The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (386 page)

Both the studio’s faith in her and her departure from Paramount in 1935 owed something to the fact that B. P. Schulberg, one of the studio executives, fell in love with her at the cost of his own marriage. She was put under contract by Walter Wanger, she was married very briefly to Bennett Cerf, and then made a series of outstanding movies in which she seldom escaped ordeal, disaster, and travail: William K. Howard’s
Mary Burns, Fugitive
(35); Henry Hathaway’s
The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
(36); as Mrs. Verloc in Hitchcock’s
Sabotage
(36), compelled by dynamic editing to stick Oscar Homolka with the carving knife; an especially unhappy experience in Wyler’s
Dead End
(37); and the female lead in Fritz Lang’s first three American films:
Fury
(36),
You Only Live Once
(37), and
You and Me
(38). In all of these, she caught exactly the fragile happiness allowed in Lang’s world and played with a restraint that perfectly matched the fatal simplicity of the plots. There are close-ups in
Fury
of Sidney watching Spencer Tracy in a burning jail that are as harrowed as Lillian Gish close-ups.

She was married now to actor Luther Adler. After Dudley Murphy’s
One Third of a Nation
(39), and
The Wagons Roll at Night
(41, Ray Enright), she exchanged movies for the theatre, making a brief return at the end of the war, in Frank Lloyd’s
Blood on the Sun
(45);
Mr. Ace
(45, Edwin L. Marin); Dieterle’s
The Searching Wind
(46); and
Love from a Stranger
(47, Richard Whorf). She was away for a while, and then appeared in Milestone’s
Les Miserables
(52); Fleischer’s
Violent Saturday
(55); and
Behind the High Wall
(56, Abner Biberman).

She made a comeback in
Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams
(73, Gilbert Cates); Dora Bloch in
Raid on Entebbe
(76, Irvin Kershner);
I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
(77, Anthony Page);
Damien—Omen II
(78, Don Taylor);
Siege
(78, Richard Pearce);
The Gossip Columnist
(79, James Sheldon);
The Shadow Box
(80, Paul Newman);
A Small Killing
(81, Steven Hilliard Stern);
F.D.R.: The Last Year
(80, Anthony Page);
Having It All
(82, Edward Zwick);
Hammett
(83, Wim Wenders);
Order of Death
(83, Roberto Faenza);
Finnegan Begin Again
(85, Joan Micklin Silver);
An Early Frost
(86, John Erman);
Pals
(87, Lou Antonio);
Beetlejuice
(88, Tim Burton);
Andre’s Mother
(91, Deborah Reinisch);
Used People
(93, Beeban Kidron); and, finally, in
Mars Attacks!
(96, Burton).

Don Siegel
(1912–91), b. Chicago
1946:
The Verdict
. 1947:
Night Unto Night
. 1949:
The Big Steal
. 1952:
No Time for Flowers; Duel at Silver Creek
. 1953:
Count the Hours; China Venture
. 1954:
Riot in Cell Block 11; Private Hell 36
. 1955:
An Annapolis Story/The Blue and the Gold
. 1956:
Invasion of the Body Snatchers; Crime in the Streets
. 1957:
Spanish Affair; Baby Face Nelson
. 1958:
The Gun Runners; The Line-Up
. 1959:
Edge of Eternity; Hound Dog Man
. 1960:
Flaming Star
. 1962:
Hell Is for Heroes
. 1964:
The Killers; The Hanged Man
. 1967:
Stranger on the Run
. 1968:
Madigan; Coogan’s Bluff
. 1969:
Death of a Gunfighter
(codirected with Robert Totten);
Two Mules for Sister Sara
. 1970:
The Beguiled
. 1971:
Dirty Harry
. 1972:
Charley Varrick
. 1974:
The Black Windmill
. 1976:
The Shootist
. 1977:
Telefon
. 1979:
Escape from Alcatraz
. 1980:
Rough Cut
. 1982:
Jinxed!
.

