The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (372 page)

As these four films would suggest, she was a cosmopolitan actress, moving from one country to another for some fifteen years. In addition to that ill-balanced quartet:
Steibruch
(42, Sigfrit Steiner);
Maturareise
(43, Steiner);
Der Engel Mit der Posaune
(48, Karl Harth);
Maresi
(48, Hans Thimig);
Die Letzte Nacht
(49, Eugen York);
Es Kommt ein Tag
(50, Rudolf Jugert);
The Magic Box
(51, John Boulting);
So Little Time
(52, Compton Bennett); wretched in adultery with Trevor Howard in
The Heart of the Matter
(52, George More O’Ferrall);
Der Träumende Mund
(53, Josef von Baky);
Tagebuch einer Verliebten
(53, von Baky);
Die Letzte Brücke
(54, Helmut Kautner);
Gervaise
(55, René Clément), the picture that introduced her to America;
Die Ratten
(55, Robert Siodmak);
Rose Bernd
(57, Wolfgang Staudte);
Die Schinderhannes
(58, Kautner);
The Hanging Tree
(59, Delmer Daves);
Das Riesenrad
(61, Geza von Radvanyi);
The Mark
(61, Guy Green);
Ich bin auch nur eine Frau
(62, Alfred Weidenmann); and
Zwei Whisky und ein Sofa
(63, Gunter Grawert).

Her apparent retirement has been interrupted by
Le Diable par le Queue
(68, Philippe de Broca);
99 Women
(69, Jess Franco), in which she and a butch Mercedes McCambridge vie for control of a women’s prison;
The Odessa File
(74, Ronald Neame); as the mother of Katharine Ross in
Voyage of the Damned
(76, Stuart Rosenberg); and in
Superman
(78, Richard Donner). She was also in
Just a Gigolo
(78, David Hemmings);
Christmas Lilies of the Field
(79, Ralph Nelson); as a onetime patient of Freud in
Nineteen Nineteen
(84, Hugh Brody);
Samson and Delilah
(84, Lee Philips);
Die Glückliche Familie
(87, Nikolai Mullerschon);
Le Dernier Mot
(91, Gilles Behat);
Maria des Eaux-Vives
(92, Robert Mazoyer);
Der Clan der Anna Voss
(95, Herbert Ballmann);
Tatort—Heilig Blut
(96, Hartmut Griesmayr); and in her brother’s documentary,
Meine Schwester Maria
(02).

Maximilian Schell
, b. Vienna, 1930
1970:
Erste Liebe/First Love
. 1974:
Der Füssganger/The Pedestrian
. 1975:
Der Richter und Sein Henker
. 1978:
Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald/Tales from the Vienna Woods
. 1984:
Marlene
(d). 1993:
Candles in the Dark
(TV). 2002:
Meine Schwester Maria
.

Viennese cinema is a neglected field: at its best, it embodies literature, psychology, theatre, and music, while pouring them all into the new elixir. Without Vienna, we would not have Preminger, Fritz Lang, Wilder, Axel Corti, or even Max Ophüls. Maximilian Schell may not have a place at quite that level; nevertheless, his wandering career testifies to the cultural wealth of Vienna.

The younger brother of Maria Schell, he is the son of actress Margaretha Noe and writer Ferdinand Hermann Schell. He was educated at the universities of Zurich and Munich, and went on to careers as actor, stage director, screenwriter, movie director … and man of the world.
First Love
(from a Turgenev story) starred Dominique Sanda and John Moulder Brown;
The Pedestrian
was a story about war crimes and historical guilt;
Tales from the Vienna Woods
was an Odon von Horvath play, previously directed by Schell for London’s National Theatre.
Marlene
was a droll, feature-length tribute to Dietrich in which the old lady is heard but not seen.

Schell has often acted in his own films, as well as in:
Die Letzte Brucke
(54, Helmut Kautner);
Kinder, Mutter und ein General
(55, Lazlo Benedek); to Hollywood for
The Young Lions
(58, Edward Dmytryk); winning the best actor Oscar as the defense lawyer in
Judgment at Nuremberg
(61, Stanley Kramer);
Five Finger Exercise
(62, Daniel Mann); St. Joseph of Cupertino in
The
Reluctant Saint
(62, Dmytryk);
The Condemned of Altona
(63, Vittorio De Sica);
Topkapi
(64, Jules Dassin);
Return from the Ashes
(65, J. Lee Thompson); a Nazi general in
Counterpoint
(67, Ralph Nelson); the arch betrayer in
The Deadly Affair
(67, Sidney Lumet).

