The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (339 page)

At the end of his life, he played a small part in
Sextette
(78, Ken Hughes), Mae West’s final film, and he was in
The Man with Bogart’s Face
(80, Robert Day).

Sam Raimi
, b. Detroit, Michigan, 1960
1983:
The Evil Dead
. 1985:
Crimewave/Broken Hearts and Noses
. 1987:
Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn
. 1990:
Darkman
. 1993:
Army of Darkness
. 1995:
The Quick and the Dead
. 1998:
A Simple Plan
. 1999:
For Love of the Game
. 2000:
The Gift
. 2002:
Spider-Man
. 2004:
Spider-Man 2
. 2007:
Spider-Man 3
. 2009:
Drag Me to Hell
.

More than fifteen years before
The Blair Witch Project
, the very young Sam Raimi had promoted the idea of a cabin in the woods where evil forces made killers of ordinary people. And
The Evil Dead
was a low-budget picture that played at Cannes. There was far more style than funds, and this all led to
Darkman
, a full-scale studio horror movie. But Raimi was not content to be labeled a horror kid.
The Quick and the Dead
was a bizarre, camp Western that attracted a lot of name actors. Then all of a sudden
A Simple Plan
was a real picture about rural folks, paranoia, and what the snow can cover. Of course,
A Simple Plan
could have been played for horror, yet it suggested that Raimi had higher ambitions. Who would have thought those would have shifted to Kevin Costner’s dotty daydream, and thence to a major franchise,
Spider-Man?

Raimu
(Jules Muraire) (1883–1946), b. Toulon, France
Perhaps because we are all actors now (I mean, too well aware of trying to be convincing), we have become anxious about the intelligence (or otherwise) of professional actors. No matter that “acting” (as opposed to being) ourselves might be regarded as stupid, futile, vain, and neurotic, we are highly concerned to vouch for the intelligence—the intellect, even—in actors. Whereas once upon a time, people were content to observe great brilliance in actors riding along without a parsable thought for anything else in the world—as if actors were great sportsmen, kings or queens, or immense lovers.

For example, Raimu—that glorious, unrestrained performer, of whom the solicitous Jean Renoir once said, “Although Raimu was perhaps the greatest French actor of the century, he was completely ignorant of some things. All he knew about the cinema was that a close-up showed the details of a face. During shooting he would constantly say to the cameraman, ‘Make me big.’ ” It is a primitive approach, Boudu-esque—except that Michel Simon himself was a refined and articulate man. Another great admirer of Raimu’s instinctive approach was Orson Welles, surely a fine example of the actor too chronically clever for his own good, so that he was compelled to take up the consequent air of fraud in his persona. As for Raimu—nothing deterred or deflected him.

He was a star of music hall, the Folies-Bergère, and the stage long before he got into film. Once established on camera, he revealed his fondness for naturalness and a select body of directors with whom he felt comfortable. Of course, he is treasured above all for his César in the Pagnol trilogy, but there are many other fine films in the list, and Raimu is central to that French faith in the grand, “ugly” actor—something that helps explain the great success of Depardieu, and which testifies to the ongoing nineteenth-century romance in French acting.

Raimu probably did a few silent films, but the established list of credits begins with
Le Blanc et le Noir
(31, Robert Florey);
Marius
(31, Pagnol and Alexander Korda);
Mam’zelle Nitouche
(31, Marc Allégret);
Fanny
(32, Allégret);
La Petite Chocolatière
(32, Allégret);
Les Gaietés de l’Escadron
(32, Maurice Tourneur);
Théodore et Cie
(33, Pierre Colombier);
Charlemagne
(33, Colombier);
Ces Messieurs de la Santé
(33, Colombier);
L’Ecole des Cocottes
(34, Colombier);
Tartarin de Tarascon
(34, Raymond Bernard);
Minuit Place Pigalle
(34, Roger Richebé);
J’Ai une Idée
(34, Richebé);
Gaspard de Besse
(35, André Hugon);
César
(36, Pagnol).

