I swear I've seen George as an oriental. Western Guy or CharlieChaplinFan would know.
You know, Bronxie, I think we are doomed to always watch the opposite things on TCM. I somehow miss every single thing you watch! I did watch George yesterday, but I watched earlier in the morning, while you watched just about the time I left the TV to go do my chores. When will we ever hit the same movie?
That was Harry Morgan who took that particuilarly nasty tumble down the stairs in RACE STREET. When I interviewed him he said only the nicesty things about working with George Raft and added that he would have done ten more pictures with George had it been possible. Maybe it's a good thing he didn't, though: Harry made two films with Raft and met pretty violent deaths in both.
Yep, George did indeed play an Asian . . . in LIMEHOUSE BLUES.
20th Century Fox's Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) is not a bad movie I love.
It is a bad movie that is a triumph of entertainment over history. Aired on TCM the other evening, I had not seen it in a few decades, though this movie seemed to be one of those flicks that the NYC area's Million Dollar Movie unspooled five times a week regularly when I was a kid. The movie has some of the following:
Sacred vs Profane Love! Lions vs. Christians, The Debauched vs. The Virginal, An Invisible Heaven vs. An Earthly Garden of Delights, Good Actors vs. Movie Stars! Actually, it has it all--including a sweaty, crowd-pleasing desperation and gargantuan cinematic case of Acromegaly that overcame the studio system as their grip on the American imagination began to slip thanks to television and myriad other distractions.
The tale of Demetrius and friends is ostensibly a sequel to the solemn (if subversively amusing) introductory CinemaScopic chariot ride through The New Testament known as The Robe (1953). Suggested by the popular novel by the Rev. Lloyd Douglas (Magnificent Obsession, White Banners, Green Light) that inspired The Robe, Demetrius and the Gladiators is more fun than the straitlaced, starchy herd scenes of MGM's Quo Vadis? (1951), and not nearly as classy as Spartacus (1960)--though the latter film seems to have used Demetrius and pals as a template for that tale of liberation spun without the inclusion of an off-screen divine Messiah.
In The Robe, the searing effect of the cloak acquired by that brooding--if undeniably dishy--Roman centurion Richard Burton at the base of The Cross drove the narrative, leading the Welsh actor and lovely Jean Simmons toward a martyrs' epiphany. Along the way, they met some pretty interesting heathens, including craggy Richard Boone as Pontius Pilate (who had marital trouble), that ol' fossil Ernest Thesiger as Emperor Tiberius (with just a touch of the weirdness he brought to The Bride of Dracula), and that malevolent fresh face to film, Jay Robinson as Caligula--all under the guiding hand of Henry Koster, a good director whose best work usually featured Deanna Durbin or told gentle stories with a strong streak of whimsy (Harvey, Come to the Stable, The Luck of the Irish).
However, under the burly guidance of an underrated director, Delmer Daves, this sequel picks up real steam, telling the jam-packed, fast-paced story centered around one of my favorite alleged non-actors, VictorMature, who had been a relatively minor character in the pre-quel, though he was the one character a viewer could identify with in the supporting cast. Vic had previously played Richard Burton's former Corinthian-born slave turned convert in The Robe. His plebeian roots gave him an instinctive understanding of the message of Christ that was lost on those more patrician cast members--allowing the audience to get an eyeful of '50s style decadence in some scenes. Moving to Rome, Demetrius bills himself as a potter, though he is regarded with some awe by others since he is the unofficial "keeper of the robe," a red cloth once worn by J.C. and now regarded with reverence by the persecuted early Christians. The community of true believers, living in a kind of suspiciously communistic subsistence community (I suppose this was a daring feature for a film made in '53), share their meager worldly goods but the legend of their founder's life and miracles soon draws the attention of the increasingly mad Emperor Caligula and his guards, who are seeking the robe and ensnare the still hot-headed Demetrius in one of their raids.
