue? Colombo had his filthy raincoat, his half-smoked cigar, a wife somewhere (real or imagined), and he had his deliberate, delicious way of dangling suspects that was meat and drink to his array of guest stars. The show was hokey; it was hokum; and it was a million miles from the rough-edged naturalism that Falk practiced with his pal from another world, John Cassavetes. But if he was going to work for Cassavetes, then earning up to $250,000 for every
Colombo
was a sweet return. There is also the fact that the show brought the actor eight Emmy nominations—with four wins. By the way, before Falk took it, the part had been offered to Bing Crosby.

At the age of three, Falk lost an eye to illness and thereafter a glass orb was kept in place by dint of fierce scowling. Colombo seemed Italian, but Falk was Eastern European and Jewish. In the first years of the twenty-first century, he fell victim to Alzheimer’s, so it is clear that he will not work again. Ironically he had already made his name for a special brand of lugubrious taunting quick-wittedness. He did detective stories that were all in the head.

He did a lot of television on top of
Colombo
, but he has a list of movies that is worth noting: a debut in
Wind Across the Everglades
(58, Nicholas Ray);
The Bloody Brood
(59, Julian Roffman);
Pretty Boy Floyd
(60, Herbert J. Leder); a supporting actor nomination for
Murder Inc
. (60, Burt Balaban and Stuart Rosenberg); another nomination for
Pocketful of Miracles
(61, Frank Capra);
Pressure Point
(62, Hubert Cornfield);
The Balcony
(63, Joseph Strick);
It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
(63, Stanley Kramer);
Robin and the 7 Hoods
(64, Gordon Douglas);
The Great Race
(65, Blake Edwards);
Too Many Thieves
(66, Abner Biberman);
Penelope
(66, Arthur Hiller);
Luv
(67, Clive Donner);
Castle Keep
(69, Sydney Pollack).

It was then that he made
Husbands
(70, Cassavetes); outstanding in
A Woman Under the Influence
(74, Cassavetes);
Murder by Death
(76, Robert Moore);
Mikey and Nicky
(76, Elaine May);
The Cheap Detective
(78, Moore):
The Brink’s Job
(78, William Friedkin);
The In-Laws
(79, Andrew Fleming);
All the Marbles
(81, Robert Aldrich);
Big Trouble
(86, Cassavetes);
Wings of Desire
(87, Wim Wenders);
Happy New Year
(87, John G. Avildsen);
The Princess Bride
(87, Rob Reiner);
Vibes
(88, Ken Kwapis);
Cookie
(89, Susan Seidelman);
In the Spirit
(90, Sandra Seacat);
Tune in Tomorrow
(90, Jon Amiel);
Lakeboat
(00, Joe Mantegna);
Enemies of Laughter
(00, Joey Travolta);
Made
(01, Jon Favreau);
Corky Romano
(01, Rob Pritts);
Three Days of Rain
(02, Michael Meredith);
Checking Out
(05, Jeff Hare);
Next
(07, Lee Tamahori).

Manny Farber
(1917–2008), b. Douglas, Arizona
Don’t forget Douglas, Arizona, the place where Manny Farber was born and raised and where he lived until at the age of seventeen he entered the University of California at Berkeley. Douglas is a boil on the Mexican border where everything is hot, barren, and spacy—and if there was anything at which Farber excelled, as film observer and painter, it was space, creaking in the sun, stretching and shrinking with the mood of someone who was bound to ask why he was living in Douglas, Arizona.