The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (365 page)

Then,
I Heart Huckabees
was awful—was, even, one of the most crushing of recent American films. There was a delay, and then Russell’s next film—
Nailed
—was delayed. So let’s remind ourselves that
Three Kings
was a startling movie about an inane war.

Jane Russell
, b. Bemidji, Minnesota, 1921
Of all the screen’s sex goddesses, Jane Russell seemed most amused by the performance. Not that she was undeserving. She was a chiropodist’s assistant when a photograph of her was sent to Howard Hughes. That rare blend of artist, engineer, and businessman designed a bra that would do her justice and then abandoned his invention in the most delightful scenes of his own film
The Outlaw
. That film, made in 1940 and released in 1946, is generally mocked. But it is very funny, quite sexy, and as much Howard Hawks as Hughes. Russell is the primal female object in it and the raison d’être of a long, drawn-out publicity campaign to launch the movie. When at last Hughes let it out, the poster had a drawing of Russell, holding a pistol, lolling in the hay, with the caption: “Mean … Moody … Magnificent.”

Russell was no actress, but she was dryly skeptical and physically glorious. Such droll eroticism is rare in Hollywood, and we are lucky that she was allowed to decorate so many adventure movies:
The Young Widow
(47, Edwin L. Marin); very good with Bob Hope in
The Paleface
(48, Norman Z. McLeod);
Double Dynamite
(50, Irving Cummings);
His Kind of Woman
(51, John Farrow);
Macao
(52, Josef von Sternberg);
Montana Belle
(52, Allan Dwan);
Son of Paleface
(52, Frank Tashlin);
The Las Vegas Story
(52, Robert Stevenson); generous to Monroe in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
(53, Hawks);
The French Line
(53, Lloyd Bacon), a dull, garish film, but with two startlingly direct songs;
Underwater
(55, John Sturges);
Gentlemen Marry Brunettes
(55, Richard Sale);
Foxfire
(55, Joseph Pevney);
The Tall Men
(55, Raoul Walsh);
Hot Blood
(56, Nicholas Ray);
The Revolt of Mamie Stover
(56, Walsh); and
The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown
(57, Norman Taurog).

Her retirement was broken by occasional guest appearances—in
Johnny Reno
(65, R. G. Springsteen) and
Waco
(66, Springsteen)—and prominence on TV—in bra commercials where she brought “great news for us full-figure gals,” a message from Arcadia to Levittown.

Ken Russell
, b. Southampton, England, 1927
1962:
Elgar
(d). 1963:
French Dressing
. 1964:
A House in Bayswater
(d). 1965:
Debussy
(d);
Douanier Rousseau
(d). 1966:
Isadora Duncan
(d). 1967:
Dante’s Inferno
(d);
Billion Dollar Brain
. 1968:
Song of Summer
(d). 1969:
Women in Love
. 1970:
Dance of the Seven Veils
(d). 1971:
The Music Lovers; The Devils; The Boy Friend
. 1972:
Savage Messiah
. 1974:
Mahler
. 1975:
Tommy; Lisztomania
. 1977:
Valentino
. 1978:
Clouds of Glory
(TV). 1980:
Altered States; Crimes of Passion
. 1986:
Gothic;
an episode from
Aria
. 1988:
Salome’s Last Dance; Lair of the White Worm
. 1989:
The Rainbow
. 1990: “Dusk Before Fireworks,” episode from
Women & Men: Stories of Seduction
. 1991:
Whore; Prisoner of Honor
(TV). 1992:
The Mystery of Dr. Martinu
(TV). 1993:
Lady Chatterley
(TV);
The Insatiable Mrs. Kirsch
(s). 1995:
Mindbender; Classic Widows
(d) (TV);
Alice in Russialand
. 1997:
Ken Russell “In Search of the English Folk Song”
(d). 1998:
Dogboys
(TV). 2000:
Lion’s Mouth
. 2002:
Fall of the House of Usher
.

No other British director advanced with such effect from TV to movies, or demonstrated the perilous cultivation of heartless prettiness by TV that on a larger screen looks like an odiously picturesque self-loathing. Just as a Lang, a Buñuel, or a Renoir always conceals style and eliminates the distractions of “beauty,” so Russell hurls it at us with a remorseless facility. That he is oblivious of his own vulgarity and the triteness of his morbid misanthropy serves as a contrast to illuminate the vigorous pessimism of Buñuel.

