The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (197 page)

And then, just as he was beginning to seem on automatic, or doing it for the check, along came
Hannibal
(01, Ridley Scott), where it is his exquisite performance that lets the film become a delicate tribute to lost love and rare expertise. But then there was
Hearts in Atlantis
(01, Scott Hicks); Lecter again in
Red Dragon
(02, Brett Ratner);
Bad Company
(02, Joel Schumacher). He was superb with Nicole Kidman in
The Human Stain
(03, Robert Benton), but attacked by critics. Next came
Proof
(04, John Madden) and Ptolemy in
Alexander
(04, Stone). The best actor alive?

The chance of playing Hemingway slipped away, but he carried himself like someone above criticism:
The World’s Fastest Indian
(05, Roger Donaldson); the doorman in
Bobby
(06, Emilio Estevez);
All the King’s Men
(06, Steven Zaillian);
Shortcut to Happiness
(07, Alec Baldwin); writing and directing
Slipstream
(07), which hardly played; as a wicked mastermind in
Fracture
(07, Gregory Hoblit);
Beowulf
(07, Zemeckis);
The City of Your Final Destination
(08, Ivory).

Miriam Hopkins
(1902–72), b. Bainbridge, Georgia
The career of Miriam Hopkins is curiously curtailed, almost as if her reputation for being difficult to work with eventually caught up with her. But in the 1930s she was a leading actress, crackling in comedy, and capable of real ferocity. There was always a glittering, choleric intensity about her, a sense of pride and superiority that often seemed to be reflecting on the listless films she had to make.

Educated at Syracuse University, she was a dancer and then a stage actress before a movie debut in
Fast and Loose
(31, Fred Newmeyer). Paramount signed her up and she excelled in
The Smiling Lieutenant
(31, Ernst Lubitsch);
Two Kinds of Women
(32, William C. De Mille); glowingly carnal as the barmaid in
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(32, Rouben Mamoulian); in
The World and the Flesh
(32, John Cromwell); outstanding and razorlike in
Trouble in Paradise
(32, Lubitsch); on loan to MGM for
Stranger’s Return
(33, King Vidor); in
Design for Living
(33, Lubitsch); and
All of Me
(34, James Flood).

Samuel Goldwyn put her under contract when her time at Paramount elapsed, but hardly used her profitably. He loaned her out for
The Richest Girl in the World
(35, William A. Seiter), and to Mamoulian to play
Becky Sharp
(35)—good, but a little eclipsed by the attention to the novel Technicolor process. Goldwyn then wasted her in
Barbary Coast
(35, Howard Hawks) and
Splendor
(35, Elliott Nugent), but did better by her in
These Three
(36, William Wyler), a bowdlerized version of Lillian Hellman’s
The Children’s Hour
. She was loaned to Alexander Korda for
Men Are Not Gods
(37, Walter Reisch); and to RKO for
Wise Girl
(37, Leigh Jason) and
The Woman I Love
(37, Anatole Litvak, to whom she was briefly married). For Goldwyn, she made
Woman Chases Man
(37, John Blystone), and then joined Warners for
The Old Maid
(39, Edmund Goulding),
Virginia City
(40, Michael Curtiz),
The Lady With Red Hair
(40, Curtis Bernhardt), and in lifelong rivalry with Bette Davis in
Old Acquaintance
(43, Vincent Sherman).

At this point, she returned to the theatre and made only a few more movies in character parts: as Aunt Penniman in
The Heiress
(49, Wyler);
The ating Season
(51, Mitchell Leisen);
The Outcasts of Poker Flat
(52, Joseph H. Newman); the hateful wife in
Carrie
(52, Wyler); as the aunt in a remade
The Children’s Hour
(62, Wyler); a German
Fanny Hill
(64, Russ Meyer); as Bubber’s hysterical mother in
The Chase
(66, Arthur Penn); and
Comeback
(70, Donald Wolfe).

Dennis Hopper
(1936–2010), b. Dodge City, Kansas
1969:
Easy Rider
(codirected with Peter Fonda). 1971:
The Last Movie
. 1980:
Out of the Blue
. 1988:
Colors
. 1990:
Backtrack; The Hot Spot
. 1994:
Chasers
.

