The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (182 page)

Hal Hartley
, b. Lindenhurst, New York, 1959
1984:
Kid
(s). 1987:
The Cartographer’s Girlfriend
(s). 1988:
Dogs
(s). 1990:
The Unbelievable Truth
. 1991:
Trust; Theory of Achievement
(s);
Surviving Desire
(TV);
Ambition
(s). 1992:
Simple Men
. 1994:
Amateur; Opera No. 1
(s);
NYC 3/94
(s). 1995:
Flirt
. 1997:
Henry Fool
. 1998:
The Book of Life
(s). 2000:
New Math
(s);
Kimono
(s). 2001:
No Such Thing
. 2004:
The Girl from Monday
. 2006:
Fay Grim
.

Hal Hartley is offbeat enough to be one of his own characters—an odd, distracted independent filmmaker who comes to town (well, not quite town—rather more that quality of shabby suburbia he knows from Long Island), attracts some good-looking but disaffected people, and draws them into some modest fable of ironic reversal. And every few years comes out with a nice, tart, deadpan comedy—like a midlist literary novel—that plays to subtly diminishing audiences.

Lest that sound dismissive, let me say I like Hartley and would like to encourage him (even if I’m not as fervent an admirer as Andrew Sarris). But what interests me especially here is the plight of the classic independent filmmaker, the distinct yet pale voice that has never really dreamed of going Hollywood and seeks only the kind of art-house audience that has never been as uncertain of itself in America as now.

Yes, of course there should be a place for such a thing—for Hartley, John Sayles, and Whit Stillman (and many others). Yet still the feeling lurks: that the movie in America has some duty to be large, embracing (and uniting)—that it requires some kind of sensational reach or vulgarity that wants everyone. That it is un-American to resist that.

So I at least understand the criticism that Hartley has created his own mannered forms and turned them into cliché in ten years: the unexpected meeting; the rather listless men; the beautiful but hushed women; the studied introduction of startling situations with every subsequent effort to downplay the surprise.
Sight and Sound
in 1999 could speak of his risk of becoming “vapid and obsolete,” and I think it’s true that in ten years Hartley has managed to make his new films seem unexciting. Is it that he is not seized by the medium? Is it that film in America is a beast that has to be lusted after, raped, and exploited? Can there be the kind of quiet, wry, but rather boring marriage that Hartley prefers? Or does such quiescence demand a far more evolved style (like Antonioni’s, say) than he dreams of?

Laurence Harvey
(Laruschka Mischa Skikne) (1928–73), b. Janiskis, Lithuania
Educated in Johannesburg, he served in the South African army before going to RADA and thence to work in the English theatre.

“I’ve never been able to like you,” says Richard Boone’s Sam Houston to Harvey’s Colonel Travis in
The Alamo
(60, John Wayne) and moments later Wayne’s Davy Crockett tells him to “Step down off your high horse.” Not many actors lasted as long on cold starch, or endured such illness. Although not the man I would want to defend Texas with, Harvey was icily effective as the brainwashed Raymond Shaw in
The Manchurian Candidate
(62, John Frankenheimer) and as the double-agent Eberlin, a man instructed to liquidate himself, in
A Dandy in Aspic
(68, completed by Harvey after the death of Anthony Mann).

Elsewhere, he tended to bare his teeth and arch his cheekbones, whether trying to suggest nastiness—as in
Butterfield 8
(60, Daniel Mann),
The Outrage
(64, Martin Ritt),
Darling
(65, John Schlesinger)—or hoping to be appealing, as in
Two Loves
(61, Charles Walters),
Walk on the Wild Side
(62, Edward Dmytryk),
The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm
(62, Henry Levin),
The Running Man
(63, Carol Reed), or
Of Human Bondage
(64, Ken Hughes and Henry Hathaway).

