The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (445 page)

A magazine cartoonist, he was imprisoned by the Germans during the First World War and it was in captivity that he first acted. In peacetime he entered the theatre professionally, first as an actor and then as a producer. It was the successful production of R. C. Sherriff’s
Journey’s End
, in 1928, that took him to New York. He supplied dialogue for
Hell’s Angels
, directed the film of
Journey’s End
, and followed that with a version of Robert E. Sherwood’s maudlin romance,
Waterloo Bridge
, with Bette Davis in a small role. At that time, Universal were preparing to film
Frankenstein
, with Robert Florey directing Bela Lugosi. The actor turned down the part, and Whale was assigned to it. He offered the part of the monster to a friend, Boris Karloff.

Frankenstein
is not the greatest horror film, but historically and artistically it was a landmark. It is most frightening when dealing with the “ordinary” people. When treating Karloff’s monster it is surprising, lyrical, and gravely tolerant. His fear of fire is by far the most compelling “horror” in the movie; his yearning for the light its most spiritual image. In the scene of the monster and the little girl floating flowers on a pond, the balance of hope and menace is so exact that the scene still has the riveting effect of the best Hitchcock. Above all, Whale and Karloff had created a new hero, a helpless outcast so much nobler than the little man from Universal at the beginning of the film who prattles on about how frightened we will be.

The film was a vast success, and Whale became a studio hero. He was never entirely happy amid the sensationalism of horror so far from the clumsy earnestness of
Journey’s End
—and it may be that his own mixed feelings added to the misanthropic flavor of his other horror films. At any event, he hired good writers and actors and generally extended the range of the form.
The Old Dark House
is a pastiche Gothic study of an English family in decline, starring Karloff, Ernest Thesiger, and Charles Laughton.
The Invisible Man
is a parade of trick photography, adorned by the voice of Claude Rains. But
The Bride of Frankenstein
is among the greatest of horror films. It contrived to overcome Universal’s anxiety about a sequel by recreating a Mary Shelley prepared to continue the story, and then by having the same actress—Elsa Lanchester—play both Mary and the bride monster. Once more, Whale’s real concern is for the emotional life of his monsters. The sequences in which Karloff is “schooled” and domesticated are very funny and poignant, as though Whale only half-grasped the meaning he was conveying, of a noble savage living in a deformed society.

But Whale then abandoned horror for more theatrical pictures. He seldom recaptured the consistent inventiveness of those four films.
Show Boat
shirks none of the sentiment and there is every suggestion, in the last view of Ol’ Man River, that the Mississippi consists of tears alone. But between those soggy moments, the “showbiz” scenes are very exciting and active. There is a fond sense of barnstorming in the show-boat scenes, especially when Charles Winninger explains an interrupted melodrama; sumptuous trembling close-ups of Helen Morgan as she sings “Bill”; moments reminiscent of
French Can Can
in the music hall sequences; and an inane but gorgeous track around Paul Robeson as he sings “Ol’ Man River.” Time and again,
Show Boat
surprises with its vivacity and the equal skill out-of-doors and in front of cardboard backdrops. It is never as bold or influential as the Frankenstein pictures, but it does suggest true versatility, plus the mixture of sophistication and unashamed sentiment.

His later work is very varied and not without interest: Tom Milne has written about the freshness of
Remember Last Night?
and Brian Aherne as Garrick;
Port of Seven Seas
is a reworking of
Fanny
, with Frank Morgan, John Beal, and Maureen O’Sullivan; Louis Hayward was
The Man in the Iron Mask; Green Hell
was an adventure melodrama that George Sanders and Vincent Price could scarcely play for laughing. In 1941, Whale retired, and became a painter, only to make a disastrous attempt at a comeback in 1949 with a forty-minute version of a Saroyan play shot on a set designed by Whale. He is an enigmatic figure, never at ease in Hollywood, who died eventually as if in a Universal scenario—“in his swimming pool, in mysterious circumstances.” This story was well told in
Gods and Monsters
(98, Bill Condon), which is a surprisingly full portrait of Whale’s odd, poignant life.

Ben Whishaw
, b. Clifton, Bedfordshire, England, 1980
When Anthony Andrews played Sebastian Flyte in the “original,” John Mortimer, adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s
Brideshead Revisited
(81), he was thirty-three—which is mature for an immature but decadent aristocrat at Oxford. When Ben Whishaw played the part (in the new, abbreviated, and purposeless movie) he was twenty-seven. Andrews made a big impact in 1981. Such candid gayness was novel on our screens then (and it was moderated in the groundbreaking series). Andrews possessed the natural class voice. Ben Whishaw doesn’t. He sounds like the southern Midlands, and he looks a bit like a battered featherweight boxer. But he is the only thing you look at in the new
Brideshead
(00, Julian Jarrold).