In the middle 1980s, Dennis Hopper underwent a much publicized “recovery.” He admitted to years of drugs and drink—to say nothing of impossible ambitions as actor, artist, and spirit of the 1960s. He had a run of interesting parts that seemed to bear out this rehabilitation, by far the best of which was
Blue Velvet
(86, David Lynch), where his Frank Booth is both a roaring villain and, eventually, a psychosexual infant who is father to Kyle McLachlan’s son. There was a nakedness in the performance, especially in his spied-upon scenes with Isabella Rossellini, in which Hopper’s unquestioned daring was more under control than he had ever managed before. It was a terrific performance, and it seemed to signal a new maturity in the man, even if some people who supposedly knew looked at Frank, and said, “Yes, that’s how Dennis Hopper is.”

I treasure his work in
Blue Velvet;
I think that
Out of the Blue
is a painfully eloquent myth about incest, despite all its pretensions; I found Hopper credible and effective as the father in
Rumble Fish
(83, Francis Coppola) and as
Paris Trout
(91, Stephen Gyllenhaal) for TV. But there is so much else to endure.

In this writer’s considered opinion, Dennis Hopper was an ardent young man fatally unlucky to cross the path of James Dean—in
Rebel Without a Cause
(55, Nicholas Ray) and
Giant
(56, George Stevens). He believed he was somehow the heir to something. He knew he wanted to act, and he believed rebellion was some proof of artistic integrity. Much of Hollywood—Henry Hathaway most famously—found Hopper a pain in the neck. Let spectators simply observe that the young actor was staring, strident, and monotonous. He was not capable of the intricacy or the intimacy that made Dean so remarkable:
I Died a Thousand Times
(55, Stuart Heisler);
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
(57, John Sturges);
Sayonara
(57, Joshua Logan);
The Story of Mankind
(57, Irwin Allen);
From Hell to Texas
(58, Hathaway);
The Young Land
(59, Ted Tetzlaff);
Key Witness
(60, Phil Karlson);
Night Tide
(63, Curtis Harrington);
The Sons of Katie Elder
(65, Hathaway);
Queen of
Blood
(66, Harrington);
Cool Hand Luke
(67, Stuart Rosenberg);
The Trip
(67, Roger Corman);
The Glory Stompers
(67, Anthony M. Lanza);
Hang ’em High
(68, Ted Post);
Panic in the City
(68, Eddie Davis); and
True Grit
(69, Hathaway).

Then came
Easy Rider
, a disaster in the history of film to set beside the loss of Technicolor, the invention of gross participation, the early death of Murnau, and the longevity of Richard Attenborough. Millions would dispute all of this: they saw
Easy Rider
over and over, until the movie was scarcely distinguishable from the haze in the auditorium. In the process, “youth” was given the kingdom—not just as filmmakers, but as the controlling element in the audience; incoherence became sensitive; drugginess was for a time a mainstream mode; and every studio drove itself stupid trying to repeat the hit. Dennis Hopper became a genius, and very rich.

This did have the advantage of letting him do less. Indeed, he labored over
The Last Movie
, a title that flattered to deceive, but which remains a marker for pretentious nonsense. He acted in
Kid Blue
(73, James Frawley);
Mad Dog
(76, Philippe Mora); he was decent as the soldier in
Tracks
(76, Henry Jaglom); opaque in
The American Friend
(77, Wim Wenders); and stranglable in
Apocalypse Now
(79, Coppola).

Out of the Blue
was a picture in which he had been hired only as an actor. He took over the direction at the last moment from coproducer and cowriter, Leonard Yakir. With a fine dead-eyed performance from Linda Manz, and an agonized one from Hopper, the symbolic associations are kept under restraint. The picture works.

Hopper acted in
Wild Times
(80, Richard Compton) on TV;
King of the Mountain
(81, Noel Nosseck);
Human Highway
(82, Bernard Shakey);
The Osterman Weekend
(85, Sam Peckinpah);
My Science Project
(85, Jonathan Beteul);
Riders of the Storm
(86, Maurice Phillips); as an alcoholic in
Hoosiers
(86, David Anspaugh), for which he got a supporting actor Oscar nomination;
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2
(86, Tobe Hooper);
Stark: Mirror Image
(86, Nosseck) for TV; the shortest-lived husband in
Black Widow
(87, Bob Rafelson);
River’s Edge
(87, Tim Hunter);
O.C. & tiggs
(87, Robert Altman);
Straight to Hell
(87, Alex Cox); and
The Pick-up Artist
(87, James Toback).

