The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (28 page)

Richard Barthelmess
(1895–1963), b. New York
The partnership of Lillian Gish and Barthelmess in
Way Down East
(20, D. W. Griffith) is arguably the most elevated acting in the American silent cinema. Actor and actress alike had a Victorian handsomeness that Griffith and Billy Bitzer suspended between the glowing images of Pre-Raphaelitism and the true animation of cinematography. It follows that Barthelmess was the ideal hero of romantic melodrama.
Tol’able David
(21, Henry King)—the first film made by his own company, Inspiration—is the model of his best work: in which he plays a young man, suspected of cowardice, who comes up trumps by carrying the U.S. Mail, thrashing the rascals, and winning the girl. The situation is corn but, like Griffith and Gish, Barthelmess invested it with a shining seriousness.

Barthelmess graduated from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and went into the theatre. By 1916, he made a film debut in
Gloria’s Romance
(George King); then in the Theda Bara
Camille
(17, J. Gordon Edwards);
The Moral Code
(17, Ashley Miller);
The Eternal Sin
(17, Herbert Brenon);
Rich Man, Poor Man
(18, J. Searle Dawley); and
The Hope Chest
(19, Elmer Clifton). He worked for Griffith for the first time in
The Girl Who Stayed at Home
(19) and was put under contract:
Boots
(19, Clifton);
Three Men and a Girl
(19, Marshall Neilan);
Peppy Polly
(19, Clifton); and
I’ll Get Him Yet
(19, Clifton). In most of these he played opposite Dorothy Gish, but he starred with Lillian in
Broken Blossoms
(19, Griffith), in which he plays the Yellow Man. It is a marvelous performance, riveting because of how little Barthelmess emotes. He did four more with Griffith:
Scarlet Days
(19);
The Idol Dancer
(20);
The Love Flower
(20); and
Way Down East
, in which he plays the country boy who rescues Lillian Gish from death and dishonor.

After
Experience
(21, George Fitzmaurice), Barthelmess and Charles H. Duell formed the Inspiration Company, designed to produce films presenting the actor in idealistic material. By 1926, he had appeared in eighteen films for the company, mostly directed by Henry King—
Tol’able David
(21);
The Bond Boy
(22);
The Seventh Day
(22);
Sonny
(22);
Fury
(23);
The Fighting Blade
(23);
Twenty-One
(23);
Classmates
(24);
The Enchanted Cottage
(24);
New Toys
(25);
Shore Leave
(25); and
Soul-Fire
(25).

The company collapsed and Barthelmess joined First National for
The Patent Leather Kid
(27, Alfred Santell). That was a success, but his career was threatened, less by sound than by the fact that he was a little too old for the youthful parts with which he was associated. He made
The Noose
(28, John Francis Dillon); played twins in
Wheel of Chance
(28, Santell); he sang in
Weary River
(29, Frank Lloyd); played a man who thought he was Chinese in
Son of the Gods
(30, Lloyd). His days were numbered but he made several excellent films:
The Dawn Patrol
(30, Howard Hawks);
The Last Flight
(31, William Dieterle);
The Cabin in the Cotton
(32, Michael Curtiz);
Central Airport
(33, William Wellman); and
Heroes for Sale
(33, Wellman), the latter as a bitter war veteran. He played a Sioux in
Massacre
(34, Alan Crosland), and after
A Modern Hero
(34, G. W. Pabst),
Midnight Alibi
(34, Crosland), and
Four Hours to Kill
(35, Mitchell Leisen), he made
A Spy of Napoleon
(36, Maurice Elvey) in England. He retired for a few years and came back in an affectionate summation of his screen character, as the coward who makes good, in
Only Angels Have Wings
(39, Hawks). Amid the excellence of that cast, he more than holds his own and it is a loss that after supporting parts in
The Man Who Talked Too Much
(40, Vincent Sherman),
The Mayor of 44th Street
(42, Alfred E. Green), and
The Spoilers
(42, Lloyd), he retired for good.

