Classic Movies in Review
“Desert Fury,” “Le Samouri” and Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival
Turner Classic Movies (TCM), the channel, company and brand with which I’ve been happily associated for decades, celebrates its 30th anniversary this spring. Accordingly, this story rounds up some classic movies and content I’ve been contemplating. Last week, I attended Hollywood’s TCM Classic Film Festival.
Earlier this season, I watched Desert Fury at Sid Grauman’s Egyptian theater on Hollywood Boulevard. The motion picture’s a Lizabeth Scott film I’d never seen and often heard about. Master of ceremonies and TCM host Eddie Muller—introducing the movie during his film noir festival—humorously described it as the “gayest” film and there’s truth in his banter. Homoeroticism creeps into Wendell Corey’s character.
Desert Fury disappoints. It begins with a car horn honking and entices with Lizabeth Scott’s character kept by her domineering mother as a kind of prisoner against a huge picture window, which serves as a metaphor, with a memorable scene of an oncoming desert storm. Prohibition and the speakeasy—relevant to my fiction writing—plays a role offscreen and there’s some good acting and screenwriting, such as the cutting line that “it’s a nice day—you ought to let it in.” Playing solitaire, a car crash at a bridge, Burt Lancaster as a cop—aspects to enjoy are ample in Desert Fury, yet it’s ultimately lacking in fury. The movie goes flat.
So does a foreign film, Le Samourai, starring Alain Delon, and his wife, Natalie, also seen at Hollywood’s Egyptian theater, which is run by an organization funded by Hollywood titans on a property owned by Hollywood’s and the Obamas’ streaming corporation Netflix. Sid Grauman’s theater’s been nicely renovated—it’s my second favorite Hollywood theater (after Grauman’s Chinese theater) now that ArcLight Cinemas ceased operations at the Cinerama Dome—and, for now, concessions are reasonably priced.
I was drawn to the French film Le Samourai chiefly for Mr. Delon, an actor who fascinates me every time I see him on screen. Le Samourai is a strange crime movie. I wouldn’t want to see it again. Film scholar David Thomson describes Delon’s assassin character as schizophrenic, a slight exaggeration but only slight. This makes Le Samourai, part of Muller’s noir festival, mildly more interesting.
Down the street, TCM’s former archivists and executives later appeared on a panel at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel during the Turner Classic Movies classic film festival, which often affords an interesting program. TCM executive and host Scott McGee, with whom I worked while writing for FilmStruck, moderated the panel discussion after introducing a 12-minute film celebrating Turner Classic Movies’ 30th anniversary. The short movie credits real estate developer, ad businessman and CNN, TBS and TCM founder Ted Turner. The short film shows that, when a researcher learned that Thomas Edison’s 1898 kinetoscope film debuted on April 14, the date was selected for TCM’s debut on cable TV in 1994.
Angela Lansbury (whom I saw interviewed during a recent TCM festival screening of The Manchurian Candidate before she died) “showed up for work on time and expected excellence,” according to one archivist. The presentation included footage of Easy Rider director and actor Dennis Hopper saying he did not want Jack Nicholson (Five Easy Pieces) to be cast in Easy Rider. This made me wonder how much better that film might’ve been without Nicholson.
James Dean through the eyes of actress Julie Harris—Dean’s co-star in Elia Kazan’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden—also appeared on archival film. Harris spoke about Dean performing Bach on the flute, describing the bisexual actor as “a boy who had heroes—he really worshipped Mr. Kazan.” Harris said Dean wanted to “do [William Shakespeare’s] Hamlet” and predicted that, had he lived longer, James Dean would’ve been a director. At the end of making the epic East of Eden, Harris recalled, she walked past Dean’s trailer, adding that she could hear his muffled crying.
TCM ran a clip of the late Diahann Carroll discussing director Otto Preminger. The black actress said she auditioned for the lead—Preminger “laughed in [her] face” due to her youth—and instead was cast in a small role in Preminger’s Carmen Jones. They became friends. Carroll said she thought Preminger was “funny”, though always at other people’s expense, and she admitted that he “directed through intimidation.” The Julia actress said that her father had parented through intimidation and “it didn’t work.” She displayed a toughness, which helps me better understand her career.
Other archives bits of interest include that Heaven Can Wait (1978) and The Graduate actor and screenwriter Buck Henry got his start in Hollywood, like most or many Hollywood types, with an insider’s connection; his mother was a silent film actress. Speaking of Hollywood subjectivism and smallness, when I asked the panelists to discuss how they got their archives jobs, one of them answered that he got the job because he said he liked an entertainer the interviewer liked. Another worked in Atlanta, where TCM is based. Another worked for Turner’s company library. Another worked for David Letterman and Johnny Carson.