At the age of fifteen, with a local theatre company, Whishaw was the sensation of the Edinburgh Festival with a performance as Primo Levi. Only nine years later, after RADA, he delivered a
Hamlet
(for Trevor Nunn) that had many people using the word “genius.”

His film career began in small parts:
Other People’s Children
(00, Peter Travis);
Ready When You Are, Mr. McGill
(03, Mike Newell);
The Merchant of Venice
(04, Michael Radford);
Enduring Love
(04, Roger Michell);
Layer Cake
(04, Matthew Vaughan); as Pingu in the TV series
Nathan Barley
(05); as Keith Richards in
Stoned
(05, Stephen Woolley). He had the lead part in
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
(06, Tom Tykwer);
I’m Not There
(07, Todd Haynes); as the suspect on TV in
Criminal Justice
(08, Otto Bathurst and Luke Watson);
The International
(09, Tykwer); as John Keats in
Bright Star
(09, Jane Campion), in a performance that captured the camera; and as Ariel in
The Tempest
(10, Julie Taymor).

Forest Whitaker
, b. Longview, Texas, 1961
1993:
Strapped
(TV). 1995:
Waiting to Exhale
. 1998:
Hope Floats; Black Jaq
(TV). 2004:
First Daughter
.

Forest Whitaker brings strange baggage to much of his work, and asks us to puzzle it out. He is large, yet he does not seem like the football player he was once. For he is gentle, a touch clumsy, and is it walleyed, or is that just something he does from time to time? There are no answers, and not many limits to what he’s willing to try. You have to keep your wits about you nowadays when he appears—but time and again his presence encourages our trust (or attention).

His biggest film, of course, is
Bird
(88, Clint Eastwood). No one doubts how he worked at that. Still, the few bits of Charlie Parker on film don’t make one think of Whitaker. Parker, I suspect, was harsher, tougher, and less tender to people—he was off on his own line and level, hearing things that made other people say he was crazy. Whereas Whitaker, naturally, gives off some of the sweet good nature of Louis Armstrong.

He made his debut in
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
(82, Amy Heckerling);
Vision Quest
(85, Harold Becker); very good as a passing hustler in
The Color of Money
(86, Martin Scorsese);
Platoon
(86, Oliver Stone);
Stakeout
(87, John Badham);
Good Morning, Vietnam
(87, Barry Levinson);
Bloodsport
(88, Newt Arnold);
Johnny Handsome
(89, Walter Hill); very good in
Downtown
(90, Richard Benjamin);
A Rage in Harlem
(91, Bill Duke), which he helped produce;
Article 99
(92, Howard Deutch).

At that point he was outstanding as a British soldier in
The Crying Game
(92, Neil Jordan);
Diary of a Hitman
(92, Roy London);
Consenting Adults
(92, Alan J. Pakula); the prison guard in
Last Light
(93, Kiefer Sutherland);
Body Snatchers
(94, Abel Ferrara);
Bank Robber
(94, Nick Mead);
Lush Life
(94, Michael Elias)—this deals with jazz, though it’s not about Billy Strayhorn, but what a subject that might be for Whitaker;
Blown Away
(94, Stephen Hopkins);
Jason’s Lyric
(94, Doug McHenry);
Ready to Wear
(94, Robert Altman);
Smoke
(95, Wayne Wang);
Species
(95, Roger Donaldson);
Phenomenon
(96, Jon Turteltaub);
Body Count
(98, Robert Patton-Spruill);
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
(99, Jim Jarmusch); the villain in
Panic Room
(02, David Fincher); as the cop in
Phone Booth
(02, Joel Schumacher);
Deacons for Defense
(03, Bill Duke).

He had a triumph in 2006, playing Idi Amin in
The Last King of Scotland
(Kevin Macdonald). So it’s sadder still to behold the kind of work he’s been doing around it:
A Little Trip to Heaven
(05, Baltasar Kormákur);
American Gun
(05, Aric Avelino);
Mary
(05, Abel Ferrara);
Even Money
(06, Mark Rydell);
The Marsh
(06, Jordan Barker);
The Air I Breathe
(07, Jieho Lee);
The Great Debaters
(07, Denzel Washington);
Vantage Point
(08, Peter Travis);
Street Kings
(08, David Ayer);
Powder Blue
(09, Timothy Linh Bui);
Winged Creatures
(09, Rowan Woods);
Hurricane Season
(10, Tim Story).