There were postwar American directors who seemed more occupied by keeping in work than by pursuing their talent, but Siegel was one of the most admirable survivors. Never quite a leading director, he vindicated modesty of scale; deliberately viewing himself as something of a misfit, he looked like the last upholder of orthodoxy. He made few films that are not personal, inventive, and interesting. Some are exceptional works that transcend limitations of budget, time, and script. Almost alone, Siegel usefully extended the conception of the Hawksian hero, observed action without brutality, treachery without dismay, and romance without glamour. If anything, his films became more terse, more drily amused, and more economically exciting. He is a test case of the intelligent, unpretentious entertainer.

Siegel was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, and graduated with a B.A. In America, Hal Wallis got him a job in the film library at Warners. From cutting in stock shots, he rose to be head of the Montage Department, an editor, and an occasional second-unit director. The training at Warners was what Siegel made of it, shooting montage sequences in the style of the studio’s directors. His montages were outstanding: especially good ones are to be seen in Curtiz’s
Yankee Doodle Dandy
and
Casablanca
.

In 1945, he directed two shorts for Warners,
A Star in the Night
and
Hitler Lives?
, both of which won Oscars. Then his career as a features director was launched with
The Verdict
, a Victorian thriller starring Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Its fogbound London makes a sophisticated contrast with the incisive leads. That and
The Big Steal
, a delicious RKO comedy thriller with Mitchum and Jane Greer, are his best early films. Others are less happy:
Duel at Silver Creek
is a weirdly naïve narrated Western.

It was with
Riot in Cell Block 11
, produced by Walter Wanger, that Siegel began to develop his own theme of an outsider figure gazing balefully at society.
Private Hell 36
showed the sort of inconsistency that was still spoiling all his films, but
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
was a simple, ingenious conception carried out at least three-quarters adequately. It had a sure sense of rural atmosphere, a talent for filling in character quickly, and a reluctance to allow melodrama to smother wit.
Body Snatchers
is exemplary science fiction because it needs no visual tricks and knows that zombies and vital people look alike.

The next years could not avoid the vagaries of the job market, but whenever good material came his way, Siegel exploited it with the sureness of a professional sportsman.
Crime in the Streets
was one of his first treatments of the modern city;
Baby Face Nelson
was a minor gangster masterpiece, turning the bizarre figure of Mickey Rooney to exceptional advantage;
The Line-Up
was a very influential study of two hired killers increasingly lost in a strange city.

By the 1960s, Siegel had earned himself a reputation for expertise so great that he was called upon to do several TV pilots. In the cinema, he salvaged
Hound Dog Man
against vast odds and ensured that
Flaming Star
was the best of Elvis Presley’s films. Then came two more substantial successes—
Hell Is for Heroes
and
The Killers
, the first a lucid study of war psychopathy, the second a reworking of the Hemingway double-cross story that had an intriguingly flawed romantic relationship between John Cassavetes and Angie Dickinson.
The Hanged Man
and
Stranger on the Run
were eighty-minute TV movies way above average, while
Madigan
was the first in a sequence of films that dealt with an aggressive cop-hero who pragmatically straddled the law. Steve McQueen in
Hell Is for Heroes
, Lee Marvin in
The Killers
, and Richard Widmark in
Madigan
had all been additions to Siegel’s gallery of tough, solitary heroes.

That figure was then taken over by Clint Eastwood in an unusually fertile actor-director relationship.
The Beguiled
is an amusing excursion into the Southern backwoods during the Civil War, with the lying, lusting Eastwood destroyed by vigorous lady neurotics;
Two Mules for Sister Sara
was too slow; but
Coogan’s Bluff
and
Dirty Harry
are among Siegel’s best films. Eastwood was a strong, commercial personality who could have overwhelmed Siegel. But Siegel was as adept at maneuver and as effortlessly to the point as Marvin’s character in
The Killers
. With at least half a dozen movies to count in the records of postwar American cinema he begins to emerge as one of Jesus College’s most unexpectedly notable alumni.

Although briefly married to actress Viveca Lindfors (whom he directed in
Night Unto Night
and
No Time for Flowers
), Siegel’s cinema has scant time for women, apart from the hothouse of
The Beguiled
.

