The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (254 page)

Her parents were in the theatrical business, and Anita was clearly pretty enough to think of an acting career. But writing appealed to her more. She began with plays, but found success when she started offering photoplays to the new movie business. An early success was
The New York Hat
(12, D. W. Griffith), which starred Mary Pickford and Lionel Barrymore. In time she wrote hundreds of scripts for silent movies—for Griffith and then for Douglas Fairbanks and various Talmadges. She did some of the titles on
Intolerance
(16, Griffith)—not really a testament to wit—and she wrote, among others,
Wild and Wooly
(17, Emerson), with Fairbanks;
Come On In
(18, Emerson);
The Virtuous Vamp
(19, David Kirkland), with Constance Talmadge;
The Branded Woman
(20, Albert Parker), with Norma Talmadge;
Woman’s Place
(21, Victor Fleming);
Polly of the Follies
(22, Emerson).

It was in 1923 that Emerson—a bit of a Willy to her Colette—told her to try plays:
The Whole Town’s Talking
was a debut hit. Next year, at his orders again, she used coast-to-coast train journeys to write
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
. It sold out overnight, and it became a stage hit (with June Walker) and then a movie, scripted by Loos (28, Malcolm St. Clair), with Ruth Taylor (Buck Henry’s mother).

It was around this time that she discovered Emerson’s philandering and elected not to take his advice on retirement. Instead, she took up a Metro offer to write for $1,000 a week, and found herself fashioning the screen image of Jean Harlow:
RedHeaded Woman
(32, Jack Conway);
Hold Your Man
(33, Sam Wood); and
Riffraff
(35, J. Walter Ruben).

She kept working with
San Francisco
(36, W. S. Van Dyke);
Mama Steps Out
(37, George Seitz);
Saratoga
(37, Conway);
The Women
(39, George Cukor);
Susan and God
(40, Cukor);
Blossoms in the Dust
(41, Mervyn LeRoy);
They Met in Bombay
(41, Clarence Brown);
When Ladies Meet
(41, Robert Z. Leonard);
I Married an Angel
(42, Van Dyke).

She moved to New York in 1947 and she would have Broadway hits with
Happy Birthday
, the musical of
Blondes
(it starred Carol Channing), and a version of
Gigi
(with Audrey Hepburn). She also wrote two books of memoirs,
A Girl Like I
and
Kiss Hollywood Good-by
.

Jennifer Lopez
, b. Bronx, New York, 1970
“J-Lo,” as she is now widely referred to, is the first Hispanic actress to be taken for granted in Hollywood. You can regard that as a welcome innovation, or an absurdly belated recognition of how far the social order in Los Angeles depends on the employment of people from south of the border to do the menial work. That trend will only increase in California, and in other parts of America, but it remains to be seen how far some key elements in the Latin American imagination—music, religion, fantasy, family, and pleasure—can help rescue American pictures from the remorseless grind and anhedonia of box office.

Don’t put all that load on the amused and amusing Lopez, who has worked hard and risen to most serious challenges offered her. The child of Puerto Rican parents, she was raised at Catholic schools, and broke into TV as a teenager, notably as a Fly Girl on the show
In Living Color
. More TV work led to her breakthrough role, as the young Maria Sanchez in
My Family
(95, Gregory Nava). She followed that with
Jack
(96, Francis Coppola);
Blood and Wine
(97, Bob Rafelson), in which she was clearly a new beauty; and then, full of energy as the murdered Tejano singer in
Selena
(97, Nava);
Anaconda
(97, Luis Llosa);
U-Turn
(97, Oliver Stone); very funny and sexy with George Clooney in
Out of Sight
(98, Steven Soderbergh—they were an item for a while); a voice in
Antz
(98, Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson); as the psychologist in
The Cell
(00, Tarsem Singh);
The Wedding Planner
(01, Adam Shankman);
Angel Eyes
(01, Luis Mandoki);
Enough
(02, Michael Apted).

Her film career must now compete with her singing and her established place as one of the world’s most photographed women. She struggled to find chemistry with Ralph Fiennes in
Maid in Manhattan
(02, Wayne Wang); probably found it much easier, with Ben Affleck (her beau), in
Gigli
(03, Martin Brest). The disaster of that film seemed to add to the travails of their love story. It ended, with the great groan of an iceberg splitting. But she carried on with
Jersey Girl
(04, Kevin Smith);
Shall We Dance?
(04, Peter Chelsom);
An Unfinished Life
(04, Lasse Hallström).