Harvey made his debut in
House of Darkness
(48, Oswald Mitchell) and his reputation in the British cinema in
The Scarlet Thread
(51, Lewis Gilbert);
The Good Die Young
(53, Gilbert); as Romeo, opposite Susan Shentall, in
Romeo and Juliet
(54, Renato Castellani); in Henry Cornelius’s
I Am a Camera
(55); as Joe Lampton in Jack Clayton’s
Room at the Top
(59)—his breakthrough; in
Expresso Bongo
(59, Val Guest); and
The Long and the Short and the Tall
(61, Leslie Norman). He drifted to Hollywood out of no clear conviction or demand and often returned to work in England—as Lampton again in
Life at the Top
(65, William Kotcheff). What more can you say of a man only interesting as a zombie, except that in 1963 he directed and produced a film,
The Ceremony
, and in 1969 produced another,
L’Assoluto Naturale
(69, Mauro Bolognini)? After that, he played in
Der Kampf um Rom
(69, Robert Siodmak),
WUSA
(70, Stuart Rosenberg), and
Night Watch
(73, Brian G. Hutton) before succumbing to cancer. Among several wives, he included Margaret Leighton and Harry Cohn’s widow, Joan.

Byron Haskin
(1899–1984), b. Portland, Oregon
1927:
Ginsberg the Great; Irish Hearts; Matinee Ladies; The Siren
. 1947:
I Walk Alone
. 1948:
Man-Eater of Kumaon
. 1949:
Too Late for Tears
. 1950:
Treasure Island
. 1951:
Tarzan’s Peril; Warpath; Silver City
. 1952:
Denver & Rio Grande
. 1953:
The War of the Worlds; His Majesty O’Keefe
. 1954:
The Naked Jungle
. 1955:
Long John Silver; Conquest of Space
. 1956:
The First Texan; The Boss
. 1958:
From the Earth to the Moon
. 1959:
The Little Savage; Jet Over the Atlantic
. 1960:
September Storm
. 1961:
Armoured Command
. 1963:
Captain Sinbad
. 1964:
Robinson Crusoe on Mars
. 1968:
The Power
(codirected with George Pal).

Haskin (or Haskins, as he was often known) was a photographer from 1922, and
Bobbed Hair
(25, Alan Crosland),
On Thin Ice
(25, Malcolm St. Clair), and
Across the Pacific
(26, Roy del Ruth) led to his participation on the earliest exercise in sound,
Don Juan
(26, Crosland). He is credited with some of the detailed engineering that made filming with sound less cumbersome and, after
When a Man Loves
(27, Crosland) and
Wolf’s Clothing
(27, del Ruth), he worked briefly as a director himself. But for the next twenty years he concentrated on photography. Only in 1947 did he resume as a director.

His films are cheerful adventures with a special enthusiasm for space fiction, often in George Pal productions. Invariably, they center on ingenious special effects photography, and the roar of Robert Newton’s Long John Silver (in two films) is one of Haskin’s few human achievements. With Pal, Haskin made several engaging movies:
The War of the Worlds, The Conquest of Space, Robinson Crusoe on Mars
, and, not least,
The Naked Jungle
, which has Charlton Heston troubled by a mailorder marriage with Eleanor Parker and an unexpected invasion of ants.

Anne Hathaway
, b. Brooklyn, New York, 1982
At the age of nineteen, as Mia Thermopolis in
The Princess Diaries
(01, Garry Marshall), Anne Hathaway seemed more of a throwback than Julia Roberts in
Pretty Woman
(an earlier experiment by Mr. Marshall). Tall, upright, with not much of a figure but with burning coal eyes, Ms. Hathaway was a princess who made Princess Diana seem hopelessly modern and neurotic. It was the measure of Mia’s strange kingdom that Julie Andrews was its model, and it was essential to Hathaway’s charm that she was a kind of ugly duckling. Nobody bothered to notice whether she could act, or wanted to try. She was the lynchpin of one of the dottiest films ever made. Moreover, the film was such a success that there had to be a sequel:
The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
(04, Marshall). Has Mr. Marshall ever thought of just one more?
The Princess Diaries 3: Belle de Jour?

No, of course not, but in the meantime Ms. Hathaway has made strenuous attempts to be a more rounded woman. She was Cinderella in
Ella Enchanted
(04, Tommy O’Haver) and Madeline Bray in
Nicholas Nickleby
(02, Douglas McGrath). Within a couple of years of Mia’s return, there was Hathaway as a wife in
Brokeback Mountain
(05, Ang Lee) and as Alice among the fashionistas in
The Devil Wears Prada
(06, David Frankel). The latter was a very cunning entertainment that replayed the trick of turning its duck into a swan. Her company in those two films was very testing, and Hathaway just about held her own and had it in her to be funny.