Dirty Harry
, for instance, has women only as the killer’s victims, as Harry’s briefly mentioned dead wife, and as strippers lurid in night-town. The lone cop in that film is emotionally shriven, preoccupied by the impossible demands society makes of him and by his unarticulated independent code of honor.
Dirty Harry
is clearly a character near to Siegel’s view of himself: a battered survivor who lives in a criminal, psychopathic jungle and who eventually throws away his badge, frustrated by the compromises of the law and politics.

The end of
Dirty Harry
is more painful than all the film’s physical violence, for it is a picture of rough decency despairing of intractability. Few films suggested so subtly how a cop might turn into an outlaw. Ironically, Siegel had difficulty in persuading Eastwood to go through with the scene (in the way that directors sometimes have to wheedle actresses out of their clothes). Perhaps that speaks for the probing seriousness Siegel had reached beneath a crime picture’s hard surface.

In his last years, Siegel faltered.
The Shootist
is a solid, respectful vehicle, and
Charley Varrick
is an outstanding example of Siegel’s irony. His influence on Eastwood has proved lasting, and touching. After Siegel’s death, Eastwood said, “If there is one thing I learned from Don Siegel, it’s to know what you want to shoot and to know what you’re seeing when you see it.” A very American credo.

Simone Signoret
(Simone Kaminker) (1921–85), b. Wiesbaden, Germany
Gallantry cannot conceal the thought that few women, so dazzling at thirty, faded so much by fifty. As the tart in
La Ronde
(50, Max Ophuls), the Renoirlike blonde in
Casque d’Or
(52, Jacques Becker), and the adulteress in
Thérèse Raquin
(53, Marcel Carné), she was moody, sensual, and glowing like a greengage. But those features became lost in overweight, and her brooding face went sour with dismay. It was a great loss, and it was interpreted as part of her indifference to glamour and her commitment to serious, political issues. Perhaps so, but she made no film as serious as
La Ronde
, and lost beauty is a more cinematic tragedy than some famous causes.

She made her debut toward the end of the war:
La Boîte aux Rêves
(43, Yves Allégret, her first husband);
Les Démons de l’Aube
(45, Allégret);
Macadam
(46, Marcel Blistène);
Dedée d’Anvers
(48, Allégret); to England for
Against the Wind
(48, Charles Crichton);
Manèges
(49, Allégret); and
Le Traqué
(50, Frank Tuttle). By the mid-1950s, her reputation began to spread beyond France: as one of the plotters in
Diabolique
(55, H. G. Clouzot);
Evil Eden
(56, Luis Buñuel); in an episode from
Die Vind Rose
(56, Yannik Bellon);
Les Sorcières de Salem
(57, Raymond Rouleau); very good as the older woman in
Room at the Top
(58, Jack Clayton), a relic of the British view of French sophistication and winner of the best actress Oscar;
Les Mauvais Coups
(60, François Leterrier);
Adua e le Compagne
(60, Antonio Pietrangeli);
Le Jour et l’Heure
(62, René Clément); opposite Olivier in
Term of Trial
(62, Peter Glenville);
Dragées au Poivre
(63, Jacques Baratier);
Ship of Fools
(65, Stanley Kramer);
The Sleeping Car Murders
(65, Costa-Gavras);
Is Paris Burning?
(66, Clément);
The Deadly Affair
(67, Sidney Lumet);
Games
(67, Curtis Harrington); as Arkadina in
The Seagull
(68, Lumet); faking her execution in
L’Armée des Ombres
(69, Jean-Pierre Melville);
L’Aveu
(70, Costa-Gavras), with Yves Montand, her husband since 1951;
Comptes à Rebours
(70, Roger Pigaut);
L’Américain
(70, Marcel Bozzuffi); and
Rude Journée pour la Reine
(73, René Allio).

She had an immense personal triumph as
Madame Rosa
(77, Moise Mizrahi), offering her decline into ruggedness as part of a very sentimental philosophy, and carrying the film to a best foreign-language picture Oscar. She also played in
Judith Therpauve
(78, Patrice Chereau) and
L’Adolescente
(79, Jeanne Moreau);
Chère Inconnue
(81, Mizrahi); and
L’Etoile du Nord
(82, Pierre Granier Deferre).