She remains the subject for a great biopic. She was married to Ojani Noa and then engaged in hilarious but prolonged legal disputes as to what each one could say about the other. She married Cris Judd. She was a companion to Sean Combs. She produced and starred in
Bordertown
(07, Nava), about the murders of women in Juarez. She then married Marc Anthony and produced
El Cantante
(07, Leon Ichaso) in which MA played salsa singer, Hector Lavoe.

Sophia Loren
(Sofia Scicolone), b. Rome, 1934
One of the modern cinema’s great beauties, humorous, sympathetic, and an especially good listener, Sophia Loren has been badly wasted. Too often, lumpish high spirits have been encouraged instead of her relish for mischief. It might be said that her persistent association with obviousness—whether in comedy, romance, epic, or Italianateness—itself shows some preference. But
Heller in Pink Tights
(60, George Cukor) caught an out-of-breath, exuberant tenderness there for the right director. Even
That Kind of Woman
(59, Sidney Lumet) promised a mixture of glamour and meditation. Her marriage to Carlo Ponti only emphasized her flouncing as an “international” star and nudged her toward becoming an Italian momma. Statuesque and floridly handsome, she was a star from an earlier era needing the services of great cameramen, the imperious love of a Sternberg, or the warming sympathy of a Cukor.

But there is no question about her courage and determination, or her shrewdness. As a young woman, she overcame dark rumors about her past—she had known great poverty as a kid. Then, later on, Cary Grant was for a while head over heels in love with her (something had to come out of
The Pride and the Passion
). Yet she reasoned with herself and married Ponti instead.

She had bit parts in
Quo Vadis?
(51, Mervyn Le Roy) and
Il Sogno di Zorro
(51, Mario Soldati) and became a leading actress within a few years:
Aida
(53, Clemente Fracassi);
Tempi Nostri
(53, Alessandro Blasetti);
Carosello Napolitano
(54, Ettore Giannini);
Gold of Naples
(54, Vittorio de Sica);
Peccato Che Sia Una Caraglia
(54, Blasetti);
La Bella Mugnaia
(55, Mario Camerini);
Pane, Amore e …
(55, Dino Risi); and
La Fortuna di Essere Donna
(56, Blasetti).

Hollywood now took her up, but in a sequence of wretched films:
The Pride and the Passion
(57, Stanley Kramer);
Boy on a Dolphin
(57, Jean Negulesco);
Legend of the Lost
(57, Henry Hathaway);
Desire Under the Elms
(58, Delbert Mann);
Houseboat
(58, Melville Shavelson);
Black Orchid
(58, Martin Ritt);
The Key
(58, Carol Reed);
A Breath of Scandal
(60, Michael Curtiz);
It Started in Naples
(60, Shavelson); and
The Millionairess
(60, Anthony Asquith).

She was looking her best now—amusing in the latter and a resplendent heroine in
El Cid
(61, Anthony Mann). After an Oscar for a strenuous, if earnest, piece of ham in
Two Women
(61, de Sica), she began to work in both America and Europe:
Madame Sans-Gêne
(61, Christian-Jaque); in an episode from
Boccaccio ’70
(62, de Sica);
Five Miles to Midnight
(62, Anatole Litvak);
The Condemned of Altona
(62, de Sica);
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
(64, de Sica);
The Fall of the Roman Empire
(64, A. Mann);
Lady L
(65, Peter Ustinov);
Operation Crossbow
(64, Michael Anderson);
Judith
(65, Daniel Mann);
Arabesque
(66, Stanley Donen);
A Countess from Hong Kong
(67, Charles Chaplin);
Cinderella, Italian Style
(67, Francesco Rosi);
Sunflower
(69, de Sica);
La
Moglie del Prete
(70, Risi);
La Mortadella
(71, Mario Monicelli);
The Journey
(74, de Sica);
Verdict
(74, André Cayatte);
The Cassandra Crossing
(76, George Pan Cosmatos);
A Special Day
(77, Ettore Scola);
Brass Target
(78, John Hough);
Firepower
(79, Michael Winner); and
Revenge
(79, Lina Wertmuller).

