The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (284 page)

She had had to change her name to avoid confusion with the less interesting first lady of Republic, Vera Hruba Ralston. She worked on TV and made her debut in
For Men Only
(52, Paul Henreid). Thereafter she was the woman in Westerns:
The Charge at Feather River
(53, Gordon Douglas);
Wichita
(55, Jacques Tourneur); excellent in
The Searchers
(56, John Ford). She was second fiddle to Joan Crawford in
Autumn Leaves
(56, Robert Aldrich);
23 Paces to Baker Street
(56, Henry Hathaway);
Beau James
(57, Melville Shavelson);
The FBI Story
(59, Mervyn Le Roy);
Beyond This Place
(59, Jack Cardiff);
Five Branded Women
(60, Martin Ritt); and
A Touch of Larceny
(59, Guy Hamilton).

Hitchcock recalled her for the ordeal of seeking out Mrs. Bates at the end of
Psycho
(60), but left her character underdeveloped. Since then, she has worked in less significant roles:
Back Street
(61, David Miller);
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
(62, Ford);
The Hanged Man
(64, Don Siegel);
The Spirit Is Willing
(67, William Castle);
Gentle Giant
(67, James Neilson);
Sergeant Ryker
(67, Buzz Kulik);
One of Our Spies Is Missing
(67, E. Darrel Hallenbeck);
Kona Coast
(68, Lamont Johnson);
Hellfighters
(68, Andrew V. McLaglen);
Mission Batangas
(68, Keith Larsen, her second husband);
The Wild Country
(71, Robert Totten);
Baffled!
(71, Philip Leacock);
One Little Indian
(73, Bernard McEveety);
Runaway
(73, David Lowell Rich); and
The Castaway Cowboy
(74, Vincent McEveety).

She was in
Run for the Roses
(79, Henry Levin);
Roughnecks
(80, Bernard McEveety);
Our Family Business
(81, Robert Collins);
Travis McGee
(82, McLaglen);
Brainwaves
(82, Uli Lommel);
Mazes and Monsters
(82, Steven H. Stern);
Psycho II
(83, Richard Franklin);
Helen Keller: The Miracle Continues
(84, Alan Gibson);
The Invitation
(84, Larry Stewart);
International Airport
(85, Charles S. Dubin and Don Chaffey);
Into the Night
(85, John Landis);
The Hijacking of the Achille Lauro
(89, Collins);
Separate Lives
(95, David Madden).

Lewis Milestone
(Lewis Milstein), (1895–1980), b. Chisinaw, Ukraine
1925:
Seven Sinners
. 1926:
The Caveman; The New Klondike
. 1927:
Two Arabian Knights
. 1928:
The Garden of Eden; The Racket
. 1929:
Betrayal; New York Nights
. 1930:
All Quiet on the Western Front
. 1931:
The Front Page
. 1932:
Rain
. 1933:
Hallelujah, I’m a Bum
. 1934:
The Captain Hates the Sea
. 1935:
Paris in Spring
. 1936:
Anything Goes; The General Died at Dawn
. 1939:
Of Mice and Men
. 1940:
The Night of Nights; Lucky Partners
. 1941:
Our Russian Front
(codirected with Joris Ivens) (d);
My Life with Caroline
. 1943:
Edge of Darkness; The North Star
. 1944:
The Purple Heart
. 1945:
A Walk in the Sun
. 1946:
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
. 1948:
Arch of Triumph; No Minor Vices
. 1949:
The Red Pony
. 1951:
Halls of Montezuma
. 1952:
Kangaroo; Les Miserables
. 1953:
Melba
. 1954:
They Who Dare
. 1955:
The Widow
. 1959:
Pork Chop Hill
. 1960:
Ocean’s 11
. 1962:
Mutiny on the Bounty
.

Milestone came to the United States in 1917 and served in the First World War. In 1920 he went to Hollywood and worked as assistant editor and writer with, among others, William A. Seiter. It was the film version of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel,
All Quiet on the Western Front
, that established Milestone as a leading director, partly because the warning of the film was reinforced by sound, and partly because the battle scenes, contrary to the theme of the movie, were undeniably spectacular.