Freddie Bartholomew
(Frederick Llewellyn) (1924–92), b. London
Just as Hollywood kept a cricket team of English actors, to add tone or to be mocked, so among child actors Freddie was the little gent, wickedly exposed by Mickey Rooney. But before then he had played
David Copperfield
(34, George Cukor), contriving to coordinate such varied players as W. C. Fields, Elsa Lanchester, Lionel Barrymore, Basil Rathbone, and Edna May Oliver—and capturing producer David O. Selznick’s dream of the perfect child. Next he was Garbo’s son in
Anna Karenina
(35, Clarence Brown), with Victor McLaglen in
Professional Soldier
(36, Tay Garnett), and
Little Lord Fauntleroy
(36, John Cromwell). Rooney had a part in that film, and in
The Devil Is a Sissy
(36, W. S. Van Dyke), Bartholomew was put between Rooney and Jackie Cooper. He was Tyrone Power as a boy—unnecessary duplication—in
Lloyds of London
(36, Henry King) and a brat in
Captains Courageous
(37, Victor Fleming). Various members of his family were fighting in the courts over his earnings as his career declined:
Kidnapped
(38, Alfred Werker);
Lord Jeff
(38, Sam Wood);
Listen Darling
(38, Edwin L. Marin);
The Spirit of Culver
(39, Joseph Santley);
The Swiss Family Robinson
(40, Edward Ludwig);
Tom Brown’s Schooldays
(40, Robert Stevenson);
Naval Academy
(41); and
A Yank at Eton
(42, Norman Taurog). After
Junior Army
(43) and
The Town Went Wild
(44), he joined the American Air Force, and appeared in only two more films—
Sepia Cinderella
(47, Arthur Leonard) and
St. Benny the Dip
(51, Edgar G. Ulmer)—before drifting into TV, where work on commercials took him to a career in advertising.

Kim Basinger
, b. Athens, Georgia, 1953
I don’t always “get” Kim Basinger. I mean, why did she ever buy that small town in Georgia, and why is she virtually the only actress who’s ever been sued successfully for getting out of a movie (
Boxing Helena)?
Why marry Alec Baldwin? Is she even, really, that beautiful?

Well, the paper didn’t catch fire, so I’ll press on. She was a singer and a model before she got into acting. Her effective debut was picking up the Donna Reed role (and making the prostitution far more obvious than Ms. Reed was ever allowed to do) in the TV
From Here to Eternity
(80). That meant that she was already leaning on thirty, and it may be that her great achievement is looking so much like a movie star (and a young sexy blonde) at a relatively mature age. After all, doesn’t she say she could do Veronica Lake without surgery?

Her first movie was
Hard Country
(81, David Greene), and she followed that with
Mother Lode
(82, Charlton Heston—he said, “There was, even then, a special presence the camera turns to”); a Bond girl in
Never Say Never Again
(83, Irvin Kershner);
The Man Who Loved Women
(83, Blake Edwards);
The Natural
(84, Barry Levinson); a little out of her depth in
Fool for Love
(85, Robert Altman); recovering her iconic status as a sexual creature in the inane
9½ Weeks
(86, Adrian Lyne), with eyes that have that way of dilating or narrowing in perfect synchronicity with secret male desires; quite nicely Cajun in
No Mercy
(86, Richard Pearce);
Blind Date
(87, Blake Edwards)—with Bruce Willis in his first starring part; funny in
Nadine
(87, Robert Benton);
My Stepmother Is an Alien
(88, Richard Benjamin);
Batman
(89, Tim Burton); as Bugsy Siegel’s squeeze, but falling for Alec Baldwin, in
The Marrying Man
(91, Jerry Rees);
Final Analysis
(92, Phil Joanou); in
Cool World
(92, Ralph Bakshi)—a fine idea gone wildly astray;
The Real McCoy
(93, Russell Mulcahy);
Wayne’s World 2
(93, Stephen Sirjik); with Baldwin in the remake of
The Getaway
(94, Roger Donaldson), but not dislodging any memories of Ali MacGraw;
Ready to Wear
(94, Altman); and then, after an absence,
L.A. Confidential
(97, Curtis Hanson), for which she won the supporting actress Oscar. That meant beating out Julianne Moore in
Boogie Nights
. Which brings me back to the stuff I don’t get.

Well, the marriage ended, and the actress has wandered into stranger ventures:
I Dreamed of Africa
(00, Hugh Hudson), a mix of vanity production and animal rights special;
Bless the Child
(00, Chuck Russell), a spiritual thriller;
8 Mile
(02, Hanson);
People I Know
(03, Daniel Algrant);
The Door in the Floor
(04, Tod Williams);
Elvis Has Left the Building
(04, Joel Zwick);
Cellular
(04, David R. Ellis);
The Sentinel
(06, Clark Johnson);
Even Money
(07, Mark Rydell)—as a gambler; producing and acting in
While She Was Out
(08, Susan Montford);
The Informers
(09, Gregor Jordan);
The Burning Plain
(09, Guillermo Arriaga).