He produced, as well as acted in, a version of Kafka’s
The Castle
(68, Rudolf Noelte). His own movies were now balanced off by increasingly meretricious acting jobs:
Krakatoa, East of Java
(69, Bernard Kowalski);
Simon Bolivar
(69, Alessandro Blasetti); and
Pope Joan
(72, Michael Anderson). He was nominated for best actor Oscar in
The Man in the Glass Booth
(74, Arthur Hiller), then came
The Odessa File
(74, Ronald Neame);
St. Ives
(76, Thompson);
A Bridge Too Far
(77, Richard Attenborough);
Cross of Iron
(77, Sam Peckinpah); nominated for the supporting actor Oscar as a resistance liaison in
Julia
(77, Fred Zinnemann);
Avalanche Express
(79, Mark Robson);
The Black Hole
(79, Gary Nelson);
Players
(79, Anthony Harvey);
The Diary of Anne Frank
(80, Boris Sagal);
The Chosen
(81, Jeremy Paul Kagan);
The Phantom of the Opera
(83, Robert Markowitz);
The Assisi Underground
(84, Alexander Rameti);
The Rose Garden
(89, Fons Rademakers), as a man who attacks ex-Nazis;
The Freshman
(90, Andrew Bergman); Lenin in
Stalin
(92, Ivan Passer);
Miss Rose White
(92, Joseph Sargent); and
A Far Off Place
(93, Mikael Salomon).

Past sixty, Schell makes a grand villain and a learned authority figure, hovering between cardinals and devils:
Justiz
(93, Hans W. Geissendorfer); Pharaoh in
Abraham
(94, Sargent);
Little Odessa
(94, James Gray);
The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years
(96, Kevin James Dobson);
Telling Lies in America
(97, Guy Ferland);
The Eighteenth Angel
(97, William Bindley);
Left Luggage
(98, Jeroen Krabbe);
Vampires
(98, John Carpenter);
Deep Impact
(98, Mimi Leder);
Wer Liebt, dem Wachsen Flügel
(99, Gabriel Barylli);
Joan of Arc
(99, Christian Duguay);
I Love You, Baby
(00, Nick Lyon);
Fisimatenten
(00, Jochen Kuhn);
The Song of the Lark
(00, Karen Arthur);
Festival in Cannes
(02, Henry Jaglom);
Bestseller
(02, Jörg Grünler);
Coast to Coast
(03, Paul Mazurksky).

Joseph M. Schenck
(1876–1961), b. Rybinsk, Russia; and
Nicholas Schenck
(1880–1969), b. Rybinsk, Russia
You pronounced the name “Skenk,” as in “skunk,” and maybe that’s all one needs to say. Except that very few brothers were so unalike: I don’t think it’s entirely safe to exclude the possibility that they just said they were brothers, in the hope that that outrageous assertion would make them more noticeable, or sympathetic. But it’s easier to be funny about them now than it was in the days when the Schenck boys had real power. Today, the general public has forgotten them, but between them they once ran pictures. I’m inventing the possibility that they weren’t brothers, but it grows more plausible the longer you look at them. And it’s enough to give their story charm and menace.

Joe was a big slob, nearly bald, rather Slavic looking; an actress he once chased round the office (when he should have been past those things) said he had a nose like a large boiled potato. He was effusive, sentimental, affectionate, and grabby. Anita Loos thought he was the ugliest man she’d ever seen on first meeting. Then, “five minutes later I thought he was one of the most attractive.”

There was no five-minute makeover with Nick. He was cold, watchful, controlled, with silver hair and glaring spectacles; a natural frightener, and the one man who had an emotional edge on Louis B. Mayer. Irene Mayer said that Nick always asked polite questions about you, but never listened to the answer.

As collaborators, if not brothers, Nick and Joe went into the pharmacy business soon after they came to America. From that, they jumped over into amusement arcades, with majority interests first in Paradise Park and then Palisades Park. It was at the latter that they featured the entertainment where customers sat in rail cars and watched the passing footage of back-projected scenery. That enterprise brought them into contact with Marcus Loew, so that by 1910 they were inside the Loew organization—with Joe actually running the theatres while Nick was the company secretary.