Colors
was a routine cops versus gangs story set in L.A.
Backtrack
and
The Hot Spot
have been hack jobs, the one briefly illuminated by Jodie Foster, the other exactly what a Don Johnson–Virginia Madsen pairing would lead one to expect. Hopper still acted—he was in
Backtrack
, as well as
Blood Red
(88, Peter Masterson);
Chattahoochee
(90, Mick Jackson);
Flashback
(90, Frank Amurri);
Doublecrossed
(91, Roger Young);
The Indian Runner
(91, Sean Penn—who acted in
Colors); Nails
(92, John Flynn);
The Heart of Justice
(93, Bruno Baretto);
Boiling Point
(93, James B. Harris);
True Romance
(93, Tony Scott);
Red Rock West
(93, John Dahl); and
Speed
(94, Jan De Bont).

Late in 1993, he did a series of commercials for Nike, playing a football freak, so precise, so funny, and so daring (and perverse—sniffing Bruce Smith’s shoe), they may be his finest work.

Well, the legend of Hopper as a director seems to have been put away. As for his acting, it is a grim sequence in which, in his sixties, he has returned to a worse form of the stuff in which he spent the sixties. But here’s the true rub: in one film—
Carried Away
(96, Barreto)—he was not just good, but marvelous (as well as quiet, shy, anxious, and simple). That makes this toll all the more nightmarish:
Witch Hunt
(94, Paul Schrader);
Search and Destroy
(95, David Sale);
Waterworld
(95, Kevin Reynolds);
Basquiat
(96, Julian Schnabel);
Samson and Delilah
(96, Nicolas Roeg);
The Blackout
(97, Abel Ferrara);
RoadEnds
(97, Rick King);
Top of the World
(97, Sidney J. Furie);
Meet the Deedles
(98, Steve Boyum);
Michael Angel
(98, William Gove); as William S. Burroughs in
The Source
(99, Chuck Workman);
EdTV
(99, Ron Howard);
Straight Shooter
(99, Thomas Bohn);
Jesus’ Son
(99, Alison Maclean);
The Venice Project
(99, Robert Dornhelm);
Bad City Blues
(99, Michael Stevens);
Lured Innocence
(99, Kikuo Kawasaki);
Luck of the Draw
(00, Luca Bercovici);
Held for Ransom
(00, Lee Stanley);
The Spreading Ground
(00, Derek Van Lint);
Ticker
(01, Albert Pyun);
Unspeakable
(01, Thomas J. Wright);
Leo
(02, Mehdi Norowzian);
The Piano Player
(02, Jean-Pierre Roux); as Frank Sinatra in
The Night We Called It a Day
(03, Paul Goldman).

He was in the aptly named
Unspeakable
(03, Thomas J. Wright); does
The Keeper
(03, Paul Lynch) really exist?;
Blueberry
(04, Jan Kounen);
Out of Season
(04, Jevon O’Neill);
The Crow: Wicked Prayer
(04, Lance Mungia);
Americano
(04, Kevin Noland).

Some of that may sound fanciful. But Hopper is said to have been in 149 films (at the age of 68), so it’s possible that we have forgotten some of them and he has dreamed others.
Land of the Dead
(05, George A. Romero);
10th & Wolf
(06, Robert Moresco);
Memory
(06, Bennett Davlin);
Sleepwalking
(08, Bill Maher);
Elegy
(08, Isabel Coixet);
Swing Vote
(08, Joshua Michael Stern). He took a role on the TV series
Crash
, but prostate cancer was reported.

Lena Horne
(1917–2010), b. Brooklyn
The final irony is that when the dismal day comes (and Lena Horne is no longer alive or dangerous), there will be a clamor to make her life story as a movie. It won’t be hard to dramatize. You can show the affair with Orson Welles as well as her struggles to be “in” pictures. And, of course, you can have Lena’s own recordings on the soundtrack, the voice leaping out at you like a rapist tiger in Rousseau’s jungle. And who plays Lena? Who, indeed? Who has the gloom and the sensuality, the class and the bitchiness, the bloodcurdling diction and the killer instinct, the coffee and the chocolate? Will Lena Horne be turned into a sweet thing?