At this period, Milestone had an inventive, flashy technique that passed for style and a knack of picking or being picked for interesting properties.
The Front Page
was one of the best early talking comedies, although the talk belonged to Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur and was to be used rather better by Hawks in
His Girl Friday. Rain
was a failure; it was a controversial subject, cannily cast: Joan Crawford as Sadie Thompson and Walter Huston as Rev. Atkinson.
Hallelujah, I’m a Bum
was an eccentric Depression piece, pairing Jolson and Harry Langdon.
The Captain Hates the Sea
was John Gilbert’s last movie.

Throughout the 1930s, Milestone worked in the theatre as well as the movies and this added to the idea that he chose his films carefully. In fact, his selection seemed based on variety for its own sake:
Anything Goes
was an Ethel Merman/Bing Crosby musical;
The General Died at Dawn
an excellent Gary Cooper adventure set in China;
Of Mice and Men
an honorable version of Steinbeck, helped by a sensitive performance from Burgess Meredith. Nothing suggested that Milestone was more than a competent director. War showed that he could be a good deal less.

Although his initial reputation rested on a monument against war, his Second World War projects settled for the glamour of battle and the standard group portrait of unambiguous soldiers:
The North Star, The Purple Heart, A Walk in the Sun
, and later,
Halls of Montezuma
. After the war, the surface excitement flickered out.
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
was a rich, neurotic thriller, but
Arch of Triumph
—again from a Remarque novel—was an overlong commercial failure (it is also the one really disturbing film he made). He had an inexplicable interest in Australian subjects (
Kangaroo
and
Melba
) and did a very dull remake of Victor Hugo.
Pork Chop Hill
was the Korean war, dutifully disenchanted, but still stirring whenever his tracking shots began traversing the battlefield.
Ocean’s 11
needed a Gordon Douglas, while
Mutiny on the Bounty
ran aground on a loathing between Brando and Richard Harris that obscured the original antagonism between Bligh and Fletcher Christian.

John Milius
, b. St Louis, Missouri, 1944
1973:
Dillinger
. 1975:
The Wind and the Lion
. 1978:
Big Wednesday
. 1982:
Conan the Barbarian
. 1984:
Red Dawn
. 1989:
Farewell to the King
. 1991:
Flight of the Intruder
. 1994:
Motorcycle Gang
(TV). 1997:
Rough Riders
(TV).

Milius’s father was a shoe manufacturer. When the family moved to California, the child devoted himself to surfing, kendo, Hemingway, Patton, MacArthur, and Teddy Roosevelt. In later years, the study and firing of guns was added to the pantheon. Milius studied film at the University of Southern California and started writing scripts furiously. Many were shelved, but he got a credit on
The Devil’s 8
(69, Burt Topper), and thereupon used his knowledge of the Vietnam war and his sympathy for tyrant-heroes to write the first version of
Apocalypse Now
for Coppola. The dynamic Kilgore sequences in the finished film seem closest to Milius.

In the next few years, Milius rewrote
Dirty Harry
(71, Don Siegel) and undoubtedly contributed the vigilante fervor that overflowed Siegel’s customary cynicism; he also worked on
Evel Knievel
(71, Marvin Chomsky), another movie that might have benefited from more of Milius’s enthusiasm for its subject. He wrote
Jeremiah Johnson
(72, Sydney Pollack);
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean
(72, John Huston);
Magnum Force
(73, Ted Post), written with Michael Cimino; and
Melvin Purvis—G Man
(74, Dan Curtis). Those are four problem pictures:
Jeremiah Johnson
required more extravagance than Redford or Pollack could muster. Instead of ecological treatise, it should have been a wilderness legend, Jack London verging on King Ubu.
Roy Bean
sacrificed madness to whimsicality.
Magnum Force
was too much a Clint Eastwood vehicle, too little a study of fascism wearing a badge. And
Melvin Purvis
was a TV afterthought to Milius’s first feature.