A training in still photography nurtured meretricious accomplishment. Russell was a photographer on
Picture Post
who made several prizewinning amateur films—notably
Amelia and the Angel
(57)—as a way into TV. There, he became the prize enfant terrible of the BBC arts section. It is worth recalling that his
Elgar
appealed shamelessly to the stuffed Malvern pride of English conservatives whom most of the more recent films have outraged. Hardly a frame of
Elgar
went by that did not evince approving sighs from those as pious about music as they were insensitive to cinema.

The BBC’s pursuit of the dead artist led Russell into increasingly eccentric or—as he thought—decadent subjects.
Debussy
was allowed to hide the music beneath one of the key works in Swinging London’s narcissistic reveling in its own listlessness. Only
Song of Summer
—about Delius, and evidently restrained by the presence of the composer’s amanuensis, Eric Fenby—stilled itself long enough to be accurate and touching. But
Dance of the Seven Veils
was a travesty of the historical details of Richard Strauss’s life and a gratuitous gathering together of Russell’s unbridled sense of pictorial madness and decay. It is the overweening grasp of perfection in such images that contradicts their intentions, and only a spirit as complacent and conventional as Russell’s would so insist on being shocked. The overall need to sensationalize artists and to reduce them to comic-book Freud and TV commercial glamour is justified by Russell as a means to making them more popular.

His cinema films began by being pedestrian, although
French Dressing
had moments of surrealism as Russell’s imagination prodded at the forlorn English seaside. But
Women in Love
was drawn largely to the melodrama and callow primitivism in D. H. Lawrence.
The Music Lovers
and
The Devils
seem to me the work of self-induced mania, where visual grotesqueness has swamped intellect or feelings. There is no intrinsic objection to a vision of teeming corruption. But it demands the passion of a Bosch. Russell’s is hysterical and hollow. Thus, in the same year, he could move from the melting of martyrs in
The Devils
to entirely wax-dummy people in
The Boy Friend
. Just as he fell far short of Dreyer’s or Bergman’s examinations of religious mania, so he was incapable of carrying off the amateur charm of Sandy Wilson’s musical.

Russell will try anything, go anywhere, secure in the knowledge that the results would never be attributed to anyone else. His spiritual home may be that England that runs from, say, William Beckford to D. H. Lawrence, and as late as 1993 he was back to the Lawrentian novel, though less happily than before.
Altered States
, on the other hand, was sci-fi as seen by Paddy Chayefsky—at least, before the writer saw the end product.
Crimes of Passion
was a bold idea, but Russell was too excited by it for it to remain an idea.
Whore
is Theresa Russell in-your-face with an X rating.

Passing seventy, Russell showed no signs of moderation or being reasonable.
Mindbender
was a dramatized life of Uri Geller. The
Insatiable Mrs. Kirsch
was a strange piece of aural erotica.
Classic Widows
was a tribute to the wives left behind by great composers. His energy and his rather simpleminded trust in creativity could keep him going for decades yet. He teaches, and he flirts with big schemes and small change.

Kurt Russell
, b. Springfield, Massachusetts, 1951
Though it’s fairly clear that Kurt Russell would rather have had a pro career as a baseball player, he’s given good value in movies as a tough guy, a blue collar guy, and, above all, as Snake Plisskin, his frowning dude in the
Escape
films. As a Hollywood personality, he is liked for his long-running relationship with Goldie Hawn (they have never been married—but they’re busy).

He was the son of Bing Russell, a baseball player who became a small-part actor, and he had a rich career as a child actor in the 1960s, including the lead in the TV series
The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters
(63–64). On the big screen, he was in
The AbsentMinded Professor
(61, Robert Stevenson);
It Happened at the World’s Fair
(63, Norman Taurog)—an Elvis Presley picture;
Follow Me, Boys!
(66, Norman Tokar);
The One and Only Genuine, Original Family Band
(68, Michael O’Herlihy), with a kid credited as Goldie Jeanne—Hawn to be;
The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit
(68, Tokar);
The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes
(70, Robert Butler).

