The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (287 page)

Working usually for Freed, he coincided with the MGM musical—but only coincided.
Cabin in the Sky
is all-black, dwelling gloriously on Lena Horne and Ethel Waters.
Meet Me in St. Louis
is a period piece, more intent on personality and nostalgia than musical routines—a sort of home theatricals musical in which “The Trolley Song” is beautifully integrated with the action.
Ziegfeld Follies
is a series of sketches. While
Yolanda and the Thief, The Pirate
, and
An American in Paris
are willfully stylized and fantastic, inclining toward a new form that might consist only of dance, song, and color. Stunning as these pictures are in moments, the open-air musicals of Donen seem more original.
The Pirate
, especially, looks like the work of a man more eager to decorate than design.

Then there is the odd history of Minnelli and Judy Garland. He was often gay; she was close to frenzy. He was a consummate professional; she was ready to break any rule she could discover. He was tender and considerate; he loved her talent, and he saw the chance of revealing an adult Judy. She always needed protectors. So Minnelli was brought in to replace Fred Zinnemann on
The Clock
, and he delivered a flawless, sweet romance.
Meet Me in St. Louis
was made in chaos but Judy was never more beautiful, and never placed in so stable a family setting. Minnelli’s kindness lay in showing Garland looking after Margaret O’Brien, rising to the bittersweet “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which in her voice is as forlorn a song as “Over the Rainbow.” Their marriage lasted from 1945 to 1951, technically, but by the time of
The Pirate
they were estranged. Yet they served each other, and they gave life (and the burden of their unlikely union) to Liza to sort out.

As Minnelli’s musicals became less dramatically necessary
—The Band Wagon, Brigadoon, Kismet
—he made delightful comedies in which his rococo instinct in no way distracted one from the dry homespun of Spencer Tracy.
Undercurrent
was a contrived psychological movie, but often intriguing;
Madame Bovary
never worked as a whole, or as the dream of a bourgeois wife. But
The Bad and the Beautiful
was a breakthrough: it opened up a potential for sudden insights in brilliantly regulated melodrama that was one of Minnelli’s most fascinating assets. It can be seen in
The Cobweb, Some Came Running, Two Weeks in Another Town
, and
The Courtship of Eddie’s Father
—all underrated films, ostensibly lurid or soft subjects that he invested with such intense psychological detail that the narrative faults vanish. In those films, as in
Lust for Life
, the personal story and the visual story lock together. The use of the goldfish in
The Courtship of Eddie’s Father
, and the emphasis on interior shape and decor in
The Cobweb
, may be symptomatic of Minnelli’s most lasting achievements.

Regularly, his work plunged and rose again:
The Sandpiper
is a dreadful film;
Four Horsemen
a hopeless one, saved locally by the color and by Ingrid Thulin;
Goodbye Charlie
has fine moments but lacks coordination. It was his first film away from MGM and marked an unexplained drying up in his output.
On a Clear Day…
, despite its mangled form on release, shows the same visual distinction and the same interest in imaginative exclusion of outside reality, so that three films in ten years is hard to understand.

On a Clear Day …
also returned to Minnelli’s persistent interest in dream experiences. There is a nice moment in
Yolanda and the Thief
when Frank Morgan wakes Fred Astaire from the dream sequence with the words, “When you have a nightmare you sure keep busy.” True enough, and cut off from inner, imaginary feelings, Minnelli sometimes looks uninterested.
Yolanda
is a dull story, transformed in the dream sequences that suddenly call into being all of Minnelli’s fantastic control of light, color, shape, and movement.
Meet Me in St. Louis
is a daydream,
An American in Paris
a pretext for a dream. And remember that Minnelli introduces a rather frightening nightmare into
Father of the Bride
. Not only do such enchanted visions recur, but Minnelli’s stress on style is itself reaching out for dream: the fluid, self-sufficient sequences of fantastic imagery. That could explain the occasional feeling of indifference to narrative, just as it directs attention to his style.

Carmen Miranda
(Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha) (1909–55), b. Marco de Canvezes, Portugal
It was a short career, and in her bizarre fusion of the lacquered look of Punch’s Judy with the fruity effulgence of her head she was hardly the most useful or coherent image of things “Latin.” Today, anyone doing “Carmen Miranda” might be attacked as a stereotype, barely protected by camp. But in the early forties, she was a cheerful purveyor of the American notion that things south of the border were hot and absurd. Probably 90 percent of Americans believed she was Spanish, whereas she was a Portuguese who had gone to Brazil as a child and become a star in Rio on radio, records, and in movies. She made some films in Brazil, and in 1939 she was in the musical
Streets of Paris
on Broadway. She also did a show at the Waldorf-Astoria, the New York hotel most favored by Hollywood moguls.

