The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (64 page)

Eddie Cantor
(Edward Israel Iskowitz) (1892–1964), b. New York
Al Jolson may have been America’s biggest star in the early decades of the twentieth century, but Eddie Cantor wasn’t far behind him—and in certain fields surpassed him. Orphaned early, he was brought up in poverty on New York’s Lower East Side by his grandmother and by himself: as a young kid, he was already inventing the entertainer he was to become. By his mid-twenties, he was starring in successive editions of the Ziegfeld
Follies
, alongside his great pals Will Rogers, W. C. Fields, and Fanny Brice. Throughout the twenties he triumphed on Broadway and in the recording studio—twenty top-ten hits in fifteen years (paltry compared to Jolson’s eighty-plus, but including such standards as “Margie,” “If You Knew Susie,” and “Makin’ Whoopee”).

Then came his first Hollywood hit, the silent
Kid Boots
(26, Frank Tuttle), based on his big stage success. It’s an oddity, because in the absence of his voice and his singing-dancing routines, his physical lightness and mournful face read more like Buster Keaton than the upbeat Cantor we get in sound. What’s more, he’s not only in pursuit of a girl—and the girl is Clara Bow!—but he gets her. (It’s a golf story, by the way.) In his Goldwyn sound films, he’s almost always desperately shy and trying to fend off determined young women. A second silent
—Special Delivery
(27, Roscoe Arbuckle)—flopped. And then, after a cameo in
Glorifying the American Girl
(29), came the first of the Goldwyns.

It was
Whoopee!
(30, Thornton Freeland), based on what was perhaps the biggest of his Broadway shows, and sold to Goldwyn by producer Ziegfeld in need of cash. Ziegfeld came along as coproducer, but it was a Goldwyn picture all the way, and since he kept it close to the original, it’s a revelation today about twenties Broadway musical comedy: numbers that don’t have a lot to do with anything, lots of glorious girls in over-the-top outfits, and too much of a silly plot (a politically incorrect story about a white girl and a supposed Indian who ends up acceptable because he isn’t an Indian after all). Who cares? Cantor plays a weakling hypochondriac on the run from his determined nurse, Ethel Shutta, and when the action stops and he bursts forward to belt out “My Baby Don’t Care for Clothes,” it’s heart-stopping—the first time I watched
Whoopee!
on video, I ran this sequence seven times. Cantor is incandescent, strutting and hopping back and forth, spilling over with gaiety, demonstrating what the best of vaudeville and musical comedy had to offer: a tremendously generous personality, giving every ounce of itself to making you feel good. Jolson, like Garland, demands love from the audience; Cantor just wants you to be happy. The fact that he’s in blackface for this number (and occasionally in his other Goldwyns) is irrelevant—neither politically correct nor incorrect—because this blackface is purely cosmetic: there’s not the slightest suggestion of imitating or patronizing or colonizing blacks, not a touch of Jolsonish minstrelsy; this is just a Cantor trademark that works for him (and for us).

There were to be five more Goldwyn films, all to the same formula and most of them including routines Cantor had developed on the stage—like the orthopedic one in which he’s tied up in knots. First came
Palmy Days
(31, A. Edward Sutherland), about a criminal fake seer defeated by brave little Eddie, who ends up with the strong-willed Charlotte Greenwood; she literally wrestles him to the ground (Oh, Miss Martin, you simply carry me away!) There’s
The Kid from Spain
(31, Leo McCarey), with Eddie in the bullring;
Roman Scandals
(33, Tuttle)—he dreams he’s back in ancient times;
Kid Millions
(34, Roy Del Ruth), with a scheming Ethel Merman pretending to be his mother; and
Strike Me Pink
(36, Norman Taurog), with Merman again. Cantor made extravagant claims for the boxoffice success of this run of films, but
Variety
confirms that he was Hollywood’s number-one attraction overseas, ahead of Garbo, Dietrich,
et al.
By then Cantor was established as one of the biggest of all radio stars—his show was in the top ten for at least a decade—and he felt underappreciated by Goldwyn; they agreed to disagree.