Of the films he has directed,
Dillinger
is the best: shot with raffish elegance and humor, imaginatively cast, and made with the same sardonic bravura that characterized
Scarface
. The rivalry of Ben Johnson and Warren Oates is always comic, but never taken too far.
The Wind and the Lion
is cheerfully fabricated Rooseveltiana, with Sean Connery as a Berber. It’s a boys’ book of heroes kind of film, a foolish but consistent throwback to forties cinema and earlier imperialist confidence. The flair for youthful adventure was just as strong in
Big Wednesday
, a hymn to surfing, and Milius’s least focused narrative.

Over the years, Milius had earned and even provoked the press reputation of a strident, magnum-brandishing reactionary. But he is more than that. He is an anarchist, he is articulate, and he has an unshakable faith in human grandeur that might work very well with a more humdrum topic than he has yet taken on. Film may be too small or ephemeral a passion for him. But he has one great scene already: he helped write the speech Robert Shaw’s Quint pronounces on the sinking of the
Indianapolis
in
Jaws
(75, Steven Spielberg).

He was also an executive producer on
1941
(79, Spielberg), which he helped write; on
Hardcore
(79, Paul Schrader); and on
Used Cars
(80, Robert Zemeckis). A little later, he coproduced
Uncommon Valor
(83, Ted Kotcheff) and
Fatal Beauty
(87, Tom Holland), and contributed the story to
Extreme Prejudice
(87, Walter Hill).

But as a director, Milius has wandered and strayed. His own great confidence and the lyricism of his heroism have seemed forced.
Conan
gave a boost to the career of Arnold Schwarzenegger;
Flight of the Intruder
and
Red Dawn
were abject and stupid.
Farewell to the King
is the one interesting project, though it falls far short of its Melville-like potential.

In 1993, Milius could do no more than the script for
Geronimo
(Walter Hill). A year later, he wrote
Clear and Present Danger
(94, Phillip Noyce). His two TV movies repeated earlier, and younger, interests.

Then later, he was writer and producer on the TV series
Rome
(05–07).

Ray Milland
(Reginald Alfred Truscott-Jones) (1905–86), b. Neath, Wales
Milland had little trouble playing American as a young man. He wore clothes like an officer, and he was good-looking in a glossy way. He smiled to order, and partnered a lot of actresses with aplomb. But there was something else in the man, something more autocratic or less good-natured, and it was promise of the saturnine figure from
Dial M for Murder
and the man who, at fifty, would make films of his own that were stark and forbidding.

He had begun in Britain. After King’s College, London, and service in the Guards, he drifted into movies apparently while visiting a girlfriend actress at the studios. As Spike Milland, he had a small part in
The Plaything
(29, Castleton Knight). Smoothed out into Raymond Milland, he made several more British pictures, including
The Flying Scotsman
(29, Knight) and
Lady from the Sea
(29, Knight), before going to Hollywood to appear at Metro, with Marion Davies, in
The Bachelor Father
(31, Robert Z. Leonard). He stayed a year in America, in several films, the best of which was
Payment Deferred
(32, Lothar Mendes).

Returning to Britain, he was in
Orders Is Orders
(33, Walter Forde) before going back to Paramount, to small parts in
Bolero
(34, Wesley Ruggles) and
We’re Not Dressing
(34, Norman Taurog), and thence to a contract. For the next ten years, Milland worked hard in a variety of supporting roles and romantic leads at Paramount and on loan:
Many Happy Returns
(34, Norman Z. McLeod);
Four Hours to Kill
(35, Mitchell Leisen);
The Glass Key
(35, Frank Tuttle);
The Gilded Lily
(35, Ruggles) with Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray; at Universal with Deanna Durbin in
Three Smart Girls
(36, Henry Koster); in Mitchell Leisen’s
Easy Living
(37),
Arise My Love
(40),
I Wanted Wings
(41), and
Lady in the Dark
(44); for Wellman in
Men With Wings
(38) and
Beau Geste
(39);
Hotel Imperial
(39, Robert Florey); a great success back in Britain in Asquith’s
French Without Tears
(39); in De Mille’s
Reap the Wild Wind
(42), and otherwise the model squire to Paulette Goddard, Loretta Young, and Dorothy Lamour. Then in 1942 he played with Ginger Rogers in Billy Wilder’s first film,
The Major and the Minor
.