Fox snapped her up, and she had her moment: singing “South American Way” in
Down Argentine Way
(40, Irving Cummings); “I-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi like you very much” in
That Night in Rio
(41, Cummings);
A Weekend in Havana
(41, Walter Lang);
Springtime in the Rockies
(42, Cummings); doing “The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat” in
The Gang’s All Here
(43, Busby Berkeley).

That was her peak, but she was in
Four Jills in a Jeep
(44, William A. Seiter);
Greenwich Village
(44, Lang);
Something for the Boys
(44, Lewis Seiler);
Doll Face
(45, Seiler);
If I’m Lucky
(46, Seiler);
Copacabana
(47, Alfred E. Green);
A Date with Judy
(48, Richard Thorpe);
Nancy Goes to Rio
(50, Robert Z. Leonard); with Martin and Lewis in
Scared Stiff
(53, George Marshall).

Isa Miranda
(Ines Isabella Sampietro) (1909–82), b. Milan, Italy
Twice for Max Ophüls, Isa Miranda played the part that interested him most—the actress in search of herself: as a sketch among many in
La Ronde
(50) and wonderfully delicate and touching in
La Signora di Tutti
(34). It was that earlier film that decided her on a film career. In fact, she did not attain her Ophülsian tenderness with many other directors—but neither did Martine Carol.

Although most of her films were Italian, she also worked in France and America:
Il Caso Haller
(33, Alessandro Blasetti);
Comele Foglie
(34, Mario Camerini);
L’Homme de Nulle Part
(37, Pierre Chenal);
Scipione L’Africano
(37, Carmine Gallone); to Hollywood, to play opposite Ray Milland in
Hotel Imperial
(39, Robert Florey);
Malombra
(42, Mario Soldati);
Zaza
(43, Renato Castellani);
Lo Sbaglio di Essere Vivo
(45, Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia);
Audela des Grilles
(48, René Clément); her episode in
Siamo Donne
(53, Luigi Zampa);
Raspoutine
(53, Georges Combret);
Avant le Déluge
(54, André Cayatte);
Summer Madness
(55, David Lean);
Gli Sbandati
(55, Francesco Maselli);
Une Manche et la Belle
(57, Henri Verneuil);
La Noia
(63, Damiano Damiani);
The Yellow Rolls Royce
(64, Anthony Asquith);
Hell Is Empty
(66, Bernard Knowles and John Ainsworth);
Caroline Chérie
(67, Denys de la Patellière);
The Shoes of the Fisherman
(68, Michael Anderson);
L’Assoluto Naturale
(69, Mauro Bolognini); and
The Night Porter
(73, Liliana Cavani).

Dame Helen Mirren
(Ilyena Lydia Mironoff), b. London, 1945
The movies only really caught up with Helen Mirren by the time she was thirty-five or so. Thus, despite the generous indications of Michael Powell when he cast her as the beach nymph in
Age of Consent
(69), Mirren’s fiery youthful beauty was largely confined to the stage in Britain. She was outstanding in the sixties and early seventies as Miss Julie, Cressida, Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, Titania, Cleopatra, and the Duchess of Malfi. Her exceptional
Miss Julie
was done for British TV (72, John Gleniston and Robin Phillips).

On screen, she generally had small roles: in Peter Hall’s film of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(68); as suffragette and mistress in
Savage Messiah
(72, Ken Russell);
O Lucky Man!
(73, Lindsay Anderson); as Gertrude
and
Ophelia in the sixty-seven-minute
Hamlet
(76, Celestino Coronado); in
The Collection
(76, Michael Apted), from Pinter; as Caesonia in the
Penthouse Caligula
(79, Tinto Brass); as one of the adults playing children in Dennis Potter’s
Blue Remembered Hills
(79, Brian Gibson); and
The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu
(80, Piers Haggard).