The three César films had made him immensely popular, and he was now a star who had vehicles, or roles, conceived for him:
Le Secret de Polichinelle
(36, André Berthomieu);
Le Roi
(36, Colombier);
Les Jumeaux de Brighton
(36, Claude Heymann);
Les Perles de la Couronne
(37, Christian-Jaque and Sacha Guitry);
Gribouille
(37, Allégret);
L’Etrange Monsieur Victor
(37, Jean Gremillon);
Vous N’Avez Rien à Déclarer?
(37, Léo Joannon);
Carnet de Ball
(37, Duvivier);
Les Rois du Sport
(37, Colombier);
Le Fauteuil 47
(37, Fernand Rivers);
Faisons un Rêve
(37, Guitry);
La Chaste Suzanne
(37, Berthomieu); and then a huge hit in
La Femme du Boulanger
(38, Pagnol)—which was one of the last French films to play in Britain and America at the start of the war, and which romanticized French rural life with its stress on eating. (In time, that taste would turn into Alice Waters’s restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California, which was inspired by the Pagnol films and has always been a favored place for filmmakers.) For Raimu to have left France (because of war) would have been unthinkable:
Les Nouveaux Riches
(38, Berthomieu);
Noix de Coco
(39, Jean Boyer);
Le Héros de la Marne
(39, Hugon);
Monsieur Brotonneau
(39, Alexandre Esway);
Dernière Jeunesse
(39, Jeff Musso);
Le Duel
(39, Pierre Fresnay);
L’Homme Qui Cherche la Verité
(40, Esway);
La Fille du Puisatier
(40, Pagnol);
Parade en Sept Nuits
(41, Allégret);
Les Inconnus dans la Maison
(42, Henri Decoin);
Monsieur La Souris
(42, Georges Lacombe);
Le Bienfaiteur
(42, Decoin);
Les Petits Riens
(42, Raymond Leboursier);
Le Colonel Chabert
(43, René Le Hénaff);
Untel Père et Fils
(43, Duvivier);
Les Gueux au Paradis
(45, Le Hénaff);
L’Homme au Chapeau Rond
(46, Pierre Billon).

Luise Rainer
, b. Dusseldorf, Germany, 1910
How are the Oscars awarded? That question intrigues public and nominees alike. It is easy now to charge that the statuettes have become devalued as the movie industry has lost confidence. The gauche gestures of the Academy to great stars who unaccountably slipped through their net—Cary Grant and, too late, Edward G. Robinson—have added to the impression that Oscars were always political rewards, shared out among major studios and stars. But close scrutiny of the list of winners reveals a charming eccentricity. Go to the heyday of the industry—mid-1930s, for instance—and in consecutive years a lady named Luise Rainer won the best actress Oscar. The Academy quickly flinched from its generosity, and the actress herself was overawed by the twin household gods. Her career crumbled so completely afterwards that they might have been voodoo idols.

Rainer was a distinguished Berlin stage actress, a member of Max Reinhardt’s company, invited to Hollywood by MGM in 1935. She had made a few films in Germany—
Sehnsucht 202
(32, Max Neufeld);
Heute Kommt’s Drauf An
(33, Kurt Gerron)—but nothing to suggest unusual promise. Her American debut came about only when Myrna Loy abandoned
Escapade
(35, Robert Z. Leonard). That proved simply that Rainer photographed well and that she was monotonously expressive in the manner of silent screen humility. MGM then cast her as the first, long-suffering wife of
The Great Ziegfeld
(36, Leonard), and she won her first Oscar (because of a long, tear-filled telephone scene). The second came with her Chinese peasant in Thalberg’s last production,
The Good Earth
(37, Sidney Franklin, et al.), another wife who has to endure a husband’s mistress. All this at the studio that had Garbo, Norma Shearer, and Joan Crawford as its leading ladies.

It was an astonishing beginning, but it was effectively the end. Rainer was a limited, moistly appealing screen personality, quite unable to survive the reaction against two in a row. Her marriage to Clifford Odets was foundering and her remaining films at Metro were forlorn ventures:
The Emperor’s Candlesticks
(37, George Fitzmaurice);
Big City
(37, Frank Borzage);
The Toy Wife
(38, Richard Thorpe);
The Great Waltz
(38, Julien Duvivier); and
Dramatic School
(38, Robert Sinclair). The studio then dropped her and her retirement from the screen was interrupted only once, in 1943, with
Hostages
(Frank Tuttle).

There was nothing more until Rainer appeared in 1991 as perhaps the best witness in TNT’s history of MGM—beautiful, intelligent, and mesmerizing. She has since appeared as the grandmother in
The Gambler
(97, Károly Makk) and in
Poem
(03, Ralf Schmerberg).