Now, whether you think she became a real actress in
Rachel Getting Married
(08, Jonathan Demme) is up to you—she looked disturbed and she acted hopelessly selfish, but it was some way from a thorough performance in an overrated film. Elsewhere, she was Jane Austen in
Becoming Jane
(07, Julian Jarrold) and Steve Carell’s stooge in
Get Smart
(08, Peter Segal) as well as
Passengers
(08, Rodrigo García) and
Bride Wars
(09, Gary Winick).

Can it last? Can she extend her reach? It is said that Ms. Hathaway is going to play Judy Garland—with Julie Andrews as Kay Thompson?

Henry Hathaway
(Henri Leopold de
Fiennes) (1898–1985), b. Sacramento, California
1932:
Wild Horse Mesa
. 1933:
Heritage of the Desert; Under the Tonto Rim; Sunset Pass; Man of the Forest; To the Last Man
. 1934:
Come On, Marines!; The Last RoundUp; Thundering Herd; The Witching Hour; Now and Forever
. 1935:
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer; Peter Ibbetson
. 1936:
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine; Go West, Young Man; I Loved a Soldier
(uncompleted). 1937:
Souls at Sea
. 1938:
Spawn of the North
. 1939:
The Real Glory
. 1940:
Johnny Apollo; Brigham Young
. 1941:
The Shepherd of the Hills; Sundown
. 1942:
Ten Gentlemen from West Point; China Girl
. 1944:
Home in Indiana; Wing and a Prayer
. 1945:
Nob Hill; The House on 92nd Street
. 1946:
The Dark Corner
. 1947:
13 rue Madeleine; Kiss of Death
. 1948:
Call Northside 777
. 1949:
Down to the Sea in Ships
. 1950:
The Black Rose
. 1951:
You’re in the Navy Now; Rawhide; Fourteen Hours; The Desert Fox/Rommel, Desert Fox
. 1952:
Diplomatic Courier;
“The Clarion Call,” episode from
O. Henry’s Full House
. 1953:
Niagara; White Witch Doctor
. 1954:
Prince Valiant; Garden of Evil
. 1955:
The Racers/Such Men Are Dangerous
. 1956:
The Bottom of the Bottle; 23 Paces to Baker Street
. 1957:
Legend of the Lost
. 1958:
From Hell to Texas/Manhunt
. 1959:
Woman Obsessed
. 1960:
Seven Thieves; North to Alaska
. 1963:
How the West Was Won
(codirected). 1964:
Circus World/The Magnificent Showman; Of Human Bondage
(codirected with Ken Hughes). 1965:
The Sons of Katie Elder
. 1966:
Nevada Smith
. 1967:
The Last Safari
. 1968:
Five Card Stud
. 1969:
True Grit
. 1971:
Raid on Rommel; Shoot Out
. 1973:
Hangup
.

After a debut as a ten-year-old actor, Hathaway progressed from assistant to Frank Lloyd to director of two-reel Westerns for Paramount before commencing a forty-year career as director. Durability cannot conceal great oscillations in his work. And professionalism and the legend of his colorful temper should not excuse frequent dullness. Because a man has directed for so long does not ensure that his character has matured. Close study of Hathaway reveals, at best, an amiable enthusiasm for adventure, but at worst, the considerable endurance test of, say, the overrated
Call Northside 777, Down to the Sea in Ships, The Black Rose, The Desert Fox, White Witch Doctor, The Racers, The Bottom of the Bottle, 23 Paces to Baker Street
, and
Legend of the Lost
. Hathaway has only to be compared with the genuinely inventive Don Siegel for all his lethargy and lost opportunities to fall into place.

He was always a workhorse, generally with Paramount and Fox, competent at roughhouse action but otherwise likely to be influenced by his compatriots on a film. Thus
Peter Ibbetson
is unlike any of his other films in its sense of dream;
The Shepherd of the Hills
is a charming rural fable with a wonderful, shy Betty Field;
13 rue Madeleine
is diverted by the energy of James Cagney;
Kiss of Death
is made nasty by Richard Widmark’s hoodlum;
Fourteen Hours
is a bedlam of talented supporting players;
Niagara
throbs with the implausibility of Joseph Cotten and Monroe being married;
Garden of Evil
is built on the niggling confrontation of Widmark and Gary Cooper; and
True Grit
is an unashamed Oscar vehicle for John Wayne.