For television, she played herself and her own mother in
Sophia Loren: Her Own Story
(80, Mel Stuart), and she has also appeared in
Aurora
(84, Maurizio Ponzi);
Courage
(86, Jeremy Kagan);
The Fortunate Pilgrim
(88, Stuart Cooper); and
Sobato, Domenica e Lunedi
(90, Wertmuller).

Nowadays, she appears rarely, but her beauty is unabated:
Ready to Wear
(94, Robert Altman);
Grumpier Old Men
(95, Howard Deutch);
Soleil
(97, Roger Hanin);
Francesca e Nunziata
(01, Wertmuller);
Between Strangers
(02, Edoards Ponti, her son). In semiretirement, she did a
Lives of the Saints
(04) for Italian TV (as St. Teresa), along with
Too Much Romance—It’s Time for Stuffed Peppers
. The ironies or trapdoors in that one sentence may explain her stately battleship “Mamma” in
Nine
(09, Rob Marshall).

Peter Lorre
(Laszlo Loewenstein) (1904–64), b. Rosenberg, Hungary
He was the squat, wild-eyed spirit of ruined Europe, shyly prowling in and out of Warner Brothers shadows, muttering fiercely to himself, his disbelief forever mislaid.

Having run away from home, he was a traveling actor in Breslau, Zurich, and Vienna, and eventually so successful in
Fruhlings Erwachen
(29, Richard Oswald) and
Die Koffer des Herrn O.F
. (31, Alexis Granowsky) that Fritz Lang cast him as the Dusseldorf child-murderer in
M
(31), the soft, vulnerable human shape in an enclosing square of impersonal forces, a killer but a startlingly plausible victim of split personality.

After several more Austrian-German films—
Bomben auf Monte Carlo
(31, Hanns Schwarz);
F.P.1 Antwortet Nicht
(32, Karl Hartl);
Schuss im Morgengrauen
(32, Alfred Zeisler);
Fünf von der Jazzband
(32, Erich Engel);
Der Weisse Damon
(32, Kurt Gerron);
Was Frauen Traumen
(33, Geza von Bolvary); and
Unsichtbare Gegner
(33, Rudolf Katscher)—he was persuaded to travel by Nazism.

He went first to France where he appeared in
De Haut en Bas
(33) for another exile, G. W. Pabst. Thence to England, where he managed to be more chilling even than Hitchcock in
The Man Who Knew Too Much
(34) and
The Secret Agent
(36). By then he was already adrift in Hollywood with his appearance as Dr. Gogol in Karl Freund’s
Mad Love
(35), and as Raskolnikov in von Sternberg’s
Crime and Punishment
(35). After
CrackUp
(36, Malcolm St. Clair) and
The Lancer Spy
(37, Gregory Ratoff), Lorre created and stayed in the part of Mr. Moto—Japanese judo-expert private eye—in some eight films, five directed by Norman Foster.

But it was war in Europe that really identified Lorre as the inescapable refugee/spy/madman/ murderer. He looked every lunatic part in the eye and transformed them into portraits of delicate, deranged kindness, pushed to the point of frantic malice:
Strange Cargo
(40, Frank Borzage);
Stranger on the Third Floor
(40, Boris Ingster);
I Was an Adventuress
(40, Ratoff);
They Met in Bombay
(41, Clarence Brown); as Joel Cairo in Huston’s
The Maltese Falcon
(41);
All Through the Night
(41, Vincent Sherman);
The Face Behind the Mask
(41, Robert Florey);
Casablanca
(43, Michael Curtiz);
The Cross of Lorraine
(43, Tay Garnett);
Background to Danger
(43, Raoul Walsh);
Passage to Marseilles
(44, Curtiz);
The Mask of Dimitrios
(44) and
The Conspirators
(44) for Negulesco;
Arsenic and Old Lace
(44) for Capra;
Hotel Berlin
(45, Peter Godfrey);
Three Strangers
(46, Negulesco);
The Chase
(46, Arthur Ripley);
The Verdict
(46, Don Siegel); pursued by
The Beast with Five Fingers
(47, Florey);
Casbah
(48, John Berry);
Rope of Sand
(49, William Dieterle); and
Quicksand
(50, Irving Pichel).