Ella Raines
(Raubes) (1921–88), b. Snoqualmie Falls, Washington
Ella Raines had that look on her face—saucy, knowing, and eager. Elisha Cook’s mad drummer could see it in
Phantom Lady
(44, Robert Siodmak), and it’s likely that Ms. Raines knew it herself. After the University of Washington, she got herself noticed by David Selznick, then by Howard Hawks. They had an affair, and then she was passed on to Hawks’s partner, Charlie Feldman, ending his marriage to Jean Howard. Hawks only used her in his production of
Corvette K-225
(43, Richard Rossen), but it’s said he shot some of her scenes himself. Thereafter, she was picked up—professionally—by Siodmak, who used her four times:
Cry Havoc
(43, Richard Thorpe);
Hail the Conquering Hero
(44, Preston Sturges); with John Wayne in
Tall in the Saddle
(44, Edwin L. Marin);
Enter Arsene Lupin
(44, Ford Becker); as the love of Charles Laughton’s imagination in
The Suspect
(44, Siodmak); very touching with George Sanders in
The Strange Affair of Uncle Henry
(45, Siodmak);
The Runaround
(46, Charles Lamont);
White Tie and Tails
(46, Charles Barton);
Time Out of Mind
(47, Siodmak);
The Web
(47, Michael Gordon);
Brute Force
(47, Jules Dassin); with William Powell in
The Senator Was Indiscreet
(47, George S. Kaufman); in a Western,
The Walking Hills
(49, John Sturges);
Impact
(49, Arthur Lubin);
A Dangerous Profession
(49, Ted Tetzlaff); with Vaughn Monroe in
Singing Guns
(50, R. G. Springsteen); having plastic surgery in
The Second Face
(50, Jean Bernhard);
The Fighting Coast Guard
(51, Joseph Kane);
Ride the Man Down
(52, Kane); and then to England for her last film,
Man in the Road
(56, Lance Comfort).

Claude Rains
(1889–1967), b. London
For consistent enterprise in supporting parts, Rains had few equals. Technically, he often filled roles that were leads, but he treated them as character parts. Slight, elegant, and detached, he was middle-aged before he came to Hollywood and he specialized in lawyers, politicians, doctors, and as a discreet support for Bette Davis. But he also gave unusual individuality to a number of villains, and even the occasional florid madman. It says something for Hollywood’s coming of age during the war that Rains was a corrupt, obnoxious politician for Capra in 1939, and yet, four years later, in
Casablanca
, a most engaging cynic, surviving with amusement amid so much compromise.

Rains was a noted actor before 1914, and a respected teacher at RADA (Charles Laughton was one of his students). He was well into his forties before being cast by James Whale in
The Invisible Man
(33), a remarkable debut for so responsive a face, since Rains played in bandages throughout. He was only revealed to the world in Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s
Crime Without Passion
(34). After a few more films, including
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
(35, Stuart Walker), in which he is a pinch-faced drug addict, and back to Britain for
The Clairvoyant
(35, Maurice Elvey), Rains was put under contract by Warners:
Anthony Adverse
(36, Mervyn Le Roy); Napoleon in
Hearts Divided
(36, Frank Borzage);
Stolen Holiday
(36, Michael Curtiz)—about the Stavisky affair;
They Won’t Forget
(37, Le Roy)—an indictment of lynch law, with Rains as a conniving district attorney;
The Prince and the Pauper
(37, William Keighley);
Gold Is Where You Find It
(38, Curtiz); as an amused, giggly Prince John in
The Adventures of Robin Hood
(38, Curtiz and Keighley);
White Banners
(38, Edmund Goulding);
Four Daughters
(38, Curtiz); the detective pursuing John Garfield in Busby Berkeley’s
They Made Me a Criminal
(39); Napoleon III in
Juarez
(39, William Dieterle); magnificent as Senator Payne in Frank Capra’s
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
(39, made for Columbia)—note his complex reaction as he is being introduced: he is the most interesting person in the film;
Four Wives
(39, Curtiz); a classic picture,
The Sea Hawk
(40, Curtiz); playwright David Belasco in
The Lady With Red Hair
(40, Curtis Bernhardt);
Here Comes Mr. Jordan
(41, Alexander Hall);
The Wolf Man
(41, George Waggner);
King’s Row
(42, Sam Wood);
Moontide
(42, Archie Mayo); the psychiatrist in
Now, Voyager
(42, Irving Rapper); the police chief in
Casablanca
(43, Curtiz);
The Phantom of the Opera
(43, Arthur Lubin);
Passage to Marseilles
(44, Curtiz); grace under pressure as the Jew in
Mr. Skeffington
(44, Vincent Sherman).