James Whitmore
(1921–2009), b. White Plains, New York
When James Whitmore’s Gus thinks to hide the gun in the cash register at the start of
The Asphalt Jungle
(50, John Huston), it feels like a real rascal trick—so take care to remember that Whitmore had been to Choate and Yale (places where the real rascals get ahead). This was after military service, so it was the late 1940s before he got to Broadway, where he won prizes for the play
Command Decision
. The movie seemed set, but Van Johnson got his part. No matter, a year later, Whitman was in
Battleground
(49, William Wellman)—with Johnson in the same platoon—and earning a supporting actor nomination.

He had made his debut in
The Undercover Man
(49, Joseph H. Lewis) and (spoken to by God) in
The Next Voice You Hear
(50, Wellman). These were the first of nearly 150 roles in film and television, very often as a sergeant or a reliable chum to some hero in crisis. So he looks grim and loyal while Robert Taylor looks anguished and bad-tempered dropping the Bomb on Hiroshima in
Above and Beyond
(52, Norman Panama and Melvin Frank)—war films rely on such moments of silent commiseration where real men do not have to look at each other. He narrated
The Red Badge of Courage
(51, Huston), because Spencer Tracy was too expensive. He does “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” with Keenan Wynn in
Kiss Me Kate
(53, George Sidney), and he is stalwart at torching big ants in
Them!
(54, Gordon Douglas). He is in
The Command
(54, David Butler) and a classic grunt in
Battle Cry
(55, Raoul Walsh). He’s in
Oklahoma
(55, Fred Zinnemann) and
The Eddy Duchin Story
(56, Sidney). He’s a scout in
The Last Frontier
(56, Anthony Mann).

He was in
Crime in the Streets
(56, Don Siegel);
The Young Don’t Cry
(57, Alfred L. Werker);
The Deep Six
(58, Rudolph Mate);
The Restless Years
(58, Helmut Kautner);
Who Was That Lady?
(60, Sidney); as the reporter who passed in
Black Like Me
(64, Carl Lerner);
Chuka
(67, Douglas);
Waterhole #3
(67, William Graham);
Nobody’s Perfect
(68, Alan Rafkin); president of the assembly in
Planet of the Apes
(68, Franklin Schaffner);
Madigan
(68, Siegel);
Guns of the Magnificent
Seven
(69, Paul Wendkos); as Admiral Halsey in
Tora! Tora! Tora!
(70, Richard Fleischer);
Chato’s Land
(72, Michael Winner);
The Harrad Experiment
(73, Ted Post).

He had played Harry Truman on stage and TV in
Give ’Em Hell, Harry
(75, Steve Binder), a title that described his order to drop the bomb with flinty certainty. He did
The Serpent’s Egg
(77, Ingmar Bergman);
The First Deadly Sin
(80, Brian G. Hutton);
Nuts
(87, Barbra Streisand);
The Shawshank Redemption
(94, Frank Darabont);
The Relic
(97, Peter Hyams);
Swing Vote
(99, David Anspaugh);
The Majestic
(01, Darabont). So who worked for Winner, Streisand, and Ingmar Bergman in a fifteen-year period?

Bo Widerberg
(1930–97), b. Malmo, Sweden
1961:
Pojken och Draken
(codirected with Jan Troell) (s). 1963:
Barnvagnen/The Pram; Kvarteret Korpen/Raven’s End
. 1965:
Karlek 65/Love 65
. 1966:
Heja Roland!/Thirty Times Your Money
. 1967:
Elvira Madigan
. 1968:
Den Vita Sporten/The White Game
(codirected) (d). 1969:
Adalen Riots/Adalen 31
. 1970:
The Ballad of Joe Hill
. 1974:
Fimpen/Stubby
. 1976:
Mannen pa Taket/The Man on the Roof
. 1979:
Victoria
. 1983:
Grifesten
. 1984:
Mannen fran Mallorca/The Man from Majorca
. 1986:
Ormen’s vag pa Halleberget/The Serpent’s Way
. 1988:
En Far
(TV). 1989:
Vildanden
(TV). 1990:
Hebriana
(TV). 1992:
Efter Föreställningen
(TV). 1995:
Lost och Fägring Stor
.