A festival highlight was Billy Dee Williams, 87, discussing his career, from being a child actor and portraying an athlete in Brian’s Song to various roles on screen and stage. One of his first heroes, Williams said, was Rudolph Valentino. A montage of performances showcased Billy Dee Williams as the dashing romantic figure after all.
Mr. Williams gave a reality check to his TCM hostess and film scholar Jacqueline Stewart, a college professor who framed his career with references to his background, stressing his Harlem childhood. Billy Dee Williams added context to the pat framing. For example, he pointed out that one of the first black movie stars in Harlem died of a heroin overdose. Another black Harlem intellectual, Channing Tobias, committed suicide on the George Washington Bridge, he noted. Billy Dee Williams summed up his acting approach and persona by reminding the audience—to whom he persistently addressed himself—that he “was never a thug—I was always creating.”
Billy Dee Williams made creating—not blood, ancestry or skin color—the theme of his answers, appearance and commentary. When the topic of playing characters of another race was implicitly raised due to his recent remarks on a TV show, Williams boldly expressed his conviction that, contrary to the status quo, today’s artists ought to “go for it.” Williams urged the actor to see oneself as an artist and “creative entity” not as a person whose identity is based on blood, ancestry or race.
Williams discussed his dad being diagnosed with and dying of cancer before and during filming of Brian’s Song. The actor, who recently wrote his memoirs, said he infused his grief over losing his father into his performance as Gale Sayers, who tended to his best friend, Brian Piccolo (James Caan), as he died of cancer. To her credit, Stewart observed that cancer was rarely depicted on film before Brian’s Song.
In his movie with co-star Diana Ross as Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues, the Billy Dee Williams character, Louis McKay, was, Williams said, “one of the worst human beings,” according to Williams, who met his real-life counterpart. The movie’s producer, Berry Gordy, is a “wonderful” enthusiast, however, and Williams enjoyed working on Gordy’s films. Williams, who’s also a painter and wanted to make a film about fellow painter and legendary musician Duke Ellington, sat and talked to the audience with natural ease. When asked about the Star Wars series character Lando Calrissian—a relatively minor character in the franchise and his career—here, too, Billy Dee Williams spoke without pretense.
Explaining the Calrissian character’s origins as an aspect George Lucas (American Graffiti) felt compelled to create in response to critics of Darth Vader as an anti-black racial dog whistle—a view Williams did not show tolerance for—the handsome actor discussed creating the character without a single reference to race. Citing Lando’s Armenian-sounding last name—and evoking his early hero worship of Valentino—Williams said he contextualized the Lucas character as primarily having panache for life. The character’s cape, he added, against racial stereotyping, reminded Williams of classic movie star Errol Flynn (Cry Wolf), star of several swashbuckling movies.
TCM’s audience was enthralled. Regarding the term person of color, Williams plainly, simply and thoughtfully answered that he sees himself as inhabiting a “full spectrum of color,” and, as his favorite film, he named the Jennifer Jones movie Duel in the Sun.
I saw Billy Dee Williams recently on Bill Maher's Club Random. I could tell by the way he would re-frame Bill's questions that there must be an Ayn Rand connection, probably from The Fountainhead. I later found out that he mentions in his recent autobiography that he went to an Ayn Rand lecture.
“I was always out and about in the city, looking to have experiences, intrigued by almost everything, and my God, what a time it was to be in New York. I attended a lecture by Ayn Rand at the 92nd Street Y. I also saw poet Dylan Thomas there. Do not go gentle into that good night. I was near the front for Spanish flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya at the Coliseum. The same with José Greco and Antonio. I loved that world, the drama, the romance of those dancers. I even took flamenco lessons for a while. My mother and I saw Lotte Lenya at the Coliseum. I hadn’t seen her since I was in Firebrand of Florence, but my mother had kept in touch, and afterward we went backstage to say hello. While we were there, Greta Garbo walked in.”
Thank you for an interesting discussion. I liked the reviews, especially the review of Desert Fury. I've always had sort of a 'love hate' relationship with film noir because while the craftmanship of the better FNs, the quality of the cinematography, writing, acting, etc. is often excellent, the world view, what I will call the attack on personal independence and free will, which underlies the films, wears on me. I've often wondered why the FN movement appeared in history when it did. That generation had just beaten both the Depression and the Axis during WW2. Personally I would have expected films celebrating ambition, self reliance, courage, etc. but it did not turn out that way. That said I still enjoy certain FN movies quite a bit.