Then she was outstandingly sinister, centuries apart, as the mistress in
The Long Good Friday
(79, John Mackenzie) and Morgana in
Excalibur
(81, John Boorman). She was in
2010
(84, Peter Hyams); winning the best actress prize at Cannes for
Cal
(84, Pat O’Connor); Russian in
White Nights
(85, Taylor Hackford, her companion);
The Gospel According to Vic
(85, Charles Gormley); as the mother in
The Mosquito Coast
(86, Peter Weir);
Pascali’s Island
(88, James Dearden);
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
(89, Peter Greenaway);
When the Whales Came
(89, Clive Rees);
The Comfort of Strangers
(90, Paul Schrader); and
Where Angels Fear to Tread
(91, Charles Sturridge).

Still and all, she has never had a movie role as meaty as the lady cop in
Prime Suspect
on TV (91, Christopher Menaul). Nor have the movies had a fuller portrait of an attractive woman as soured by career.
Prime Suspect
is doggedly realistic and old-fashioned, despite its feminist slant, but it conjures up a Buñuel black comedy in which gigolos, aristocrats, and bishops are forever turning themselves in for interrogation.
Prime Suspect 2
(93, John Strickland) was not as good, but who could deny Ms. Mirren a franchise?
Prime Suspect 3
(93, David Drury) played on television in Britain in December 1993. She also appeared in
The Hawk
(93, David Hayman).

There have been three more
Prime Suspect
series (in 95, 96 and 03), and Jane Tennison has made it to superintendent without turning into a serial killer herself. Elsewhere, she was the Gertrude figure in
Prince of Jutland
(94, Gabriel Axel); the queen in
The Madness of King George
(94, Nicholas Hytner);
Some Mother’s Son
(96, Terry George), which she helped produce;
Losing Chase
(96, Kevin Bacon);
Critical Care
(97, Sidney Lumet); in the TV series
Painted Lady
(97, Julian Jarrold); the voice of the queen for
The Prince of Egypt
(98); showing just how far she can go in
The Passion of Ayn Rand
(99, Menaul);
Teaching Mrs. Tingle
(99, Kevin Williamson);
Greenfingers
(00, Joel Hershman); directing
Happy Birthday
(00);
The Pledge
(00, Sean Penn);
Last Orders
(01, Fred Schepisi);
Gosford Park
(01, Robert Altman);
No Such Thing
(01, Hal Hartley);
Door to Door
(01, Steven Schachter).

She took the old Vivien Leigh role in a TV version of
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
(02, Robert Allan Ackerman); she was on TV in
Georgetown
(02) and
Pride
(03, John Downer);
Calendar Girls
(03, Nigel Cole);
The Clearing
(03, Pieter Jan Brugge).

It was in 2003, after some doubts, that she accepted the honor of “Dame” and meeting HRH. It did wonders. Within a year, she was
Elizabeth I
(Tom Hooper)—and just a little routine. But the clue was enough, and two years later she was quite simply
The Queen
, thanks to Peter Morgan and Stephen Frears. That won everything—an Oscar included—and in many hearts wiped away the memory of Diana. In addition, Dame Helen did
Shadowboxer
(06, Lee Daniels), playing a hit-woman;
Inkheart
(08, Iain Softley); Tolstoy’s wife in
The Last Station
(09, Michael Hoffman); the
lead
in
The Tempest
(10, Julie Taymor)!

Thomas Mitchell
(1892–1962), b. Elizabeth, New Jersey
Nineteen-thirty-nine was a prodigious year for Thomas Mitchell and supporting parts:
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
(William Dieterle); as Kid Dabb, denying failing sight, in
Only Angels Have Wings
(Howard Hawks); as the alcoholic doctor in
Stagecoach
(John Ford), for which he won the supporting actor Oscar;
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
(Frank Capra); and as Scarlett’s father in
Gone With the Wind
(Victor Fleming). That sort of vivid enthusiasm has not dated, and it is typical of the sure sense of idiom that Hollywood bred in supporting players.
Stagecoach
, for instance, is a blueprint movie, in that any actor could have known exactly how to play it from one reading of the script: it is exactly centered on convention.
Only Angels …
is far more original in that its conventions are entirely Hawksian. Arguably, it is Mitchell’s most testing part. The man he plays is, indeed, a kid, despite being in his forties. Mitchell very subtly suggested the undertone of homosexuality in such male camaraderie, just as he played on the same theme, more robustly, as Pat Garrett in
The Outlaw
(46, Howard Hughes).