His later film career is relatively thin. Movies in which he’s the main attraction are the funny
Ali Baba Goes to Town
(37, David Butler);
Forty Little Mothers
(40, Busby Berkeley, who had choreographed the first Goldwyns);
Show Business
(44, Edward L. Marin);
If You Knew Susie
(48, Gordon Douglas). And there are cameos in movies in which he appears as himself, like the 1943 all-star
Thank Your Lucky Stars
(43, Butler). Finally, just as Jolson sang for Larry Parks in the hugely successful
Jolson Story
(46), Cantor provides the voice for Keefe Brasselle in the far less successful
Eddie Cantor Story
(53, Alfred E. Green). By then he was a legend—for his tremendous career, his almost obsessive philanthropizing (he invented the March of Dimes), and his public devotion to his wife, Ida, and their five daughters, a running gag through his decades on radio and TV. Somehow, those big rolling banjo eyes, that good-natured exuberance, that combination of delicacy and boisterousness, of the naïve and the risqué, gave him an endearing appeal that carried him through a career of almost fifty years and is still effective today.

Frank Capra
(1897–1991), b. Bisacquino, Sicily
1926:
The Strong Man
. 1927:
For the Love of Mike; Long Pants
. 1928:
The Power of the Press; Say It With Sables; So This Is Love; That Certain Thing; The Way of the Strong; The Matinee Idol; Submarine
. 1929:
The Donovan Affair; Flight; The Younger Generation
. 1930:
Ladies of Leisure; Rain or Shine
. 1931:
Dirigible; The Miracle Woman; Platinum Blonde
. 1932:
Forbidden; American Madness; The Bitter Tea of General Yen
. 1933:
Lady for a Day
. 1934:
It Happened One Night; Broadway Bill
. 1935:
Opera Hat
. 1936:
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
. 1937:
Lost Horizon
. 1938:
You Can’t Take It With You
. 1939:
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
. 1941:
Meet John Doe
. 1942:
Prelude to War
(d);
The Nazis Strike
(codirected with Anatole Litvak) (d). 1943:
The Battle of Britain
(d);
Divide and Conquer
(codirected with Litvak) (d);
The Battle of China
(codirected with Litvak) (d). 1944:
Arsenic and Old Lace
. 1945:
Know Your Enemy: Japan
(codirected with Joris Ivens) (d);
Tunisian Victory
(codirected with Roy Boulting) (d);
Two Down and One to Go
(d). 1947:
It’s a Wonderful Life
. 1948:
State of the Union
. 1950:
Riding High
. 1951:
Here Comes the Groom
. 1959:
A Hole in the Head
. 1961:
Pocketful of Miracles
.

When I wrote the first edition of this book, I did not conceal my distaste for most of Capra’s work. The essay that resulted provoked surprise and dismay, the beginnings of some agreement, but a feeling that I had been so “prosecutorial” that I had refused to see Capra’s enormous talent, or facility. In 1975, Capra’s reputation was seldom assailed. The only suspicion came from his self-glorifying but less-than-honest autobiography,
The Name Above the Title
, published in 1972. And I knew I was challenging orthodoxy (though I was following in the excellent steps of Andrew Sarris) by saying: “The most odious aspect of these films [those of the late thirties and early forties] is the way they bowdlerize politics by suggesting that the tide of corruption can be turned by one hero. Deeds and Smith admonish indolent or cynical government assemblies with a soulful list of clichés that Capra persuades himself is libertarian poetry, rather than a call for unadventurous conformity.”

Since then, there has been time and reason for reconsideration, but I think I like Capra less than ever, even if I have become more interested in his emotional muddle. First of all, I have lived in America, and Capra’s attempts and failures are more paining if one is, or is trying to be, American (and Capra was himself an immigrant who longed to be accepted).

In America I “discovered” the uneasy depths of
It’s a Wonderful Life
. I had seen the film in England, but I had not grasped it and it had not gripped me. But, in America,
Wonderful Life
was an institution, all over the TV airwaves at Christmas, bringing good cheer without quite letting us forget a vision of dread. For happiness here was pursued by the hounds of living hell; the American dream was so close to the nightmare. The film that failed in 1947 had become a token of uplifting fellowship, yet it was a film noir full of regret, self-pity, and the temptation of suicide. How could so many people convince themselves that it was cheery? I turned the film over in my mind and wrote a kind of novel (
Suspects
) that was inspired by my mixed feelings.

That would not have been possible without the craft, the guile, the magic of
It’s a Wonderful Life
. Because that movie is so beautifully made, so rich in texture and nuance, it set me on a line of thought that wonders if some of the most central American films do not offer an uncanny conjuring of “genius” and the unwholesome—I would put
The Godfather, Citizen Kane, The Searchers
, and
Taxi Driver
(at least) in the same category: terrific movies with their own plunge into the abyss. Call them problem films, call them secret revelations of the medium. They remind me of
Triumph of the Will
.