He was grown for
The Barefoot Executive
, but with a monkey for a costar;
Fool’s Parade
(71, Andrew V. McLaglen);
Now You See Him, Now You Don’t
(72, Butler);
Charley and the Angel
(73, Vincent McEveety);
Superdad
(74, McEveety);
The Strongest Man in the World
(75, McEveety).

He was then absent for a few years of serious baseball, before returning for what is still his best performance: on TV in
Elvis
(79, John Carpenter), in which he actually makes a lot of the real guy seem second-rate. That film also starred Russell’s wife, Season Hubley. He followed that with
Used Cars
(80, Robert Zemeckis); the splendid
Escape From New York
(81, Carpenter);
The Thing
(82, Carpenter);
Silkwood
(83, Mike Nichols); with Goldie Hawn in
Swing Shift
(84, Jonathan Demme);
The Mean Season
(85, Phillip Borsos);
The Best of Times
(86, Roger Spottiswoode);
Big Trouble in Little China
(86, Carpenter); with Goldie again in
Overboard
(87, Garry Marshall); the cop in
Tequila Sunrise
(88, Robert Towne);
Winter People
(89, Ted Kotcheff);
Tango & Cash
(89, Andrei Konchalovsky); a tough firefighter in
Backdraft
(91, Ron Howard);
Unlawful Entry
(92, Jonathan Kaplan);
Captain Ron
(92, Thom Eberhardt); as Wyatt Earp in
Tombstone
(93, George Pan Cosmatos);
Stargate
(94, Roland Emmerich);
Escape From L.A
. (96, Carpenter), which he coproduced;
Executive Decision
(96, Stuart Baird); the very successful
Breakdown
(97, Jonathan Mostow);
Soldier
(98, Paul Anderson).

He returned to Elvis-ness in the daft
3000 Miles to Graceland
(01, Demian Lichtenstein), and then agreed to be the shrink in
Vanilla Sky
(01, Cameron Crowe), a performance of great, if unintended, comic value;
Interstate 60
(02, Bob Gale);
Dark Blue
(02, Ron Shelton); as the victorious Olympic hockey coach in
Miracle
(04, Gavin O’Connor);
Sky High
(05, Mike Mitchell);
Dreamer
(05, John Gatins);
Poseidon
(06, Wolfgang Petersen)—a money-spinner;
Death Proof
(07, Quentin Tarantino);
Cutlass
(07, Kate Hudson, Goldie’s daughter).

Rosalind Russell
(1911–76), b. Waterbury, Connecticut
You only realize how good a film Howard Hawks’s
His Girl Friday
(40) is when you remember that Rosalind Russell is in it. Top-speed comedy and the floating aggression of Cary Grant actually managed to control the bossiness and overemphasis that spoiled so many of her films.

Trained at AADA, performances on Broadway led to an invitation from Hollywood. Not that the film world ever properly took her on. Although under contract at MGM, she was often loaned out and remained conscious of being second choice to the studio’s other leading ladies. She made her debut in William K. Howard’s
Evelyn Prentice
(34) and was in Wellman’s
The President Vanishes
(34); W. S. Van Dyke’s
Forsaking All Others
(34); Victor Fleming’s
Reckless
(35); and Tay Garnett’s
China Seas
(35) before getting a lead part, intended originally for Myrna Loy, in Howard’s
Rendezvous
(35). There followed
It Had to Happen
(36, Roy del Ruth);
Under Two Flags
(36, Frank Lloyd);
Craig’s Wife
(37, Dorothy Arzner)—her first big personal success;
Manproof
(37, Richard Thorpe);
Night Must Fall
(38, Thorpe);
The Citadel
(38, King Vidor); and in a series of daft hats as the group gossip in Cukor’s
The Women
(39).

She was now typed as a career woman in comedies that veered from the hardboiled to the sentimental:
No Time for Comedy
(40, William Keighley);
The Feminine Touch
(41, Van Dyke);
They Met in Bombay
(41, Clarence Brown); pretty good as the boss in
Take a Letter, Darling
(42, Mitchell Leisen);
My Sister Eileen
(42, Alexander Hall); and
Roughly Speaking
(45, Michael Curtiz).