Joe branched off in 1917, the year in which he married Norma Talmadge. As such, he became the producer of her pictures, then of those of her sisters, Natalie and Constance, and then of those of Natalie’s husband, Buster Keaton. He made a fortune (largely on Connie), and in 1924, he accepted the position as president of United Artists.

Meanwhile, Nick waited and positioned himself at Loew’s, and when Marcus died, in 1927, Nicholas Schenck became president of Loew’s Inc., a position he held until 1955. As such, going under the nickname of “the General,” he was the most powerful person in the MGM outfit on the East Coast, and so powerful on the West that he stimulated and fueled the antagonism between Mayer and Thalberg. He was also, of course, the president of the most successful operation the business has ever known. And he was the man who, one day in 1951, told L.B. it was all over (or had Dore Schary tell him).

Long before then, Joe Schenck had helped found 20th Century (with Darryl Zanuck) and then merged it with Fox two years later. From 1935 until 1941, he was president of Fox. But then he had to take a break, in prison, for tax offenses and perjury. His U.S. citizenship was even withdrawn, but he cleared his slate by informing on those gangsters and union bosses (notably George E. Browne and Willie Bioff) who had been taking protection money from the studios. President Truman himself helped clear Joe’s name. He got his citizenship back, and in 1952 he won a special Oscar “for long and distinguished service.” He was also restored to Fox, and is said to have played his part in comforting Marilyn Monroe. In hindsight, of course, it’s fascinating to think that there was this guy, born in Russia!, sent to prison, and with a record in the amusement parks that didn’t bear looking into—and the club he had helped form came to his aid, restored and rewarded him. If he’d been a screenwriter, he might have been thrown out of the country. And Nick would have been buying beer for the throwers.

Fred Schepisi
, b. Melbourne, Australia, 1939
1971:
The Priest
. 1973:
Libido
(codirector). 1975:
The Devil’s Playground
. 1978:
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
. 1982:
Barbarosa
. 1984:
Iceman
. 1985:
Plenty
. 1987:
Roxanne
. 1988:
A Cry in the Dark
. 1990:
The Russia House
. 1992:
Mr. Baseball
. 1993:
Six Degrees of Separation
. 1994:
I.Q
. 1997:
Fierce Creatures
. 2001:
Last Orders
. 2003:
It Runs in the Family
. 2004:
Empire Falls
(TV).

Though he was the sole screenwriter on the startling
Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
, Schepisi is a director of uncommon yearning and thematic complexity who seems hard pressed to find or settle on his own vein of material.
Jimmie Blacksmith
came from a Thomas Keneally novel;
Plenty
is from David Hare’s play;
Roxanne
is one of the staler renderings of the Rostand play, a star vehicle uneasily set in Colorado;
A Cry in the Dark
was from life;
The Russia House
is from John Le Carré by way of Tom Stoppard’s script; while
Six Degrees of Separation
was scripted by John Guare from his own play.

Throw in the attempt at a Western (
Barbarosa
) and science fiction (
Iceman
), as well as the trip to Japan for
Mr. Baseball
, and one can view Schepisi’s journey as adventurous or wayward, in search of something, working with American money but never yet coming to ground in Hollywood. The coziness of
Roxanne
seems the more out of place once one grasps Schepisi’s interest in misplaced people driven to violence or irrationality by confusion.
Jimmie Blacksmith
was not just a film about race and sex, but a study of Australia’s muddle.
A Cry in the Dark
had the same impact and the same inner concern: it was about disintegration, and the woeful attempt to impose plastic order on unheeded or denied savagery.

Most intriguing of all,
Plenty
is a kind of aghast celebration of a woman who will not settle for popular answers about what she wants or what it is to be English. With Hare’s text, and Meryl Streep’s very brave performance, Schepisi showed us a woman helplessly drawn to terrible, dangerous gestures. Perhaps one needs to have been—or to have wanted to be—English to feel the movie’s pain.
Plenty
seemed to me at first a failure, too tied to self-pity and too blurred in writing and casting. But I cannot get the film out of my head, and I’m still not sure how much of that comes from Hare, Streep, or Schepisi. My only answer so far is that there are three profound, unstable talents, drawn toward difficulty and discomfort.