Newly converted to Christianity, Mature, who once famously claimed "I'm no actor, and I've got 64 pictures to prove it," struggles to convey the internal spiritual anguish of one newly minted, toga-wearing boy scout trying to survive in a racily hedonistic world. Given the fact that Mature's disarming frankness of his acting chops ignored the quality of his work with good directors in Kiss of Death, Cry of the City, Easy Living, and My Darling Clementine, I found his performance in this movie very endearing and highly entertaining, if lacking in nuanced subtlety. Even though he must look a bit prissy and superior at times, and asked to deliver some impossibly overripe dialogue (i.e. "We need no gods, you and I--we have each other", he sighs as he and Messalina embrace passionately), the actor still makes Demetrius a likable if misguided fellow. Even Ernie Borgnine as head of the gladiator school seems puzzled by his reluctance to defend himself. A frustrated fellow warrior and captive king forced into the arena, the Pre-Blacula William Marshall, whose magnificent presence and rich speaking voice give his noble Nubian gladiator a resonance that is not in the script, finds Demetrius a likable, instant pal as well.
Above: Victor Mature as Demetrius between a rock (Ernest Borgnine as Strabo, the Gladiator Drill Instructor) and a soft place (Susan Hayward as Messalina the Lustful).
As Christians have learned repeatedly for the last two thousand years, Demetrius finds that emulating Christ and turning that other cheek is heavy sledding in this world, though the struggle to follow this ideal may be more important than the destination, as this movie implies several times. The flawed hero's noble impulses toward chastity and a desire for eternal peace are undone--for a time--by Demetrius' capture and introduction to the world of gladiatorial hijinks, which include witnessing the soiling of the virtue and the demise of Demetrius' pure gal pal (Debra Paget) at the hands of mumblesRichard Egan (that boy was working out in those days--though his diction still needed help). Above: Debra Paget struggling to keep her virtue at the hands of Richard Egan's Gladiator
The reluctant gladiator learns the nuts, bolts and killing techniques of the bread and circuses game from a hulking but affable, earring-wearing Ernest Borgnine (two years before Marty). Demetrius even finds himself very close to some very nubile near occasions of sin, including an unrecognizable, chicken-munching Anne Bancroft, as a gladiator good-time girl who seems to hail from that Roman suburb, The Bronx. I had the impression that Annie came to the orgies preceding the gladiator matches because she had a yen for the chicken wings and dip, not necessarily the wholesale canoodling. The loss of his pure sweetheart at the hands of his taunting fellow gladiator, after he prays to his God for her deliverance plunges Demetrius into despair and rage. Bitter and angry, Demetrius' sorrow does wonders for his performance skills in the Circus Maximus, where he becomes a killing machine taking on men and beasts. [FYI: The man vs. tiger scenes in the coliseum are much better than the scenes in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah, when sharp-eyed viewers could practically see the sawdust seeping out of the stuffed lion that Victor Mature wrassled in that 1949 epic. It may also help that the camera stays farther away from the combatants thanks to the demands of CinemaScope.]
Above: Jay Robinson (center), spreading the joy as Caligula, and demonstrating the after-effects from sipping from those lead-lined chalices with Barry Jones as Claudius and Susan Hayward's dubious looking Messalina.
The erosion of the pacifism Demetrius espouses energizes the Roman hordes, especially those debauched and enervated Romans in the court of the Emperor Caligula, played once again by Jay Robinson, whose sibilant-spraying speeches really lay it on with a trowel this go-round. One of the leaders of the pack of sybaritic pagans this trip is Susan Hayward as the notorious Messalina, who never met a fella she didn't like. Believing that sex equals power, her extracurricular activities include testing the mettle of each season's crop of boy toys gladiators, despite being the wife of the seemingly dim but highly civilized Roman Senator Claudius (played by Barry Jones). Jones appears to have been imported from the UK to play a series of slightly befuddled, conscience-stricken darlings in American pics (Plymouth Adventure, Prince Valiant) after his fine performance in the timely drama Seven Days to Noon (1950), a career peak that deserves to be better known. Claudius, as portrayed by Jones, is the Roman equivalent of "the good German" who crops up in movies of this same period. Educated, perhaps ham-strung by a degree of refinement, but able to strike a small (ineffectual) blow for the human race on occasion, Claudius represents the best of our Greco-Roman heritage, which I suspect the filmmakers wanted to highlight to counterbalance the psalm-singing aspects of the story. As screenwriter Philip Dunne described it to film historian Patrick McGilligan in Backstory 1: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood's Golden Age (Univ of CA Press, 1986), one of 20th Century Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck's flaws was that "he thought all kings, emperors, and nobility should be played by English actors. That was class, you see..."
Above: Victor Mature, expressing anxiety and guilt (or is it indigestion?), while Michael Rennie as Saint Peter tweaks his conscience further.