Then there has been Joseph McBride’s careful and horrified biography of Capra. I say “horrified” because McBride was once a leading fan of the director. Yet in the research he did on Capra’s archive he found all kinds of flaws in the man: a hypocrite, a careerist and credit grabber, a rearranger of the facts, a liar, a reactionary, a bogus liberal, an anti-Semite, a self-serving fabulist, and an informer. And a big admirer of Mussolini.

Would these charges fit others in Hollywood? Perhaps. There is every likelihood that a Hollywood career leaves its owner exhausted, saddened, and profoundly compromised. There is no guarantee that bad, or compromised, people may not make good films. But in Capra’s case, the human shortcomings are especially suggestive and important because he was so determined to seem righteous. Compromise is that wicked ploy loathed and condemned by Jefferson Smith—and thus his horrendous, hysterical reduction of the Senate to grotesque melodrama, game show, and a Ross Perot rally.

Capra came to America at the age of six from Sicily. The family lived quite well in Los Angeles (they had been able to pay for the boat to New York and the train West—six tickets). He went to Throop College of Technology (which would become Cal Tech) and graduated. By the early 1920s, Capra’s inventive streak had led him to be a gagman with Hal Roach and Mack Sennett. Then he replaced Harry Edwards as Harry Langdon’s director.
The Strong Man
is Langdon’s funniest picture, and if
Long Pants
is less good it hardly explains the sudden rupture between the two men. Capra was fired, and he responded with a savage attack that seems to have made Langdon falter.

The turning point for Capra, and in the event for Columbia, came when Harry Cohn hired him. The early films at that studio are varied entertainments, full of life, speed, and cinematic flair. That their director was personally ambitious did not yet overwhelm the material. With Robert Riskin as his writer and Joseph MacDonald as his cameraman most of the time, he turned out
The Miracle Woman
, with Barbara Stanwyck as an evangelist—Stanwyck and Capra had an affair;
Ladies of Leisure
, with Stanwyck as a gold digger;
Platinum Blonde
, one of Jean Harlow’s best movies;
American Madness
, with Walter Huston as a bank president during the Crash;
The Bitter Tea of General Yen
, uncommonly erotic, with Stanwyck as a missionary and Nils Asther as a Chinese warlord; and
Lady for a Day
, from Damon Runyon, about an old apple seller (May Robson) who impersonates class.

At that point, Capra made
It Happened One Night
, a pioneering romantic comedy; it won Oscars for best picture, actor, actress, director, and adapted screenplay (Riskin); it also boosted Columbia in the corporate landscape of Hollywood. As for Capra, he was turned into a man who was set on something like the Nobel Prize for Cinema. He began to preach humanity in what was obviously a very troubled time.

What followed showed unflagging talent: Riskin and then Sidney Buchman (
Mr. Smith
) were superb at construction and dialogue—Capra films move like hunting dogs; the eye for oddballs and extras was unfailing, and Capra loved stray incidents; the playing was often daring and unexpected—he got a lot out of Jean Arthur, say, but he turned the noble Gary Cooper increasingly to self-doubt and morbidity. And the films, it seems to me, are a kind of fascistic inspirationalism in which the true daily, tedious difficulty of being American is exploded in the proposed rediscovery of simple goodness. Ross Perot may look and sound like Preston Sturges’s Weeny King (in
The Palm Beach Story
), but he is a figure from and for Capra.

The films of this age are
Mr. Deeds
, the dopey
Lost Horizon, You Can’t Take It With You, Mr. Smith, Meet John Doe
, and even the postwar
State of the Union
. These same years saw several war documentaries and the grating
Arsenic and Old Lace
. The “political films” get worse, generally;
State of the Union
is awkward and beyond middle age.
Meet John Doe
is probably the most dishonest. The best made is
Mr. Smith
, and for that very reason I find it the most disturbing. I despise the resort to patriotism, statuary, and quotation in defiance of gridlock, back-room deals, and compromise. Democracy in America is a noble hope that needs to be guarded against corruption, but compromise is the essential American way—without it we risk dictatorship. Jefferson Smith is a tyrant, a wicked folksy idiot, who commandeers James Stewart’s alarming sweetness. He is the real threat in that film. Claude Rains’s Senator Payne is the best-written, best-acted, and most interesting figure in the film, but he is locked in such ignominy that he can veer, crazily, from kindness to malice to suicide attempt to repentance in order that this fevered story can get off.