Saul Bass
(1920–96), b. New York
How rare it is nowadays to see credit sequences that try to convey the spirit, or even the formal concerns, of a film. Yet there was a moment, in the fifties and the early sixties, when Saul Bass made the handmade credit sequence nearly the prerequisite of a smart film. Nor was he simply an ambitious graphic artist who seized an opening. In Saul Bass’s best work, there is the beginning of a fine critical appreciation of the films being treated. He was a filmmaker, eager to be asked further into a picture. In hindsight, his credits, trailers, and ads seem like part of a golden age. And so, today, when we have to read a couple of miles of meticulous credit-gathering, all in a tasteful white on black, it’s one of the stray pleasures of watching movies on TV to see this grave pride being whisked past, too fast and too small to be read.

After training at Brooklyn College and work as a freelance designer, Bass formed Saul Bass & Associates in 1946 (his wife, Elaine, was a significant contributor to the firm). He got into film, apparently, at the invitation of Otto Preminger—further proof of both his eye and his commercial acumen. Later, he would form a valuable partnership with Hitchcock, and it is clear that he did work—of a schematic, planning nature—on the shower scene in
Psycho
.

His best work can be seen in
Carmen Jones
(55, Preminger);
The Big Knife
(55, Robert Aldrich);
The Seven Year Itch
(55, Billy Wilder);
Saint Joan
(56, Preminger); the brilliant, desperate reaching hand for
The Man with the Golden Arm
(56, Preminger);
Johnny Concho
(56, Don McGuire);
Around the World in 80 Days
(56, Michael Anderson);
The Pride and the Passion
(57, Stanley Kramer);
Cowboy
(58, Delmer Daves); pendant tears in
Bonjour Tristesse
(58, Preminger);
Vertigo
(58, Hitchcock);
The Big Country
(58, William Wyler), using the stagecoach wheels and blending with the great score by Jerome Moross; superb on
Anatomy of a Murder
(59, Preminger); ditto on
North by Northwest
(59, Hitchcock);
Psycho
(60, Hitchcock);
Ocean’s 11
(60, Lewis Milestone);
Exodus
(60, Preminger);
Spartacus
(60, Stanley Kubrick);
West Side Story
(61, Robert Wise); coaxing that slow-mo black cat for
Walk on the Wild Side
(62, Edward Dmytryk);
Advise and Consent
(62, Preminger);
Nine Hours to Rama
(63, Mark Robson);
The Cardinal
(63, Preminger);
It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
(63, Kramer);
Bunny Lake Is Missing
(65, Preminger);
Seconds
(65, John Frankenheimer);
Grand Prix
(65, Frankenheimer).

In the seventies he gave up features, working on his own experimental short films. But he came back for
Broadcast News
(87, James L. Brooks);
Big
(88, Penny Marshall);
The War of the Roses
(89, Danny DeVito);
GoodFellas
(90, Martin Scorsese);
Cape Fear
(91, Scorsese), with fine use of watery reflections;
The Age of Innocence
(93, Scorsese).

Angela Bassett
, b. New York, 1958
In the early nineties, after a start in
City of Hope
(91, John Sayles),
Boyz N the Hood
(91, John Singleton), and
Passion Fish
(92, Sayles), Angela Bassett impressed nearly everyone with two very different, strong women. As the wife to
Malcolm X
(92, Spike Lee), she was uncommonly serene as well as long-suffering and enduring. But as Tina Turner in
What’s Love Got to Do with It
(93, Brian Gibson), she took on one of the world’s powerhouse performers and enriched our understanding of the great Tina. If, finally, Bassett and the movie needed footage of the real Turner, it was no reflection on Bassett—just a mark of the dead end in such biopics. Since then, Bassett has been a lot more conventional:
Innocent Blood
(92, John Landis);
Strange Days
(95, Kathryn Bigelow);
Vampire in Brooklyn
(95, Wes Craven);
Waiting to Exhale
(95, Forest Whitaker); as Betty Shabazz again in
Panther
(95, Mario Van Peebles);
Contact
(97, Robert Zemeckis);
How Stella Got Her Groove Back
(98, Kevin Rodney Sullivan); with Meryl Streep in
Music of the Heart
(99, Craven);
Supernova
(00, Thomas Lee); as Lena in
Boesman and Lena
(00, John Berry); with nothing to do in
The Score
(01, Frank Oz); on TV in
Ruby’s Bucket of Blood
(01, Peter Werner). She then appeared in
Sunshine State
(02, Sayles), on TV as
Rosa Parks
(02, Julie Dash) and in
Masked and Anonymous
(03, Larry Charles);
Mr. 3000
(04, Charles Stone III); a voice in
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
(05, Doug Liman);
Akeelah and the Bee
(06, Doug Atchison); a voice in
Meet the Robinsons
(07, Stephen Anderson);
Gospel Hill
(08, Giancarlo Esposito);
Meet the Browns
(08, Tyler Perry);
Nothing but the Truth
(08, Rod Lurie);
Notorious
(09, George Tillman Jr.).