That observation explains the presence of Michael Rennie as Peter the Fisherman, whose preternatural calm and ascetic face is just made for a holy card--though his character here is mostly a combo of wet blanket, spiritual traffic cop, and guardian angel on earth to the wayward Demetrius. Peter's arrival at the seaside villa of Messalina marks the sudden end of Demetrius' summer of love. After sinking into an abyss of self-indulgence during a summer by the sea with La Hayward, even Demetrius seems a bit weary of Messalina-Susan's patented shtick: the flaring of her nostrils, the tossing of her red mane, and her expression of a throaty lust for life, especially if that life is coursing through the muscular bod of the former slave turned reluctant gladiator. All Rennie's Peter has to do is show up for five minutes, get wine splashed in his face, and listen to Demetrius' frenzied denial of shared faith passively.
Presto-chango, Messalina loses her playmate, Demetrius returns to Rome as a centurion appointed by Caligula (who is going off the deep end, believing the Christian-held robe has magical powers of life and death). Long story short, the robe turns up in an unexpected way that renews Demetrius' faith, though the movie stops short of investing a physical object with spiritual significance at this point, making the message of this film interestingly ambivalent. With the demise of the leading baddie in the cast, it even seems to indicate that the world might be big enough to hold both pagans and believers in some kind of wary harmony...though if anyone believes that jazz that Messalina spouts near The End, I have some swamp land in the Okefenokee where you could build your dream house.
Above: Barry Jones as Claudius, apparently wondering if the paycheck has cleared yet, appears as the spouse of Susan Hayward, playing Messalina like a house on fire.
In an effort to share the wealth of enjoyment in this bad movie, Demetrius and the Gladiators is posted below:
One can generously call this movie fun. Not so forgiving, there's much to be desired. THE ROBE on the other hand, is pretty solid biblical drama. I should qualify that I've only seen it as a child. I don't know if it would stand up to my adult perspective. But I found the story exciting, the mood stirring. The films drawn from Lloyd C. Douglas' books intrigue me. I appreciation his conviction, regardless of my own religious feelings. There's a spiritual quality that's comforting.
RedRiver wrote:One can generously call this movie fun. Not so forgiving, there's much to be desired. THE ROBE on the other hand, is pretty solid biblical drama. I should qualify that I've only seen it as a child. I don't know if it would stand up to my adult perspective. But I found the story exciting, the mood stirring. The films drawn from Lloyd C. Douglas' books intrigue me. I appreciation his conviction, regardless of my own religious feelings. There's a spiritual quality that's comforting.
I love the quiet spiritual restlessness found in Douglas' White Banners and Green Light, even if they are not very well known.
I'll say they're not. I never heard of these films! I find satisfaction in MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION. It's not my favorite "in your face" melodrama. But, again, it's the author's vision. There's no pretense toward anything else.
Bronxgirl48 wrote:moira, I can't understand any virgin struggling too hard against a fate worse than death in the arms of Richard Egan.
I even have a hard time accepting neurotic, greedy, repressed Constance Ford's rejection of him in A SUMMER PLACE.
Well, Egan lacks social skills in this one. No blazer, no gentle regret over past missed opportunities, no embracing of his long lost beloved with only a glance, and if Connie had attended the night before weinie roasts at Gladiator Central in ancient Rome, even she might have found her frigidity an even bigger stumbling block to social success than it was in 1959. Richard Egan also learned to speak by the time he worked with Delmer Daves again in A Summer Place. I barely understood a word the man mumbled in Demetrius and Friends. But then, maybe if he put a shirt and some pants on things would have been more coherent. I always found it interesting that the man taught Speech at the college level prior to taking the plunge as a professional actor.
BTW, apropos of nothing other than it interests me, and maybe someone else, author Anthony Giardina wrote one of the best of his stories, "The Films of Richard Egan," as an inventory of Egan's movies as seen through the eyes of a suburban boy growing up in America in the most active period of the actor's career. While fiction, this poetic, elliptical and concisely written piece captures the promise, momentary glory and long struggle of an actor and a child-man viewing him. The story, which has been published in "The Country of Marriage" (Random House, 1997), can be seen online here:
Jackie, were you by any chance watching THE REIVERS a while back at the same time I was, lol?
In an effort to add to my Steve McQueen viewing experience, I was looking forward to THE REIVERS, but was immediately turned off when I knew right off the bat that Steve woud take the boy to a bordello where there would be a heart-of-gold hooker in love with Steve, and that there would be a lot of BONNIE AND CLYDE-type banjo music.
I'm sorry to say I couldn't stick with it to the end...
Lyrical meditations on life, love, and Richard Egan, who would have thought, ha! Fascinating links, moira, thanks! I've only seen Richard in one movie and that would be A SUMMER PLACE, where his social skills get a wonderful workout. (sigh) He's so protective, so wise, so....hunky. An irrestistible combination. I'd like to see him in other non-beefcake type parts, perhaps where he's wearing glasses and puffing on a pipe.
Bronxgirl48 wrote:Lyrical meditations on life, love, and Richard Egan, who would have thought, ha! Fascinating links, moira, thanks! I've only seen Richard in one movie and that would be A SUMMER PLACE, where his social skills get a wonderful workout. (sigh) He's so protective, so wise, so....hunky. An irrestistible combination. I'd like to see him in other non-beefcake type parts, perhaps where he's wearing glasses and puffing on a pipe.
Non-beefcake, or semi-beefy but interesting roles for Egan that I might recommend are The View from Pompey's Head (1955), with Egan opposite Dana Wynter in a Southern-based story, The Voice in the Mirror (1958), his best role as a determined recovering alcoholic who has a tougher time with sobriety than besottedness, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1957), a lively if not great noir based on the longshoremen struggles in the NYC area, Pollyanna (1960), and The 300 Spartans (1962), an earnest, often affecting adaptation of the story of the Battle of Thermopylae with Egan as the doomed King Leonidas.
Good luck finding copies of many of these movies. TCM occasionally airs them and even more rarely the Fox Movie Channel screens one of those made while Egan worked at 20th Century Fox. Ebay or Ioffer might have DVD-rs of a few of these sometimes.
Loved your review of Demetrius, Moira! And I loved even more that you posted a link, since I missed this Mature-fest which I was so looking forward to. Glad to hear that his fight with the big cats was more believable than the one in Samson and Delilah. But of course, what isn't more believable?
Despite his hilarious quips about being a non-actor, Mature shows remarkable restraint in The Robe, and personally, I think he out acts the hunky, handsome but hopelessly hammy Burton in that film. Good thing Burton has nice legs.
According to Pauline Kael, who wrote a truly wonderful obituary for Mature in the NY Times:
Never an actor who took himself too seriously, Mr. Mature was fond of telling how he was rejected for membership in the Los Angeles Country Club because the club did not accept actors. He said that he had replied, ''Hell, I'm no actor, and I've got 28 pictures and a scrapbook of reviews to prove it.''
Mr. Mature told Life magazine in 1941, ''I can act, but what I've got that the others don't have is this,'' as he pointed to his body. The same article described him as ''proportioned like a frappe glass'' with a 33-inch waist, 25-inch biceps, a 45-inch chest and standing 6 feet 2 1/2 inches tall. Life added that 300 New York models had chosen him as the man they would most like to be marooned with on a desert island.
Mr. Mature, who was fond of ice cream and loathed exercise, described himself to The Saturday Evening Post in 1942 as ''the biggest fraud that ever hit Hollywood.''
According to Hal Erickson:
Nonetheless, and thanks to such cinematic folderol as Samson and Delilah (1949), Mature was still widely regarded as a lousy actor who survived on the basis of his looks. Rather than fight this ongoing perception, Mature tended to denigrate his own histrionic ability in interviews
\The truth of the matter was revealed sometime later, according to Kael:
''I took acting five times as seriously as anyone else,'' Mr. Mature said in a 1971 interview. ''I just couldn't show it.''
At last we hit on something we both watched.... er....should I say, didn't watch. I have tried 3 times to watch The Reivers, and have struck out 3 times. Apparently, just as Victor Mature before him, McQueen denigrated himself for taking on the role in this movie by saying that it would probably be his last, once people got a look at the thing.
JF--I agree about The Robe and I loved the quotes you included from that Kael article about Mature. Vic must have been a reporter's dream to interview, since he was always willing to make a self-denigrating crack or to spout off things like this one, which I had to clean up a bit about his more sensitive co-workers and the press:
"If you're so concerned about f****g privacy, don't become a f****g actor!"
Maybe we should have a thread devoted to the wit and wisdom of Victor Mature? Btw, I forgot to include his enjoyable performance as a movie star in After the Fox in my short list of his best flicks.
